Sorry folks, No bulk Romas this year!

I hope you've been keeping up with our farm's progress on Instagram, facebook and twitter! I've seriously not kept up with my poor blog. Life is just too busy for everything. I'm getting all the lovely emails about our romas, so unfortunately here's the news:
We won't have our bulk organic romas for sauce this year.
Sorry folks, there is late blight out in the patch and though the romas don't look too bad its too risky to start taking orders and packing boxes.  We know there are a lot of you out there that understand how to cut some rot off your tomatoes and the odd spot but unfortunately there are some really picky folks who need close to perfection and I just can't bother with the complaints.  So, unfortunately there are a few out there that ruin it for the majority.  What we will do is pack into our baskets and sell at market. For those that need sauce you will probably be able to score 5 baskets which is 25lbs, which is half a bushel. Which happens to be a case amount. We know our regulars and folks that have been good to us over the years, esp understanding growing organic tomatoes can be a real challenge, so we will try and do what we can. The roma patch is a great hybrid variety that is holding it's own and the tomatoes so far are pretty nice, but we know it won't last.  We will harvest as many as we can.  We took a few case orders for WestEnd Food Coop that we had planned for months, but that is it.  We have cut off all other orders. (Check out the picture of the field.  The greener tomatoes are the roma, but when it's this bad we know that the first time the guys go through to pick it will spread everywhere.)
It's always a bit depressing to drive around our community and see gorgeous green fields of tomatoes and watch ours die.  BUT we are not spraying fungicides or ripeners, so we simply have to let it go. We are fortunate to have tomatoes last year, year before.  The weather with all the wet conditions this year have a lot to do with local organic crop failures.  We choose not to control everything. We will be lucky to break even on the tomatoes this year, but for us it's not worth profiting off tomatoes that have been stabilized with chemicals of all sorts.  
We have beautiful watermelons and other crops this year! We know we will have successes and failures so that is why we never bank on one crop and grow a diverse lot and hope for the best.  Watermelons and all our cabbages, cauliflower look great! We had a very weak spring, slow summer but we are hoping to bring it on strong for a great fall harvest! I know, I know, our instagram is loaded with gorgeous pictures - but we are proud and I don't like to whine about problems and failures and instead try and concentrate on the positives.  There is a great investment and risk that goes into all we do and there are many days we look around at how others operate/make their living and how much easier it would be. We simply love what we do. With Ben kicking ass in the fields, nose to the ground (why you don't see him at market much) he's able to grow some amazing stuff that has given us our loyal customers over the years. .  
This market picture was taken last week.  I'm proud of this awesome display!  And we will continue to bring on the goods year after year.  Be it tomatoes one year or cabbage the next - we'll always have something good to share! Thanks for understanding!


 

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