Have we Mentioned TOMATOES?!!
Do you remember a few weeks ago when we didn't have enough tomatoes and I said, "Just wait until the end of July or beginning of August"? Well, the time has come. This brutal summer heat is ripening the tomatoes in a hurry! I don't know how many more weeks they'll last but we've got thousands of pounds of tomatoes ripening fast out there in the field and we want you to make good use of them. Bulk boxes available again this week. Do not be shy!
This summer heat is really rough on farm and farmer alike. Though we have lots of tomatoes now, I'm afraid they're coming at the cost of tomatoes later because tomatoes can't set fruit when it's this hot. They'll flower but the flower's will abort and...no new fruit. We're doing our best to keep them watered in these semi-drought conditions. The weather is making the fruit that is already there, extra flavorful but it doesn't bode well for late August fruits. Oh well, maybe you'll be sick of tomatoes by then.
The moral of the story is, you should get them while the get'n is good, so stock up the freezer with whole tomatoes, experiment with pizza sauce and salsa. Please share your tomato use ideas on the Facebook page to help inspire everyone's creativity. It's always hard to find the time this time of year, but we'll try to get some time for Sheri to get out of the field so she can make our 50 quarts of salsa we make and eat every year. That's right, a quart a week! It's really good salsa! It's probably been a decade since we purchased salsa and since you are in a CSA with nearly unlimited tomato availability (at least this week) you can too!!!
Back to Farming from Vacation
We had a great time in the mountains and we came back to a farm that was well-taken-care of thanks to the hard work of our farm crew who put in a lot of extra hours to pick up the slack. Now we're primed and ready for some really big fall plantings. We just need it to cool down a bit and a little rain would be nice as well. Then we'll be planting thousands of broccolini and watermelon radishes and daikon radishes of all colors and carrots.....so many carrots and a big giant final green bean planting and maybe some fall snap peas (though they never seem to do well for us but we keep trying anyway).
The farm is pretty dry so we've been needing to run the irrigation pump nearly 24-7 to keep up with things. So far the spring-fed pond is keeping up but the flow into the pond is slowing down so we really could use some good rains to replenish the source of our water supply. There's been one year in 10 that the spring dried up. We're hoping that doesn't happen this year. We'll need to irrigate significantly to get these fall crops established if we don't get some rain soon to bring up the soil moisture levels. Some years we don't have to irrigate much and some we do. This year all the pumping and cooling on the coolers is hitting the electricity bill pretty hard but at least we aren't buying the water! I'm sure you've noticed an uptick on your own electricity bill as well. Whew it's been a hot one.
But before we go feeling too sorry for ourselves, we should do some research on the 1936 heat wave. That was really a doozy. It got to 121 F in North Dakota and set all time high temp records in almost every state (many of those records still stand today).
I keep thinking, maybe we'll get a mild winter out of this, but the 1936 heat wave came right after a record cold winter, so you really can't judge much from one season to another. We'll take it as we get it, I guess and try to roll with the punches.
Bread and Cheese
Bread: Farm to Market 100% Whole Wheat Sliced Loaf
Cheese: Hemme Brothers Rubbed and Smoked Cheddar Block
Honey this week and Flour the Next?
Our very own beekeeper, Mr. Steve just harvested honey from the hives on our property and we've got some bottles available for sale this week. He's hoping to get another harvest later on in August but we'll make this batch available now. Also, we've been making connections with a new startup here in KC called Mason Milling that mills fresh local organic grains into flour. We're planning on getting some flour in shortly from them to see how you like it. More on that later.
Thanks so much for your patronage. You CSA members are the backbone of our farm. We would not be able to do what we do without your support week in and week out! Thanks for bearing with us and coming out to pick up your shares in the sweltering heat. You are keeping local food production alive and through partnerships with dairies, bakeries, beekeepers and millers, you're helping local food thrive. So thanks again for being awesome! We appreciate you!
Your farmers,
Dave and Sheri
