Have you had enough corn? Find out who else is enjoying all the corn. But first some announcements.
There seems to be increased activity on our road at the end of last week and yesterday. It hasn’t been torn up yet but I think it could happen any minute so be prepared for road work delays.
Some members who have been with us for a while may have met my older son Chris when he was VP of post harvest handling here at Fresh Earth Farms and may be wondering what he is up to these days. Well, based on his farm experience he’s realized farming is too much work and instead took the far easier entrepreneur approach to start his own company. Check out True 360 to see how his company “creates immersive experiences for zoos and aquariums”. It is a pretty cool way to use 360 degree cameras to give zoo and aquarium clients a virtual reality experience for their customers. And if you have some spare dough lying around he is looking for investors. I know I am counting on this for my retirement plan (no 401k in farming).
That is all for now. Now on to farm news!
Farm News
Sweet corn this year is behaving like a teenager — just being difficult for difficult sake. Our goal with sweet corn is to plant a number of varieties so that you get a reasonable amount of sweet corn for six weeks during the summer season. By planting multiple varieties at staggered dates we should have corn maturing over a long period of time. For example, if we plant a variety with a 65 day maturity time and another a week later with a 75 day maturity time in theory the second variety should be ready 17 days after the first variety. Seems reasonable.
This year it didn’t happen. In fact it never seems to happen the way we plan. Since we knew this never worked in the past prior to planting this season we spread out the planting dates even farther than usual. We thought this year we’ll have our six weeks of sweet corn without any one week overwhelming our members. Mother Nature had other ideas.
The first two varieties seemed to work well. One matured a week after the first. So far so good. But then the third variety matured around the same time as when the second variety matured. And before we were even close to giving out this third variety the fourth and last variety matured. It was like the last three varieties matured within a week of each other. How is this possible?
When we noticed this overlap of maturity we first tried to give you a whole bunch of corn. We also donated some to St. Paul’s Monastery, one of our customers. But we still have a bunch left over. In fact we harvested 2000 ears of corn on Thursday and Friday of last week. To give you another idea, this is approximately 1,500 lbs of corn — all hand harvested into harvest crates which when full weigh 70 lbs or so. As you can imagine last week was a very physical week.
But now the last corn is ready and it is the tastiest variety of corn. So we made the executive decision to donate the leftover corn to the food shelf and give you the latest and tastiest sweet corn. We tried to figure out how to give you all this corn but 1) we don’t have room in our cooler for this much corn, 2) we don’t have room in the delivery totes for this much corn and 3) you don’t have room in your fridge for this much corn. So we figured we’d donate it and share the bounty with those less fortunate. This is the “C” part of ASC — Agriculture Supported Community. On Monday I brought 1500 ears of corn to Valley Outreach in Stillwater. They were very grateful and mentioned their clients will snap this up quickly. So thank you members for supporting us supporting our community.
On another note, I’m really hoping last week was the peak of the season. I thought it was a bit much and I hope you were all able to make use of or give away all that we gave you. One of the biggest fears — and frequently unspoken fears — of CSA farmers is losing members because we did too good of a job; we gave our members too much food and they feel guilty if they don’t use it all. Please do not feel guilty. And please do not use having too much food as an excuse not to rejoin. You’ll have to find some other excuse like relocation or becoming exclusively a carnivore.
What will we have this week?
Hopefully less than last week. We will have sweet corn, tomatoes (I think even more than last week), cherry tomatoes, cucumbers (I think this is the end of the cucumber peak so they will be slowing down), some summer squash (past peak), onions (we’re switching to the red ones), hot peppers, beans, cabbage, small beets (the ones the deer ate off the tops), eggplant, peppers and a few odds and ends.
FruitShare, FlowerShare and CheeseShare (if it gets to the farm by delivery time today) are this week.
Produce Usage Ideas
Since I am running out of my usual go-to recipes here are a few suggestions from our Facebook Forum:
There is no better recipe than one that uses up a number of your CSA vegetables, and this one uses three that are in great supply: cabbage, cucumbers and onions. Give it a try! Cabbage Salad with Cucumbers.
This recipe also uses a few of the farm ingredients that are in great supply zucchini, corn and onions. And if you get CheeseShare it uses one of the many delicious cheeses we include: Parmesan! I think I’m going to give this one a try: Zucchini, Squash & Corn Casserole.
I guess that is all for now. I need to get out there before it starts raining. As usual, do not hesitate to contact me if you have questions, comments, suggestions, jokes, brain teasers or just want to hang out at the farm.