Carrots are always a little bit sweeter after a frost, so make sure you get some this weekend! Photo by Scott David Gordon

A few weeks ago, I decided to take a little bit of a gamble and start planting all of our summer crops - even though the average last frost date hadn't yet passed in Travis County (if you remember, I asked you all to cross your fingers for us). Taking gambles like this is part of being a farmer, and to be honest it's one of my favorite parts of the job! Average last frost around here falls near March 7th, and with this warm winter, we all thought we'd cleared the danger when we last week remained warm and sunny.

So I'll admit I was a little nervous when I checked the weather on Sunday to find that low temperatures were predicted to be 34 or less! We have a lot of summer crops in the field, and had even more transplants hardening off outside our greenhouses, so this forecast spelled bad news for our little gamble. JBG Greenhouse Manager, Brandon, was able to make it out to to farm on Sunday to get the tender young transplants back into our warm greenhouses, but obviously we couldn't do anything about the plants out in the fields. After that it was just a waiting game.

Katie helps to empty the greenhouse back out this week. We moved everything back inside for Sunday's frost! Photo by Scott David Gordon

Luckily, we really dodged the bullet on this late frost. In some of our low-lying areas on the farm, we lost some early tomatoes and cucumbers, but that was the worst of the damage. Higher areas on the farm must have sat right above freezing point, as we saw some minor frost burn on the leaves of a few potatoes, beans, and squash, but all of these plants will bounce right back and be fine. What a relief! Late frosts can be extremely damaging to farms - I remember one year we had a frost hit in late April, when all of our tomatoes, peppers, and more were mere weeks away from their first harvest! I know that a few farmers here in Austin still wait until April to plant out their tomatoes after that one very late frost, and I certainly don't blame them. Although part of the inherent risks of working with Mother Nature, weather events like that can cost farmers loads of time, money and labor in a business that runs on small margins to begin with, so we are extremely grateful that Sunday's weather went mostly in our favor.

Come see is this weekend at the Spring Picnic and Garden Gallop this weekend! Photo by Scott David Gordon

So, to our farm community, I'm happy to let you know that the farm will be as beautiful and bountiful as ever for our Spring Picnic tomorrow, March 26th! For those of you running, hopping, skipping or walking the Garden Gallop 5k or 1 mile Kids Fun Run, this year's route around the farm is a great one. You'll have the opportunity to see a huge diversity of fruits and veggies growing, flowering crops for our bees, the woods and creek that run through our farm, and yes, maybe even a few plants that didn't make it through Sunday night as well (we can't be perfect all the time!).

It's going to be an absolutely gorgeous day out, so make sure you plan to hang out after the race for our great lineup of bands -  Doug Moreland, The Bottom Dollar String Band and Chansons et Soulards will be bringing the dance tunes while you picnic on the lawn! Frank Hot Dogs will be selling food on site if you don't want to bring a picnic, and we're excited to see the whole family out in Garfield for a day of farm festivities celebrating Spring in central Texas.

Running past a new cilantro block. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Tickets are still available for the Garden Gallop 5k and Spring Picnic at jbgorganic.com/picnic. We've also have some last-minute volunteer slots just open up! Volunteering will not only get you a free ticket to the event, but also a free t-shirt made special for our volunteers. Email us at volunteer@jbgorganic.com to RSVP for shifts. See you tomorrow!