Being that it’s August, I guess that means that summer is half over. From the weather the past couple of days, you’d think we’re already in September. This morning (08/02), the low temperature here at the farm was 39F, and the prior two mornings it hit 43F as a low. These extremely low temps for the summertime have caused some problems, which I will detail in the crop section below. Anyway, it is certainly nice to have the humidity under control for a little while.

So, in the field the temps were cold enough to have caused both general crop slowdowns, as well as some individual plant damage. In general, most crops have slowed a bit, though this will correct itself over a couple of days. The more sensitive plants like Basil, Peppers, and Tomatoes, have some plants showing cold damage. Thankfully it wasn’t quite cold enough to cause frost, though it was close.

As far as crops go, Green Cabbage, Russet and Red Potatoes are all newly available this week. I’m still picking String Beans and Snap Peas. The corn does not look like it’s doing well this year, so I’m not sure I will have any of my own. I found some Pumpkins and Winter Squash set on their vines, so hopefully they’ll grow nice and big. The Eggplant have started flowering, so there should be some in a couple of weeks. There should be a very limited amount of Cherry Tomatoes, and the early Salad Tomatoes are just starting to turn reddish, so they shouldn’t be too much longer. And lastly, due to the radical changes in the weather over the last few weeks, quite a bit of the Lettuce that was planted for the next few weeks has bolted (gone to flower), so there will only be very limited amounts, or even none of my own for a time. I will fill in the gaps with Local Lettuce as needed.

From beyond the farm, I am told that Local Blueberries still have a few weeks to run. The Canadian Strawberries were looking nice, so I got some extra ones this week. The unhappy news is that the Pennsylvania Peach crop will not hold out as long as previous years, and so they will likely only be available for two, or maybe three weeks. There was no word yet on Local Apples, and honestly I didn’t expect an answer given how early it is.

The Laying Hens are doing great, though they are demanding more treats of late. As for the Broiler Chickens, this will be the last week to get fresh ones until sometime in late September. There should be a reasonable selection of sizes, including some of the larger birds. I will not be doing half-chickens this week, though there are frozen ones available.

I think that’s everything I needed to cover for this update. Hope you all have a great week.