News From the Farm | June 29, 2026

You could come to the farm every week and it would look different. The landscape is constantly changing, especially in warmer months and periods of transition like our recent change from spring to summer crops.

The plants are growing fast. As anyone who’s ever grown zucchini knows, we have to harvest those plants frequently to avoid baseball bat-sized squash. All the crops are speeding along; it doesn’t take long at all for a just-planted field of melons to germinate (photo on the left) and then become full of thriving, happy plants (photo on the right).

Plants can also disappear quickly too, like the sunflowers. When they’re ready to harvest, rows of sunflowers that were full in the morning will all be gone before lunch.

The sheep also help transform the landscape, grazing a tall field of cover crops in a matter of days.

We’ve had some other more dramatic alterations of the landscape too in the past two weeks:

The first was taking down a large, beautiful, old oak tree that was rotting at its core and was very close to the shop and a power line. The task was an all-day affair with arborists on two cranes. The central area of the farm looks naked and empty, but also a lot safer.

Also, the shade cloth covering the peppers is up! As discussed last week, the heat is great for a lot of reasons and helps us grow delicious summer fruits and vegetables. However, we don’t want too much heat, for people or the plants. We cover our 2.5 acres of peppers each year with shade cloth to protect peppers from getting sunburnt and giving them and the pepper harvesting team a slightly cooler environment! If you want to read more about the pepper shade cloth, check out this description of the process.

Speaking of the heat, if you happened to be around the farm during lunchtime a few days last week, you might’ve been able to snag a refreshing snow cone from Cousin Cones, a new thriving local business with friendly, helpful salespeople. We’ve got many toasty days in our future; the peppers are all set on sun protection but I’m sure the rest of us will need some snow cones to help cool off.

Elaine Swiedler, CSA Manager