The early summer lull, so rejuvenating after the frantic labors of Spring, is no more – the garden has caught up to us, and is firing vegetables at us faster than we can catch them or take cover. In Spring, we harvested everything available to fill your boxes – now, we have to be choosy, and not harvest all kinds of perfectly delicious veggies. (And even then we’ll harvest more than can be fit inside, and you’ll get a cabbage and a bag of edamame on the side …)

The weeds are getting uppity, and going into seed production mode – no more mulching the field with their corpses, we must remove their millions of future weedlings, to appease the future-us.  We’ve pulled out many cubic yards of ragweed, pigweed, smart weed, lambs quarter, bindweed, foxtail, quack and crab grass, hell, every kind of grass that exists in this region. If we consider it entertainment and not just work, we’re really getting one heck of a good deal with it all.

The tomatoes of the field are being slowly consumed by early blight – soon, they will be Charlie Brown Xmas trees. Heirloom tomatoes are sadly prone to disease, and once blight is introduced it spreads inexorably. We trim off spotted leaves daily to slow the advance, and will be fortifying them as we can with the stuff tomatoes thrive upon. Inside the high tunnel, the plants are looking much better – the biggest problem has been trellising failure due to the weight of them.

The cucumber beetles that pillaged the garden this spring have subsided – although their larvae remain in the soil feeding on the roots, the adults are scarce enough that we have good hope for the second planting coming up now; when we remove the covering fabric so they can be pollinated, the plants will be large enough to better withstand a beetling, which should be mild at worst at this time of year.

The mosquitoes are another story … they’re active all day many days, and there is no shortage of them. However, we floated down the Saint Croix for a couple hours on Sunday, and oh my god the skeeter gauntlet we had to run to get into and out of that river gave us both PTSD and the perspective needed to never complain about the relatively benign suckers on the Farm again.

 

Finally, this was the week that canning began! We pickled some okra, 14 pints of beets, and put up some cabbage/pepper relish too. Let us know if you’re looking to buy extras of anything for your own preservation projects – if we can, we’d be happy to hook it up!

Box #10: a fine box, indeed.

Carrots – 4 varieties, 2 colors this week … a quirk of planting led to an abundance of fascinating forked shapes for your entertainment.

Edamame – Snack on it! Boil in salted water until the pods turn bright green (~4 min), toss with more salt if you like salty, toss and serve hot, warm, or chilled. Practice this week – more are coming!

Cabbage – Savoy or Red varieties. If it’s not red, it’s the Savoy. Savoy is a more tender leafed cabbage, while the Reds are sturdier. We often like eating cabbage fresh – it’s crunchy and sweet. Perhaps try a with vinegar-based coleslaw? I recommend sauteeing it in a a pan with some onions, salt and pepper. Serve over egg noodles and invite us to dinner.

Tomatillos

Peppers

Tomatoes – an heirloom medley, yo.

Eggplants – Asian and Italian – See the newsletter title! Eggplant is a seriously undervalued veggie in this culture … get on board the eggplant train. Or be pushed in front of it.

Onions

Zucchinis

Cucumbers

Sweet Corn – Eat it now! Or soon anyway. The longer you wait, the more sweet sweet sugar is converted to less sweet sweet starch. I like it raw, but many people boil it first, or nuke it. The primary advantage is making it hot enough to melt delicious butter all over.

Herbs: Basil, Fennel, & Savory – wash your basil before you use, because we didn’t get to it this week!

 

There’s a mimic bird around here; last year, it was a rusty hinge. We spent some time trying to figure out where the door or piece of equipment was swinging in the wind before realizing the “screee” also happened when there was no wind. Turns out that catbirds are notorious mimics and in our hood. This year, the resident catbird is into the loud “beeep” of the solar power inverter being overtaxed and shutting down. Hijinks ensue; I hope the bird is amused.

The days have been hot but not ridiculous – it’s definitely summer, humid and steamy … and the mosquitoes have been loving the moisture. For our new screen porch, we thank the gods, as well as Craigslist Free listings for the porch, Patriarch Jim for construction, and my departed Mom for financing the deck materials. We went and foraged some chantrelle mushrooms to eat down by the River, and were grateful for the lesson nature provided us there – namely, that as voracious as the skeeters are at the Farm, they could be so, so much worse.

