LETTUCE (F/P) A brief bit of summer lettuce until it leaves us until fall.
CABBAGE OR EGGPLANT (F) Check out the best eggplant recipe ever on Tom’s blog – so delicioso and simple.
CARROTS (F/P) More freshly dug roots, topped for longer storage.
FRESH GARLIC (F/P) freshly pulled, not cured so keep it in the fridge.
CUCUMBERS (F/P) the essential crunch of summer
SUMMER SQUASH (F/P) lots of round zucchini, for those who want to try the stuffed squash recipe from last week.
GREEN BEANS (F/P) Thanks to all the pickers that are keeping those beans a-comin.
HERB CHOICE (F/P) Italian basil, Thai basil, herb fennel or a dried herb.
Also this week: Bread of Life delivery
Next week: More tomatoes, summer squash, cucumbers and beans. More onions, beets and carrots.
Weather: Sunny skies and mild temperatures keep us smiling. The sky has been such a brilliant color of blue that you might think it unnatural if it wasn’t shining down on our heads. The sheep have been enjoying the weather. We now have six lambs ‘on loan’ from Parker Farms. Currently they are helping us clear out the fencerows of poison ivy. Yes, they seem to love the stuff!
The Fields: The garlic harvest continues. With over half of the crop dug, sorted and hung to dry in the barn we are cautiously optimistic. Last year was a bad one for our garlic. The ground didn’t dry out once while the crop was growing, much less during the critical period prior to harvest. We ended up with many small and/or rotten heads as a result. So we had fewer, smaller heads in the shares last year and not enough good-quality seed to plant in the fall. To fill in the gap, we purchased about a bed’s worth of seed from California. Since the early spring we have noticed that the plants from the purchased seed were variable. Some failed to grow at all, many grew very oddly with extra bulbs along their stems instead of just one underground. Overall, the yield from the purchased seed is much diminished. That is in comparison to our two beds of saved seed plants that look amazingly good this time around. We’re seeing the best quality garlic harvest ever on our farm from those two beds. We’re putting the goofy California garlic in the shares this week and saving plenty of the best for next year’s crop.
Links: If the buzz about Food http://www.foodincmovie.com/Inc. is true, the film should be the biggest hit yet in the ‘what’s wrong with our food system’ genre. Produced by some of the same folks that brought us ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, ‘Food Inc.’ promises to be the catalyst for change in how we eat that the former film was for changing the way we use energy. The Tivoli Theatre in KC begins it’s showing this Friday.