Most summers we see a lack of lettuce in the middle of the summer. Lettuce does not really like high heat, but with the proper care and irrigation we can have some nice lettuce if we harvest it just before it gets to full size. We start all of our lettuce by transplant and in the summer the greenhouse and plant nursery area tends to get neglected. This year, thanks to Sarah we have been transplanting a fresh batch of lettuce transplants into the fields almost every week. Sarah's responsibilities on the farm change with the season. In the winter and early spring she spent most of her time pruning apples, blueberries and raspberries. In the late spring and early weeks of summer she was busy training our new interns as they arrived from various countries around the world. Now she splits her time between the greenhouses and lettuce fields in Dracut and the orchards in Westford. Thank you Sarah for making sure we have lettuce for our summer salads.

The corn is coming. Due to the drought we lost our first field of corn which should have been ready more than a week ago. We plant the earliest corn on the sandiest ground since it is the warmest soil in April. Such a sandy ground needs irrigation every four days when it does not rain. Because we have been so busy watering everything, we missed a few waterings by a couple of days. When we could see that the ears would end up being only two inches long, we decided to abandon the field and use the water on another crop. This Monday we will have corn from the second planting. But we will have it only on Monday and not the rest of the week. Unfortunately a family of raccoons got a taste for this corn and decided to enjoy the whole field when it was just about ready. On Sunday we picked the few untouched ears that were left before there were none. At least the raccoons are now well fed. Due to the drought and corn's voracious appetite for water, there will be less corn this year than most. I always say, the years when we have little corn due to drought, we have a lot of tomatoes and the years when the rains ruin the tomatoes, we have a lot of corn. This is looking like a great tomato year.

Enjoy,
Farmer Dave