Thursday, August 8, 2013

Update from La Belle Besogne Farm for May, June, and July 2013: Math in Real Life, Food and Farming, CSA

Below you will find a short update and a beautiful poster put together by Marv on what's been taking place at La Belle Besogne Farm in May, June, and July. The video series for this section of Math in Real Life can be found at Food and Farming, Section 1: Community Supported Agriculture, CSA.
"Greetings from the Eastern seaboard. Here's a photo update of what's growing out here. It's been hot dry and crusty followed by a biblical downpour. The bugs and weeds are thriving, the hard-drive is making strange noises, so video work will have to wait until the fall (also I barely have time to take a shit, let alone edit videos). I'm finally getting an idea of what people mean when they say they are too busy. I feel like scratching my back till there's nothing left. But all in all things are great!

"...You'll be happy to know we're keeping records and should have some numbers for you soon. Things are scrawled in different places but it looks to be a pretty good picture of harvest amounts etc.

"There are also quite a few losses, a whole bed of Bok Choi that got eaten by cabbage moth, a half-bed of broccoli that went to flower before we could harvest it and about thirty feet of spinach that barely germinated. There's plenty of backup crops for our shares and market tho. Looking back on the spring it feels like we were just planting out tons of extra stuff expecting everything to fail. But the weather seems to have stabilized, lots of sun and lots of rain, the soil is looking great and we're crushing bugs (the bad ones only) every chance we get.

"Oh and the tobacco plants are getting huge! One is almost four feet high, thanks for that. (The slugs love the huge leaves) So anyway, as soon as we get a bit of time for data entry, I'll send that stuff your way. Till then, take care and enjoy the summer that seems to be flying by way too fast."