Market Farming

["Marie Kamphefner" <kampy AT grm.net>]

Regards to the list:

 

Hey Phil!  Glad to hear from you!  Hasn’t this weather been something???  We had to drag out our coats already for early morning chores.  We finally got egg plant this past week.  Three weeks ago, I put some tiny baby ones in the CSA shares and most of them stayed baby-sized ir seemed for a month.  My pink ones have turned yellow and soft.  The Black Bells are doing well.  The edamame (soy beans) are full of tiny pods – it’s REALLY late this time.

 

The weeds are so big, we ended up just brush-hogging the spent gardens.  The gardens looked like jungles because we couldn’t get in to weed them, it was so wet.  One day I lost my boots in the mud and I couldn’t pull them out – these boots go to my knees.  I picked green beans in foxtail taller than me.  I felt like I was one big chigger bite!  We lost probably 2/3 of our potato crop because the field was under water for so long.  But the potatoes we got are just wonderful.  Our land is creek bottom and I believe it’s the last place on the planet to get dry.  Much of our gardens got really low on nitrogen (yellow corn) during all the rain, but things greened back up and we had a decent yield on most everything.  The melons all died but the squash and pumpkins are prolific.  Tomatoes are doing well, but most of them are ugly.  What is a lug?

 

We thought we did better in the drought with irrigation.  At least the weeds didn’t take over so bad then.  The better thing about all the rain and cool weather is our light bill is much lower than usual.  And the water bills have been minimal.  Last year I said I would never complain about rain again, but I think I did.

 

Marie in Missouri