Someone asked me this weekend, "how many acres of corn do you grow?" Ha. We only have a few acres to grow vegetables of any kind here. We tend to plant intensively (meaning we cram as many plants in there as possible), and we tend to forgo a fair number of crops that take up a lot of room, but offer relatively little in return for the amount of space they need. Corn has often been one of those crops. We also don't always grow sweet corn, because corn will cross-pollinate over the wind with every other cornstalk growing out there within a 1-2 mile radius. Most of the neighboring farms here are larger commodity-crop farms, and it's a sure bet that if they're growing corn, they're growing genetically modified grain corn. If their genetically modified grain corn cross-pollinates with my standard-breed sweet corn, we then have GMO-contaminated corn, and I don't have any control over it. I don't want to eat that, and I'm betting you don't either. I've scouted the area high and low this spring, and I can't find a single corn field for miles around - lucky us! The first ears in our little corn patch should be ready by the weekend! (Sorry mid-week folks, it's not quite ripe enough yet for Wednesday, but we do expect to have corn for at least the next 4-6 weeks).
The early summer crops are also starting to take off. Plenty of Sungolds this week, more squash and cucumbers than you can bat an eye at. Green and purple bell peppers and starting to appear, and I even found a few eggplants out there today! The larger tomatoes are almost ready; in the meantime we have green tomatoes this week that are great for making relish or chutney, as well as fried green tomatoes.
A less exuberant note - sadly we have lost our entire potato crop for the summer. Tropical Storm Andrea dumped entirely too much rain on our farm at just the wrong time for the potatoes. They sat in standing water for days, followed by another week of daily downpours. We checked them late last week, to find that nearly every single tuber in our 1/4-acre potato field was rotten. It's a discouraging blow to put so much time, effort, and money into a crop, only to watch it all slip away through forces out of our control. I like to remind myself that we've bounced back from a heck of a lot worse, and we will always do just that. And hey - just about everything else on the farm is looking great!
The early summer crops are also starting to take off. Plenty of Sungolds this week, more squash and cucumbers than you can bat an eye at. Green and purple bell peppers and starting to appear, and I even found a few eggplants out there today! The larger tomatoes are almost ready; in the meantime we have green tomatoes this week that are great for making relish or chutney, as well as fried green tomatoes.
A less exuberant note - sadly we have lost our entire potato crop for the summer. Tropical Storm Andrea dumped entirely too much rain on our farm at just the wrong time for the potatoes. They sat in standing water for days, followed by another week of daily downpours. We checked them late last week, to find that nearly every single tuber in our 1/4-acre potato field was rotten. It's a discouraging blow to put so much time, effort, and money into a crop, only to watch it all slip away through forces out of our control. I like to remind myself that we've bounced back from a heck of a lot worse, and we will always do just that. And hey - just about everything else on the farm is looking great!
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