Pages

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Volume 14 No 5 - Week of July 6th

48 Hours - NO Rain!

We hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July and celebrated being Food Patriots! As Cathy at www.farmtoconsumer.org so aptly put it: "Food Patriots! How will you celebrate Food Independence (from factory farms) Day? Hug a farmer? Broil a grassfed burger?" Farmer Rich & I ate all local at Ali's house (Ali is our Farm Operations Leader) with many of our local farmer friends and Ali made a great salad fresh from our farm for all to enjoy.Greenhouse 7-4-09.jpg

We started the fava bean harvest and they are in your delivery this week. Though quite labor intensive everyone looks forward to our yearly delivery of fava beans. If you have never cooked fresh fava beans before, make sure you check out the harvest identifier to tips on how to prepare them. We do have another planting, but they don't look like they will be as productive as this planting.

Since the rain has been so consistent over the last several weeks, we have been taking advantage of our greenhouses to try to ensure consistent deliveries. Despite some severe losses in the fields, our greenhouse crops are doing well and some of the field crops are rebounding. We planted New Zealand Spinach in the Franklin greenhouse as all the spinach in the field was lost due to the weather.

From the Fields: The rain kept us out of the field most of the week. The lettuce plants in the greenhouse that were to be transplanted into the field bolted (turn to seed), so they went into the compost pile. We couldn't plant them any earlier as it was too wet. We are planning on re-seeding this week more lettuce and various greens. To be transplanted in the fields are Chinese cabbage, cucurbits (cukes, zukes & squash) and stevia. We are running behind but we also plan on seeding some winter squash up in Scott's fields. These will take the place of the garlic that was just harvested. All in all, it appears that the garlic harvest this year is far better than last year's crop. Your first delivery of garlic is tonight. The garlic is not cured yet, as that occurs over the next few months. When the garlic is fully cured it will have the intense flavors, but many like the milder early garlic to start using in your favorite recipes.

Weather Report: Wow - no rain for 48 hours between July 4th & 5th!! Another few days like these splendid days and we'll be able to plant in the fields again. We did have rain most of the week off & on from a trace to 1" each day. The temperature at the farm fell to 49ยบ F over night between the 4th & 5th of July. No danger to the crops, but worth noting it was the coldest night since May.

Animal report: We guess that the poor weather has kept the animals at bay. They probably don't like getting wet like Farmer Rich. No problems with deer, groundhogs or bugs this week! Even the deer at Scott's farm seems to have given up on eating any more plants. The squash plants are looking really good and you are getting your first summer squash delivery this week.

Pick of the Week: click on the links below or to the right to bring you to the delivery specific to your pick-up location. Deliveries will be of similar variety & poundage, but may contain different items. Occasionally, some crops are ready to harvest but not enough to deliver to all our drop-off locations. What we do is start to filter them in each week to a different drop-off until there is enough to delivery to everyone.

No comments: