Tomatoes!

Jump for joy, tomato season is early this year!!! We didn’t anticipate having enough tomatoes to put into your totes until the last week of August, but they have come on strong – 2 weeks earlier than expected. My mom, Betsy, is the tomato queen and she cultivates a myriad of varieties in her greenhouses. You can expect to see plenty of red slicers in the coming weeks, as well as an assortment of heirlooms later on (they usually peak in the first half of September).

The Sad Demise of the Cucumbers…

Our excitement about the early arrival of the tomatoes is partly tempered by the untimely croaking of the cucumbers. They are another greenhouse crop. Sadly this year the moles have done them in by tunneling under the plants. Moles love to burrow under drip-irrigated crops because the ground is moist and soft – making it easy digging for them. The moles themselves are carnivorous, feeding largely on worms and other insects underground. But their subterranean swimming habit creates hollows in the ground; when plant roots hit these hollows tunnels, they can’t grow beyond or through them, which means they can’t take up water or nutrients. Sometimes no amount of stomping down tunnels or trapping actual moles can beat ‘em. This year the moles seem to have won. We had hoped cucumbers would see us into September, but it looks like they are pretty much over. Hopefully early tomatoes will help make up for it!

Bulk Basil Available

There is still plenty of basil available if you want to place a bulk order and make some pesto! $14 a pound for luscious tops - all leaf, no stem. Send us an email with your name, phone number, pickup location, and the amount you want in one pound increments.

Farm Burglarized on Tuesday Night

On Wednesday morning we were shocked to discover that our barn had been burglarized overnight. Sadly, it was a pretty clean sweep: all of my hand tools, power tools, harvest tools and knives, scales, handtrucks, carts, walkie-talkies, coolers, deep-cycle battery chargers for the electric tractor, and more. We are trying to regroup today and figure how to at least get through the rest of the week without our usual quiver of tools. I am scrambling to immediately replace the things we can’t live without at the peak of harvest – specialty harvest knives, scales, etc. I imagine that many of the other tools will take some time to replace, as we can afford them or if an insurance settlement can be worked out. We will cross our fingers.

In all the 36 years that my mom has owned the farm, we’ve never had an incident like this, which is reason to be grateful. It’s hard times for so many folks; I can only hope that whoever stole these things needed them more than us right now.

Please forgive the brevity of the newsletter this week; I have to get back to the farm to try to put things back in order for tomorrow’s harvest.

In your share this week:

• Head Lettuce
• Strawberries
• Purplette Onions           
• Carrots
• Zucchini
• Green Cabbage
• Parsley – Italian or Curley
• Tomatoes
• Yellow Finn Potatoes

Kitchen Tips

Don’t forget to visit the Recipe Wizard to find ingredient-specific recipes, or go to the Recipe Exchange if you have a recipe you’d like to share with everyone!

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.