Christmas in July!

We celebrated Christmas on Wednesday, complete with feast, secret santa gift exchanges, Ken playing the role of Santa with a white flour beard, and even a Charlie Brown Christmas tree!! It was a really sweet night, with all the gifts being so well thought out for each recipient, and most being hand made also. The end of this week also marks my fourth month here at the farm, and nearly the half way point (if not past) for most of us at the internship who are staying until the end of the season. Our farming activities this week still revolved mostly around cultivation, weeding, harvesting radishes, green beans and carrots, and trellising and pruning our tomatoes. This was also the first week we have been able to harvest a few of our very first choice heirloom tomatoes off the vine, and Elena, Stephanie and I considered ourselves very lucky girls to get a quick unplanned field trip with Isaac to our Fisher field to glean the first tiny and tender eggplants coming to fruit there. Here are the pics of the week:

July 23

Katie, bringing in some green beans from harvest, African Queen style!

July 24

Trellis Masters! Richie and I spent Tuesday spooling extra twine onto all the stakes in the field. The top west end of the field is behind us.
We definitely came from behind and finally got caught up this week! Maybe even a little ahead...

July 25 (Merry Christmas!!)

The best Christmas present ever... Justin paying up on a bet he lost to me with a bottle of champagne! He bet me Isaac would never use the  word 'cray', as in crazy, to describe anything. But he did, and I won. That was really hard for them both. More great Christmas pics in the
bonus fotos, just couldn't resist making this THE shot for Wednesday. Yessss.

July 26

Elena with a kitten friend from the farm next door. They have four kittens that spent the day trooping along with us as we trellised and
pruned the tomatoes in Pie Four!

July 27

At the top of our twenty acre field in Pie Four, looking East. Tomatoes, melons, and peppers abound!! I remember picking up garbage out of this field when it was just dirt. Now it is weeks away from harvesting, and gloriously weed free!! Amazing.

July 28

Colten and Alex with the brand new baby eggplants in our Fisher Field on Saturday! A nice treat in the midst of a fun filled day of weeding!

Bonus Fotos:

Jacob and Elena, with Christmas sweaters in full effect!

Happy Christmas children! From left: Emma, Luke, Abby, Alex, Stephanie Jacob, Eric, Elena, Val, Rachel, and Sarah.

Luke, with his awesome gift made by Santa Ken!

Justin with feathers, opening his gift on Santa Ken's lap. 

Sarah opening her gift under the Christmas tree, with Rachel. Jacob, Val and Eric looking on.

The happiest Christmas child, Ian, with his gift, the quintessential farm snack,
sunflower seeds! Lucia in background.

Won my bet! Me with the disgruntled men, Isaac and Justin! Carrots and champagne make for sweet, sweet victory.

Dragon Fly season! Most are these tiny electric blue ones that dart around fast as lightning, but this guy was a helicopter!! I could see
his head move around and his eyes shift as he smiled for the camera. This one is perched a top one of our trellising stakes in Pie Four.

Okay, so, might have overdone it with all the pics this week, but it is Christmas in July, so what's a little overabundance? All the crops are ripening to harvest and I can't wait until that's what we are spending the majority of our time on. It's unbelievable that soon July will be over. It seems like just last week it was April and I was wondering what I was getting myself into! Now it's almost August and I am wondering why I never started sooner, and how I will occupy my time during the cold season!! To those of you with your own gardens and farms, I hope everything is ripening right and here's to happy harvesting! To those of you with us at Grant Farms and to our CSA members, hooray(!), for harvesting full time is almost here!!

XO,

Val