Summer 2024
Happy CSA eve!
Looking forward to sharing produce with you once again tomorrow! Just a reminder that this week is an add-on week. This will be the first flower add-on! If you ordered flowers, your mason jar display will be set near the CSA boxes at your drop site. Please only take the display with your name on it! Milo and I had a lot of fun growing and picking these flowers for you and we can’t wait to share more blooms soon!
I wish I could say that things on the farm have been as peaceful as this photo of the dill flowers during golden hour, but it has been quite the opposite! Pearce is still in Germany, and July always brings lots of work. This week we were able to chip away at transplanting some of the fall veggies, do some direct seeding, and keep up with harvests. I was able to seed another round of lettuce and radishes in one of our hoop houses and my mom and I seeded all the fall carrots as well as another planting of bush beans.
We are seeing the thistle start to take over in parts of the farm we turned away from for a bit to focus on harvesting and planting, but weeding the farm is beginning to take upmost priority! If the thistle goes to seed, it will just keep coming back, year after year. Our farm crew will be weeding our little hearts out soon. The cherry tomatoes have also gotten a little bushy out there, so we’re making that a top priority this week to finish trellising them so the produce lots of tomatoes for us.
Lucky for us, the rain just keeps coming! Again, this week I was positive I was going to turn the irrigation on and as soon as that thought crossed my mind, it rained overnight! Our fields drain pretty quickly so I haven’t been fighting any standing water. I think all we need now is a little heat. The 60 degree weather overnight is hard on the summer crops. Our poor peppers! They just want some heat! They are feeling small and run down with the cool temps. Let’s hope for some real summer heat in July to keep everything going strong.
Here are some photos from the farm for you to get a little taste of what our week held:
In your box….
Here are photos of what you’ll find in your box this week!
Large CSA
Small CSA
Some Inspiration…
We’re still holding on to the beautiful spring veggie vibe! Lettuce, leafy, greens, and LOTS of herbs. The flavor in your box this week will come from all the beautiful herbs in the box! There is a big bunch of cilantro for you to play with. I love making homemade guacamole using the cilantro and green onions. If you still have radishes left from last week, you can throw them in the guac too.
One of the exciting things in your box is a little box of herbs that make an amazing, nourishing tea. In the box you will find a sprig of mint, a few calendula flowers, and some lemon balm. This trio of herbs makes a beautiful, soothing tea blend. The mint aids in digestion, the lemon balm calms the mind, and the calendula nourishes the skin. Steeped all together, they make a lovely tea.
To make tea with your herbs, you can use a classic teapot and pour boiled (hot but not scalding) water over the leaves and flowers. Or if you have a french press, you can put the herbs in the bottom and pour hot water over the top and let steep as long as you’d like. These flavors are mild, so the longer you steep, the more flavor and nutritional benefit you’ll get. You can also make a sun tea with the herbs. All you need to do is pour hot water over the herbs in a mason jar and set in the direct sunshine to steep. It must be sunny to do this, but the sun’s power can aid in pulling the benefits out of the herbs into the water. Feel free to read about sun tea here:
Here are some notes on a few other things:
Collards: This is probably the last week we’ll eat collards this summer, so soak them all in! They get hot in the heat of the summer and we’ve already harvested from the plants quite a bit this season. I love eating my collards steamed, over rice with a fried egg on top. If you have any favorite ways to prepare collards, please send my way and I’ll share it!
Summer Squash: The large CSAs received the very first summer squash of the season! The plants had a rough start because they were inundated with pest damage. We have a lot of cucumber beetles on the farm and they came into full force right when the cucurbits were planted. After some time to recover and a few foliar feedings from us farmers, they are beginning to produce! All of them are different types of zucchinis and can be cooked any dish a zucchini would be used in. Enjoy!
Soil and sunshine,
Eleanor