I also brought half of my potatoes, which the Farmette and I had been digging up the week before. She advertised them as Red, White, & Blue potatoes and mixed some red New Potatoes, Yukon Golds, and All-Blue Potatoes. The All-Blue are actually purple and were also, to our surprise, the best sellers. I only sold potatoes on the 4th of July and I'm now saving the rest in hopes that their eyes begin growing in time for a huge August planting. I've fallen in love with potatoes because they have an easy rhythm. Dig a hole, plant an eye, cover hole. When plant is a few inches tall, shore up sides so potatoes have room to expand. This also weeds the area. By the time the weeds begin shading out the potato plant, it's time to harvest which is really more like digging for buried treasure. I think every shovel yields about $1.50-$2.25 in potatoes. It's fun. So I'm saving as many as I can and hope to get more than 10 rows in my fall planting. That's just my hope. I'd be surprised if I had less than 8 rows though.
My beans frustrated me because the weeds were small and close, so I could only hoe between the closely planted rows. These weeds ended up doing me a favor: they didn't shade out the plants, but they did prevent sun spots from developing on the beans. Kneeling between rows to pick them is still a pain though, especially with foxtails biting at your hands. I'm hoping the pole beans succeed on the popcorn planting and prove easier to harvest.
This has been my first big week since strawberry season and I like the crop shift. My yields are higher than last year all around and I'm beginning to get an idea of how long it takes to do what with each crop. If I buy a walking planter next year I can plant x10 as fast and perhaps even succeed with a regular crop schedule, instead of putting stuff in when it's about the right time or when I get around to it. I would love to have a few people working for $8/hr next year, harvesting $20/hr in produce.
Tomatoes and the Three Sisters guild of popcorn, pole beans, and spaghetti squash are on the horizon. The tomatoes look like they're burning up from the bottom, a problem that hurt my uncle's tomatoes last year. Those plants still produced but not as much as they should have. The Three Sisters look fantastic in some places and poor in others. My timing was bad with them and I would plant the seeds differently if given another chance, but there are still pole beans climbing and squash plants curling out everywhere. I even harvested 7 volunteer zucchini that grew out of last year's rotten fruit. I told people at market that I just wanted to get rid of them and would take whatever they offered. The high price was $2.25 ea. and the low was $1 ea. An easy $10.50!
While the farm isn't as profitable as I wish it was, it's significantly better than last year. And once again I'm getting excited about the prospect of hiring workers. I don't know if I'll need any again this year but I suspect I will.
