In this week's CSA share:
- Carrots
- Sweet Corn
- Eggplant
- Head Lettuce
- Serrano & Jalapeño hot peppers
- Sweet Peppers
- Zucchini
- Tomatoes
- Walla Walla Sweets
On Rotation:
- Strawberries
It's that sorrowful week when the farm goes quiet because the kids are back to school. Of course it's a good thing, but how we miss their belly laughs and barefoot glee and mischievous shenanigans as they roam feral around the farm all day! This year we found ourselves unexpectedly short-handed in July and for the first time ever the kids stepped up and stepped in, filling essential roles during packout on Tuesdays and Fridays: Cleo (age 13) took over flower production/making boquets and Uma (age 9) was our go-to girl for packing up green beans and cucumbers. Both of them have also been super helpful getting the CSA totes packed the past 6 weeks, which is always the final step in our 13-hour-long Tuesday and Friday marathons. It's hard to say how we'll survive September without them, now that we're short-handed again AND broken-hearted :). Needless to say, it has been SO SWEET and special to have them in the mix, getting real work done and doing it beautifully (stop by the Langlois Market this week to pick up a boquet of flowers, thanks to Cleo who put in her final day in the barn yesterday).
On the farm this week we're looking forward to In a Landscape (this Saturday at 5 pm - tickets are still available!). What else? We're cleaning a motherlode of onions in the greenhouse in order to clear out space for our next big storage crop that's almost ready to come out of the field: winter squash! We'll also start digging our first storage potatoes tomorrow with the help of the horses. Pretty much the next month is all about stuffing the barn, walk-in coolers, and any covered space with as much food as possible for fall and winter (it's easy to imagine what it's like to be a squirrel at this time of year). But meanwhile, summer persists!
- The u-pick strawberry patch is still fruiting abundantly. It's a great time to come out and pick - you'll likely have the run of the place on Wednesdays and Saturdays. That said, this might be the final week you see them in the CSA share. The berries have a shorter shelf life in the Fall, so we encourage practicing instant gratification rather than delayed (eat now, not tomorrow!) and keeping them refrigerated.
- Uma's watermelon crop is ready! You can pick up one of her super-sweet-n-juicy open-pollinated melons at the farmstand on Wednesdays and Saturdays for the next couple weeks while supplies last!
- We should have another two weeks of sweet corn, this week and next. Get your fill while it's here!
Savor the abuandance, it doesn't get much better!
