As mentioned in the last post, we have outgrown our market van. Last Saturday, we had it packed as full as we possibly could, including several crates on Caitlin's lap in the passenger seat. We had a great market and sold nearly a dozen crates of vegetables, so we had those nested rather than stacked, taking up a lot less room.

When it came time to load the van back up at the end of the day, however we were puzzled to find that it wouldn't all fit. We pulled crates out and moved them around, but no luck. Tried again. Eventually we got everything in, with Caitlin still stuck with a pile of things in her lap.

We still don't really understand the physics of this problem, but we've heard that it happens to other farmers, too. Next week we may have to take a second vehicle down to ensure that everything makes it home.

Our general business philosophy has been one of slow but steady growth - we have known too many farmers (and other entrepreneurs) who take on too much, too fast and end up over their heads in work and debt. So we've tried to match our growth with our capacity and the market, trying to know where we will sell everything we plant and how we will take care of it.

That said, we also have grown to match our excitement and ambition. Last year we had about an acre and a half in cultivation; this year we're close to five. That was made possible in large part by investment in cultivation equipment and an increase in employees (from one full time to one full time and two part time). We've more than doubled our CSA over last year and expanded our market space from ten feet to twenty.

Now we're coming up against new logistical constraints: last week our market van was packed absolutely to the gills, the cooler is likewise stuffed, and we've got thousands of pounds of winter squash, potatoes, and other fall harvest waiting to come in. The wash station that served us well in the past has become crowded with three or four people working on harvest day. CSA pickup is likewise cramped if more than a couple people show up at once. Watering one acre by hand (or truck) is laborious but feasible; five acres is too much. These are all good problems to have!

Jeremy has spent a fair amount of time in the past few weeks scouring Craigslist and other websites for used coolers, cleaning out and organizing a big barn that had been storage for planting flats and unused equipment, and talking with various agencies and contractors about digging an irrigation pond. He's found a big three-section cooler from a gone-out-of-business restaurant in Brooklyn that we're planning to put in the barn, which we'll plumb and use as a new wash station and CSA pick-up location. The three-section cooler will allow for vegetables to be kept at their ideal temperatures (broccoli, beets, greens, onions, and carrots at 35 degrees, potatoes at 40 degrees, tomatoes, eggplant, and winter squash at 55).

It's exciting to be growing our business, to see the reward of our hard work in a beautiful market stand and the appreciative comments of CSA members. We're proud to be a part of a larger movement that values local, organic, healthy food and vibrant communities. We're proud, too, to be preserving and improving this land, creating decent employment for people in our community, and doing work we love. We do love it, even in August, even in the rain and the bugs, even when the days are long and the fields are weedy. Every year we get better at it, and every year it gets better. I think that's a good measure for sustainable growth.

August. August can be a bit of a slump month where morale is concerned - the weeds are tall, the diseases and pests are proliferating, the zucchinis have no respect for Sundays, and that first hard frost looks impossibly far away. This year, the effects of all the rain in May and June are still making themselves known - we've got gaps the production of lettuce and beans from the weeks when we couldn't get our equipment in the field to prepare beds to plant successions, onions swimming in weeds from the weeks we couldn't get in the field to weed, and cucumber plants giving up the ghost early because of diseases that came up on the storms. The great bounty and beauty of August can begin to feel like a burden when the cooler is already full and the tomato hornworms have just moved in.

The upside of August, of course, is the arrival of the deep summer fruits - tomatoes, eggplants, melons. Those, of course, have all been a bit late due to the cool and wet early on (see above), but they're starting to roll in. We had three whole cantaloupes at market on Saturday, and there are a lot on the plants, so we expect to have them in force soon.

(And soon, we'll make some time for an afternoon at the lake or a long bike ride or a little dinner party, and then we'll love farming again.) Fall will be upon us before we know it, and we'll be wishing for a few more weeks of August to get done everything we want to do.

We've got a lot of lovely produce for the market tomorrow - some gorgeous broccoli, summer squash, carrots, beets, cabbage, eggplant, tomatoes, and more!

Don't forget that starting this weekend, the Middlebury Farmers' Market will be held in the north parking lot of the Marbleworks (by Costello's, Otter Creek Yoga, and the pharmacy). This is to give the Marbleworks folks a chance to finish their landscaping and fix up the lawn. The hours will be the same, and there should still be plenty of parking.

This Saturday is also the MiddSummer Fest, so bring a cooler if you plan to stay all afternoon. See you there!