More variants

Slightly different again. The biggest difference may be that half the the bags are plastic today, as we finally got to the point where not enough bags came back. The good news is that the vegetables still look decent, even in plastic. I have to admit that the shares are a bit smaller than I would like to see this time of year, it's been a slow growing year and lots hasn't really taken off yet. Today's share has a bit of sage and dill. I like the sage as tea and the dill in dressings but they both have many uses. This is the first day that we had enough tomatoes to give to everyone, although cucumbers are still on rotation. We've been skating by with just enough summer squash to go around, although it's a bit smaller than I would like. There's a good head of Plato II romaine today and to round things out there are thinnings from a very thick planting of yellowstone carrots.

We continue to catch up on planting, but we're not there yet. I'll probably put in a few extra hours tomorrow. Fortunately most other work around the farm can hold off for now - that would be weeding and cleaning up the edges, spreading compost and things like that. Maybe we'll get a little heat this weekend and the summer crops will perk up.

Excellent Salad

I ate it all before I could take a picture, but I just wanted to let you know what I did with a leftover share from Monday that didn't get picked up. I take those home sometimes and eat them myself. It's a kind of quality control. Even after three days of no refrigeration the share was completely usable. That always blows me away. Should we really be spending all this money to run our refrigerator?

Tonight I boiled the beans until tender in salted water and then dunked them in cool water. Meanwhile I washed the lettuce and carrots. I sliced up the carrots, chopped the dill finely, and cut the beans into thirds and tore up the lettuce. I made a dressing with a bit of tahini, olive oil, white vinegar that I had soaked the chive blossoms from this spring in and a bit of sea salt. Finally I tossed it all together.

I was pretty happy to find that the beans were really tasty. I've been worried that they weren't as good as I remembered, but they were actually better (although I realized that I should have been warning people to string them - they're an older style and some of the more mature ones have strings). I hope you're all enjoying the bean variety - these might be the only ones of the summer as our second seeding failed and it's a bit late to reseed. If you're not happy with any of the varieties, or if there are ones you think could be better please let me know. We're always refining what we do here on the farm from season to season. Also, we love hearing if you've made something you really liked with the shares, especially things that are super simple.

One last note - this is probably the week that we run out of bags. Unless our members from WK come through big time and return more bags than I gave them we'll be out of luck tomorrow. I've ordered more but they're not going to be here for a few weeks. We'll have to make do in the meantime. The past two weeks folks have been good about returning clumps of bags, but this week that seemed to fall apart and we're pretty desperate right now. I should have ordered more sooner - sorry about that. I'll make sure to have plenty next time round.

Variation on a theme

A similar share to last week as the beans continue to produce, we harvested the remaining blushed butter and flashy lightning lettuces, and the summer squash continues to produce just enough for everyone to get some. Some Napoli carrots this week in place of the Cosmic Purple, very sweet and decent sized. Also, replacing the sage this week is a bit of dill and basil. A few folks will see tomatoes or lemon cucumbers. Both of those crops are coming on very, very slowly but I'm hoping they'll pick up the pace soon. Mostly we're harvesting cherry tomatoes right now but there are also a few Juanne Flamme (yellow), and Black Prince (black). The cherry varieties are the perennial favorite Sun Gold and a new one for us this year, Sweetie, a nice little red one that does have great, sweet tomato flavor. The one other tomato you'll see at some point is Moscovich, our mid sized red tomato with excellent flavor.

We're making a little headway on the fall plantings, although we're still not quite caught up. Today the last seeding of carrots went in, with a bit of cilantro. We also made headway on the beet beds so those should get seeded on Thursday. Then it's on to getting six or so beds of chicory starts planted out.

Other herbs

Today's share is similar to Monday's, but instead of sage we have a bit of cilantro and some basil that needed to be pinched. The tomatoes are still poking along and ripening very, very slowly so only a few shares got them today. The same goes for cucumbers. Both look like there's good fruit set coming so we should have them soon, as soon as we get a little more warm, sunny weather I expect. In the meantime, we're catching up on some of the bed preparation and seeding outside and I've got lots of ideas for next year about how we'll keep on top of everything perfectly. Oh yes, I almost forgot that the carrots are different as well. We have Napolis and just a few thinnings from the Yellowstones today. We should have more carrots in the shares soon.

