Summer is on the Fly!

Is it really getting to be the end of June?  Today is, indeed, the first day of summer (Jon wrote this on Sunday).  For whatever reason I just don’t feel like the majority of my seeding is done or that the largest summer harvests are just around the corner. But the calendar says it is so.

The calendar also says strawberries are abundant right now, with hopefully a good 2-3 weeks left of picking. Our hope is that the strawberries can withstand these frequent wet spells. As Justin had mentioned last week, there has been a rather drippy theme to this season so far.

With constant wetness like this, it is imperative that we keep the planting clean, which means frequent “skimming” of only the ripest fruits. It is a little more time consuming, but worth doing because the plants last longer.

Yesterday was our first day of pick your own at our farm in Brandon. It was a perfect sunny day and the gorgeous berries made several hundred folks thrilled, happy and stained red.

Down at our farm stand things were also humming with many folks still hunting for the perfect plants to place in their gardens  Add to that the biscuit and berry and veggie and cheese eating crowd and we were running on all cylinders.  It’s a crazy whirling time of year here as both the plant season and harvest season co-mingle.

Our fields are about to start yielding all the yummy summer things like zucchini and cucumbers and peas. Certainly corn can be added to that list, as tassels and silk are everywhere and little ears have formed and are filling out. I figure you’ll see corn no later than the middle of July.

But for now, let’s all just immerse ourselves in the “good sugar” of strawberries.  We have almost 4 acres to be harvested this year, and hope to see around 12-15 tons come off the fields before it’s all done.  For Father’s day today I had a huge bowl of berries and a buttermilk biscuit, drowned in some Butterworks Jersey cream and sprinkled with some cardamom and cinnamon. I might have to repeat that tomorrow morning just to make sure I got it right.