We feel like we’re turning a corner here on the farm. We’ve continued to plant more summer vegetables, the peppers & eggplant are in the ground, along with a few varieties of beans(lima, soy & green). More sunflowers and zinnias, parsley, basil, and lettuce mix also went in. The potatoes are growing well and have been hilled again. All the over-wintered onions have been harvested and are curing in the barn loft. The next fields are ready to be planted with winter squash and sweet potatoes. The greenhouse is full again with more plants: sweet corn, popcorn, flowers, flowers, flowers, lettuces, melons, summer squash, cucumbers, and more. The more we plant the further we get from all soggy soil and lack of growth of spring. It’s approaching summer time now and it’s ok to be hot out. Sometimes unpleasantly hot, but the plants growing now like it hot. There’s even a few ripening blueberries out on the bushes!
We’re getting a nice gentle rain this afternoon which all the plants are enjoying, I’m sure. This weekend our crew gets another member: Christine from Atlanta will be joining us for June, July, & August. We’re excited to have her with us. We also have another regular volunteer, Philip, who has been helping out for the past couple of weeks. Many hands make light work. It also means that more projects can get crossed off the endlessly long list!
The summer Solstice is coming right up. We’ll be hosting our annual Farm Party Potluck the weekend before the Solstice, SUNDAY, JUNE 17TH. We’ll have hamburgers made with local beef, hotdogs, tofu corn dogs, and a variety of beverages. Please bring a side dish or a desert. We’ll be give farm tours, visiting with you all, and swimming over at the pond, so bring a suit!
Some produce notes:
Almost all produce (greens, lettuce, summer squash, even roots crops) will last longer if you keep them in a plastic bag in the refrigerator or keep a damp cloth or paper towel around them. The refrigerator cools by pulling the moisture out of the air and so will suck moisture out of produce that is exposed causing it to wilt.
The bok choy makes a wonderful light coleslaw. You can use your regular dressing or made it an asian type by adding some tamari and toasted sesame seeds. I also made a quick stirfry/saute with the bok choy and garlic scapes this past week end. I chopped the scapes up and sauteed them until tender and then added the bok choy and a little bit of water. Cooked the bok choy until just tender and then added salt or tamari to taste. The bok choy cooks down so don’t be afraid to use the whole bunch.
The kohlrabi should be peeled before eating and is great grated or sliced in a salad, or cut up sort of like carrot sticks and eaten raw. We pick some last week when Belle’s preschool class was out touring the farm and gave the children slices to taste. One of them said “It tastes like candy!”
The onions in your box are just recently picked and are not completely cured/dried, so please take them out of the bag and store them on your counter so they will finish drying. You can use them right away fully dry or not.
On plastic bags, sometimes we give you produce in plastic bags. This is usually to keep the produce (like onions or garlic) dry or to protect it a little from being rolled around in the box, like summer squash. Right now our bags are regular plastic but ASAP is selling some corn based biodegradable bags that we will get as soon as we run out of these old ones (or sooner). We would love to get away from any kind of plastic bags for our CSA so if any one has some ideas on how to do that, we would love to hear them.
Thanks and enjoy!