A new, terrible predator has been stalking our land. In broad daylight, when no humans are round to witness the carnage, something has been roaming through the high tunnel and destroying our beautiful tomatoes – when they are ripe and ready to harvest, they are devoured, their carcasses often left hanging on the plants. When they’re not quite ripe, the beast takes only a nibble – ruining the entire fruit before moving along in search of sweeter prey.

The single, neat triangular holes left behind in the unripe fruits told me what we were dealing with – a free range chicken had discovered the promised land. We tried chasing them away when we saw crews come clucking around, but the damages continued, and escalated. One particular hen – a ratty little grayish yellow hen, was our main suspect.

A live trap was set for her, baited with the tomatoes already torn asunder. And when we came home from our travels that afternoon, the hen we’d suspected was, indeed, indignantly captured inside of the greenhouse, in a cage full of maters.

I made plans to rehome her – but put her in solitary confinement in the nursery coop for a day first … to see if the problem was solved with her on lockdown.

No.

It was too late. Perhaps she’d been the pioneer, but in the recent days she had taught the others. A dozen more tomatoes fell to their rapacious beaks before sundown.

So, Ratty gets to stay. And today after the harvest was done, I fought the vines that covered up some coils of fencing, so we could create a barrier, in the hope that our vine-ripened tomatoes and our free-range chickens can peacefully coexist once more ….

(that’s it up top, with pieces of thorny vines lying about ^ )

inside box Thirteen

We didn’t expect to be harvesting in the rain today, but the morning brought a whole lot of surprise moisture, making us run out to harvest the cherry tomatoes before the plants sucked up the water and split all the ripe fruits open. And then I got to balance in the rain on a ridiculously unstable ladder surrounded by poison ivy, to harvest the apples for today’s box. And I laughed aloud up there, realizing just how happy I am that this is my life, my work, my struggle. It was a joy to harvest the box today – I hope it tastes as good as it felt.

• Red Baron Apples – the regular rainfalls have made for happy apple trees
• Tomatoes That the Chickens Spared
• Chicken of the Woods – you will get haunted, most likely, if you let this sit in your fridge until they go bad. They’re very, very good! Our friend Mark found this in Interstate Park and traded them for some tomatoes and eggs … anyway, you can find recipes online or just tear or slice them up, then sautee them in butter – cover and simmer in oil/butter for ten minutes, on low. Pairs well with pasta, or risotto, or put it in a soup. Mushroom things.
• Cherry Tomatoes Saved from the Rain
• Cucumbers of the non-pickling kind
• Zucchinis of Tender Size
• Red Potatoes
• Kohlrabi – eat the greens too! Can cook em with your kale perhaps
• Kale
• Shallots
• Parsley
• a Melon of Some Sort or Another

I told you we were teetering toward fall, didn’t I? This week was a wardrobe change week – outfit one begins with flannels and socks and layers, which are shed as the day kicks in and the sun’s heat brings attire back in line with summertimes. I’ve used the van’s heated seat and the AC within hours.

It’s kind of fun. And a gentle introduction to the coming Autumn.

In other news, I mowed. I mean, weeded. Err, cultivated. That’s the official word for it in agriculture. Kristin is watering the beets. Beets are our exercise in baffling futility. This year perpetuates the cycle.

Also, there is a huge chicken of the woods growing just outside our bedroom window. And we picked chokecherries. And

inside box Twelve

• Tomatoes! – now they’re really going! BLTs, salsa, sauce, caprese salads, roast them, or freeze them to enjoy when summer is merely a memory.
  

• Cherry Tomatoes – don’t sleep on these delicious little guys! I harvested them all this morning and ate many that had split, and was quite impressed with their deliciousness.
• Sweet Corn – the last week of it!
• Peppers – either a couple of bell peppers or a bag of shisitos. Either way, not spicy. Shishitos are usually cooked whole over high heat with oil and salt, maybe a little garlic at the end, until the skin starts to blacken and sear.
• a Melon – everyone got one of several possible varieties.
• Carrots
• Cucumbers

• Zucchini
• A red and a white Onion
• Italian Basil

This was the week the season tipped. Various signs abounded, but these were noted as confirmations of what everyone already knew. summer would end. Winter will come.

Yeah, this is the week where you realize that soon it will be harder to put aside thoughts of winter, as we notice that the bracken ferns are crisping, the night times are cooling, the sun setting sooner, and the farmer picking the flowers from the tomato plants.

But for now, summer is still here. Our bones haven’t felt a true chill, the woodstove pipe has smoked only in the first stirrings of firewood-thoughts. The days remain long, long enough that at bedtime it’s hard to believe the morning activities could possibly be from this same day.

The fall crops have yet to kick into our meals, there are more tomatoes still on the vine than we have yet harvested. And biting into the corn releases distilled sweet, sweet summertime.

