Provider Green Beans
Eureka Yellow Beans
Northern Lights Swiss Chard
Mixed Lettuces
Walla Walla Onions
White Ball Turnips
A variety of Summer Squash which might include:
Zephyr (slim bowling pin shaped, yellow top/pale green bottom)
Eight Ball (round dark green)
Elite (classic light green zucchini)
Pattypans (scallpops - yellow, green white)
Horn of Plenty (yellow crookneck)
Lita (oval grey mideastern cousa)
From the Farmers….
We are entering the abundant season! Beans, beans, beans. Our bean plants are so productive this year – every plant loaded with curtains of beans that we actually stopped picking – just gave up on the second half of the rows – instead of inundating you with bags and bags of beans. I based the amount of plants to grow on last year – and you may remember that last year we were hit hard with the June hail – destroying a lot of our crops and cutting the yield on a lot of others – including beans – but I hadn’t realized our yield was that drastically reduced until I saw our yellow beans today.
This could be a great thing – if you are one of those folks who would like to freeze or can a few beans – or a lot of beans – let us know immediately and plan to come to the farm this Friday, Saturday or Sunday afternoon to pick some beans for your winter eating. After that they will be too overly mature. You can email but it might be best to call to make sure we get the message in time so you can come to pick.
We have already begun working up the soil where some of the first crops were planted and harvested and now replanted with succession crops. Where the earliest greens were, we put on loads of compost from our local municipal composting site, disked and tilled and that area is now replanted to fall red cippolini onions and some cilantro will also get seeded there. Where the early sugar snap peas were is now – already mulched – a late crop of green beans – more chard, beets, late radishes and turnips. Soon we will disk and till the kohlrabi and broccoli field and ready it for either replanting or putting in a soil-building cover crop.
We are continuing to try to get under control the scads of weeds that took over in the early spring cold. We’ve resorted to pruning some of the big lamb’s quarters taking up residence in the onion patch. The weeds which grew up right next to the onions even though the patch was mulched have grown so tall that I’ve become worried that they are shading the plants so much that though it hadn’t seemed so earlier, I’m thinking now that they could inhibit crop growth. It is always a bit of a complex process to determine the maximum amount of weed competition each crop can bear. We don’t like to keep our soil bare (of mulch or weeds) since it leaves it open to evaporation and drying out – but too many weeds can also suck moisture away from the crop we want as well as shade it too much. Sometimes, we simply mow the pathways between the rows to keep the vegetation low and create grass pathways. This way we don’t let the weeds set seeds either. And while you may wonder why we don’t do this with all the crops, we don’t because the grasses among the weeds are not well behaved – they like to keep creeping over into the crop rows instead of staying in their neatly mowed areas – so this technique works best in areas like the spaces between the rows planted in plastic mulch like the tomatoes, peppers and melons.
All the animals are doing fine – it takes a ton of water to keep them all well hydrated on these hot, humid days. The pigs like to take a quick drink and then try to lay in their water tubs. They are also digging deep holes to get to the cool soil to lay in. The lambs, chicks, and rabbits we are raising for butcher are all nearly ready for the fateful day. (See the upcoming notice about available meat shares.) We are all looking forward to cutting back on our huge feed bill when we will no longer have all these young, always hungry livestock.
Until next week…..
We are entering the abundant season! Beans, beans, beans. Our bean plants are so productive this year – every plant loaded with curtains of beans that we actually stopped picking – just gave up on the second half of the rows – instead of inundating you with bags and bags of beans. I based the amount of plants to grow on last year – and you may remember that last year we were hit hard with the June hail – destroying a lot of our crops and cutting the yield on a lot of others – including beans – but I hadn’t realized our yield was that drastically reduced until I saw our yellow beans today.
This could be a great thing – if you are one of those folks who would like to freeze or can a few beans – or a lot of beans – let us know immediately and plan to come to the farm this Friday, Saturday or Sunday afternoon to pick some beans for your winter eating. After that they will be too overly mature. You can email but it might be best to call to make sure we get the message in time so you can come to pick.
We have already begun working up the soil where some of the first crops were planted and harvested and now replanted with succession crops. Where the earliest greens were, we put on loads of compost from our local municipal composting site, disked and tilled and that area is now replanted to fall red cippolini onions and some cilantro will also get seeded there. Where the early sugar snap peas were is now – already mulched – a late crop of green beans – more chard, beets, late radishes and turnips. Soon we will disk and till the kohlrabi and broccoli field and ready it for either replanting or putting in a soil-building cover crop.
We are continuing to try to get under control the scads of weeds that took over in the early spring cold. We’ve resorted to pruning some of the big lamb’s quarters taking up residence in the onion patch. The weeds which grew up right next to the onions even though the patch was mulched have grown so tall that I’ve become worried that they are shading the plants so much that though it hadn’t seemed so earlier, I’m thinking now that they could inhibit crop growth. It is always a bit of a complex process to determine the maximum amount of weed competition each crop can bear. We don’t like to keep our soil bare (of mulch or weeds) since it leaves it open to evaporation and drying out – but too many weeds can also suck moisture away from the crop we want as well as shade it too much. Sometimes, we simply mow the pathways between the rows to keep the vegetation low and create grass pathways. This way we don’t let the weeds set seeds either. And while you may wonder why we don’t do this with all the crops, we don’t because the grasses among the weeds are not well behaved – they like to keep creeping over into the crop rows instead of staying in their neatly mowed areas – so this technique works best in areas like the spaces between the rows planted in plastic mulch like the tomatoes, peppers and melons.
All the animals are doing fine – it takes a ton of water to keep them all well hydrated on these hot, humid days. The pigs like to take a quick drink and then try to lay in their water tubs. They are also digging deep holes to get to the cool soil to lay in. The lambs, chicks, and rabbits we are raising for butcher are all nearly ready for the fateful day. (See the upcoming notice about available meat shares.) We are all looking forward to cutting back on our huge feed bill when we will no longer have all these young, always hungry livestock.
Until next week…..
The Bread Box
Your bread share this week is an Oatmeal Wheat. We are experimenting with an all purpose flour to replace the strong bread flour that is unavailable. It seems to have worked well for this batch. Enjoy.
