In This Week’s Box
Sugar Snap Peas
Raspberries
Red Leaf Lettuce
Arugula
Fennel
Scallions
Green Bell Peppers
Summer Squash and Zucchini
Broccoli
Fresh Garlic
Hakurei Salad Turnips
Fruit share: bing cherries from Tuken’s Orchard
Farm Journal:
This week marks the start of the flower share, though we have been bringing flowers to market for a month now. By August last year we were able to sell 100 plus bouquets at market and we wanted to experiment with having flowers even earlier and get to that 100 mark sooner. We made a plan in the winter to have flowers in the hoophouse for the first time and it has been a great success. Here is a picture of the snapdragon bed–the best stand of snaps we’ve ever grown.
Three flower beds in the hoop house plus an early planting of sunflowers ( that we had to cover with row cover for frost protection one night!) plus some perennials have made for some busy market harvesting days. We hit the 100 bouquet mark this past Saturday! More importantly, they all sold!
While the care of flowers, from seeding to planting to weeding, is very similar to that of the vegetables, Emily and her crew of one, Brooke Medlin, are in charge of the harvesting and bouquet making. Brooke worked for us last year and we are thrilled to have her back this year! When she interviewed, she told us about her work as an artist, and we knew she would have the artistic eye necessary for bouquet work. (Check out her gorgeous jewelry here.) Together we pick each flower at its’ optimal stage to insure a long vase life and then make the bouquets. When Brooke isn’t busy with the flowers or greenhouse seeding (which she does before flower season kicks in) she can be found petting and taking pictures of our farm cat, Wrigley. He knows this, so he often seeks her out!
Here is Wrigley keeping Emily company while she gets ready to make the flower share bouquets.
And here are the flowers in the final arrangement.
Recipes to get you started
Roasted Snap Peas and Broccoli
Roasted Hakurei Turnips and Cous Cous (use scallions instead of red onion)