The heart of summer beats strong still, but now, we know. To appreciate the swelter and the crisp, the blaze and the abundance. Last week, we could not help but to take it for granted, but this week, we are grateful to feel gratitude for the summer, in its endless array of sensations … and flavors.

what’s inside box Eleven

They are getting heavier, and harder to close …

• Holy Basil – to smell it is to love it. Put some in your pocket to waft heavenlyily throughout the day, or however you do aromatic herbs. Tea is common, but if you dry some and smoke it in a pipe please report your results. It’s also said to be good with melons …
• a random Melon – everyone gets one, but they’re all different. Some might be less flavorful that we would like, due to the rain this week. Oh hey I got waxing philosophical and failed a rain report … over 2″ this weekend!! Good for many thinga, but not for melon flavor concentration. Anyway cut yours open – it’s like some kind of musk melon. Cantalopeeque,or maybe not.
• Sweet Corn – eat it soon. As usual, I will endorse immediate, raw consumption as a peak summer pleasure, but if you’re into microwaves and butter and such you do you with no shame. But the sooner the sweeter, sleep not upon it.
• Radishes – the first of the fall crops! Might be quite spicy, unless that rain too off the edge.
• Purple Potatoes – they didn’t do as well as the other types, but at least the nature of our problems with them is an indicator of our soil’s improvement …. it’s less acidic, which makes the skin disorder the purples had more likely as an unfortunate side effect of an overall positive.
• Cucumbers – summer staples
• Zucchini – staples of summer
• Tomatoes
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Onions
• Jalepenos – since they’re a green pepper, the season’s weirdly delayed pepper-ripening matters not.

((Some of summer has been slow to arrive this year – the peppers, the eggplant, and the ground cherries, usually abundant by now, are barely starting to ripen, or even to form. A weird year, as is normal. Too little sunshine is suspected – too many clouds, with smoke and haze all too often.))

The wild mushrooms finally started popping in our woods this week; we got our first on-farm chicken of the woods – and our first lobsters. The chokecherries and blackberries are increasingly ripening out in the Barrens around us. The storms missed us, for the most part, although we did get one solid half-inch rainfall. This was much appreciated by all the dehydrating flora, as well as the fauna. Also, it meant we could back away from running the field irrigation, for a bit longer.

A small hawk is hanging around our tree tops a lot of the time, the mice are active en masse, There are more slugs in the garden than we’ve ever before seen, and we rejoice in the zipping of more and more dragonflies. The bear hasn’t been seen. Nothing seems to be preying on the chickens.

Some old friends came out to help out – CSA Member Tara and her clan paid visits, harvesting a gazillion beans for the Market amongst the socializing, and Steffan reprised his role as a harvest hand today, helping fill your boxes with the fruits of our labor. With Grandpa Jim, we started to build a small addition to the screen porch, to serve as a little mudroom entryway. The tomato plants are taller than Kristin so she wields a stepstool to trellis them up. And the harvest today went smoothly; this is what we got for you:

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• Carrots (orange & purple) – We weeded them this year! For over 20 hours.
• Green Cabbage
• Cucumber – we might have to do a large pickling project this week. 
• Zucchini 
• Beans – greens are on the wane, purples and dragontongues wax.
• Onions
• Tomatoes – now they’re starting to come on for real.
• Cherry tomatoes 

It was another one of those weeks where it was hot and it was rainy, it was smokey and we were busy being farmers and parents and family and friends. The usual. 

The weeds continue to celebrate the frequent rainfall; we have been pulling and burying and mowing them but it feels increasingly like a zombie video game where there are always more coming than going and, inevitably, inexorably, inescapably they shall overwhelm and consume the human holdouts. 

Well, maybe not exactly like that. Really, I was just feeling dramatic for a moment there and really, we are staying ahead of the horde better than ever, I dare say. Sure there are a few rows that will take heavy artillery to beat back, and I may not make it through another week without losing another mower belt. But it seems pretty decent. And with the rain, plus the deer fence keeping 100% of the deer and 95% of the rabbits out, we have some unexpectedly vigorous production. Liiiike the peas, which I hope you enjoy because guess what.

And the rutabagas …. yeah, the rutabagas. That’s a weed thing, too. See, these are normally a fall crop, and they’re a lot larger – but due to an unfortunate series of events they were planted in a bed with a lot of early season crops that finished up for the year, and the weeds snuck up en masse and we decided we would have to call in a huge piece of landscape fabric and/or a riding lawnmower, to get the row under some semblance of control.

Aaanyway, first we had to salvage the rutabagas early, today, and so here we all are, with early season, tender rutabagas on the menu.

When we weren’t weeding, we were often trellising and transplanting. For the moment, there are no plants in the Little Greenhouse, for the first time since March! But soon more fall crops will be getting seeded, so that won’t last for long

In the meantime, there’s

Box 6

Cucumbers (Slicers & Pickling)

Zucchini & Summer Squash – it’s officially summer everybody; get your zucchini game on line and on point.

Kale (Curly Blue & Scarlet)

Sugar Snap Peas – people enjoy these, scientists say

a small amount of either Snow Peas or Broccoli. Or maybe this one weird-looking cauliflower.

the aforementioned Rutabagas

Onions