What's up at Sparrow Arc

Shipping off to Boston:
The trusty old box truck in front of Crosstrax.

This week I purchased a bike so I don't have to carpool to work anymore. Instead I bike about 10 miles a day to and from the farm. It's a great wake up routine. Our starting times have been subject to change because of the hot weather. Some mornings start at 5am, others at 7am I personally like starting at 5 am to beat the heat and get our greens out of the field before they get wilty.

Greens bins waiting to be brought to washup.

I harvested broccoli leaves for the first time. I didn't know that broccoli leaves are edible, let alone very tasty. I brought a half pound of left over leaves home and cooked them like I would've kale and they turned out delicious. We've also begun harvesting more broccoli, broccoli leaves, squash, frisee, head lettuce, edible flowers, pea tendrils, and haikuri turnips to add to our late spring harvest. The additional crops are an exciting addition to our greens and radish harvests we've had the past few weeks.

Besides harvesting I've spent more time on the tractor harrowing in our leased fields in Burnham to prepare them for more plantings. We've almost filled one field in Burnham with heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, eggplants, greens plantings, head lettuce, fennel, hot peppers, and a few brassica  successions.

Potatoes!

I've also been spending time monitoring the pest situations in a few of our fields that are in production. The biggest problems being flea beetles on the greens, cucumber stripe beetles on the cucurbits, and Colorado potato beetles on our potatoes. We spent time hand picking potato beetles to see the severity of damage to the crops.

Beets and head lettuce ready for the field.

The greenhouse has been shuffling through plantings of head lettuces, brassicas, and our winter squash varieties. It's been a long hot week, but I'm excited for next weeks harvests when we should be getting a better squash crop going out to market!