August gave us a couple of particularly hot spells and not much rain until the end of the month, which was followed by a few sunny days, so all good again now for the plants (and weeds) to grow well during September.
All of our vegetable plants are transplanted now, except for the last sowing of outdoor lettuce and parsley. Most crops are well enough weeded to thrive now so our focus changes to harvesting those veggies that need to be stored until next spring.
A lot of our onion crop was harvested as ‘green onions’, and we have now picked up most of the remaining crop for storage. Martin undercuts the onions with a tractor mounted implement, then it is a case of picking the onions up by hand into buckets once the tops are cured. Then, potatoes are next, with some already sold via the Better Food Shed, as well as our own box scheme and the Farmer’s Markets we sell at. The winter squash is best left to soak up some September sun before we start harvesting it in bulk.
Although we’ve only had a few pictures of a turtle dove on the wildlife camera this year, and none of us has heard one from the farm fields, the conservation measures overall have had some success.
https://rspb.org.uk/media-centre/western-european-population-of-turtle-doves-up
We had our annual Soil Association inspection in August, which involves a walk around all the growing areas, and then the rest of the visit is checking paperwork and record-keeping to ensure that all is as it should be and that all the Soil Association standards for organic horticulture are being followed. It all went smoothly, as it should after so many years of growing organically.