A lot got done this week. We weed-whacked down the spring salad rows, and then tilled under the remains and old hay mulch (thanks Neighbor Dave!).

That completed, we transplanted out the next wave of recruits from the greenhouse: broccoli & cabbage mostly. Kristin hunted squash vine borers, which we’d lured into “trap crops” – varieties of plants they love mostest, which she pulled out and dissected, wiping out the hellspawn within.

We trimmed diseased tomato leaves from the plants in the field – we’re not having a great tomato year (more on that in a future newsletter) like last year, but they’re doing OK, moreso in the high tunnel.

The WWOOFers learned the joys of hay mulching (ie sneezing, itching), which they’d all missed out on in the springtime.

We helped The Neighbors tidy up the grapevines in their vineyard, and drank and made merry.

It was a good week on the Farm – with a good box to cap it off:

Box 9

Forecast called for a cloudy, rainy harvest – so of course it was a steamy, sunny harvest, 90 degrees under bright blue skies.

CSA Harvest days have been downright pleasant and fun lately, with time for a delicious lunch and room to chat before heading to the Cities.

Halfway through the season now, and we have a pretty reliable regular Tuesday crew going now (between the Senior Sehrs, Neighbor Marcia, friends Steffan & Angela, and WWOOFers Sarah, David, and Grace).

As we all work through the weeks the process flows more and more smoothly … we even slept in until 7:00 today!

It left us enough time to fill your boxes to the top with freshly harvested:

Sweet Corn: It might have been just a touch early to harvest, but it should be sweet and tasty even if kernels aren’t as big as they might have gotten. But waiting a full week would have been too long for some of it, so que sera, sera; there will more next week, unless the raccoons figure out how to get past the electric fence … (PS the photo at the top of the page is actually a corn stalk, not an alien. They grow backup support roots when they get tall … and some of our popcorn is over 10 feet now!)

Okra or Cauliflower – The okra is doing even better than we thought it would – there aren’t a ton of plants, but they’re so tall that we’ll soon need a step ladder, or stilts perhaps to harvest them.

Since there wasn’t enough cauliflower to give a full head to everyone, we randomly distributed one or the other. You probably know how to use the cauliflower – if you got a purple variety, the color does remain even through cooking (unlike the beans). A farmers’ market customer that grew up in Georgia told us, in her thick lovely accent, that ours is the best okra she’s had – and she’s been buying us out of it. So if you’re ever going to try this sometimes intimidating southern staple, now’s the time. If you put the pods in a pan whole and cook them, they won’t be slimy. Then you can cut them up as desired. Or, you can slice them the long way and grill them, slice them crossways to make nifty little star shapes that can be breaded with cornmeal and flour and salt and pepper (this is how Georgia does it, and says she just snacks on it like popcorn). If you didn’t get okra yet and want to try it out just let us know!

Tomatoes: If the sides are a little bit soft, it’s probably ripe. Or that’s how I’ve been judging them lately with some success anyway – color doesn’t help as much with so many varied shades of heirloom.

Zucchini – Now that you’ve had a couple of weeks to practice, we’re starting to slowly increase the levels of zucchini in your boxes, much like gradually boiling a frog alive.  No, ok they’re not bad – very versatile veggies, with an incredible range of possibilities – but oh boy do they produce a lot when they’re on their game like they are now.

Onions – You like them.                                                       

Cucumbers – The cucumber beetles have greatly reduced yields, taking out many plants entirely and stunting the rest – this time of year, their larvae are down in the soil feeding on the cuke plant roots. We hate them, but it’s not all bad – we’ve had a few good weeks of cucumber abundance, and the experimental fall crop in the high tunnel seems to be coming up nicely. We may try some late season sugar snap peas in the gaps in the cucumbers’ cattle panel trellising …

Potatoes – The reds are finished up early, but with a strong showing – enjoy them in potato salads with the onions, or baked, or fried. You probably have plans for them.                         

Thai Basil – nice herbal addition to Asian dishes! Add it to stir fries after turning off the heat, or add into noodle salads. Or just sniff the bag.

