Welcome to Week 12! We are over half way through of Summer CSA season and in full on summer abundance! All of our plants have finally caught up after a cold spring and we are reaching peak tomato season. We hope everyone is enjoying summer before school starts and eating lots of tomato sandwiches and blackberries.
On the farm this week, we have our last little bit of outdoor planting this week (fall salad, fall spinach, turnips, last minute fennel, sprouting purple broccoli) as well as our big winter/spring 2023 seedings in the greenhouse (December salad, overwintered onions and spinach.) Its hard to squeeze in planting when we are so busy harvesting literal tons of food!
After the last few seasons of being understaffed during the peak season, we are exploring some small scale mechanization that will help us out and keep us on track. We are also seeking some USDA funding to do some big infrastructure improvements like building a new tunnel to increase plant propagation space and trenching water lines and building a pump house to make irrigation a much less easier and to prevent theft and vandalizing of our irrigation pump. Due to the funding cycle, we have to do all of this planning during the peak season, which is unfortunate, but really the only option for first generation farms like ours.
Veg this week:
Have we mentioned tomatoes? Lots available right now!
Onions- this might be the best onion year I have ever experienced in my ten years of farming! Lots of sweet onions right now, including our fav the long red of tropea.
Leeks- summer leeks are here, in case onions aren't your thing? Mild and sweet, we use the whole stalk! These are an extra tall variety called Lincoln, haha, see image.
Peppers- as we talked about before, its been a bad pepper year for us, with the cold spring and extensive wireworm damage to the roots of the plants, but we still have some for you! Limited amount of shishitos available and some jalapeños. Good news, we have learned a lot about managing this pest this year.
Lots of lettuce heads, especially for August! It's peak BLT season, y'all.
