This Week’s Harvest
Sugar Snap Peas
Romaine Lettuce
Broccoli
Hakurei Salad Turnips
Golden and Chioggia Beets with green tops
Swiss Chard
Basil
Salad Mix
Scallions
Tomato
SAVE THE DATE!
Our CSA members are invited to join us on a field walk on Wednesday July 8 at 7:30. We will tour the fields and see the how 8 acres of vegetables and flowers are managed organically. It is a great way to meet your farmers, fellow local food enthusiasts and see how your food is grown. Family and friends welcome!
Farm News
All the recent rain we’ve had is blog worthy and a bit epic. It started raining on Friday June 12th and didn’t really stop until this past Sunday. We were trying to get a couple beds of sweet corn and salad mix planted when the first thunderstorm rolled through. We will never finish that particular planting and have 1 1/2 beds of corn instead of 3. The rest of the flats got tossed on the compost pile. You can’t hang on to seedlings in their little cells. Once they get root bound they will never reach their full potential. Since we seed every week that means we have things to plant every week. We have to toss the big stuff and just move on to the next thing that is ready.
Right now it seems the entire greenhouse is ready. I took a picture to show the huge seedlings. Our greenhouse should not be this full of plants this time of year! Unfortunately more rain is on tap for later this week and the fields will not have had a chance to dry out. We just have to hang tight, restart seeds, and be ready to go once we can plant again.
Not being able to plant is just one of the side effects of wet weather. When the fields are too wet we can’t weed. Ben has been off our cultivating tractor for 2 weeks. When it is dry Ben cultivates at least 5 times a week. That’s a lot of missed days. The weed pressure is going to be immense. Pictured is our next salad mix planting barely bigger then the grass weeds. The best way to manage weeds is to hit them early and kill them when they are young and don’t have developed roots. The bigger the weeds get the more resilient to cultivating they get. We are probably going to have spend a good amount of time hand weeding–never a good thing on a vegetable farm where every single man hour is precious.
And finally, while the weeds don’t mind the soggy soil, the plants we want to be growing are adversely affected. Our broccoli does not like its current swamp like environment. We were hoping for bigger heads. Fortunately we have a large planting, much of which is still coming on. The fields are starting to dry out and we have a cold front moving through at the end of the week, so next week should bring larger heads. The snap peas got water logged and the pods are slightly discolored. We’ve never experienced this on peas before, but our daily snacking is proof that the flavor is still great!
We’ve been at this veggie farming business long enough to know that things are never going to go perfectly. While it is hard not to get stressed out about things out of our control, the healthiest attitude for a farmer to take is one of looking on the bright side. As such, I will end this post on a positive note. We managed to get our sweet potato crop in the ground the day before all this rain. We order slips from an organic farmer and if they would have arrived in the mail a couple days later, we would have no sweet potato crop this year. The slips are starting to put on new growth and are looking healthy. I have also starting cutting the first planting of sunflowers. Typically when the fields get saturated the top heavy sunflowers flop over, producing unusable crooked stems. But I am happy to report that the planting hung on through wind and rain and the cooler will be full of sunflowers soon. The sunflower share may start next week!
Recipes
Remember to click on the vegetable list above for even more recipes specific to each vegetable.
Pasta with Peas, basil and Spinach (Substitute finely chopped Swiss chard for the spinach and add when you add the peas)
Glazed Turnips and Snap Peas (use scallions in place of onion)
Romaine salad with roasted beets (one romaine is plenty)