Hello Folks!
As usual, the farm is hopping with activity. This is one of the few years that we have been able to say that we are keeping up with irrigation on the farm. Ryan is out at all hours (even in the dark) turning on water, moving hoses, and turning off water, but it seems to be working!
We’ve also had some fun pretending that it was Christmas this week. It was a good week to “Hoe – Hoe – Hoe.” Getting rid of weeds is never a glamorous job, but it looks like a million bucks when its done. Ryan’s had some fun on the tractor too cultivating to get rid of those weeds.
Just like other weeks, we’ve been harvesting away. Picking greenhouse cucumbers, digging potatoes and picking them up off the ground, cutting broccoli and cabbage, pulling beets and carrots, and more.
And while some produce in the field has come out of the hail damage, other produce has not. We just started cutting lettuce once again this morning. Some of the onions will survive, although the hail damage means we will have to pick them smaller.
One of the questions people have asked lately is “does insurance cover that?” Well the answer is… in Nebraska the insurance for vegetable crops costs more than the value of the crops several times over. This means it is anything but economical to hold insurance on vegetables. So, we try to self-insure by planting several times per year,
In the field, the field tomatoes are a long ways away from producing and its about time to string them again. More on stringing tomatoes later. Our eggplant plants that came through the hail now have some baby eggplant on them and that makes us happy. The pickling cucumbers, unfortunately, look terrible. Not sure what that will mean for this year’s crop, but it certainly won’t be early.
As a reminder, try to bring back your box each week. If you are picking up produce on the farm, Jacob has farm fresh eggs for sale each week. Enjoy the produce and happy early Independence Day!
Your Farmers,
Ryan, Katie, and Crew