Classic barn red
We also made a few other improvements to the operation, mostly replacing things that had worn out or broken over the past 15 years - new greenhouse plastic, a new commercial grade salad spinner, new potting soil mixer...
In our ongoing efforts to move the farm in the direction of a "lean, clean, machine", we limited our marketing to one farmer's market a week and kept the farm crew mostly to a few dedicated and experienced workers. We do miss having other outlets for our products, but life is much more sane if we just keep things simple and don't get over extended.
As far as growing seasons go, we have had worse, but we definitely have had better too. I like to sum it up this way: it was too cold in May, too wet in June, too hot in July, and just too late by August! The spring was actually fairly normal. We had most of our snow last year during March, and it took awhile for things to warm up in April and May. We had our last spring frost on May 26, although it had been in the 80's earlier in the week. The old rule of thumb around here is that the last frost can be as late as Memorial Day, but rarely is it ever really that late.
 |
March 20 - still lots of snow
|
 |
Chris' sister Ailea visited from England in April
|
In June we started getting some serious rain, and it just wouldn't quit. We had an incredible 15+ inches of rain during the period from late May through mid-July. Much of it fell during intense thunderstorms - one storm dropped almost an inch in 25 minutes. That's just a lot of rain no matter how you look at it. Unfortunately, all this rain fell during the time of the season when the crops needed to be put in the ground, so finding a window when it was dry enough to plant was very challenging.
The rains lightened up some later in July, but that led to a string of days with temperature well into the 90's. Fortunately, August and September had less weather extremes, and October was down right beautiful. It was a nice long and relatively mild autumn. We had a few light frosts in September and early October, but the killing frost did not arrive until October 24.
Considering all the crazy weather, our crops really didn't do that bad. Yes, there were some failures: more than half the potatoes rotted in the ground, our weekly plantings of spinach drowned all though May and June, and the tomatoes eventually got late blight, which significantly reduced their yield. But... we still had a lot of beautiful produce to sell throughout the whole season. Other than spinach, our greens did quite well - we had perhaps the best year ever for baby arugula. We also had good crops of green beans, boc choi, escarole, eggplant, peppers, kale, and radicchio.
|
| Beautiful crop of Costata zucchini |
The highlight of the season was our weekly farmer's market on Saturdays in Saratoga Springs and seeing all our dedicated customers come back week after week and year after year. With all the frustrations and disappointments that go along with farming - your support and enthusiasm for what we do, make it all worth while! There is a lot of competition out there now for your food dollar - far more than when we started - lots of new farmers starting, new farmer's markets, and new natural food grocery stores. We truly appreciate the loyalty of our long time customers... Thanks.
So, the seed catalogs arrive every other day, the days are getting longer, and we've got a lot to do to get ready for next season. Can't wait to get started.
Here's a few more pictures from the 2013 season.
 |
Baby chard - new product this season
|
 |
Costata zucchini
|
 |
Assorted bell peppers
|
 |
| Farmer and giant boc choi |
 |
Assorted mini-heirloom tomatoes
|
|
