This week, we’d love to share with you the lore of the Georgia Jeanette hot pepper, and how this little piece of Athens plant history came to be growing at Diamond Hill Farm.

As we head into fall, another season is changing, too: our season of Averi. This is our beloved CSA manager’s last week with us, and she’s handing over the reins to Maddie! We could gush all day about how awesome Maddie is, but I think it’s better to let y’all get to know her in her own words. That’s why she’s this week’s KNOW YOUR FARMER!!!!! :-)

Next week the sun’s gonna be just as hot, we’re gonna have just as many peppers and okra comin’ out of the fields, and we’re gonna be just as sweaty at the end of the workday. But one itty bitty thing will change: our CSA gets to call itself “Fall”!!!

Because we’re just not exhausted enough from farming, the farm crew recently took on a sporty extracurricular: SOFTBALL! Your favorite farmers can now be found practicing our pitches, sprinting between bases, and hollerin at the top of our lungs in the local softball league.

We hope you enjoyed Antho’s Know Your Farmer 2.0 in the newsletter last week. This week, y’all get to know the other half of the team: Reid, our dirt-lovin’, trail-hikin’, mythical forest creature of a Field Manager.

We’re very excited to introduce the new Beaverdam Boyz in Charge: Farmers Antho and Reid! We couldn’t be happier to have two capable, experienced farmers stepping up to take the reins ~ especially because both have already been part of the Diamond Hill Farmily for years.

We’re living in an eggplant wonderland! Six beautiful varieties of eggplant are at their peak right now ~ some long, some fat; some big, some teeny; some purple, some greeny!

The drought finally broke and heavy Season harvests continue!! We’re pretty much working sun up ‘till 100-degree heat index harvesting tomatoes, summer squash, winter squash, cucumbers, more tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, okra, peppers, more tomatoes, and more squash.

We are in absolute PEAK tomato season. This past weekend’s markets were a dazzling display of reds, oranges, and golds. As with all summers, we’re up to our eyeballs in tomato harvests, re-arranging our tomato ripening room, packing tomatoes, hauling tomatoes, and getting tomatoes to their final destination (your plate, your sandwich, your belly, etc).

We hope you enjoy getting to know Casey a little better this week! We’re so excited to keep sharing more from our crew in the coming weeks. The DHF team is truly something special, and we want y’all to love them as much as we do. As Casey said, the people here really are the best. We couldn’t agree more

The flower crew is growing into its next season. Flower farmers Kalyn and Casey are stepping into leadership roles, each helping carry this beautiful, ever-evolving flower program forward.

Farmer Alex is taking a leap across the ocean as she moves to Italy with her fiancé, Marco, our Atlanta delivery driver! It’s time to celebrate all that Alex has done for the farm. She has been truly instrumental during her nearly four years with us, leading our flower program through an extraordinary period of growth.

The heat index is UP UP UP! We’re planting sweet potato slips and feeling the summertime crazies :~)

Summer CSA Week 2 could also be called Bittersweet Goodbyes Week 2. Week 1 saw us saying so long to Farmer Anna, who is now on her journey to the West Coast. And now, our dearest Farmer Emma has departed this week to begin nursing school full-time.

As we step into a new summer season, the farm is also transitioning into a season of goodbyes. This summer, we will be saying farewell to three of our beloved farm managers. Last Friday marked the beginning of our long goodbyes. Field manager Anna’s last day was celebrated with plenty of cake, a toast, a “yearbook” that we all signed, a gigantic container of M&M’s, and more than our fair share of tears.

Allium season is here! Perhaps the stinkiest of seasons, we are incredibly stoked to be pulling up big leeks, beautiful onions, and fat bulbs of garlic. Fortunately, we are stinky farmers, so we love it all the same ;)

Last week we welcomed Cynthia Flores from Labor Movement for a 2-hour Farmer Wellness workshop. Cynthia wanted to make one thing clear: we farmers are athletes. We lift heavy things. We haul. We squat. We twist. We endure long days, repetitive motions, all sorts of weather, and beyond that, a season that never really ends. We are strength athletes. We are endurance athletes. We are athletes in overalls (That’s kind of their tagline)

If you’re not in flower farming or floral design, you may not know this, but Mother’s Day is basically the flower-industry equivalent of the Olympics.

this week we’re sharing some Farmin’ 101 and talking about an organic farming trick that helps transplants settle into field lige and make it all the way to harvest… Kaolin clay!

The earth is still dry as a saltine cracker in a sandstorm. Not a raincloud around here brave enough to show its face for more than a few seconds, and we’re starting to wonder what it’s gonna take to get some rain brewing in the skies. A heartfelt plea to our ancestors? Yelling at a lake? Human sacrifice?