Fall at Pete’s
We are now harvesting much more of our own produce, thanks to successive plantings and the extra replanting we did following the July flooding. We are now picking our own: beets, carrots, radishes, tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, zucchini, kale, chard, lettuce, basil, dill, flowers, peppers, beans, melons, eggplant… and probably a few other things I’m forgetting.
We are still buying in some items (potatoes, winter squash, cabbage), and some items we normally have in bulk (beets, carrots, basil, winter squash) are limited in supply and will likely remain so the rest of this season. This is in part due to the crops lost directly to flooding, and due to the overall wet/excessive rainy conditions which caused/spread disease or washed away nutrients the plants needed to be vigorous and healthy.
Our fall crops remain uncertain- some crops were flooded, but are not for human consumption so are okay if they don’t succumb to diseases spread by the flood (diseases such as phytophthora (Vegetable: Phytophthora Blight | Center for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment at UMass Amherst). We are hearing from other farmers, and seeing in our own fields, that this has been widespread already this season, and will likely worsen and continue to spread. Winter squash is likely going to be in limited supply this fall for this reason, and pumpkins as well.
We have already purchased some early winter squash from FOUR REX FARM in Hadley (CISA – Community Involved In Sustaining Agriculture | Valley Bounty: Four Rex Farm (buylocalfood.org) and will continue to purchase potatoes (and later sweet potatoes) from them throughout the fall. We will start to get storage onions from the Ziomek’s down in Amherst in the next few weeks.
Apples, as most of you know, are in short-supply in NH & VT this season. Especially hard hit were the orchards we have relied on for many years to supply us with apples- Allyson’s Orchard & Harlow’s Sugarhouse, as well as Green Mountain Orchard. We are currently sourcing apples from Champlain Orchards and Green Mountain Orchard, but naturally the price is higher this season due to the very limited supply. Peaches, while they last, have been Amish-grown & purchased through Upper Valley Produce.
We will continue to do our best to keep the shelves stocked, support our other local/regional small producers. Even produce which we do not grow helps keep our small farm afloat and going into the next season (and we hope, for many years to come), and it helps other farms like ourselves who may have also lost some crops.
As I’ve said many times this summer, we all lost “something”, but few of us lost “everything” so the best thing we can do is keep buying local and take the little ‘hiccups’ that come with a season like this, in stride and with kindness, compassion, and thankful hearts.
Climate events locally like the May freeze & July flooding, the fires out West and in Canada, and the extreme, record-setting temperatures in the US and across the globe should serve as a solemn reminder that a decentralized food supply is vital, and that our limited regional farmland and natural resources must be preserved and protected.
