This Week’s Harvest

Sweet corn
Green or red cabbage
Green beans or dragon tongue beans
Fairytale eggplant
Summer squash and zuchinni
Red gold potatoes
Candy onions
Green bell peppers
Tomatoes
Cucumber OR sungold cherry tomatoes
Okra ( farm pick up only)

News From the Farm
While you have been enjoying the candy onions for some time now, we are gearing up for the remaining onion harvest this week. We still have a few weeks of candy onions left, but they do not store well so their season is shorter. We also grow red onions, a yellow storage onion and shallots. We have the red onions harvested and drying in the barn and are planning to pull the yellow onions and shallots tomorrow. So far, the candy and red onion harvest alone is more then our entire onion crop last season. We really focused on the onion crop this year and made a few changes to improve yields and size. Our efforts paid off!
First we start the onions – way back in February- in small open flats. A couple weeks later we pluck the seedings out and pot them up into individual cells. They grow in the greenhouse in these trays and are ready to be planted in April. Ben is able to cultivate them a few times with the cultivating tractor, but we do have to devote time to hand weeding the crop as well. In past years the hand weeding step has been trumped by other farm tasks, but this year we made it a priority. Then we watch and wait. Sometime in July the tops of the onions will flop over and when at least half of the crop has flopped over tops, you know it’s time to harvest them. For onions to have maximum storage life, they need to dry and develop skins. This happens by transforming our greenhouse tables into onion drying tables stacked in our barn. We are excited to see what tommorow’s haul brings and plan on having great onions for you all season long!
Here is a series of photographs that document the life of an onion on Mile Creek Farm!

Recipes
Grilled veggie pizza on naan

Veggie shish kabobs ( lots of vegetables in this weeks box are good candidates for shish kabobs– no need to be limited by the recipe)

Potatoes and green bean salad ( use candy onions in place of the red onion)