This week the farm is finally decked out in full summer attire, as our solanaceas (tomatoes et al) finally take their rightful — and colourful — place in the sun and your baskets. It was about time, we were beginning to tire of all the greenery.
Our farming routine was broken last week as we welcomed a TV crew to the farm on Friday — and under a cloudless blue sky, expounded on the merits of, literally, the common beet (beta vulgaris). It’s a funny experience, to stand before the camera — at once nerve-racking and exhilarating. A full day of filming will have yielded only six minutes which will air on V télé’s par-dessus le marché on September 5th — an even shorter brush with fame than the 15 minutes to which Warhol (and McLuhan before him) indicated we are all entitled nowadays. Speaking of beets, by the way, they will be plentiful this week.
This week, too, we have begun to irrigate in earnest, as we transplant the last of the season’s seedlings under a scorching sun. They (and we) are enjoying the aquatic ballet of serpentine pipes, circling sprinklers and beading drip irrigation lines. Summer has indeed arrived.