It is another sweltering hot MiSsissippi day

Good morning!

It is another sweltering hot MS day and while it can feel a bit daunting to face the unconditioned air we are chugging along, making a little progress day by day with an eye on the present and towards the future. We are ratcheting up the heat intensity by steaming the soil inside of our 15 high tunnels, the picture above can give you a little bit of an idea of how the process works- a diesel powered steam boiler gets moved from tunnel to tunnel, a steam delivery tube or "sock" is placed between 2 raised beds, the beds are covered with a tarp that is weighted down with t-posts and chains, the tarp holds the steam in place while the weed seeds and pathogens get cooked out of the soil. (I hope!) It takes about 2 hours to steam two beds and around half an hour for the sock to cool down and get moved over to the next bed, a time consuming process that is also burning a considerable amount of diesel fuel, oh the things that we do in the name of non-chemical weed control. We have been steaming for the last seven days and with luck we will be finished with our last tunnel on Saturday and will be able to steam all of our landscape fabric and row cover before we return the steamer to its home in TN on Monday.

The steaming is time consuming but it is not all active work and while we let the steam do its thing we are also harvesting some things- okra, squash, zucchini, Campari, Juliet and some slicing tomatoes. We are cleaning up the facilities and mowing down old crops and continuing to plant new ones. Our propagation house is filled with tens of thousands of baby plants and some that have finished childhood are out on the hardening tables getting used to the big bad outside world before they fly the coop. Carrot seedlings are emerged and emerging in the fields, we have a big round of field direct seeding scheduled for tomorrow and with luck the first Round of the aforementioned transplant soldiers will be populating our earliest Fall fields by the end of the week. And I am also in the role of produce buyer as we are in between seasons on many crops, our farm van is on the way back from Western NC as I type this and will have lots of goodies for the Farmstand this week including heirloom and red slicers, muscadines, pears and apples, we will also have peas and peaches from Cherry Creek orchard in the store this week and of course all of the wonderful stuff that the kitchen does will be here as well. Lots of fun stuff happening in the world of Native Son, I am a little or a lot fried at this point in the year but I'm still excited to be doing it and keeping the stress of starting a new season in 112 degree heat mostly under control at the moment.

Now is a great time to get signed up for the 10 week Fall CSA season, it's a great deal and will be a lot of fun, gamble on the future of local food in North MS this Fall, your odds are good and the fresh veggies taste that much better with a little side of risk :) And lastly, we are starting up a new family business where we are making fresh pasta from scratch, our first commercial attempt was last week and the noodles were great fresh but fell apart when boiled after we dried them. We are looking for pasta samplers as we pioneer this venture, ask for a sample of our pasta prototypes when you're in the Farmstand if you are interested. Check out a couple pics of the pasta production below.

Look forward to seeing you in the Farmstand this week. Please remember that our hours are slightly reduced in between CSA seasons. Our hours are Tuesday-Friday 10-5 and Saturday from 10-2.

Thanks for reading,

Will