A quick newsletter since I don’t have much time and really not much to say.
Yes we are open today (July 4th) and will be delivering boxes as usual. No changes for the rest of the week either.
Farm News
I’ve mentioned before (I seem to say this a lot but I suppose it is to be expected when you’ve written 20 years of newsletters) that nature is kind to us farmers in one aspect. Typically the early season crops tend to be on the lighter side. Things like kale, chard and lettuce. Then as the season progresses the crops get heavier, like tomatoes and cucumbers. And finally by the late summer and fall you get the heaviest items like watermelons and winter squash. This gives us a slow ramp up to get our body in shape after a long winter of snow plowing.
This season nature is apparently angry at us farmers — at least this farmer. Here it is the third week of the season and by the end of last week we are already getting cucumbers coming out of our ears! Over the weekend and into yesterday we harvested 700 cucumbers! Of course we still have more harvesting this week so the total for the week equals enough to give every “share” three cucumbers! That means FamilyShares get nine cucumbers. CoupleShares get six cucumbers. And we farmers are exhausted. Our muscles haven’t acclimated to this onslaught of cukes! Nature, why to you hate me so? What have I done to you?
So why are there so many cukes this year other than the seething anger of Mother Nature? I suppose it is due to the overly warm weather we’ve been having. Cukes like it warm. So they living their best life. Plus without any rain we’ve had a lot of sun — plus a lot of irrigation. We can’t discount the Canadian smoke. Who knows, maybe smoking is good for something! And I think most importantly is we are getting really good a growing cucumbers! So good that we even planted a second round so that we can continue to have cukes in mass quantities for an extended length of time (oops).
But maybe not. It seems like frequently we get a huge flush of some veggie only for it to suddenly slow down as it exhausts its reproductive capabilities. Or more likely succumbs to some disease or pest. I would have thought that with the hot, dry weather that deer and crows would be eating the cukes and reducing our harvest but unfortunately they’ve had more of a hankering for watermelons and cantaloupes. So I guess we have that to look forward to — not carrying loads of melons. Thanks deer!
Anyway, time to fire up your recipe app and find recipes that use a lot of cucumbers. In the mean time we’ll keep harvesting them until the deer and crows finally do their job.
By the way, I think I am really dating myself with the title of this newsletter. I would imagine over half the people reading this have no idea what it references though I suppose there was that one movie.
What will we have this week?
Certainly cucumbers, also lettuce, some radishes, some beets, some broccoli, some bok choy, the last of the garlic scapes, zucchini, pickling cukes, green onions, some snap peas, some snow peas, some eggplants, some okra, some chard, and a whole lotta cukes! There are probably other things I’m forgetting as well.
Recipe of the Week
Cucumber water.
Slice up some cucumbers and put them in water. Drink. Repeat until you have no more cucumbers.
So much for not having much to say. As always, feel free to send in questions, comments, suggestions, uses for cucumbers and anything else you think would be helpful.