Peppers – Same mix as previous weeks roughly. Now it’s the waiting game, watching the other varieties of pepper and waiting them to ripen past the green stage into fully-flavored reds, blacks, and yellows.

Beets – It’s been a good beet year! I can tell because we’re letting you have some – in previous years we had to guard them with our lives and save them for pickled beets.

Beet Greens – One of the finest of root crop greens. We like to make salads with sautéed beet greens and roasted beets together. (Neighbor Marcie loves beets with cottage cheese, but I don’t know what she does with the greens – perhaps we will find out.)

this week:

It’s hot! Summer!! It’s amazing that we get to experience such tropical conditions – we (mostly) found it possible to enjoy the novelty of the triple digit heat indexes, working and laughing through the sticky airspace and solar blasting. Except for Thursday. That was ridiculous. So before the sun got busy, we did some morning weeding of the onions, and harvested a round of zucchini.  (Actually, Kristin and the WWOOFers did – I drove to Hudson to pick up free and incredibly heavy components of a wood-fired solar water heater.)

When afternoon hit, we packed up the dogs and the WWOOFers, fled to the river where we’d married, and got ourselves waterfalled.

We were joined in our quests this week by three wonderful WWOOFers – David PhDsson, Kingsbury’s Sarah, and Graaaaace! – as well as harvest help from the Senior Sehrs, Neighbor Marcia, and Steffan. Although the urgency and intensity of Spring is past, there is still a lot to keep busy with, and the extra hands and minds made for lighter work and hearts.

The pea rows were dismantled; cut off at their bases, trellising twine extricated and wound for reuse, heavy steel t-posts pulled up and piled for their next incarnation. The plants themselves were sent to provide a tasty snack for The Neighbors’ cows.

Fall crops like radishes, carrots, and lettuce got their roots into the soil.  The thick, wide weed canopy was yanked out in thousands of handfuls from among the sprawling watermelon vines.

The late-season cukes we planted last week are coming up now, to supplement the rather sorry early crop of cucumber beetle survivors – which are still being attacked beneath the soil by the larvae.

In a similar manner, we have been incredibly grateful for the screen porch, as the mosquitoes have finally gotten around to attain intense levels of obnoxious ravenous blood buzzing, even out in the field in the daylight,  where and when they are normally not found. Fortunately, one of WWOOFer Sarah’s talents is luring most skeeters to herself,  sparing her companions. Quite a skill indeed!

The coyotes, conspicuously absent from the night noises all spring, have returned with a yipping, yowling, caterwauling cacaphony, which we actually rather enjoy – plus, it reminds us to close up the chicken coops at night.

All the heat has the tomatoes ripening, the sweet corn silks drying … looking promising for next week’s box. Not this this week’s box is any slouch …

Week #8 Box

• Tomatoes – We grow most heirloom tomatoes – older lineages that have been selected for a long period of time, but not for traits like high production, long shelf lives, safe shipping, or uniform appearance. This means these tomatoes commonly feature what are seen as flaws to the modern grocery store shopper, such as cat-facing and green shoulders … but also tend to be far more interesting to look at and delicious to eat! Only a small amount are ready ripe now, so some of those we sent out are ripe – if you have any that are on the softer side or even starting to split under their own weight, eat them first! If you got a green tomato, it’s actually not unripe – it’s a variety … striped smaller ones are Green Zebra, and the larger solid-hued ones are “Grub’s Mystery Green.” The Yellow Ruffled tomatoes are low acid, as are the light orange “Kellogg’s Breakfast” tomatoes.
• Sweet Basil
• Tomatillos – It’s salsa verde season!!! Also great chopped up in tacos, roasted, sliced and eaten raw, or some other things that you invent. Crunch, tangy. If you don’t like them you’re wrong and it’s really too bad. Husk and wash first.
• Peppers – This week’s medley is similar to last week, but with the larger green bell peppers joining in the festivities.
• Eggplant – You might get a standard plump Italian, a slender Thai, a Chinese “White Sword,” or an Anaconda. (Actually we can’t recall what the long green ones are called, but know that that’s what they’re supposed to look like.)

