What a wonderful place to be. The dreaded feeling of falling behind is very discouraging, but with our full crew in place for a week and a bit now it feels like a huge surge in "catching up". Not quite there, but getting close. We've had a group of volunteers making a huge difference too for projects from planting and weeding to harvesting.
Last Saturday we put in a huge push to harvest all our garlic. It was looking like a beautiful crop, and it's on the to do list for July. Being July 31st on Friday we realized we just had to make time to dig it. So after packing up for weekend shares and market, we dug the garlic. I've posted a short video to facebook if you're curious. We use a metal bar that we drag behind the tractor (called an "undercutter"). It is on an angle about three inches wide, so that it gently pops up the garlic and loosens all the roots. Then we can pull by hand instead of having to use a garden fork. Still takes lots of hands to get the harvest in, many thanks to the volunteers who came out at the last minute to save the day! I can report a lovely rain after it was all safe under cover, and lots of farmers taking a well deserved rest.
Lots of treats going out in your bags this week. You may have seen an item in another bag that you haven't had yet, that's normal this time of year! Harvie randomly assigns veggies to members that like them best ("love it") when I don't have enough to go around. Your bag is filled by Harvie going down my list of what is in the fields, putting in the items that you have ranked highest first. Each week the random order changes for who might get say the first round of tomatoes. If they're all filled into bags you won't see them for swapping or extras yet. However, your odds get better week by week as we start harvesting more and more!
