From the Farmers….
Yellow, Orange, Pink and Red – the watermelons are here! Sunshine (yellow), New Orchid (orange), Mickey Lee (pink), Starlight (red) and Blacktail Mountain (red) – whichever color you get in your box, we think you’ll be delighted with the juicy sweetness of every variety of watermelon we are growing this year. We’ve been eating melons every day and no matter which color we bring in the house, we think they are the delicious! We hope you do too. And even though I said last week that it was the end of the cantaloupes – there are a few more this week – so enjoy.
However, I think this week will be the last of the tomatoes. As I said, last week, the tomatoes are just awful – the constant rain made for the worst tomato harvest ever. So, while we have been canning like crazy – over 100 quarts of juice, pasta sauce and barbeque sauce – the tomatoes that are good enough for fresh slicing and to put in your boxes are almost non-existent. As we pick, it is usually about 40-50 bad tomatoes for every one that is pretty good. If any of you are interested in picking some tomatoes to make into sauce, please contact us to set up a time to pick – but do it soon as they won’t last long.
We started out our week renovating animal pens. We doubled the size of the turkey pen since the turkeys they are growing fast and needed more room. We also nearly quadrupled the broiler pen in size with a big area of grass for them. We moved the last group of lambs into a new area – first deworming and guestimating weights as we loaded and moved them. And then we moved the big self feeder that holds over 500 pounds of feed at a time into the pigs pen so they have feed available all the time which they like. We separated the goats – taking the kids away from the moms now for good – and put the kids into the big pen with the ‘Rainbow’ playground and the does in a newly enlarged pen. We have also have been moving the electro-net fence around the oats pasture for the ewes moving it twice a week. We didn’t move Reba, but did add a strand of electric fence wire around an extra pen we’ll make available for her once she gives birth –which hasn’t happened yet – though she is looking closer. Wow – a lot of animal activity. But everyone seems quite happy – except for the goat kids.
Finally, with no rain for at least a couple of days, I plowed, disked and dragged up three sections of the fields in which the earlier crops have been harvested. We’ll seed fall rye into the old potato and pea areas and just today we replanted the section between the melons and carrots. Kristen and Laura seeded radishes, arugula and beets. Depending on what the weather does, hopefully these crops will be ready to harvest near the end of September.
This year, we’ve been trying to keep up with maintenance tasks throughout the harvest season rather than waiting until fall to get everything accomplished. This is working out really well. So today, the interns dug out the area in the rabbit hoop house where the earlier broilers had been living – and spread that composted manure out on the field. Then they hauled a huge load of sand from what will be the new root cellar and filled the excavation with clean sand. Thus the Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm team photo on this week’s blog cover.
Until next week……………Robin
What’s in your Share this week:
Tomato: Any or all of the following: Taxi (yellow), Pink Beauty (pink), Paragon (red), Red Sun (red), Green Zebra (green striped), Red Pear, Yellow Pear, Sungold (gold cherry)
Peppers: Hot: Numex Joe E. Parker (long green mildly hot), Serrano del Sol (small
green hot)
Sweet: Lipstick (mostly red thick walled heart shaped) or Gypsy (yellow)
Eggplant: Dancer (pink), or Galine (large purple),or Kermit (round green), or Thai green (long green), or Orient Express (long purple), or Orient Charm (long pink)
Carrots : Scarlet Nantes
Beets : Merlin
Bok Choi: Joi Choi
Celeriac: Brilliant (Use the tops for celery flavoring. Peel and shred or dice the
root and use as celery)
Basil: Ararat
Kohlrabi: Kossack
Watermelon: Sunshine (green stripe yellow),or Starlight (green stripe red),or New Orchid (green stripe orange), or Blacktail Mountain (black red),or Mickey Lee (pale green deep pink).
Cantaloupe: Pulsar or Superstar or Eclipse or Classic
Summer Squash: Any mix of the following: Zephyr or President or Lita or Horn of Plenty or Elite or Raven or Bennings Green Tint or Perfect Pick
Spaghetti Squash: Small Wonder (gold oval)
