CSA means a lot of things, and one of them is going with the flow of the seasons.  When Mother Nature gave us hot weather in March and May we watched the vegetables grow in unseasonable ways.  We were forced by her (Mother Nature) to begin our CSA deliveries early.  And we all asked, “What will this mean for the rest of the season?”  We have a very carefully laid out schedule for planting vegetables into the fields.  When Mother Nature messes with us we roll with it, but we don’t let her convince us to mess with our schedule.  The early season crops all came in earlier than we had planned and since we kept with our planting schedules the rest of the season’s crops should be coming in as close to planned as possible, but not this week.

It is at this point that we had to make that hard decision.  Should we meagerly fill the box this week?   We don’t want to do that.  We would rather let everything continue to grow and look forward to a more bountiful delivery in two weeks.  Believe me, it was a hard decision, but it was clear to us we needed to do it.  We want every share box to be full.  There is always a thin week or two when early crops are ending and summer crops are beginning.  And this week would have been too thin.  So if we skip it then you win by getting the same number of deliveries extending one more week into October when the bounty is guaranteed.

Crops like beans, beets, chard, cucumbers, zucchini, potatoes, garlic and the next broccoli planting didn’t get the same boost as the early greens.  Those are a few of the next vegetables to be harvested.

We thought perhaps all of this extreme heat would create speed-up of everything, but it hasn’t.  We can’t know exactly why and how the heat combined with the drought effects each crop, but we know it does.  Is one and a half inches of irrigation well water the same as one and a half inches of rain?  Just how quickly are the plants respirating and releasing moisture into the air?  Are the plants stressed because of the heat and drought?  Which plants will flourish?  Which ones will be unhappy?

Those are hard questions to answer but we can tell you that you will receive the planned number of CSA share deliveries.  All of the vegetables we planted into the ground and planned to deliver will be delivered.  The summer crops are looking fabulous (see last week’s post for pictures of some of those up and coming crops).  The fall crops are looking good as well, some of them are still getting planted, and some of them are happily growing in the fields.

This is our 18th season as CSA farmers and this ‘skip week’ is a first.  Who knows what else we will get to experience over the next 18 years!

Barb and David