Hallelujah the winter squash are in the field!

This past week was spent pressure washing landscape plastic for winter squash, unrolling the plastic in the field with each roll covering a bed of our growing area, then covering the edges of the plastic with dirt just so the wind is not apt to carry both the plastic and the plants over the mountain to our neighbors, and finally transplanting roughly 500 winter squash plants to the field. It  FEELS FABULOUS to have this job off our ‘To Do” list and our next high priority job is transplanting over one thousand pepper plants to the field. No instant gratification for any of these jobs because we must wait until August/September before our winter squash, with any luck, matures into roasted sweetness!

Meanwhile, in between all the farm jobs, our onions are being overtaken by a weed, nutsedge, that is very hard to hoe so we are hand pulling weeds for about 3/4 acre of onions. We only have 1/3 completed and I do hope we are able to prioritize this job before the nutsedge grows too much that we end up damaging the onion plants trying to rid the field of this invasive weed.

We had a great market this past Saturday so THANKS ASHEVILLE for giving me hope that folks will be eating the food we grow this season! I have been so focused on all the gazillion jobs that need to be done (i.e. field prep, direct seeding, transplanting, weeding, seeding, harvesting, selling, etc.) that I didn’t take time to photograph our CSA share once again this week. SHAME ON ME!