Groupo compacto

A compact group of items today. We have the usual lettuce, and as with last week it's a small head again, mixed varieties as I'm pulling the biggest ones from plantings of Blushed Butter, Flashy Lightning and Jester. The beans are slowly sizing up so there's a good handful of Swedish Brown. I went to dig the first seeding of carrots that did anything this season and it was mostly eaten by voles. Off of a 10' planting I got just enough, very small Cosmic Purple carrots to let folks see how pretty they are. Unfortunately I'm not sure I like the flavor, although I'm sure they'll go nicely in a salad or cooked up. The variety is a new one for us and I'm not sure if the flavor is varietal or seasonal. I've tasted them from other places before and they were better. We should have a few more carrots soon as we did get some carrots to germinate after these, orange and yellow ones. Also in the share are cipollini onions. Most of these have a hard core from bolting but they should be tasty none the less. We'll also have more in a week or two. The squash is going very slowly so there's only one or so per share and there'll be a bit of a rotation between patti pans and zuchs. The farm pick up folks got the very first of the Lemon cucs today instead of squash. I'm hoping there will be more of both next week, although it'll take a bit more warmth than we've been getting to really get them going. The same goes for the tomatoes which are just crawling along. Finally, the share has two good sized sprigs of sage which smelled so good harvesting this morning. You can dry this by hanging if you don't want to use it immediately. I like it as a tea with honey.

Kji and I were back together today and we got a bit done. I'm not sure we'll ever catch up, but that's par for the course in the summer. We got the winter cabbage and collards planted and we're on our way to getting the winter carrot beds prepared. We still have some beets to seed as well as a few other minor items. The last greenhouse seeding of the season happened today as well, a little fall spinach. In a few weeks the greenhouse will be completely shut down until January. Hard to believe we'll have all of those starts in the ground soon.

Volunteers

Today's share is very similar to Monday's, the main difference is that we started picking the Swedish Brown beans - as a green bean. We'll have these for Monday as well so no one will miss out. A good friend of Kji's and mine, Marisa, is visiting from Hawaii and came out to help today. Kji and I farmed with her at Sauvie Island Organics years ago and it's nice to get a nearly annual visit and catch up. I should also mention that every year we've had a few folks interested enough in learning more about what we're doing that they come out and volunteer some labor as a way to learn hands on and see what we do close up. This year we've had two folks, Sera and Ryan, who have pitched in quite a bit of labor, which is always a nice bonus for us. We've also had a lot of visitors who just want to get a quick tour of the farm. Even in the messy state that it's in right now I always like showing folks what we do.

Summer starting to warm up

We've hit a bit of a lull between the spring goods and full on summer harvests, as is typical for early summer and typical for this year is about a month late. The lettuce is small this week, a bit of flashy lightning or blushed butter. I thinned some beets today, forgetting that Kji gave out beets last week. The tops are good eating, as well as the roots. Kji is out of town and he had a bit of Thai basil that needed to be pinched back so that went into the shares, as well as a few of his summer squashes mixed with our own which are just starting to come on. Kji is growing Costada Romanesco, the stripped zucchini. We grew it in the past but it's not quite as productive as some of the others and has a tendency to get big, although the flavor is excellent. We're growing Yellow Scallopini, and two different zucchini that were given to us by Sauvie Island Organics when our seeding of Midnight Lightning failed. Maybe one of these will be a good replacement for the Midnight Lightning. In any case, the summer squashes are randomly distributed among the bags so I hope you get to sample the different types over the course of the season. A bit of an experiment in the bags today is a bunch of turnip greens. I've been eating these on sandwiches at the farm but they're best cooked. They're actually a weed in our parsnips so giving them out does double duty, weeding and harvesting at the same time. They came to be a weed after I let last winter's remaining crops of hakurei and gold ball turnips go to flower for the beneficial insects and bees and then didn't get them out until after they had set a bit of seed. Let me know if you enjoy them and I might make the same mistake again next year. Finally, a few folks saw a tomato last week and a few more are seeing them this week. These are just teasers. There's lots of green fruit right now and we just need a bit more of this warm weather to ripen them. Soon everyone will be getting them, I hope every week.

A few more notes from the farm - Happy Birthday to Kji! He's off celebrating so I'm solo this week. I'm also trying to get all of the fall crops in asap. Today was a catch up day for me though, and what I managed to do was to update my field notes and harvest the fava that had been planted for seed, which frees up a bed for planting. We have about ten beds to plant this week, busy week.