Thanks for all those who made it out for the farm party. We had a great time seeing you all on the farm. The party as everyone knows was on Father’s Day, but Monday was the Summer Solstice, the first day of Summer. This time of year is a real transition, almost all of the Spring crops are now finished. There is some rather unhappy broccoli that is still trying to do its thing, though the heat is not helping. So the area where all the early crops were must be mowed, disced, and cover cropped with buckwheat. Letting that area recover a bit and wait for the Fall cover crops to be sown in September. As we finish with some crops we are starting to see others produce, and we prepare for still others that are still months away. Many of those same crops that are now finished or tried out will be sown again next week and planted out by the end of July/early August. This time of year is probably the busiest for us, still managing all three seasons of crops. Hopefully will our continued hard work, the Spring crops will be put behind us for good, the summer crops will be maintained, and the fall crops will all get sown when they need to be.
Nick’s Intern Perspective…
Over the past week I feel as if the farm has teleported to somewhere HOT. I’m thinking somewhere in the Southwest. Maybe Arizona or Texas. Well heck lets just say closer to the Equator. The weather in the past week has mimicked the climates of places where plants and animals have adapted well to the heat. Lizards are able to suck up water through their feet and cacti store water until the next rain. Thankfully many of the veggies that are at home in the ground like the warm temperatures. The plants love it even more when we turn on the irrigation or an afternoon thunderstorm rumbles by dropping it’s life giving rain to the ground. Last week I was amazed at the amount of squash and cucumbers that were picked. We’re talking hundreds of pounds of squash and cucumbers. I’ve found myself thinking: “what can we do with all of these squash and cucumbers? Then my mind quickly drifts off to the character in Forest Gump named Bubba, who could come up with just about any dish you wanted for shrimp. So I started thinking about all of the great things I could make with squash: Fried squash, Baked squash with Kale and Pear, squash and kale with white bean stew, Indian squash and split peas, grilled squash, squash casserole, you can do just about anything you can think of with squash. The same goes for cucumbers: Cucumbers with Risotto, Curried rice and cucumber salad with walnuts and Raisins, Baked cucumbers in basil cream, Chilled Cucumber mint Soup with yogurt, Baked Cucumbers in Basil Cream, Pickles, Chilled pickles in vinegar and sugar with onions, cucumbers on a salad, and would you know, they even found a use for cucumbers at those spa deals.
With the season in full swing we’ve been busy as bees, but our bees have been even busier. This past weekend Maggie and Vanessa took a little trip out to our bee man Dave’s place to extract the honey that our bee’s had been working so hard to produce. With temperatures in the Honey house around 95 degrees the honey was extracted using a hot knife and a centrifuge to extract the honey from the comb. Two kinds of honey were extracted: Poplar and Locust honey. The jury is still out on what was the “best” honey, but we all know honey is just about the sweetest thing around. So really, who could say no to something so wonderful?
Once we get to honey in jars, there will be some honey coming your way!