This week I discuss all the great things happening on the farm! Don’t worry. It is a short read. But first the announcement.
The only announcement this week is the same announcement about taking back the pint-size clam shells.
Volunteer opportunity!
We have a lot of garlic that needs to be processed. What does that entail you ask? It requires someone or hopefully many someones to sit in chairs, talk among yourselves and while you are at it cut the tops off the garlic. Talk about a good time! It can be done indoors or out. On a rainy day, a cloudy day, a sunny day, any day or I suppose night! If you’d like to help please do not hesitate to contact me and let me know when you’ll be by to lend a hand. The sooner we get this project done the sooner we can give it out and the sooner we can harvest the onions. Wait. Why is this a prerequisite project to onion harvesting? Well, good question. The space currently occupied by the garlic is the space we need to cure the onions. So, come one come all!
What will we have this week
We’ll have cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, peppers, onions, some cucumbers, some cabbage, sweet corn (less filling, tastes great!), some garlic, some eggplants, some okra, a few cauliflower, a few zucchini (seems to be coming to an end already) and who knows what else.
It is a ShroomShare, CoffeeShare (though coffee won’t get here until Wednesday), and FlowerShare week.
Farm News
I was told by my son who will remain nameless to protect his innocence that my newsletters are starting to sound like they come from an angry old man. I told him to get off my lawn! And then I decided I will not write about all that is going wrong on the farm this year and instead write about all the good things happening. But before I do that I want to point out that in the last newsletter I said, “I’m sure if I say something like ‘at least the tractors are operating normally’ suddenly they will start acting up so I’m not going to say that” and on Monday I found the front left tire of the tractor flat. So no more talking about not talking about something. It just causes problem. Anyway, on to all the great things going great this year on the farm!
And that’s all I have to say about that.
As always, feel free to send in comments, questions, jokes, etc.
All joking aside (well not all joking), this week I’ll focus on the positives on the farm (and hope I don’t jinx them). First and foremost is the wonderful weather. Ya gotta love highs in the 70s with low humidity. I’m hoping we get three more, ok four more months of this type of weather.
The garlic did quite well this year. As I mentioned above, we have a greenhouse full that needs to be processed. The bulbs seem to be reasonably sized. So if you joined the farm for the garlic this could be another banner year!
The pepper plants are producing. We harvested a large variety we pick green the last two weeks. We’ll start harvesting the red ones this week and continue until the season gets cold.
The tomatoes and cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen in reasonably good quantities. I’m hoping the next several weeks we will have a lot of these to give out.
We had a big flush of cucumbers last week from the second planting. Keep your figure crossed that this will continue for a while. (Um, this last sentence was written on Saturday and on Monday we got less than 40 cucumbers, ugh).
The deer and raccoons left us some corn. Not as much as we wanted but what are you going to do?
Oh, here is something new. We had some bok choy plants that were mistakenly planted in the greenhouse earlier this season so we decided to throw then into our fall brassica area and they look pretty good despite our not covering them to protect them from flea beetles. We should be harvesting them soon. Makes me think we might do more bok choy for summer time in the future (as long as we get these nice cool summers).
Speaking of fall brassicas, they seem to be doing pretty well. It is too early to predict success but so far so good! We hope to get some fall lettuce mix, some fall meslcun mix, some arugula and some baby bok choy planted this week (once we get the tractor tire back from the tractor tire repair shop). The forecast looks favorable for cooler weather for this time of year so it should get off to a good start.
I’m sure there are a few more good things happening here. Maybe a topic for a future newsletter.
Joke of the Week
Why did the garlic go to the doctor?
It wasn’t peeling well.
As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, jokes, your guess as to the type of butterfly in the first picture or come out and process some garlic!