Our CSA Farm Crew!
There’s no questioning it – Summer is here in full force! Wow, what a week! 100+ degree heat indexes every day – a big, huge thank you to the entire Early Morning Farm team for plowing right through the hot, humid days!
The heat has really pushed some of our crops along – the Winter Squash field looked like “all dirt” from the road just a couple of weeks ago, and now the green vines are taking over. Summer Squash and Zucchini should be in full production for the next several weeks, and the Cucumbers are coming in also. In the high tunnels the Heirloom Tomatoes are finally starting to ripen and may make it into the boxes next week, especially toward the end of the week. Bell Peppers, Eggplants, and Hot Peppers are all on our possible list – it’s likely the boxes will have at least one of those this week.
Our Lettuce plantings seem to be showing a “gap” in production. We plant lettuce every 2 weeks through August and in theory this should “guarantee” a steady supply of lettuce for all 23 weeks of our CSA, but in practice we always end up with a few gaps. Lettuce should be back in a week – two at the most (usual disclaimers apply: woodchucks, weather, hail, etc)
Escarole is caput until the autumnal plantings arrive. Our Parsley planting is starting to look a little heat stressed and the leaves are getting little gold spots on them – so we’re going to mow it! Sounds drastic, I know, but it will come back in a few weeks and hopefully will look a lot better. In the meantime we have the rest of our current planting of Basil to get through and some fresh Dill for culinary herbs. Sometime soon (this week?) we are going to stop sending bunches of onions in the shares and instead send Fresh Large Sweet Onions.
We should have beets – again, please try new things with them, they’re good for you and super sweet.
When are those Carrots going to be ready? We keep checking them, it seems like they should be ready by now but they’re still on the small side. It’s probably the heat, if they don’t size up in a few weeks we might all get “baby” carrots from this planting, because the second planting is going to catch-up to the first.
Here’s the Forecast in List Form:
Likely
Beets
Large Sweet Onions
Cabbage
Summer Squash and Zucchini
Kale
Cucumbers
Dill
Possible
Lettuce – toward the end of the week
Green, Purple, or White Bell Peppers
Eggplant
Heirloom Tomatoes
Napa Cabbage
Radicchio
Swiss Chard
Fennel
Scallions
Parsley
Basil
Chance
Hot Peppers, Carrots?
Happy Eating!
Anton & the Early Morning Farm Crew!
