Thoughts from the T-Shirt Lady

It’s so exciting to have repeat customers come and tell us how much they enjoy our produce!

Believe it or not - we still have sweetcorn! Since my last post, we’ve had a couple of good rains, and the corn continues to grow and sell. We should have it for another 2 weeks or more.

The watermelons and cantaloupes continue to do well also.

Our butternut squash is ready to sell, though I don’t see it selling as well as the yellow squash we had earlier, but we do have a number of customers who at least know what it is and have eaten it before…

We are also selling tomatoes - though those have not done as well as I had hoped. Perhaps the lack of rain, or bugs or something else. This is the first year we have tried growing regular tomatoes - we have always grown cherry tomatoes and have had so many that we took them to work and gave them away! This year, however, even the cherry tomatoes have had a low production. We’ll see next year - we will try both again, and hope for a better output.

My dh has planted collards, kale, hanover salad, turnips, beets, peas, string beans, and I’m not sure what else, for the fall crops. We live in the south and greens ( collards, kale, and hanover salad) are very popular. We wanted to be able to have the produce stand in operation for quite a number of months - and if the weather holds out - we could be producing right through December. Of course… that will conflict with my husband’s hunting schedule, since he starts hunting the beginning of October and that goes through the end of December as well. We will see how it goes!

We’ve still having really hot days - I try to stay as cool as I can in the house. Looking forward to cooler days!

We should start being able to sell brown eggs in a few weeks as well. We’ve already gotten the egg washer and candler to make sure that the eggs are clean and are unfertilized. We have about 30 chickens, we are steadily gathering eggs - up to 16 now - but the eggs are all very small.

Many of our customers have asked about our eggs - The chickens have the whole fenced in yard around our house for their wandering. It’s quite a large front and back yard, and the customers can see them when they come to the stand. We supply the chickens with peelings, tomatoes that are too ripe or have holes, cantaloupes that are too ripe and watermelon rind, among other foods. We are ready as soon as the chickens are!

More later!

Sandi