Happy anniversary to my wonderful wife, who not only has to endure my constant complaints about the weather, but now has to put up with my 4 year old’s rumblings who has taken up the habit. I can’t imagine navigating this crazy world with anyone else. 11 years!
Ok, good news first: we’re FINALLY getting some rain. The bad news: it’s coming via hurricane Isaias (not a typo). A hurricane isn’t exactly the way you want a dry spell broken….but I guess I’ll take what I can get?
Our neighbor (thanks Bruce!) has a rain gauge that’s automatically uploaded online, which makes for some fun (or not so fun in this case) comparisons. For the ENTIRE month of July, we got 1.4″ of rain including an Ofer streak the last 10 days. (To give you some context, last year we got a hair under 5″, which is just about right.) It’s been so bad that we have trees, perennial bushes, invasive vines, and summer loving weeds wilting!!
But it all ends Tuesday. We’re supposed to double July’s rainfall in one day, although I showed my 4 year old daughter the forecast and she literally just said “is that really going to happen? NO!” And even though my weather app says 90% chance of rain, she very well could be right as they’re saying the hurricane’s potential path is 200 some miles wide. So yea, double or nothing I guess.
With the irrigation running every day, the garden is hanging in there. The only crop that appreciates this dry weather as far as I can tell are the tomatoes. I’ve never seen a no spray green from head to toe tomato plant in the field in August, until this year. If nothing else, maybe we’ll have a massive tomato haul! Oh and onions somehow, since onions love the water. I have enough onions to feed all of Grafton I think, and now the third succession is coming on and never looked better. Peak tomato time is still a couple weeks off, but peak onion is now!
Not only are there tons of veggies available, but there are a number of delicious add-ons this week that you’ll just have to check out on the website because this newsletter is long enough!
Another Monday, another heat wave. With highs in the 90s again, I’d like encourage everyone to pick up their veggies early. 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 – your veggies will be bagged up and kept in the fridge until pickup. Choose your pickup window on checkout (fancy!)
Veggie Ordering and Pickup Procedures: Put your veggie orders in online before 8pm Sunday. The website is 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. The two pickup windows are working well, so we’ll keep it going. Choose your pickup window while checking out online: 1230-2pm and 4-5pm 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.