Once again we found ourselves looking up at the skies today.

This afternoon, Amy was in the tomato patch, suckering & tying. I was transplanting lettuce seedlings into the field. But both of us were eyeing the clouds, marvelling at the lightning and listening to the thunder.

Mostly it seemed to be going north, over the lake …

Towards the south all looked clear …

But to the west the storm was building and approaching …

When the lightning got too close for comfort, we headed in to the barn and worked there.

The storm began with a bit of rain which quickly increased in intensity & then turned to hail. The hail lasted 8 minutes (we timed it) and was the size of peas, even large peas! Looking out the barn door, we could see it build up on the ground.

Hail is always an unwelcome event. It can cause a lot of damage, even devastation in a short time. What makes hail particularly cruel is that it usually happens in the summer when crops are ready or almost ready for harvest. It can also be very local and ruin one farm & leave surrounding farms untouched. Hail does not play fair!

Today’s hail appears to have been widespread in our area & caused varying degrees of damage. Some farms in our neighbourhood are reported to be wiped out. We were fortunate and seem to have experienced less damage – mainly rips & holes in leaves. While this will make the vegetable plants more susceptible to disease we think most will be okay. But we will find out the full extent of the damage when we harvest for CSA tomorrow.

After the storm the skies continued to awe.

What’s in the box?

Beets, broccoli/zucchini, snow peas, lettuce,

spinach, garlic scapes, green onions.

• The first of the red beets will be in your share this week. They will be baby beets, quite small, but very tender & sweet. Enjoy!
• We are picking broccoli (in fact last Friday’s pick-up got a surprise of broccoli in their box!) & zucchini – but not a lot of either. Depending on how the picking goes tomorrow, each share will have a choice of broccoli or zucchini but probably not both. We’ll see what happens for Friday?
• This is likely the last week for snow peas. Unfortunately they never last long.
• Lettuce, spinach, garlic scapes & green onions will all be part of your CSA share again. Remember to wash, dry, & bag them and store them in the refrigerator.

 

Here’s last week’s box.