• Cabbage – The harvestable cabbages are more numerous and more reasonably sized this week, so you get a whole one. I never cared about cabbages but I’ve been coming to like them quite a bit lately – hope you find some delicious uses for yours!
• Broccoli – After being almost murdered by that mid-May freeze, the broccoli army is making up for lost time, and not seeming phased at all by this intense heat. A pleasant surprise! There are two varieties producing now – our usual tender side shoots, plus the reinforcements we brought in after the freeze – a somewhat more branched, dense-headed variety.
• Zucchini – These have been put on an every-other day harvest schedule – with the big rains we’ve been getting, any longer a wait and they’d be the size of your thigh.

• Cucumbers – A handful of tattered survivors soldiers onward, against all odds. The cucumber beetle onslaught was brutal this year, and the cukes, of course, bore the brunt of the assault. (Hopefully the second-crop experiment we’re trying in the high tunnel will work out – we’re starting them under row cover fabric to keep out the dastardly buggers this time.) We’ve been drinking a lot of cucumbers on the Farm, blended with various herbs and fruity goodness. Store yours in the fridge if you’re not going to eat/drink em in a couple of days.
• Onions
• Beans – This week it’s 3 colors and 8 varieties! The larger, somewhat flattened greens are a typo of pole bean called “Grandma Mary’s Tricot”-something, which re currently twining their way to the heights of the high tunnel. Most other beans become quite tough at a size that these seem to remain tender and juicy.

 

 

 

 

In Which the Notes on What to Write About Seem Adequate

WWOOFer week of David, Rebecca, & Neville, with a touch of Meg. All four of them will be gone next week, but two should be returning.

Rising heat and rising river.

There was weeding and tilling and whipping. Potato beetle larvae patrols subsided.

Transition continues. As it does. Constant change in northern climate – brief periods of varied warmth between frozen ice ages.

Planted a cucumber bed and installed a bug barrier.  Replaced a dried up soaker hose.

Jim maintained the motorized fleet and headed up the louver-framing project in the high tunnel.

FUCKING VOLES

In the box this week:

• Eggplant: You have up to three varieties in your box. There are a couple kinds of bulbous squat purplish ones, some long skinny purple ones, and some white ones that are somewhere in the middle, shape-wise. The skinny ones are better for kebobs, and the fat ones seem a bit better for baba ganoush, but for the most part they can be used similarly. Ratatouille is a popular option. One trick to cooking with eggplant is to use a oil that you like the flavor of and use plenty of it. We like coconut and olive and sunflower seed oil on the farm.
• Turnips
• Onions

• Zucchini / Summer Squash

• Beans – our secret 3-color, 7-variety medley
• Cucumbers
• Curly Blue Kale
• Dill – would be good on sliced cukes – you can use the flowers as well as the frillies.

• Savory – this herb might be tasty sautéed with your zucchini, or you could dry it in a cool dark place to use at your leisure down the road …
• Broccoli
• Peppers – A mix of the earliest peppers in the garden – only the dark purple Czech black and the jalapenos (you will probably recognize them, although some are on the massive side for their type) are hot this week. Also some Italian Frying peppers and light streaky green/purple Sirenvyi peppers.
• Artichoke – Large boxes only  This link may be helpful … they’re not exactly filling; they’re more of an experience. We boiled them and snacked on them, peeling the scaly exterior away layer by layer and scraping the soft undersides into our mouths with our teeth. I guess that’s just how it’s done. We were hoping to overwinter the plants under cover in the high tunnel, for larger second-year artichokes .. but the voles are already tunneling through their roots with voracious glee, and I doubt these poor things have a chance of surviving a whole winter of the onslaught. Turns out this is a big problem with this crop … sigh  … those of you returning from last year likely recall how these colonial uncatchable unkillable unappeasable beasts have plagued us for years now. Oh well, they help define our limits, keep us humble, remind us of our lack of control, yada yada. Que sera, sera practice couches. Jerks.
• Okra – large boxes only – again, let us know if you’re interested in some in a future box, as we won’t ever have enough to give everyone them at once …

Some More of WWOOFer Rebecca’s Pics:

 

We’re deep into the spring/summer transition now, as pea picking gives way to bean picking and the tired salad greens are ready to be tilled under to feed late season crops.

