Summer fun seems to end suddenly each year doesn't it? But summer heat and summer harvests do not end! Your summer CSA membership doesn't end until October 21st, so we have 9 more weeks of amazing veggies to harvest. We'll be working shorthanded the rest of the season, missing some of our best workers most of the week to go to college classes, plus homeschool for the rest of us. But the good news is, we're getting toward fall and the temperatures are getting cooler....WHAT??? 100 degrees every day for the next week??? Well, it is getting cooler generally and this past week was a gorgeous early taste of fall. If we can survive this coming week, I think we'll be OK.
Many Many more Peppers
We didn't make much of a dent in the ripening sweet Italian peppers last week and there are more ripening now and they'll ripen even faster in the hot sun this week, so please grab as many as you want for fresh eating or preserving. You won't find better sweet peppers than these which is BETTER than any bell pepper you've had. I mentioned earlier that we dropped bell peppers from our production plan because these are an awesome substitute with better flavor and WAY better yield, soooooo now we're swimming in beautiful orange, red and yellow sweet Italian peppers. We munch on them straight off the plants in the fields as a super healthy and delicious snack, but we can't possibly eat them all!
What's Coming and what's not?
We are probably a couple weeks out before the fall broccolini starts producing. We should also be able to start harvesting baby ginger in a few more weeks. Fair warning though, ginger has not been doing well for us this year. It's very disappointing because we devoted a lot of high tunnel space to it this year but we've had pretty poor looking plants with a fair amount dying off. I'm not really sure what's happened but it seems the ginger didn't like the soil conditions in that tunnel. All that to say, we don't expect bumper crops of this CSA favorite, but we'll get what we can for you. Yellow zucchini are producing even better and soon another round of plants should join in production nearly doubling our harvests each week, so be ready for that! Also, more amazing pole beans will be adding to our green bean production. We've been very disappointed in our green bean production this year. Just bad timing of droughts and heavy rains are combining to drastically reduce germination and causing round after round of seedings to do poorly. Last week's crazy rains wiped out our final green bean planting because of rock hard compaction of the soil from the torrential downpour which kept 95% of the seeds from emerging through the compacted soil. That's too bad because the final planting usually yields the best for us. At this point, we're too late to be able to sneak in another planting. I keep watching to see if any more seeds can break through the hard ground, but I'm giving up hope at this point. We'll hope for better green bean luck next year. We should have some beans every week up through the first frost, but just not a bounty of them like we do with some crops. Tomatoes are on the decline as all of our outdoor plants have succumb to foliar diseases. Now we're relying 100% on high tunnel planted tomatoes which are still holding because we've kept their leaves dry. Weekly harvests will continue to decline until the end of the season.
Want to lend a hand to help us feed the less fortunate?
We're planning on donating a large quantity of peppers to the food banks this week. The problem is, we're losing much of our labor and we need to go out and pick these peppers. Would you like to join Peter Piper to pick way more than a peck of un-pickled peppers? If you are free Tuesday evening at 6:30 and would like to join us, let us know. It will be super hot, but we should be working in the shade at that point, so that's at least a bonus. If you want to come help us, please let us know by responding to this email so we can expect you. Bring garden hand pruners if you have them and a water bottle. We'll work until dark or when we have way more than we think the food pantries can handle. They'll be going out to food pantries the following day. You are welcome to stock up on some for yourself as well. There will be plenty to go around as long as we can pick them.
Bread and Cheese
Farm to Market 8- Grain Sliced
Hemme Brothers Rubbed and Smoked Cheddar Block
Thanks so much for being a part of our farming adventure. We couldn't do it without you!
Dave and Sheri
