Finally

Finally I am seeing progress in the garden. As much as I do not enjoy sweltering heat, it is exactly what the plants have needed to start to really grow and produce. We needed sun. Heat. Dry. We have finally gotten it. It is what was expected back the beginning of July. Better late than never, though. I will be lucky to have any share members decide to come back at this rate. It is really testing the idea of CSA itself-buying into a farm's ups and downs. This is about as "down" as you can go. But, I am seeing little squash and cucumbers. I am going to get a new load of compost to work into the finished areas of the gardens to reseed beans for a fall harvest. Tomatoes are looking pretty poor. I was worried I might have gotten some over spray from nearby fields, but then looked at several other farms and saw that all the tomatoes around are doing the same thing (leaves dying back prematurely). I working to try and save them, with food, mulch and a side dressing of compost. The apple crop looks great. I thought I might get some into this week's delivery, but they are still pretty tart. We will wait, but the trees are loaded. We are also going to be making wild grape jelly this weekend and next. This is the first year in a long time there have been enough, but there are gads at my parents' place. I have also gotten paths re-mowed in the garden, so that things are easier to reach. On vacation it seems the weeds took off and I came back to knee high jungles. The winter squash look great-I think we'll be okay. It is just convincing everyone that this year has not been normal. And now watching the news, it looks like rain is returning, though. I will just keep chugging through, praying that some of the members understand that this year has been hard for everyone-and next year should be better.