Goodbye, cucumbers and squash

It is a depressing but common part of any agriculture: you invest your time, energy, money into a crop, only to have it ruined by mother nature, one way or another.

Now, we can't complain. We don't have acres and acres under water like many farmers around us. We don't have damage to buildings or total annihilation of our garden like folks north of us. We just have two major crop failures, with a third one looming.

The cucumber beetles we were battling earlier this year left a present: cucumber wilt. Apparently that disease will winter in the digestive tract of the cucumber beetle, which then infects the plants in the spring. Our M2 (mobile building 2) was full of cucumber plants, and we had hoped to be picking off those plants throughout August. Instead, we got two good weeks of cucumbers before the plants stopped producing and died. Within a week, the zucchini and squash in the neighboring building did the same.

Do you know how depressing it is to tear out that many plants, when just weeks earlier they looked like this:

But, that's okay. M2 is replanted to flowers, sunflowers, fun stuff for the girls. The second planting of cucumbers and squash, planted elsewhere on our acreage, is doing well; some of the squash is already producing. We won't have the bountiful harvest we had hoped, but we will have a harvest.

And we are still feeling pretty blessed for the good luck we've had this year. Definitely feeling lucky.

Goodbye, cucumbers and squash