Soggy Season Start

Sorry for the late newsletter. We’re down an employee this week so I had to do real work.

Hopefully everyone was able to get their produce last week. It seemed to go more smoothly that I expected, which concerns me. When things go well in farming there must be some unknown unknowns we aren’t aware of (that’s why they call them unknowns). But it is better than a complete meltdown.

We are looking to add a new offering to our members — Organic Vanilla! One of our “neighbors” (well they live in Lakeland which isn’t exactly in the neighborhood but still closer than Madagascar) and fellow former Lego Robotics coach has a business making vanilla extract. I was recently reminded of this and finally figured I’d see if our members are interested. So if you are interested in supporting a local vanilla company let me know. If we get enough interest we will sell it a la carte. We can deliver it to drop sites with your veggies. Price is $19.95 for a 4 oz bottle of organic vanilla extract. We could also get you the 2 oz bottle for $14.95 but that isn’t as good of a price is it? Let me know if you are interested and if so I will add it to our online store!

We are open our usual time on July 4th — from 4:00 to 6:00.

What will we have this week?

More green onions! Garlic scapes. Some green garlic. Some lettuce. Zucchini! A few broccoli. A few broccolini. Some snow peas. Some snap peas. Some shelling peas. Some radishes. Some kale. Maybe some chard. A few pickling cukes. And probably a few other things I don’t recall. Seems like we have a little of a lot of things this week.

Just a quick note on peas. As mentioned above, we are growing three types of peas this season: snap, snow and shelling. You can and should eat the entire pea pod of a snap or snow pea; you can remove the stringy part if you prefer. However, shelling peas should be “shelled” before you eat them. The outside is very tough and fibrous and hard to chew. Probably hard to digest as well. They are a fun snack though — kind of like peanuts in a shell. How do you tell the difference? Snow peas tend to be flat with small peas inside. Shelling peas have a thinner shell. Snap peas tend to have a thicker shell. When in doubt, have one of your kids try one and see how well they chew through it. If they succeed easily it is a snap or snow pea. If they eventually spit it out it is a shelling pea.

It is a CheeseShare week with cheese from Shepherd’s Way Farms! This week’s cheeses include Friesago — aged since 2024. It’s nutty-flavor has a satisfying finish and is excellent shaved onto a salad, shredded on pasta or sliced onto a burger or sandwich. To me it is a delicious, very flavorful Parmesan-like cheese. The second cheese is Shepard’s Hope with Garlic & Herbs. It is a soft cheese reminiscent of fresh mozzarella. I wish the tomatoes were ready. The third cheese is their Big Woods Blue — a full-flavored sheep milk blue cheese. I think it would go well in our kale salad recipe but use it wherever you would use blue cheese. Delish!

For FruitShare this week we have organic strawberries, blueberries, white nectarines, cherries and pluots.

This week’s EggShare is a dozen organic chicken eggs from pastured hens, which will be the case every EggShare week.

No coffee, no flowers (though probably next week), and no ‘shrooms.

Farm News

You old timers probably recall that the “Farm News” section is really more of a “Weather News” section since we talk so much about the weather. And this week’s Weather News, er, Farm News section is no different!

The first week of the harvest season was quite wet. On Tuesday we had 1 3/4 inches of rain. On Thursday we had another 2 1/4 inches. Then Saturday night we had 3/8ths of an inch. Makes for soggy soil to say the least. And the frequency only compounds the problems — the soil never dries out.

The biggest issue with this much rain is we can’t do the things we need to do in the soil — specifically cultivate and hoe. All this rain is great for growing things and weeds take full advantage of it. As they get bigger they become more difficult to eradicate. And eventually they go to seed and become a problem for future seasons. But having water-logged soil prevents us from doing anything about it. Driving the tractor on the soil compacts it and turns it to concrete. Even walking on it compresses it. So when it is this wet we try to only do the things we need to do, specifically harvesting. We are a week or so late from planting our second round of beans; can’t till the soil when it is wet. We also have our fall broccoli to transplant. I’m hoping the rest of the week stays dry.

Another challenge that rears its ugly head when we get frequent rains is the increase in the pest population. Maybe it is just coincidence but it seems like whenever we get frequent rains like this we get an explosion of Colorado potato beetles. It’s probably a coincidence. On Saturday June 21st I was irrigating the potatoes (in hindsight maybe that wasn’t necessary) and while checking to see the system was working I did not come across any potato beetle larva. Then this Thursday after all the rain I was walking past the potatoes and saw hundreds or perhaps thousands of the larva. Luckily we had a dry enough day on Friday where I could spray with an organic pesticide called spinosad. Like most organic pesticides it isn’t 100% effective but it knocks them back enough for the plants to outgrown the constant chewing. Can you imagine if we humans had to put up with bugs eating off our body parts? Plants are so much stronger than humans.

Then the final problem (probably not really the final problem but the final one I’ll discuss in this newsletter) with all this rain is determining whether we need to irrigate those crops we plant on plastic. When we first started using plastic a number of years ago we felt we didn’t have to irrigate the crops if we get a lot of rain. Wouldn’t the rain seep under the plastic? Well, it doesn’t seem so, but maybe it does? I don’t know. That’s why this season we invested in a soil moisture sensor. With this sensor we can use science to help us determine whether to irrigate during these wet times. By sticking the probe through the plastic into the soil beneath we can measure the volumetric water content of the soil. Though that number doesn’t necessarily tell us what to do, by using the device and tracking the status of the plants and the number measured we figured we’ll eventually get to know when to water and when not. Not all soils are the same so there is a learning curve in using this technology for our situation. But more data is good!

Oh, one last problem with rain. It tends to splash soil onto the plants that then result in greater disease pressure. It also makes our zucchini dirty. So forgive us if your zucchini has a few bits of dirt embedded in the skin. We’ll do our best to keep this from happening.

Recipes of the Week

Don’t know what to do with garlic scapes? Try this recipe!

I thought the following recipe would work well substituting the blue cheese from CheeseShare for the feta cheese.

A delicious way to use bok choy! Probably should have been in last week’s newsletter.

Joke of the Week

Why don’t farmers make good comedians? Their jokes are too corny.

As always, feel free to send in questions, comments, suggestions or your interest in organic vanilla!