August 25, 2010
Getting all this heat is such a nice
change. We'll soon see if it helps the main wave of tomatoes turn red. They are running about 2 weeks behind schedule
because of the long cool summer.
The early tomatoes
are delicious. We are bringing them to the Heart of the City farmers market and New
Leaf Market on the Westside of Santa Cruz now. Nibby and Miles' Alemany started Saturday
August 21. Next we will start selling to our stores. The plants look healthy and full of green fruit. We try
to let the tomatoes get nice and ripe before picking.
The greens are in their full glory now. Chard and Basil are vibrant and delicious. The lettuces are back to all
varieties. We have a special fondness for the Batavian. It is our favorite lettuce, we seem to be the only farmers growing
it, and long ago (1988) Mark and I got a puppy and named her Tavia after this lettuce. She is the up eared dog on the logo
and lived for 16 years!
Mark will be coming to the
market every Wed and Sunday until sometime in mid November. Nibby and Miles started the Alemany market August 21st.
We had two very busy weeks the beginning
of June getting all the dry-farmed crops planted in the ground. The rain kept us out of the fields until late, and then the
heat came on suddenly and the window for successful dry farming became very narrow!
True dry farming with no irrigation takes proper soil preparation and precise timing. It bothers us that "dry-farmed
tomatoes" in the Central Coast area has lost its original meaning. Most farmers around here water their tomatoes quite
a lot, actually. They may be Early Girls and taste better than most, but they are certainly not dry farmed the way we do it!
It's hard to grow our tomatoes without the luxury of irrigation. The soil and timing are crucial, the plants will never
be as large and some dry years can be downright scary, but we think that it is worth it for the phenomenal flavor. We also
think it is important to do something real about reducing the water consumption of California crops.
So we are pleased and relieved that all the tomatoes and winter squash are now in the ground. All the winter squash
is now up and doing fine (except the Delicata which didn't come up). It is always so amazing to put the hard dry squash
seeds in the ground, not irrigate and still get such lovely fruit in the fall.
Mark is coming to the Heart of the City Farmers Market in San Francisco every
Sunday and Wednesday. He brings tomatoes, beets,salad mix, spinach, lettuce, chard and kales, cabbage, zucchini and basil.
The kids are working on the farm on harvest days. Miles is very good at the kales and moving heavy boxes, Lily pulls beets,
picks edible flowers and harvests basil. Miles says he looks forward to doing the markets.
I put in favorite photos of '09 for a new page. That's
always fun to do. Even though the fire didn't affect the farm except for some helicopters overhead, we had to evacuate
our home for a week. It was challenging to keep farming, but the tomatoes had just come on in a big way and that was more
important than our inconvenience.
We have more t-shirts now in dark green, black and brown in all sizes.We added "Davenport, CA" to the logo
in the back since we love our little town! We got so much support from the community during the wildfire.
We give some shirts to our stores' wonderful produce departments, our workers, in the kids' birthday party
goody bags and clothe ourselves in our fun logo. They are also available at cost to everyone!
We
even have a retail outlet - Homegrown Surf shop in Davenport behind Whale City Bakery! Come say hi to Nef, check out the beautiful
locally made jewelry, buy shirts and maybe have a surf board made!
Here's a link to "Life on The Farm" radio show on KUSP, with our friends Andy and Julia from Mariquita
Farm.It's fun to hear them talking on the radio, and we can often relate to their topics.
