So, as you can tell we've been pretty busy the last month. And to be honest, we are about halfway through the most tiring and busiest 6 months of our year. We have already started our bulk harvests of root vegetables and onions, which set the stage for a (hopefully) bountiful Fall and Winter, finishing greenhouse seeding and planting in the fields, weeding and mowing for good harvests and future crops, starting to fill our tunnels with Fall crops and starting to harvest heavy fruiting crops. As a farm crew we have been at our maximum for 3 months and are aware that we have about 2 more months of frost free weather. To quote another farmer, "August is simultaneously like taking a deep breath and starting a new adventure."
As we get into new crops, some of our new and returning members sometimes struggle with the fact that our produce is not like the produce in the grocery store. Our produce is harvested fresh (meaning harvested for our share members within a few days of it going home with you), as opposed to produce which is harvested, packed (sometimes in shrink wrap), and shipped sometimes across the country or an ocean, and displayed in a grocery store for who knows how many days before it ends up in your home.
This is a HUGE difference. Produce that is grown to be shipped is hard (literally, like very difficult to bruise). It can be harvested unripe so it doesn't get beat up in shipping, or shrink wrapped with a chemical to help the produce last longer.
The produce we grow can be soft. A great example is heirloom tomatoes. It doesn't mean they are bad, or overripe, they are instead very meaty. And if you like hard tomatoes then my description of 'meaty' might not make sense to you. Also grocery store tomatoes are shipped green, meaning they are harvested unripe and meant to ripen later. This affects the flavor. We harvest all our tomatoes ripe.
Melons are another example. We harvest all our melons ripe so when you pick them up in the share they are ready to eat. This means you have to refrigerate them because you do not want them to ripen further.
I also want to mention our corn. I hate growing corn and most people who read the blog know this. However, we grow 2 varieties every season and some years are great and some years are not. The heat the plants experienced when we were transplanting seedlings into the field severely affected the first variety we grow. The second variety seems to have fared better, which we are harvesting this week.
ON ANOTHER NOTE ;) We will be starting to sign people up for the Winter Share soon, probably within the next couple of weeks. More info to come in email form to all the Summer Share members.
That is a lot of words! So the only ones left are for what's in this week's share: potatoes, squash, cucumbers, cabbage, carrots, beets, onions, peppers, eggplant, head lettuce, kale, fennel, sweet corn, melons, and tomatoes!
The fruit share will include peaches, plums, and nectarines.
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