This week’s harvest: tomatoes galore, basil, garlic, onions, carrots, beets, kohlrabi, dill, parsley, kale, squash
Do you want the bad news first, or the good?

OK, let’s get the bad news over with. Yes, it hailed on our farm Monday evening. Deja vu? It was just last September when we were going through the same thing: assessing the damage on the farm from just 5 quick minutes of quarter size hail. It’s incredible how destructive it can be in such a short time. The salad greens turned to mush. Tomato, pepper, eggplant, squash, and cucumber leaves became skeletonized and fruits were pelleted. Plants with slightly tougher leaves like kale, cabbage, broccoli, and sunflowers, remained largely intact this time.

The good news…we have so many crops in tunnels, crops with tougher leaves, and crops underground, you’re share is just lovely this week and will continue to be.

One of our work/share members, Kate Greenburg (of the National Young Farmers Coalition), introduced me to the concept of resilience last year. Resilience is “the ability to anticipate risk, limit impact, and bounce back rapidly in the face of turbulent change.” Here are a few things we do to help us limit the risks we face:

1. We grow with diversity. We use it to attract beneficial insects to the farm and rotate where crops are grown so that pests don’t build up.  Nutrient demands from different crops vary so it helps maintain soil fertility. Diversity mitigates losses from the failure of any single crop.
2. We have lots of covered space to protect against bad weather (four hoophouses, a greenhouse, and lots of low tunnels covered with floating row covers).
3. We have a CSA that provides a source of income at the beginning of the season and is flexible with what it receives depending on what is ready to harvest.
4. We have work/share members who help ease the work-load.
5. We have multiple outlets for our produce when we have excess including farmers market, farm to school, restaurants and grocery stores.
6. We have city water, well water, and irrigation water.
7. We have plots in different locations with different soil types and advantages.

Don’t get me wrong. The hail scared us, made us question why we’re farming, and whether or not we should continue to farm! The commitment we’ve made to our CSA members to provide a great deal on lots of veggies all summer is one we take very seriously. After losing a little sleep with worry, we’ve been planting like crazy to replace the greens and pruning impacted fruit to help the plants recover. If the hail stays away for the season, that’s just the way things will go.

Thanks for your support,
Linley, Pete, and Reid