Pawpaws are slim pickens this year
Hi Friends!
We have had fairly cool weather for this time of year which is a huge blessing for outdoor manual labor. Last weekend I went for a trail run at Pretty Boy Reservoir and was shocked by how low the reservoir currently is. It dried up to a little stream and there’s grass growing at what is usually the bottom of the reservoir! I knew we were in a drought but seeing that visual really made it hit hard. It’s making me more intentional about our water use right now. We use drip irrigation, which conserves water, but I will be even more mindful about walking around the fixing any leaks and trying to not use more than we need.
No Pawpaw Popups This Year
Just like other orchards and vineyards between New York and North Carolina, we had a hard frost in April that wiped out our pawpaw fruit for this year. In the month of September our pawpaw sales make up about $15,000 - $20,000 in revenue each year but we won’t see that this year. Ouch! The frost also affected two other large spring crops for us, peonies and spirea. We had to make some challenging decisions this spring to cut back on our labor, while also quickly modifying our crop plan to recoup some of that lost money. Unfortunately this is just the nature of farming and as people who work the land for a living, we are truly at the whim of mother nature. Luckily, we have a diversity of crops. If we were solely pawpaw farmers, we’d be shit out of luck!
This September you may see a tiny bit of pawpaws from us at our Baltimore Farmers’ Market. An estimated 10% of our pawpaw crop survived the frost. We hope this Summer and Fall you buy our flowers and ginger (ahem, at the Baltimore Farmers’ Market) to help us make up for the loss. Wink, wink!
We are very sorry we won’t be at any of our usual pop-ups this year in and around DC.
On a happy note, this year we are seeing a TON of zebra swallowtail butterflies. Right now we are seeing them daily which is wild because I can only think of one other year that we saw these stunning butterflies. The host plant for the zebra swallowtail is the pawpaw tree. The butterflies lay their eggs on the leave of the pawpaws and the caterpillars eat the leaves before turning into butterflies.
See you all this Sunday at the Baltimore Farmer’s Market!
Sincerely,
Elisa ( and the Two Boots Crew)
Stunning florist order that went out this week to Wildflower and Whimsy.