The shop is full of curing garlic.
Welcome, Farm Friends, to the Fullness of August.
Our garden carts are full, our cooler shelves are full, our harvest bins are not only full to overflowing, but they are getting heavy. When we watched the full moon rising over the roof of the packshed while grilling veggies for dinner the other night, Noah said “it’s a good sign.” It’s August, believe it or not, and it’s the full season. Our days, our weeks, our schedules are full too, and certainly our hearts and our minds are as full-to-overflowing as all those harvest bins and farm spaces.
We want to thank all of you who have reached out with words of support and offers of help since our last newsletter—we’ll get back to you individually when we are able, but certainly know that we appreciate it all, so much. We are in the midst of the process of hiring some replacement crew, and in the meantime are so grateful for our perpetually returning small farmer, Kayla, who is back again for a few weeks and in her usual style is willingly tackling everything that needs doing—from a late evening tomato pruning session to harvesting bushels of chamomile to help re-establish pathways in the flower caterpillar.
The pathways in the flower tunnel have disappeared.
And, um, speaking of that flower tunnel….have you looked inside recently on any visits to the farm? It’s gone nuts. It’s beautiful and overwhelming. It’s perhaps a little bit of a monster, but the most beautiful monster I have ever helped create. It’s also my incentive to get this email update out quickly, because if I dash off a message speedily enough, I get to jump back into the morning flower harvest.
It’s also, perhaps, almost becoming a bit of a problem. The problem being, when I took a flower course this winter, when I added flower spaces to our growing plan, I really didn’t know how many blooms would come out of a 100’ bed, so I thought “we’ll just see what happens, see what we learn.” Well, it happened. Lots and lots and lots of flowers are happening, and they need homes! I’ve learned that sure enough, we are capable of producing a lot of flowers (I really wasn’t sure). I’ve also learned that I love growing them. I love having them on the farm, I love harvesting and arranging them, I love watching people light up as they chose the right bunch for them, or take a deep breath of sweet pea fragrance. I love that working in the flowers is a draw and a reward to many of us on the farm. But, um, it’s also time to make sure that we actually sell them, too! As we realize just how many we have, it’s clear that there are enough blooms to supply not only the market, farmstore flower bar, and a few special orders, but enough to guarantee 20 or people a weekly bouquet now through early September. If you are interested in picking up a mason-jar sized bouquet weekly for the next 5 weeks, you can reply to this email or follow this link on our website to sign up! I would love to make you a weekly jar of beauty and joy for your home or workplace.
At the Farmstore this Week:
The farmstore is loaded, with most days being fully stocked up on summer squash, cucumbers (both slicing and pickling types), salad mixes, head lettuce, kale and chard, collards, cabbage, boc choi, onions, and some exciting new additions like tomatillos! We sometimes still run out of carrots, and certainly tomatoes, between harvests, so you may find those empty occasionally, but more are always on the way. The flower bar is well stocked, and herbs will be harvested within the next few hours. It’s a great time of year to come in and load up on fresh veggies for your week, and we are starting to enter the bulk-season, when we’ll have big bags of beets, cucumbers, etc. for canning and pickling, so stay tuned for specials coming up. Today (Tuesday) we host the farmstore from 3:00-6:00, so that is a great time to come by if you have questions, want tips on convincing your own tomatoes to ripen, etc.. Some of us will be cleaning garlic to prepare for garlic braids for much of the afternoon, so swing by and say hi!
The weekly un-veiling of greens. We plant a block of 7 beds every week with out salad mix, arugula, baby kale, radishes, etc. and, protect it from insects with this row cover fabric for the first two weeks, which also helps germination. We then uncover it on week 2, to grow fuller for harvest at weeks 3 and 4. Repeat some 32 times through the season, and you have consistent greens! We’ll do this 4-5 more times outdoors, before switching to hardy winter greens in our unheated high tunnels.
Attention members:
As we said at the start of the message, it’s full season! There are so many options for filling your bags right now and we hope you are eating well. This is also the time of year when you may find yourself wanting more than will fit in your bag, so we want to remind you that that’s ok! We encourage you to load up with extras, and use your member discount (10%) for all the purchases that don’t fit into your feedbag. That might be just a few extra bunches or heads some weeks, or it might be a big batch of beets for pickling or (soon!) ingredients for salsa. The tomatoes are still just a trickle, but they are getting more abundant, and we hope to offer bulk deals by mid-August, so stay tuned. And remember that it’s a great time to walk through and check out some of the growing spaces on the farm, when you come to fill your bag!
What to eat?
We’ve recently embraced cooking on the grill that was gifted to the farm years ago by some farm members. When it’s this hot both indoors and out, it’s become an appealing option to simply grill an assortment of “farmer-grade” produce from the cooler, toss it onto a bowl of quinoa or rice and coat it with a nice homemade dressing. I don’t know how many dinners recently have emerged into full meals after starting with “well, let’s just grill some summer squash as a start and see if we have any other ideas.”
The biggest discovery: grilled beets. Just take some larger beets (and boy do we have some larger beets in the farmstore right now!), cut them into 1/4 inch slices, brush with oil, and cook 3-4 minutes per side on your grill. You can drizzle a little basil-balsamic vinaigrette on the top when you flip the slices over, for maximum flavor, or just sprinkle them with salt when you remove from the grill. I highly recommend the Chiogga beets (the pinker ones, with strips inside) for this, as you still see all the fun striping, and they are quite sweet when grilled.
It’s also time for tacos with shredded cabbage, it’s about time to start making tomatillo salsa, and of course it’s time for zucchini in just about everything.
Do yourself (and, ok, us) a favor, please try grilling slices of chiogga beets. Eat them plain, tuck them into a burger bun with or without other veggies and protein.