Greetings,
Thanks to all of you who joined us on Saturday for the Co-op Farm Tour. We were excited with the turnout and thankful the weather was pleasant. We enjoyed getting to have extended conversations with several of you and sharing our farm with a couple hundred community members!
On the farm, this week's main project has been garlic harvest. It's a one-time harvest followed by curing (drying) in our greenhouse with constant airflow. A new tactic we tried last year with much success was washing all the bulbs right after harvest and before drying. This reduced staining of the outer layers of the peels, and greatly reduced the time to "clean" the garlic prior to sale. We had someone running the pressure washer in the greenhouse for more than 8 hours this week! The garlic should be about cured in two weeks, after which it will be available for shares.
Notes on select items in this week's shares:
- Carrots: Unlike the carrots in the first couple boxes that were grown in early spring in the high tunnel, these are field grown. Summer carrots are moderately sweet with plenty of carroty flavor. Eat as a snack, shred onto your salad, or toss 'em in a stir-fry.
- Salad mix: This is a new planting (our fifth succession) and should be less likely to have bitterness than our last harvest of a more mature planting.
- Sweet onions: These are the same class as last week, mild sweet onions harvested fresh. Keep them in your fridge rather than your cupboard. Likely the last onions until we do our mass onion harvest in 2-3 weeks.
- Cucumbers: While our yield (and thus availability for shares) is much lower than we'd like in this struggling planting, we actually saw a substantial uptick in both quantity and quality of cukes late this week. There's still a bit of scarring and insect damage on a minority of fruits, but most are looking quite nice.
- Broccoli: Similar quantities to the share volumes from last week, but we're bunching them next week. A few of the heads will be less shapely but just as delicious; most are decent quality for midsummer broccoli. This will be the last broccoli until early fall.
- Eggplant: This is a new open-pollinated variety of Italian/globe eggplant. It matures at a bit smaller size than the variety we've grown in the past. I'm looking forward to putting some on the grill this weekend! Eggplant should be available weekly over the next month or more, though generally not to all members in any given week.
- Green beans: First harvest was late this week and we expect to harvest twice per week for 2-3 weeks. We like a simple sauté with some coarse salt, butter, and parmesan.
- Kale: We are doling out another round of kale next week because the plants are big and luscious. We put kale in everything (yes, we're one of THOSE families). Eggs, stir-fry, pizza, curry, smoothies, raw in a massaged kale salad. If it comes to it, it's also super easy to freeze - just blanch, drain, and pack into freezer bags.
- Tomatoes: About like last week, modest amounts of cherries (red or orange varieties), heirlooms, and red slicing tomatoes will be available this week in modest amounts. Looks like we are still about two weeks from full production, at which point we should have plenty to go around to all members.
- Serrano peppers: This little chile tends to be slightly hotter than a jalapeno and is great in fresh salsa, Mexican dishes, stir-fries. The heat is mostly in the seeds and membrane, so you can remove these parts of you aren't a big spice fan. Just make sure to wash your hands well with soap right after handling! They'll keep for a few weeks in your crisper, so don't feel you need to churn through them right away. They can also be put in the freezer whole without blanching.
What's coming up? Looks like we should have a good amount of sweet corn for the following box, along with the first of the bell peppers and a new planting of microgreens.
Have a great week,
Dana
