Hi Farm friends! Welcome to Week 6 of the Farm Share.
Now is your time to customize your share – you’ll have til midnight on Tuesday to do so. Also, please remember to return your green bags when you pick up your shares. We are starting to run low so I’m assuming some people have some forgotten piles of bags in their homes or cars.
On The Farm
This week, we welcomed our summer students to the farm! Tristan, our nephew who started “farm camp” here 4 years ago, is returning for the summer before heading to Grade 11, this time as a fully paid employee. We are so happy to have him back! We also have Dean and Breckin joining us for the summer. After having bad luck hiring a full team in the early spring, we are feeling very relieved to have the help and the energy of our new and young crew. The help didn’t come a moment too soon either. Unfortunately, Sarah has injured her knee and we have been farming without her now for 2 weeks and counting. We really miss her presence here on the farm, and are having to shake off the rust on our own greenhouse planting skills, since she has been taking care of the greenhouse plantings since last summer. We are wishing her a quick and healthy recovery.
This week on the farm, we planted leeks, beets, chard, and spring onions. We began the process of staking our peppers. We also potted up some of our fall brassicas (cabbage family) in the greenhouse. Our spring cabbages and broccoli failed to thrive, so we are putting a lot of hope into our fall plantings. So far, the transplants are looking very nice in the greenhouse and they’ll be going into the ground very soon.
In other exciting news, we are starting to take over the beehives that have been managed by Z&Bee Co on our farm. These bees really make a difference on our farm – we see them everywhere on our fields. Sarah has been learning the skills of beekeeping for a while now, so she will be stepping up to the plate (when she can step again without crutches that is). In the meantime, she’s training Alex on how to manage the bees. We’re pretty excited to add something new to the farm that really compliments everything we do here.
Veggies This Week
Beets, garlic, cucumbers, and zucchini are our biggest items in season at the moment. We also have the first of the season’s tomatoes and peppers (jalapenos)! Once the tomatoes start they just keep on coming so we’ll have more and more available each week. Our kids have been raiding the greenhouses daily now.
From our fellow farmers at Common Ground Farm this week, we have: radishes, arugula, basil, cabbage, carrots, and POTATOES. Super excited about the arugula (because we don’t grow it anymore, but we love it), the cabbage (because our spring cabbages bombed, but lets all send some happy thoughts to our fall ones), the carrots (because our clay soil does NOT like carrots, but we have some nice beds prepped for the fall, so let’s see) and potatoes (because we don’t have enough space to grow them ourselves!).
Enjoy your veggies!
Your farmer,
Kim
