Week 6

The wettest spring ever is a distant memory.  I am happy to put it behind us, but we are still feeling its repercussions.  Kelly is the mastermind of what goes where when it comes to the farm.  He can look at a field and remember what was planted in it every year that we have farmed.  I, if I am holding up my end of the bargain, tell him what needs to be seeded and transplanted and he figures out where it is going.  This spring there was ground too wet to work or not enough time to get everything worked during the very brief dry spells.   That forced us to just plant stuff where there were beds made.  It felt a little less planned out and it still feels a bit scattered.  On top of that I haven't been doing the best job of communicating.  On July 4th I mentioned we were suppose to seed rutabagas on the 5th...not real helpful!  But don't worry, the rutabagas got seeded.  Kelly jokes that we spend hours and hours on a production plan and writing down how we want things to be done and then at the end of June we toss it all aside and just work.  There is some truth to that, but for the most part we do a pretty good job remembering stuff without looking at spread sheets.  There are of course exceptions - like the rutabagas.  This week marked the end of our last big seeding for transplants.  We will continue to seed salad and lettuce weekly, but most of the transplanted crops have been seeded.  Our big fall carrot planting date is this week and a large fall beet planting is the following week.  Garlic harvest is just around the corner.  Our days are becoming more dominated by harvest, often only leaving a couple hours in the afternoon for weeding and seeding.  It feels like summer in terms of the patterns on the farm and your boxes will reflect that more and more.

Head Lettuce
Carrot
New Potatoes - I suspect I tell you every year what I like to do with new potatoes but it never gets old for me so here we go.  Regardless of their size (we grade them so while not everyone gets the same size the ones you get are of similar size to each other) I slice them in half and steam them until barely tender.  I pull them out of the steamer to dry while I heat a cast iron pan or some sort of pan that they won't stick to and add olive oil to generously (an understatement) cover the bottom.  I then pan fry them cut side down without touching them until I can see the edges are turning color.   Once they are all nicely browned I place them on a plate crispy side up.  I then toss a bunch of garlic in the pan, adding more oil if necessary stir for 20 seconds, add a hand full of chopped parley, stir just to mix them together and then spoon the mix over the crispy potatoes.  We are having these tonight with some roast chicken and broccoli.  True new potatoes are also excellent steamed and tossed with butter and herbs.
Zucchini - We had some of these grilled on a charcoal grill last night.  Delicious.
Cabbage
Herb Choice
Snap Peas - Large Only