Evolving Crops
As the weeks pass, crops are planted, mature and are harvested. Now is the time when plenty of crops are coming on. We love this time of year as the produce varieties range widely, bringing wonderful varieties and colors from our farm with tastes and appealing aromas into kitchens and ultimately tables throughout Central and Northern New York. What an honor that our products are invited into your homes and bring nutrition and health to many families!
Blueberry season is starting to trail off. It has been an especially productive year for our bushes which are in three different fields across our farm. The first field, out at our pond, was planted in the 1950’s and has several different varieties from tart to sweet but smaller berries. The two other fields are newer cultivars that produce large berries and burst with sweetness. And we have to give a shout out to our star picker, a lovely young Amish woman named Mary. Mary comes to Grindstone after her morning chores, drives her horse and buggy 7 miles and works a long, hot day picking. Why is she a star? This season she has picked OVER ONE TON (2,000 lbs.) of blueberries for us! She is a “picking machine” and has a delightful spirit and smile that she’s rarely without. We just have to admire her commitment.
In addition to our major blueberry harvest, July found us pulling garlic, harvesting lettuces, kale, chard, cucumbers, squashes — zucchini, patty pan and a fun new variety for us, “8 Ball”. And of course planting of new crops is ongoing through the summer. Since this is our 40th Anniversary since we started Grindstotne Farm, we talked about hosting a 40th Celebration at the end of July but realized there was just too much going on and not enough lead time to do a good job of making it happen. So now we are looking at holding it in the early part of September.
We, like many businesses, have been struggling with shortage of labor. Weeds continue to be a problem, getting things planted gets delayed until seedlings are starting to scream at us to be taken out of their confined growing trays.. And just to throw a curve into the mix, how about too much rain? We are fortunate that we have sandy soil and pretty good drainage, but we were approaching the limit and closing in on saturation. Farmer Dick shared his frustration by joking with our friends down the road at Freedom Rains Farm that he could loan them a canoe if they needed to do any weeding as they had standing water in their fields. But fortunately drier times are upon us.
Because of ugly incidents involving predators killing livestock in the past, we invested a lot of time into building infrastructure that should keep safe for our 150 turkeys. They are what we refer to as in the “gawky adolescent phase”, they have feathers but are still small and odd looking. In another month the breasts will broaden and fill out. They enjoy their days digging, scratching and eating asparagus beetles in the fenced in asparagus patch where there is plenty of room to roam and hang out under the Goji Berry tree. We keep them well watered, and their feed is GMO free. The pigs are over at the little nearby farm of our Field Manager, Tony. Soon they too will make their way to here where they will have more room to root around, wallow in mud and forage. Lucky piggies get lots of 2nd quality organic produce to fill their bellies as well as GMO free feed too.
We hope you have a chance to enjoy this season’s simple pleasures…an heirloom tomato sandwich with crisp lettuce and basil is a standard and delicious lunch these days. And it’s a pleasure that is farm fresh!