Not a lot of time to write this week so hopefully this will be a short newsletter.
Farm News
One nice side effect of having a bunch of new farm members is I can reuse some of my old bits. Like the one about farmers and working outside. To refresh your memory: In farming some days you get to work outside and some days you have to work outside. As you are most likely aware, the past few weeks have been “have to work outside” days though we’d like a lot more of the get to work outside days. Recently we came up with a corollary to this axiom: In vegetable farming some days you get to wash the veggies and some days you have to wash the veggies. These same “have to work outside” days are also “get to wash the veggies” days. This is not always the case. I can recall many days when you have to work outside and have to wash the veggies. These days usually occur in the fall when it is cold out and so is the wash water.
After the deluge of rain we had at the beginning of last week it has been mostly dry this past week. Which means we could use some rain. It isn’t urgent so feel free to leave the car windows up. I’ll let you know when we need your assistance in getting more rain — maybe by the end of the week.
Looking out over the next couple of weeks: our second planting of corn is starting to silk. What does that mean? It means if our first planting of corn didn’t freeze we could be giving out sweet corn this week. It also means we are a couple weeks out from sweet corn. A little later than we hoped but still ahead of other cool spring years.
Our first planting of green beans are getting flower buds. We should be picking beans in two to three weeks. This seems late to me but perhaps all this high heat is making me feel like we are halfway through August already.
Cucumbers are just starting to flower. I think again we are looking at about two weeks out for the cucumbers.
The tomatoes are just starting to turn color. I hate to say it but again probably a couple of week until tomato season.
The winter squash plants seem to double in size each day. They love the heat and last week’s moisture. These are a couple of months out yet!
What are we having this week?
There will be a few things ending, a few things continuing and a few things just getting started (plus an experiment). The things ending this week are lettuce, bok choi and probably salad mix. The things continuing are snap peas, snow peas, broccoli, chard, kale, and summer squash/zucchini (though the peas are likely nearing their end). The new things this week are beets and kohlrabi. Also new to some of us will be eggplants and escarole (the experiment). We have a small number of escarole so it will most likely stay in the tent or just go out to FamilyShares. If you have a FamilyShare and find a head of leafy stuff that looks like lettuce be aware it is not; it is escarole. Let me know what you end up doing with it. It is supposed to be good in soup! If people like it and let me know they like it we could look at growing more for the fall. And don’t worry, there will be plenty of squash for everyone!
We also have FruitShare, EggShare and FlowerShare this week!
Recipe of the Week
Our Facebook forum has been quite active lately Yay! So this week I will just point you there for recipes. You can also check out our Pinterest page or the recipes on our web site.
As always, do not hesitate to contact me with questions, comments, jokes, etc. Thank you!