**** If you are on home delivery, please consider leaving a small ice chest out for your farm share. Temperatures are increasing every week, and leafy greens like bok choy, rainbow chard, and beet leaves can wilt if exposed to direct sunlight or when it's above 90 degrees out. Most of our deliveries are in the afternoons, but because the route is so long, Union Parish and Lincoln Parish deliveries are made around noon.
This Week
More sugar snap peas are available this week as our harvest is really increasing. There's more than enough beets, carrots, lettuce, scallions, bok choy, spinach, and herbs for everyone. The second succession of bok choy is ready, so these are much smaller than the mature ones in the inventory the past few weeks. New this week, we are adding cutting celery and leaf fennel! It's been since Spring 2022 since we have had cutting celery back in the line up, and the fennel is a new crop for us. The cutting celery is more potent than stalk celery and can be used like an herb. I add it towards the end of a recipe, since the cooking time is much shorter. The fennel is purple and looks like dill, except is has a robust licorice flavor. Don't forget to add some kohlrabi! We have a great harvest of those, plus perfect salad turnips this week. Collard greens are back!
Next Week
Next week might be the last week for escarole, and will for sure be the last for this round of Napa cabbage. We should have a small harvest of squash. Potatoes are coming any week now! Keep an eye out for blackberries soon!
Farm Update
Time is flying by and I can't believe it's already May! We finally finished planting all of the 20,000 seeds we started a month ago! It was the largest succession planting we have ever done, and now it's time to start the next one. School is almost out, and we have a ULM student coming to help us out 10-20 hours a week. I can't wait!
Irrigation is becoming a big problem, fast. We use municipal water for irrigation. In Union Parish it's pretty cheap, but we are hindered by water pressure on the one inch line. This means that I cannot water more than 2 field blocks at a time. One of the next large investments we need to make is to finish the well we started last year. I also have a meeting with a solar company next week to price out a set up for the farm. Our fields are more than 500 ft from power, and it's too expensive to install a pole with the power co-op, or run an underground line to the fields. Having power would allow us to move the germination chamber to the propagation house, run fans in our tunnels, and pave the way for a small propane tank to heat our transplants in January and February. All of this means that we can have higher quality plants going in the ground, earlier in the year. Solar power would allow us to make a big step into early tomatoes and season extension to keep growing your seasonal favorites!
Thank for for tagging us in social media posts and showing us what you are cooking! I love to see it!
I hope you have a great week and that you cook something delicious. Thanks for supporting our farm!
