Raindrops Keep Falling on My ….Beans?
I first posted about the great Community Supported Agriculture project in Tatamagouche in June, when we received our first box of vegetables. Since then, there doesn’t seem to have been a lot of change in what we get each week, although the last few weeks we’ve seen such diverse food as broccoli, kohlrabi, fennel, and kale.
The problem is the wet weather we’re experiencing here in Nova Scotia this year. It seems like the rain started in early May and hasn’t stopped since. For instance, last week we received 4 inches (100 mm) of precipitation. Then, after a couple of sunny days on the weekend, it started raining at seven o’clock Monday morning and continued steadily all day, giving us another 2 inches this week. And there’s still no sun in sight.
Most of the rest of Canada is having an extremely dry summer and although rain threatens, there hasn’t been enough. When we were in southern Ontario in late July, we saw lawns and gardens, ditches and roadsides burned brown by the sun. Although I’d rather be here with too much rain (at least it’s not enough so far to cause serious flooding), it’s getting to be too much of a good thing – and it’s having a drastic effect on the vegetable crops.
Cammie, who runs the local CSA, advised us in late July that she had lost about 70% of her early crops in the wet and muddy spring (peas, beans, cabbage, broccoli, spring turnips, beets, salad mix, pac choi, Chinese cabbage, & radishes). But the summer really hasn’t been much better weather wise. This is the first week we’ve received beans in our harvest and there have been no peas at all.
But that’s the risk of a CSA program: farmers and members share in the risk of a bad year, as well as the bounty of a good one.
This week we received carrots, ruby-stemmed chard, a lettuce head, cilantro, broccoli, green & yellow beans, and fresh garlic.
Even though the weather and the resulting harvest have been a little disappointing thus far this year, I’m still keen on the CSA program and will join again next year (providing we have the cash in March). And I’m looking forward to many more weeks of superbly fresh and interesting vegetables this harvest season.
It appears to me that you have hit the jackpot with that arrangement, according to the pic, rain notwithstanding!
E.
Elizabeth, I admit it’s a pretty impressive selection given the weather. I know that they’re working REALLY work at the farm to give us this.
We’re paying the price for last year’s weather. Two hot, sunny summers in a row is clearly too much to hope for in Nova Scotia. :/
Suzanne, does that mean we’ll have a beautiful summer next year? We can hope!
The food you did receive looks wonderful. CSA sounds like a great program. I don’t think there is anything like it in my area.
I’ve been gardening for 20 years now with the last few years all organic. Every year I find a different crop gets annoyed by the weather. This year virtually no beans and no peppers, maybe it’s too hot, I don’t know. The zucchini and cucumbers are overly abundant and they are heat loving.
We’ve been getting wonderful food, Leslie – just not as much variety as would normally be, nor quantity. Cammie’s newsletter this week had photos of four generations of peas – all failed, so no peas this year. Just too much water. Zucchini is just starting – since we’re further north, our growing season runs a few weeks later than yours.