I ventured down to our dock in Annapolis, Maryland toward the end of July and visited the farmers market. I chatted with Edgar Barajas from Westmoreland County, which is located in Pennsylvania and was one of the first counties in the colony of Pennsylvania to have its entire territorial boundary located west of the Allegheny Mountains.
Edgar filled me in on how much work goes into the summer farmers markets that I so enjoy. His farming started in February and that by mid-February seedlings were already popping up in the greenhouse.
Soil was tilled in mid-March. In April’s first week, planting began. Edgar does not use herbicides. He uses mechanical or manual labor to remove weeds: hand pulling and hoe chopping! Harvest of everything green – kale, collards, onions and spinach – took place the first week of May so that it could all be brought to market. Around the first week of June, there was a burst of cauliflowers and broccoli, followed by mid-June tomatoes, cucumbers and squash. All this was added to the produce truck.
“Farming is hard work,” Edgar said. “One must work with the environment. One month of rain, like it has rained 26 days in a row this season, takes a toll on the crops. All crops require sun, most 6-8 hours of sunlight. Squash requirement for sun differs from tomatoes. One needs to research sun requirements for individual crops.”
Edgar uses crop rotation and weeding so that bugs will not set in. Now he has 30 crops on his 50-acre farm, which he started in 2000.
I purchased a tomato from him to share, as well as a zucchini to add to the zucchini I picked up from the Project HOPE Food Fest market that was held at our Boys & Girls Clubs of Annapolis & Anne Arundel County a few days earlier. I planned to make chocolate zucchini brownies – YUM!
