The Farm Just Got a Little Bit Cooler
This is it: the cooler!
And this is how it works…
It has been (once again) a busy couple of weeks.
The biggest news being that we completed our cooler trailer. The walls and ceiling are insulated and the Coolbot unit is installed and operational! The relief I experienced when turning it on and feeling cold air come out of the AC unit was immense. Being able to harvest and immediately put the vegetables into the cooler greatly improves the quality and longevity for our products. We are eternally grateful to Slow Farm for allowing us to use some of their cooler space these past couple weeks. Ultimately, we would love to be able to take the cooler with us to market and keep our produce cold while there. At the moment we only have a few boxes to take each week but we’ll get there eventually. There are a few finishing touches I’d like to complete before then anyways, like sheathing the foam walls in plastic to protect it from getting cut or crunched by sliding bins of squash (those suckers get heavy and are destructive).
Tiny acorn squash forming.
Speaking of squash we have been harvesting large quantities of summer squash almost daily! As always you can find our squash (and other produce) for sale at Argus Liberty and Packard but now you can also find them deliciously prepared at Spencer on Liberty and Sava’s on State Street (in their brunch buffet). We are extremely proud to able to provide our favorite restaurants quality, local produce and cannot wait to experience what they cook up with it. Our winter squash plants are also coming along nicely. I have been finding tiny acorn squash among the vines which is really making me long for cool, fall weather. Only 6 more weeks of summer to go!
Magda weaving some tomato plants into the twine.
But before that: tomatoes! Well, not quite… we are still a ways off from producing summers most succulent fruit. But they are on the plants. Tiny green orbs of possibility! Just a few weeks out.
Our plants are now trellised off the ground though! We put t-posts in-between every 4 plants and then used jute twine around the posts to hold the tomatoes up in a process called the “Florida weave”. We have been doing the same thing for our cucumbers which seem to be liking it as well. Eggplants and peppers don’t receive this treatment but they have been loving the heat and sun we have been getting the past couple weeks.
More and more of these little green tomatoes are forming!
I’d be curious to hear about everyone else’s experience, but I have not been noticing much insect pest pressure this year. By this point in the season we would normally have a hoard of cucumber beetles feasting on our squash and cucumber plants but I haven’t seen one. Similarly, our eggplants have experienced some minor flea beetle damage but not enough to warrant any intervention from us. Even our brassica crops have minimal cabbage moth damage.
At this point I am anxiously knocking on wood but I think that the lower pest population is from an overall insect abundance. I have been seeing a lot of predatory insects, in particular dragonflies, which I believe is attributing to lower pests overall. Granted there are still some (I myself have been getting LIT UP by mosquitoes this year) but things feel balanced on the farm. Maybe we are just getting some of that first year on a new farm luck.
Zach weaving the cucumbers the same way as the tomatoes.
We will be at the Ypsi Farmer’s Market again this Saturday from 9-1pm! We will have kale, chard, green onions, beets, summer squash, cucumbers, cilantro, basil and some of our Cosmic Lettuce mix. As always we appreciate everyone’s abundance of support and look forward to seeing you soon.
Peace!
Zach and Magda
