2009 Season, Week Ten

July 25, 2009

This week's harvest:

"Gold of Bacau" yellow beans
Cucumbers
Basil
Tomatoes
Onions
Garlic
Hot peppers
"Patty Pan" squash (medium shares)

This week's farm news:

Thanks so much to all of you that made the journey to the farm last Sunday for the potluck. It was a beautiful day but, surprisingly, almost too cool to go for a swim!

The weather as been fairly incredible for July -- unseasonably cool, rainy, & dark! The tomato crop would actually love more sunshine than they've been getting... They're dragging their feet because of this crazy July darkness!

This week we bought 50 12-week old pullets (immature laying hens) from some friends in the nearby "Plain" community. We hope to increase our egg supply for the fall. We have to slowly integrate the new birds into the old flock of hens as chickens can be nasty when it comes to establishing the "pecking order," so we've got them partitioned off in one of the portable coops so they all can get used to seeing each other but have limited physical access!

As you can see, we harvested lots of beans this week. We'll only have them for a few weeks in the summer but they last for months in the freezer. All you have to do is trim the ends & blanch them for 3 minutes, drain, cool, & then pack into freezer bags. Also, this week's recipe [for Dilly Beans] is an easy way to deal with lots of beans!

In the next few days, we'll be hosting 3 new garden volunteers. We're hoping to utilize all the extra helping hands to get lots of fall garden planting done next week.