2015, Week 31

Rehearsal dinner arrangements sitting in my house last week, ready to be taken to Asheboro for the weekend celebrations.
Williams Wedding Flowers Weekend = SUCCESS!!
My mom and I had a blast harvesting and arranging wedding reception and rehearsal dinner flowers for my new sister-in-law this past weekend. Several photos are posted at the bottom of this email.

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For all of you who purchased edamame bouquets from me last week, if they were bitter and unpalatable, please do let me know so that I may make it up to you by providing you a complimentary flower bouquet in the next week or so.

Edamame, as with all soybeans, have a very narrow harvest window. We grow a black-seeded heirloom variety (hence the bluish tinge to the beans – that is totally normal!) that we have been growing and saving seeds from for most of my life. We grow them in isolation from any nearby large-farm soybean fields because those are GMO fields and our crop is non-GMO, and we do not want them to cross-pollinate. Their flavor has always been the best I’ve ever tasted. But it’s been brought to my attention that they may not have all tasted very good this year. We have no means for irrigation until we dig a well, which is on the agenda for this winter. And due to this difficult combination of drought and sky-high temperatures, this season some once-familiar aspects of farming have become unpredictable. The few extra days from when I sampled the edamame until I harvested them to sell may have put some of them over the edge. Please let us make it up to you with a complimentary flower bouquet if your edamame bouquet was not good – we pride ourselves in growing high quality, delicious food, and do not want this mistake to potentially leave you with a permanent “bad taste in your mouth.”

Thank you for understanding!!

Ruth and I planted several rows of broccoli and collards last Wednesday. It’s going to be difficult to keep these alive in these hot temperatures but the season for planting has begun and we cannot delay if we want a good fall season. We will rotate through the fields with sprinklers on these young crops. These small crops do not require as much water as, say, full-grown tomato plants, so we can thankfully justify watering these a bit.

This drought and heat wave have been tough on all of the area farmers, as well as our Renfrow gardening customers. My father, David, was just telling me how we have sold almost no canning jars this summer because no one has had any yield of green beans worth canning! The hardware business has been affected by everyone’s poor gardening year – so if your own garden is struggling, know that you are not alone!!We are so thankful that some things are going well – our tomatoes and figs taste as good as they always do! However the the tomato and pepper yields have been significantly reduced due to a problem with blossom-end rot that isn’t being solved by the usual remedy – adding calcium to the soil. We know there is plenty of calcium, but without moisture, the plant cannot take it up and thus solve this deficiency problem!

Have a great week and we hope to see you on Tuesday!
~Pressly Williams, Ruth Harris,
& the farm crew

Renfrow Farms Market
is open this week on Tuesday, 10am-2pm.
409 W Charles Street
Downtown Matthews

www.RenfrowFarms.com

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Below are just a few photos from this past weekend’s Williams wedding celebrations. I purchased the bride’s requested roses, hydrangeas, and baby’s breath, and combined them with all sorts of flowers from the farm.

Wedding Reception:

My handsome husband, without whom I would not have been able to make this weekend’s decorations happen for his brother and our new sister. He and my mom were instrumental help in this flower-filled event.

Rehearsal Dinner:

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