Gigi reminds me to give kudos to all of you who are remembering to bring your own re-usable bags every week to your drop site into which to transfer your veggies from their box so that you can take them home. Leaving the boxes at the drop sites REALLY saves on wear and tear on the boxes. THANK YOU, thank you so much for helping us out with this.
This week we harvested the last of the cantaloupe and honeydews –we hope you enjoy the ones you get this week – they’ll be the last until next year. If you don’t get to your melon right away or it is a little bit overripe – we suggest you try a melon smoothie. Cut up the melon in cubes, freeze it in a cake pan. You can put it in a freezer container or bag now to save for later or use it right now. Put the cubes in a blender with a glug of honey, a drop or two of vanilla and enough yogurt or milk to make it thin enough to blend. Blend and enjoy!
On Monday, we set up the electro-net fence for the ewes (female sheep) and moved them – minus the rams – into a new pasture. This is the oats, field peas and turnips we seeded early this spring. The rams are away from the ewes now since sheep are seasonal breeders (estrus cycle determined by photoperiod) and we don’t want to have baby lambs born until March – which means we’ll put the rams back with the ewes the first of October. The ewes are busy grazing on new exciting pasture and the rams are still in the old fold area and not very happy about it. We will move them to fresh pasture soon and we’ll be moving the ewes every week until the whole oats pasture is grazed. We also fenced in a new pen in the area next to the goats where the garlic and barley were growing earlier. We’ll get the last of the lambs moved into that area by the end of the week.
We butchered another batch of broilers on Tuesday morning. It is amazing that though they were only eight weeks old they are already very big. We only had 16 of them in this group so the butchering went very quickly with a rented plucker and a fast crew. Late afternoon, while the butchered chickens cooled prior to pick up by chicken share folks – we loaded the Alumacraft and Old Town Camper onto the little Toyota pickup and we all headed for the St. Croix River for a NGDF Crew Canoe Adventure. We left a car at the Sunrise landing and drove upriver (circumventing all the road construction that is ALL around us) a few miles by road to give ourselves a three to four hour paddle down river. It was a perfect day – very little wind, the river was very high from all the rain, and it was sunny with lots of clouds and not too hot, not too cold. We saw several deer, a couple of eagles, and almost no other people as we paddled and floated to Sunrise in just a little over two hours. We got back to the farm in time for evening chores and finishing up the chickens.
Today, Wednesday, with a smaller crew because Dale is gone to a wedding in Maine, we harvested tomatoes (way more damaged ones for us to process than good ones for all of you) and this afternoon in the rain, we washed and cooked and ran through the food mill over 6 bushels of damaged tomatoes.
Right now at 9:30 pm, we’re watching – mostly listening to the Music Man – and we have six big canning kettles of sauce that just needs to cook down until thick – and we are off to bed since we’ll begin harvest and packing tomorrow at 7 tomorrow morning. We’re hoping that the rain will hold off until we are finished harvesting and packing your boxes. It’s not much fun harvesting and packing in the rain!
It has been a wonderful week with the lower temperatures. Getting up and needing to put on long pants, socks and a sweatshirt is wonderful. It sure feels like fall.
Until next week……………..Robin
What’s in your share this week.
Cantaloupe, Honeydew, Asian Melon (same varieties as last week)
Summer Squash (same varieties as last week)
Tomatoes (Taxi, Orange Blossom, Paragon, Pink Beauty, Green Zebra, Red Sun, Red Pear, Yellow Pear, Sungold cherry
Eggplant (same varieties as last week)
Peppers: Hot – Conchos Jalapeno
Sweet – Carmen, Gypsy, Islander, Wizard, Sweet Chocolate
Onion – Sierra Blanca
Bok Choi – Joi Choi
Fennel – Orion
Basil – Lime
Carrots – Cosmic Purple
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