Greetings, and welcome to September!

Here on the farm we’ve immensely enjoyed this week’s cooler weather and daily rainfall. We’ve had the opportunity to direct seed lots of salad crops in the past week, and they love this weather. We’re working on sowing cover crops in as many places as possible around the farm, and we’re continuing to transplant the last of the fall seedlings. Our tomatoes are pretty much done for the season, but our pepper plants are wildly productive, and soon we’ll be harvesting winter squash and sweet potatoes! We’re still cutting lots of flowers every day. The dahlias love the cooler weather, and our marigolds, zinnias, and celosia are all downright gorgeous. It’s officially the start of pawpaw season, and each day our harvest grows a bit. We’re looking forward to this year’s pawpaw pop-ups at the Takoma Park and Dupont Circle markets!

If you’re a regular newsletter reader, it will come to no surprise to you that we at Two Boots are pretty enthusiastic about the natural world, and we love that we get to share the farm with all sorts of species from the animal kingdom. Last week we were thrilled with the arrival of zebra swallowtails, and this week we’ve spent a lot of time watching countless monarch caterpillars chew their way through milkweed. We watched a nest of baby birds learn to fly this week, and today I stumbled upon a bat sleeping in a pawpaw tree. We feel fortunate to witness such an extensive diversity of species making their homes on the farm, and it’s a driving factor in why we do what we do. In a world where the climate is changing rapidly, as farmers with access to relatively large swaths of land it is critical that we take action to give back to the Earth and support habitats for species whose homes are threatened by development and climate change. In honor of these species, today I’ll share some photos of just a few of the animals we’re lucky enough share our farm with.

A bat (we think it is an Eastern Red bat) napping in a pawpaw tree.

This week begins our annual pawpaw popups! The fruits are rolling in and we’ll be harvesting daily for the next several weeks. We are accepting pre-orders for pawpaw pickups at all of the popups, and for pickup Thursdays on the farm and at Motzi Bread. Place pre-orders through our online store. Please be sure to order for the correct date and pickup location.

Here’s where you can find us with an abundance of pawpaws in the coming weeks:

September 13th, 10:00 am - 2:00 pm: Takoma Park Farmers Market

September 20th, 8:30 am -1:30 pm: Dupont Circle Farmers Market

September 27th, 8:30 am - 1:30 pm: Dupont Circle Farmers Market

We will continue to attend the market at Johnny’s.

Wishing you well,

Amelia and the rest of the Two Boots Farm crew

Growing Food, Flowers, Habitats, and PAWPAWS!