What beautiful weather we've had after the crazy-heavy rains. We got 5 inches of rain in a very short matter of time! That was one of the heaviest rainfalls we've experienced! Thank God the pond dams held and their emergency spillways held up against the torrent of water. I think these new ponds really helped prevent flooding on our downstream fields because they helped limit the creek flow.
Things are still pretty muddy out there. All the wet weather has continued to throw curveballs to our field prep and planting plans. We've missed two consecutive planned green bean plantings, so the next one (hopefully early this week) will have to be extra large to make up for the upcoming hole in production.
This week we are increasing the size of the cherry tomato bags because the cherry tomatoes are producing beautifully! Don't feel shy about snagging extras of those. The big tomatoes are just starting to ripen so we'll have a very small quantity going out this week. Give us maybe another week or two before you can start expecting large tomatoes in every share! Sweet Italian peppers are coming in greater quantities now. Not at all full production potential, but more and more of those delicious red, yellow and orange sweet peppers will be finding their way into shares.
Lettuce has really taken a beating in all the rain and hot weather. We continue to transplant and cover with shade cloth but this week lettuce production is way down! But we still have ample greens in the way of collards, kale and chard especially. Those are going gangbusters right now.
Also, the garlic harvest was absolutely amazing this year. I know pride goes before a fall, so I'm trying to be humble here, but this is the best batch of garlic we've ever grown. It might not look like much to you, but after many years of sometimes quite measly and disappointing heads, this time we were blessed with some great stuff. The garlic we grow are all hard-neck varieties. Its completely different than the garlic in the store. Almost all garlic in the grocery store are soft-neck varieties grown predominately in China. Hard neck garlic like what we grow is what was traditionally grown in Europe. The reason you won't find it in the grocery store is it's harder to grow, it doesn't lend itself to mechine harvest and processing, and it does not have an infinite shelf life....BUT...it has way more flavor AND you only get garlic scapes from hardneck garlic. So if you enjoyed the garlic scapes this spring, you'll be glad we grow only hardneck garlic and not softneck garlic.
Another thing to stock up on is onions. We've been working through the spring onions to our larger cured onions. The onion harvest was also really good this year. The onions we grow are a much sweeter variety than what you usually find in the store. Again, the industrial food system's need for extra hard produce that can survive rough handling and extra long storage times has resulted in most commercial varieties being bred for shelf-life and transport rather than for flavor. We've been enjoying lots of grilled and sautee'd onions on just about everything lately. We hope you are doing the same.
Bread and Cheese
Farm to Market Great Grains Sliced Loaf
Hemme Brothers Pizza Cheese block
Thanks for eating with the seasons,
Dave and Sheri
