In your box:
–Basil
–Carrots
–Cucumbers
–Eggplant or cherry tomatoes
–Head lettuce
–Summer Squash
–Sweet onion
–Sweet pepper
–Tomatoes
This week finds us just past halfway through our growing season this year. After such horrible growing conditions in the spring, we’ve been rewarded with one of the best summers I can remember. We’ve had enough heat to keep everything growing without any brutal heat waves, and we’ve received consistent rain so that I haven’t had to irrigate very much at all this season. All in all, it’s been a pretty enjoyable growing year and I’m looking forward to the final few weeks of this season.
We still have a couple opportunities for you to visit the farm if you’d like to come out yet this summer. We’ll be hosting an open house this Saturday, August 24th, from 1-5pm. We’ll have a chance to pitch in with some light farm work, farm tours, yard games, and a chance to meet other CSA members. We will also have a year-end harvest party on Sunday, September 29th from 3-7pm. This is our annual potluck and fall gathering as the farm season winds down. Our farm is located at 17250 County Road 122 / New Germany 55367. Please let me know if you need directions or if you have any questions. Non CSA-members are welcome as well. We hope to see you at the farm!
I had planned to offer potatoes this week, but after all the rain we received over the weekend I decided to hold off for a week to let the soil dry out a bit. I dig all of our potatoes by hand, so trying to find them in a muddy swamp is reserved for the lower circles of Dante’s inferno. We’ll receive more carrots this week and hopefully I can find some spuds next week.
We have another crop of Sweet Onions this week. Sweet onions have a nice mild taste but do not keep as long as the yellow onions we’ll enjoy in the fall. Sweet onions will keep well for about a month and generally prefer to be kept in the fridge. These have grown very large this year, so if you can’t use them all in one meal you can save any leftovers in a plastic container and they’ll be fresh for a week or so.
Our Sweet Peppers are really a highlight of the garden right now, and the plants are really heavy with them. Most of the peppers we grow are Italian heirlooms that have an elongated tip, while we grow a few bell peppers as well (they can be used interchangeably). Peppers start out green and mature to red or orange, depending on the variety. A mature pepper has a thicker skin and sweeter flavor, but green peppers are just as useful in the kitchen.
Now that it’s time to start thinking about getting kids back to school, I know many of you will have schedule changes to add to your routine. If you would like to change delivery sites at any point this year, I’m happy to accommodate. Just e-mail me to let me know what works best and I’m happy to make changes. Otherwise, we’ll keep up with regular weekly delivery into mid-October. We’ll have some new crops and new flavors to enjoy even after the heat of the growing season begins to fade.
Expected next week: Potatoes, head lettuce, cucumbers, summer squash, sweet onion, sweet pepper, beans, tomatoes, garlic, ground cherries.
Fox & Fawn Farm 