Black Brook Farm Growers

Well, it's happened, we finally have more produce than we know what to do with.

The Carlisle farmer's market has been really fun, and it's been great talking to other vendors and customers, but we realized pretty quickly that we had more supply than the market's demand. It's been an interesting change to go from focusing on growing to focusing on selling. I imagine it feels about the same as getting to the end of the swimming portion of a triathlon and realizing it's time to get on your bike (to complete the analogy, let's say the planning last winter was the road race, or maybe that'll be canning this fall). While it's been stressful trying to off-load lettuce before it bolts (goes to flower and gets bitter) it's kind of worth it to see a product all the way from seed to shopping bag. We've also been selling some produce to Savory Lane in Acton, where I work as the Sunday brunch chef, so in that case I've seen my beet greens go from seed all the way to someone's mouth.

In addition, we've also started a small self-serve roadside stand this week. It's been fairly successful so far, and we're hoping once people start to remember our sign...

...and know that we're here, they'll start coming more regularly. We're able to put out a pretty good selection these days.

Kale, beets, lettuce and eggs in the coolers

Sunburst squash: beautiful.

Posies

We've also continued to sell to 80 Thoreau Restaurant in Concord, and we're going to start a small CSA. This year we can probably only commit to four or five people, but we're hoping that next year we sell a lot of our produce this way. It's a pretty nice model for a small farm.

Meanwhile, our garden is getting pretty lush.

Our cherry tomato plants are on the verge of exploding...

First signs of color!

We've also been dealing with our fair share of pests. Our cabbages and brussel sprouts got attacked by cabbage worms last week, and we spent a morning picking them off before blanketing the plants in row cover, and today Mom and I found about 15 of these HUGE horned worms on our tomato plants! The chickens loved them.

That's one of the nice things about working on a farm, you hardly ever throw anything away.

It's pretty scary to see how fast one of these can devour a tomato leaf.

But overall things are looking good. It's been a hot and dry couple of weeks, but luckily our soil seems to hold a lot of water, and with some irrigation and a lot of mulching we've been able to keep the plants happy.