by milecreekfarm

CSA Week 16

This Week’s Harvest

  • Watermelon (probably last of the season!)
  • Parsley
  • Salad Mix
  • Kale
  • Broccoli
  • Delicata Squash
  • Honeynut Squash
  • Basil (last of the season!)
  • Roma Tomatoes
  • Heirloom Tomatoes (last of the season!)
  • Onions
  • Garlic
  • Sweet Italian Peppers
  • Eggplant

Farm News- Wildlife Edition

One of the things that keeps things interesting on the farm are all of our wildlife encounters. For about a month this year we had 6 geese visit our old mowed down corn field every morning. It was fun counting on them being there so I was sad one day last week when I realized I hadn’t seen them lately. Who knows where they came from and where they went off to during the rest of the day and what they were doing here. I can only guess they were munching on the old corn kernels left behind from the planting. But we’ve never had geese on the farm before this season! 

We see tons of butterflies every day. I was excited to learn that not all black and blue butterflies I see on the farm are swallowtails. This one enjoying a split cantaloupe is called a Red Spotted Purple.  Also learned that it doesn’t have tails so is easy to tell apart from the swallowtails (duh). We have larger flying creatures too and often get distracted with the bird activity around the farm. We’ll see blue birds and indigo bunting, gold finch, and song sparrows frequently. Every time we pick tomatoes a hummingbird zips by, hovers to check us out (never long enough to get a picture!), and then zips away. Those of you who follow us on social media have seen the song sparrow nest updates from our tomato patch. The babies flew the coop over the weekend.

 

Even though there isn’t more than a tiny stream on the property as far as water habitat goes, we do have frogs on the farm.  In addition to the small frogs that take up residence in the rut puddles around the farm, we’ll spot a large leopard frog here and there. This one was hanging out in the shade of the pepper plants.

We’ve got a skunk living under one of our barns. We see it a lot – when we are out at dusk or dawn. On Friday when we were picking salad mix right next to the corn planting, Charity heard rustling in the direction of the corn. She looked up just in time to see a tiny little hand reach up and pull an ear of corn down! Mostly we like our skunk occupent-it’s cute and doesn’t eat too much and hasn’t sprayed us yet. It did (I think. Although it could have been a groundhog) kind of mess up our fennel planted right next to the barn. I was naive and thought the fennel would grow through it, but the fennel plants with tops are producing way bigger bulbs than the ones without. Urgh! I’m going to go ahead and blame it on a groundhog.

Recipes

Coming Up Next Week (our best guess…) Japanese Eggplant, Fennel, Carrots, Potatoes, Delicata Squash, Honeynut Squash, Cauliflower, Broccoli, onions, Roma tomatoes!