It's the first week of our 2022 Summer Share!

Here we are again - at the very start of the summer.   This is our eighth time launching a summer season, and I'm feeling a little reflective as we get ramping up again.  And oh how things have changed in eight years.  When we started it was just Eric and I, and two part-time employees on a little more than 2 acres - we've grown to more than 15 employees on about 23 acres this year.  When we started, we were doing deliveries of just 60 shares out of our 2005 Toyota Corolla. Now we deliver vegetables (and much more) to hundreds and hundreds of families each week from Bowdoinham to SoPo out of a mini-fleet of delivery vehicles.   We've worked hard to adapt to make our vegetables really work for more people by making them customizable and adding all kinds of other local goods. As of 2022, we officially deliver all year-round as we added a Spring Share to the mix (an addition to our Summer, Fall, and Winter shares).

And the more things change the more they stay the same, as they say.  One of those part-time employees from year one is still with us eight years later.  I'm still fighting panic about having enough produce early in the season so feed you all (don't worry - we do, this is just something I do).  Eric still obsessively checks the weather. We're still enjoying early morning harvest, all the natural beauty you get to be part of when you are outside most of the day, and the wonderful camaraderie you develop when you're working hard alongside excellent people.  Thank you for being part of our farm, part of our growth, and part of the local food community!  It's your support as customers that keeps the farm buzzing along all year-round!  We hope you enjoy all that we have to offer.  You can scroll down in this email to see all the amazing craft Maine foods we offer in addition to our vegetables or check you customization page to order.  And as always, contact the farm with questions!

Some housekeeping - Please Read!  Please read your sign-up email and recent informational emails for info on how to log-in, customize, and/or reschedule your share!  You can find the farm FAQ HERE or contact the farm by emailing us at farmers@harvesttideorganics.com with questions.  If you call the farm with a question, please leave a voicemail, which allows us to get you a response more quickly over the weekend.

If you have any trouble customizing your share this first week or so, please contact the farm right away, so we can help you BEFORE the share window closes at 7PM on Sunday.  This coming first week of deliveries is CRAZY for us and we won't be able to accommodate change requests after that time.  Everyone on the farm wears multiple hats, and we're not in the office 24/7, so last minute changes are often too late to be caught for outgoing deliveries.  Please email or call with questions as soon as they come up.

 Also, please note, if you signed up for any of our add-on shares bi-weekly, you may be slotted to get said share NEXT week, please check your deliveries tab in your Harvest Tide Login before assuming we forgot your add-on.  

AMAZING OVER-WINTERED ONIONS (AND SCALLIONS!)

One practice we've been mastering to make early shares more delicious and exciting (not that greens aren't delicious and exciting), is overwintering onions.  Onions are a cold hardy crop that takes a long time to grow, so for a long time the earliest we had them available was July when the earliest planted onions would mature.  Someone somewhere figured out that if you planted onions in the fall, and gave them a little winter protection, you could have onions in the spring.  We've been doing this for a few years, but I think we've finally got the system down.  To give you a little of an idea of the journey of the onions in your box this week, we can journey back to August of 2021 when Sarah and Aryn seeded them in the greenhouse.  They were then planted in late September, covered with row cover, and then covered with strips of plastic in late November to protect them from the winter cold. This covering involves a LOT of heavy hauling as it takes lots of sand bags to keep the protection on through the wind and winter weather.  Fast forward to late March, the onions haven't grown much, but the root growth they put on in the fall gives them a head start. We move all the sand bags again to remove the winter protection, add a deer fence to keep them out as they will eat literally anything in the spring, weed the onions 2 times and voila - onions in early June!  Sarah has some more info and recipes below making these onions the veggie of the week!

Also, eat the greens!  They are delicious finely chopped in a potato salad, soup, or anything else that you want to lend a light onion-y flavor to.