Week 10, 2010
August Fourth
We made it half way! Week 10 and it seems like some of the summer favorites are just starting to roll in. I know that you’re wondering, where is the sweet corn? You’re seeing it on the roadsides, it’s at market, and you see all the field corn alongside the highways forming heads of corn, and it just feels like it’s time. Well, I have to be honest with you. We’re not very good at growing sweet corn.
I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the seed, maybe it’s the planter we use, or maybe it’s that we don’t get it in as early as some folks do. I know that we don’t rush to get it planted as early as a lot of people do because we’re so busy in the spring planting everything else. We don’t have a big huge corn planter that plants the seeds at the perfect spacing in perfectly straight rows either. Although, strangely enough, I have thought about buying a big, huge, old corn planter at an auction. If I stumble across one some day, I may just lay my money down for one. It’s funny how the longer I farm, the more machinery I start to want because I see how it can make life easier and our operation a little more efficient.
We do plant corn every year. We do harvest some corn every year, depending on the year. We also have a fairly serious raccoon population on the ridge and have tried various tactics for keeping the coons at bay. Some years we keep them away, some years they eat 75% of the crop. This year we plan to start setting live traps about a week before the corn is ready to start pecking away at the coon population that is lurking nearby, waiting for ripe sweet corn.
Our tomatoes are hanging on the vine, looking large and plump and juicy, but they’re still mostly green. With all of this heat and sunshine, I imagine that it won’t be long before we’re picking ripe tomatoes. I’m hoping that cucumber and squash harvest starts to wane before tomato harvest kicks into gear. Tomatoes need to be harvested every other day, consuming a large amount of time throughout the week. I even saw that our green beans are starting to flower. I’m not sure if we’ll have them for Week 11, but by Week 12, for sure they will be here by the bushel loads!
It’s hard to keep trudging through the heat and humidity, but I feel like a soldier at the end of the day. Persevering through these temperatures truly does make a person stronger.
