Lessons Learned, 2008

It's Labor Day weekend, and summer is drawing to a close. This was our first summer as a business, so I wanted to capture a few things:

-Ten inches of rain and a few small hailstones wreak havoc on your fruit harvest. We had deluges of rain back in June. Our peach crop was coming along very nicely. However, at harvest, most of the fruit had tiny holes on them, where the skin was bruised and the fruit was rotten. Jeez. We didn't even get enough peaches this year to make a batch of jam for ourselves, let alone have enough to sell.
-Strawberries, on the other hand, benefitted greatly from the rainy June. We had a wonderful strawberry yield. If only we had enough of them to sell...,.
-I make a kick ass hot pepper sauce. We just discovered a great recipe today - some roasted cayenne peppers, garlic, and vinegar. It's got heat, but still has plenty of flavor. Next year, we're thinking of planting an entire section of peppers just so we can sell the sauce. We'll have to go back to the business plan and re-evaluate this idea.....
-Slightly underripe tomatoes make great sauce. If you pick the fruit before it ripens completely, the plant will put it's energy back into producing more. We have an incredible bounty of salsa and tomato sauce this year.
-Four year old boys are really good at watering. Just have them pretend to be firefighters, and have them point the hose at the garden. Voila - they're occupied, and you can cross something off the to-do list!