Hey y’all – your favorite parched farmer here. Parched you say? But we’ve had some rain lately you say? You must not live in Grafton, or at least what I call middle Grafton because we seem to have a force field blocking precipitation. I’ve seen it raining just to the north, south, east or west of us on multiple occasions. One time I literally saw it raining in all directions but blue skies overhead.
I’ve been showing anyone who will humor me the video I took of the weather radar from the other day. I could see and hear storm clouds approaching, so I went inside and checked the radar. ‘Oh good, looks like 30 minutes of solid rain and I’ll head back out to the fields.’ I twiddled my thumbs for a while and got lost in thought and before too long I realize it’s not actually raining. So I look at the radar again only to find out that there was this big system heading directly at us…and poof! It disappears immediately before Grafton. And then pops back up in Upton!
I happen to be on the newsletter list of another Massachusetts farm and laughed out loud when I read this: “With all the recent rain, sun, and heat, many crops are in a very vigorous and beautiful stage of growth right now”. What planet are they living on? Clearly not planet middle Grafton.
All griping aside, the garden actually looks fantastic right now, though the crops would be more accurately described as scrappy fighters than “very vigorous and beautiful”. The positive side of it never raining is that you can do something about it (irrigate), whereas if you’re getting too much rain, you can’t put a force field up. The negative side of it never raining is also that you can do something about it…meaning I’m back to my every 30 minute sprinkler dance on top of everything else and it’s exhausting. Hopefully it’s all worth it in the end. So far, the extra scrambling around seems to be paying off, but we’ll see if an extended drought combined with 96 degrees turns into a knockout punch for my some of my less scrappy fighters.
With mid-90s in the forecast for Monday, I’d like encourage everyone to get their veggies early. New this week, we’ll have your orders binned up by noon, so bring bags to pack up your veggies (though we have plenty of brown bags if you forget). That said, there will still be a 4-6pm pickup window when I’ll be present. If you know you won’t be here till then, let me know and we’ll bag up your veggies and stick as many as we can in the fridge. Here’s the link, order away!
Veggie Ordering and Pickup Procedures: Put your veggie orders in online before midnight Sunday. The website has been a little buggy so if you don’t see a wide variety of items or you see items out of stock, try refreshing your browser. Also confirm on checkout that you have the correct number of each item in your cart. With mid-90s in the forecast, I’d like to encourage everyone to get their veggies starting at noon. If you can’t make it till later in the day, let me know and we’ll bag it up for you and it will be available for you to pick up from 4-6pm Monday on the farm at 64 Potter Hill Rd in Grafton. Pickups are in the long white garage on the left across from the beat up tan and red barn at the crest of the hill.