You’ve probably had dreams where you are racing — to catch a flight, or finish a project, or get to an event — but things keep popping up to keep you from getting there. You wake up in a panic when you miss your flight, deadline, meeting, etc.

In Terra Firma’s stress dream, now reality, we are finally getting caught up with our spring preparations to-do list for April 15th. But then we look at the calendar and see that it’s actually May 15th.

One example is our tomato field. By this time most years, the plants are chest-high and beginning to load up with fruit, with the earliest varieties are getting ready to ripen. This year? We’re just starting to trellis the plants, which are only about shin-high. And there is no green fruit yet to speak of.

Over in the vineyard, some grapes are just starting to flower while others have yet to do so — also a month late. Green Beans that we would usually be getting ready to harvest are currently just a few inches tall. Sweet corn is more tolerant of cold and is a bit further along, but we missed several plantings due to rain.

May 15th is generally when we harvest our fall-planted Garlic crop for dry bulbs, but as you’ll see in your boxes today, it is still very green and lush and is just beginning to form cloves. It will be several weeks before it’s ready. Likewise our earliest Onions.

Unfortunately we can’t do anything about any of this. Our cool-season crops like Lettuce, Peas and Spinach will finish up around Memorial Day or a bit after. We’ve learned the hard way that June is almost always too hot for those crops and wishful thinking about it is not helpful.

Strawberries, however, will continue to produce until it gets too hot to harvest them any more. There have been a few years when our berry season continued almost until mid-June, the last time being 2017. In 2011, we harvested berries every week in June — the latest we’ve ever done.

Peaches are also late by about three weeks, but we’ve just started harvesting a few and there is a decent crop on the trees. It will start ripening in earnest soon and you’ll see a steady supply in your boxes going into June.

Meanwhile, with most of our summer crops planted and in progress, it’s already time to focus on getting ready for Fall. Believe it or not, we’ll start planting Winter Squash in a little over a week!

Thanks,

Pablito