This week we finally finished weeding the row that got (almost) away – the teensy tiny parsnips are rescued from the thick forest canopy of weeds that had oppressed them since they sprouted, and already exploding in size.

I was gone over the weekend visiting my sister in Illinois, so Kristin went to the Saturday market without me – fortunately, Shareholder Amy came out to help. Unfortunately, the alternator belt fell off the car … but fortunately, it didn’t die til they made it to the Market. Kind of a mess, but all came out OK in the end, with a few hours of waiting and some help from Neighbor Dave.

We had a changing of the guard this week on the Farm, as B, Nora,and Bucket transitioned into their next phase, and Floridians David, Rebecca, and dog Neville arrived. They weren’t all together though – David, here for the summer, is actually the son of last year’s WWOOFing couple “The PhDs.” Rebecca and her dog, here for a week, are traveling across the country in a travel trailer.

They showed up just in time to survive a pretty awesome storm last night – a rollicking thunderstorm that dumped 3.5 inches of rain on us over a few hours, and showed us just how leaky our various coverings could be. Storms like this are a reminder to be grateful for our rather sandy soil, which can absorb such an onslaught with nary a puddle to show for it in the morning. Damage was minimal; some of the basil, arugula, and other more tender-leaved plants were visibly pummeled, and some corn got blown over (we easily stood it back up, propped with hay mulch).

It had been a long time since we’ve had a real rainfall on the Farm – for weeks, the storms keep missing us, or glancing off yielding only wind and fractions of an inch. About time! The serious soaking put the garden in a good place to recover from today’s harvest without missing a beet!

BOX 6

• Beets – a medley of several types and colors, but all similar in how you’ll eat them. We love beets, which made it hard to let many of the go out last year … so this year, we planted quite a lot more! They’re pretty grated onto a salad, you can made “red flannel hash” with your potatoes , they’re delicious when roasted, can be cooked to soften, then eaten cold in a salad …

• Beet greens – perhaps chop it up, cook it with onion and garlic, add to ricotta with fresh basil, and stuff pasta shells? And invite us over for dinner?

• Summer Salad Mix – lettuce, arugula, pea tips, baby kale, a little mache and lambs quarter – We almost didn’t do a salad mix this week – and perhaps we shouldn’t have, since we couldn’t even fit it into your boxes. This time of year, all the greens are moving toward flowering, and are becoming less sweet and more toward the bitter side of the spectrum.I personally love the salad even when the lettuce is a little bitter, and so I advocated for its inclusion this week over Kristin’s reservations – so please, let’s win together by your enjoying it! Unlike the salads of spring, summer salad is likely best eaten with some dressing, rather than simply devoured raw, straight from the bag. This will be the last salad in your box until the very end of the year – this week we’ll be tilling in the salad beds to make room for late season crops!
• early Potatoes – Mostly reds, with a bit of purples and russets for fun. The potato plants are looking great so far; we should have many more later in the season – just thought you’d enjoy some now!
• Napa Cabbage – the Big Freeze back in May killed several of the Napas, so we didn’t get as many heads as we’d intended … which kind of works out, because a whole head of these suckers would’ve taken up most of the box I think.
  Hopefully a half-head is still plenty for you! We like to use them fresh, shredded up with a sesame dressing with soy sauce. Some people grill ‘em.
• Peas (Snow and Sugar Snap) – the final installment! I’m excited to get the pea trellises down and weed the row – there are some beastweeds lurking in there that I’m going to really enjoy taking out.

• Beans – A mix of seven varieties spanning three colors! Tender enough to eat raw, but also great to cook with. Be warned though – the purple ones don’t stay that way if cooked, so eat those ones raw if you want to enjoy their sexy coloration.
  
• Broccoli – Although most of the main heads have been harvested, the type we grow continues to produce tender side shoots. Yum.
• Zucchini – So it begins. Oh wait, that was last week … this week, we only had room in the box to give you a couple. I’d brush up on your zucchini recipes though, because the row is looking feisty and fit so far.
• Basil – Use this as soon as possible for maximum impact!
• Okra (large shares only) – we’re never going to have enough okra for everyone at the same time, but if you’re interested in some be sure to let us knowm and we can start getting it out in small amounts!

(thanks for a bunch of pics from your first day on the Farm, Rebecca!)