Week 9

When I think about the past week I am incredibly thankful for our crew.   The hot weather can be exhausting and they all worked hard without any moping or complaining.  Staying on top of the irrigation was a full time job and we are looking forward to a break in the weather pattern this week.  Ian, who has worked for the past few years, worked his last day on Friday.  He was only working Fridays and Wednesday mornings this year, but we will really miss him.  He is off to LSU for grad school.  It is great to see crew members head off on new adventures, but it also feels a little bit like an end of an era.  Ian made our farm a better place to work, both for us and for the crew.  I am hoping he might want to come back and work next summer, but I also get sometimes it can just be time to move on.

I assume it was the hot weather that had a lot of people asking about melons on Saturday at the farm stand.  I love having people inquire about specific varieties.  A melon so good that people remember it from last summer - that makes me smile.  I haven't looked at the melon patch this week.  The tell tale sign is the Korean melon that we always give the CSA.  It is our first melon and it turns bright yellow when it is ripe.  We always plant it at the the front of the first bed.  When it starts to blush yellow we know melon season is about to kick off.

We started picking Japanese style cucumbers this week and they should be in your boxes next week.  They are my favorite and although they are fussy and labor intensive, they are worth it.

Lettuce
Carrot
Cabbage
Zucchini
Celery
Cherry Tomato/Slicing Tomato - Large shares will have both.  Small shares will have one or the other.
Beet Greens - Large Share Only - In order to get nice round beets that size up quickly we thin the plants to a three to four fingers between each one.   In the spring we will take the time to bunch the thinnings, but in the summer we usually just pull them and drop them in the path as we hand weed because it is much faster.  We didn't bunch many this spring because we didn't have fantastic germination and a lot of the greens never looked that good.  This is our first planting of beets this year over on Southbay and they look so good we decided to try bunching some.  Because they are young, they are incredibly tender and delicious.

I made this this delicious burst cherry tomatoes with pancetta on grilled bread  last week.  It was so good we are having it again tonight with some grilled vegetables.  I love summer food.