Hello there, not sure who reads this but Mom pointed out that I had not posted in a while......Last 2 weeks have finally been hot and dry. Amazing how the plants react to it. Harvesting like crazy right now and working on winter soup bases for sale by the quart( yeah winter..). Anyhow I have a gumbo base, roasted summer squash and garlic veloute, pesto base and am going to start working on corn chowder. The chowder is a childhood soup. Man I loved that stuff. Marinara and basil are next. Winter squash will get turned into something nice but not until the end of October. Next batch of meat chickens and ducks are on the lawn. The last batch of chicken turned out real nice. Doing forty this time around and they should be ready at the end of September. Ducks will be ready for Thanksgiving. Should be interesting. Montp. market has gone well the last two times. Trying to do a few more into October. Barre market continues to be a real challenge. We have a market, it rains. We have had rain at all but one or two of the this summer. So now I am thinking I need a commercial kitchen in order to become the soup nazi of vermont.........soup is good, I love soup...and winter is coming. Soup and salad? anyone........... gotta run.....

Just looked at a few of my last posts. Boy they seemed upbeat and optimistic. Balance is the key so here we go in the other direction. Currently raining.....again. Just tore out all my canning tomatoes because of the dreaded late blight that was graciously imported into our beautiful state by a few large box stores from an infested nursery down south. Another rather poignant example of why people should be buying locally. I am sure the dollar loss and the hardship to vegetable farmers is huge and growing. Being as small as I am it is very hard for me to replace that revenue. Going to try though. Please keep in mind as you buy local produce this summer and into the fall that the reason you are seeing lot's of salad and greens is because it is some of the only stuff surviving this extremely difficult growing season. I will be planting kale, chard, spinach, and salad greens in where my field tomatoes were this week in order to try and recapture the lost money. The tough choise was pulling the tomatoes. They were 2 weeks away from my best harvest ever. Had to do it though in order to try and keep this stuff out of my greenhouses, tomatoes in there are hanging on and producing. Hopefully I can get 4-5 weeks of harvesting out of them. Never to early to start but keep in mind I will have another 40 chickens ready at the end of September. All raised on pasture and fed with local grain. Ducks will be ready near thanksgiving.

I will also be at the Barre Farmer's market tomorrow and starting this Saturday I will be at the Montpelier Farmer's Market. Hope to see you there and keep thinking dry, hot weather. We could all use some. Joe

Well August 10th already. Summer continues to elude us around here. Had a high of 65 yesterday with lot's of grey matter overhead all day. Today is looking quite a bit warmer with sun still lacking. It would appear that I have contracted late blight in my field tomatoes. None in the greenhouses yet..... Potatos were topped last Friday. I could not stand to continue to gamble with all the disease that is out there. They appear to have sized up well so I am hoping for a pretty crop. Need to get into the fields and get after the weeds and prep beds for fall planting of spinach and salad. Started to seed out fall flats with brassicas and lettuce. Really struggling this year on a number of differant levels. Really need to get after the last greenhouse ditching project. Slicing tomatoes are coming in nicely. Cherry tomatos came on strong but have not been as prolific as I had hoped for. Managed to flip the garlic field and get it replanted with cabbage and broccoli for late October. Now to keep the deer out of it. Trying to focus on my two farmer's markets for the next 5 weeks. I will be in Barre on Wend. and at the Montpelier Market on Saturday's. List of product looks good as far as variety goes. Just hoping the volume holds up so that I am not just standing there smiling at my customers. Winter squash is trying hard to set some fruit and size up but the cool temps are really hampering things.

August First. What a crazy month this is looking to be. Everything on the farm is hanging in there and managing to grow. Staying ahead of the fungus so far. Tomatoes are coming in really strongly. Brassicas seem to be the crop that I cannot grow this year. Potatoes arelooking great so far, garlic is harvested and curing. My best crop ever. I start the Montpelier Farmer's market on August 15th. Things are looking pretty good for that. Quite excited about it. I really enjoy doing market. Barre market continues to be a bit of a challenge but it is also a rebuilding year. I think with time it will develop into a solid market with good regular clientele. 40 meat chickens arrived this week along with 25 Muscovy ducklings. These should be ready sometime in October and November. Thanksgiving Duck anyone? Made my first batch of pesto base and have started work on a roast garlic puree and some soup bases. Also going to start making my own tomato sauce.