A light drizzle of rain can’t keep us from working out in the field but it does limit what we can do and how much we can do every day on the farm.
The top of the soil can still get muddy with a light rain and it is not good to do much work in wet soil with tools or tractors.
We are able to work on tasks we had been waiting for the time to do after prioritizing planting, weeding and harvesting while the sunny weather is happening.
Yesterday there was a about a third of an inch of rain on the farm coming in a pretty consistent drizzle throughout the day.
A light rain like this means we can still harvest today and do a little light work in the field with the sunny weather. Tomorrow we will be able to do even more work in the field and hopefully a little bit of planting.
All of the fall crops are thriving in the rain with the lettuce standing out for its fast growth and how well it is looking.
The Green and Red little gems are happy to not be as stressed which allows them to grow more naturally and give them their crunch. We are almost out of the bronze variety as that seed has been discontinued but we have saved some of it so we will have more in the spring.
The little gems grow much faster than the larger leaf lettuces but the red butter has been enjoying the weather and now we are starting to have the red leaf come in along with the green leaf.
Last week we did a good amount of mowing of older summer crops and we have a lot more to do but there are a few steps that need to happen before we can mow them.
For all the summer crops we need to pull out the drip tape that has been irrigating them and if the drip tape has no damage we keep it to reuse next year.
The tomatoes take a little more time to get ready to be mowed as after pulling up the drip tape we have to cut off and bag the string before pulling out the t-posts.
Growing since the spring the plants are big but our flail mower can handle it chopping them into small pieces that will break down into the soil over the winter adding to the organic matter.
Mowing the crops down where they grew makes it vital we rotate where we plant crop types to avoid the diseases that build up over the course of the season on the roots and leaves.
Following mowing down the summer crops we will spread cover crops on many of those areas to help build the soil over the winter and keep the weeds down.
While the summer crops are winding down and our focus turns to the leafy greens and root crops we also have one eye towards the citrus season that is on the horizon.
It seems like for many farms the season is starting a little bit early but our citrus is still a little ways away.
There is some color change and so we are able to start to get a semblance of an idea of how much fruit there is on the tree. Some of the varieties look like they have a higher than normal yield while others are below average.
With trees there is always a fluctuation yearly in the harvest as after a bumper crop the tree needs a little time to build its energy back up.
Part of the office work we are able to get done while it rains is beginning to crop plan for 2027. We will start seeding in the greenhouse on New Year’s Day so we need to have the plan all set and all of our seeds ordered and delivered.
All year long we are evaluating how a crop performs and whether it is worth to grow for the next year and now we are making those final decisions.
The decisions are complicated by a few things that are up in the air but every day we are making progress on them.
