Carrots and Salad Greens

Thank you to our shareholders who have inquired about our lamb shares. If there are any more questions or curiosity, let us know soon as we have some interest from local shops and will offer whole/half shares publicly after we feel confident that our shareholders have had a fair opportunity to reserve this all-natural, precious, pasture-raised protein for themselves.

Cloudy skies and cold fronts have been friendly to our rows of summer greens and we’re happy to incorporate them into shares this week. Big colorful bunches of buttery, crunchy Swiss Chard and silky leaf lettuces will provide a base for salads this week, with head lettuces to follow into September.

You should expect the following items in this week’s share:

Red Onions

We have crisp, well-cured red onions going out to families this week. These are sure to last on the counter for quite a while.

Ripening Sweet Peppers

We’ll be handing out a variety of bell peppers and sweet frying peppers this week. The welcomed precipitation has made our rows of pepper plants heavy with fruit, both new and red ripe.

Specialty Peppers

These slow growing rows of hot and flavorful varieties have been resurrected from the summer drought. Whereas earlier in the season it was tricky to decide which to distribute because of slow fruiting, now we have options.

Delicious blistered and cheese-stuffed, heat-hinting Shishitos will be going out to home delivery shareholders this week as Sunday folks will likely receive banana peppers (there are plenty). Mild and hot jalapenos are accumulating exponentially on their bushes.

Cherry Tomatoes

They’re still flowering, fruiting, and ripening despite the weight of the lengthy vines really testing (and sometimes overwhelming) their trellises.

Tomatoes

These are super ripe and eager to be sliced and diced. Our heirlooms have a whole lot of meaty mass this season, so if you notice a spot, blemish, or imperfection, simply work around it. These aren’t conventional store-bought, greenhouse grown, hydroponic, aesthetically perfect yet under-developed tomatoes. These are wild field tomatoes and to work around a few faults is a small price to pay for the dense purple, pink, and red meat waiting just behind any of that discoloration. If a tomato is truly over-ripe or undoubtedly unattractive, we keep and glean it for our own sauce supply. If it surpasses the standards of human consumption (a high bar by our saucing standards), into the chicken paddock it goes to be squabbled-over. We’re likely to find its progeny volunteering amongst the pasture grasses next spring.

Swiss Chard

Rainbow Swiss Chard is getting its first cut this week. These rootless beet greens are an excellent shift away from typical lettuce-heavy salad mixes.

Carrots

In previous seasons, we’ve been anxious and impatient to pull carrots out of the ground. The lush foliage can allow a gardener to miscalculate their root development. The anticipation can lead to undisciplined, impulsive pulls that are not rarely anti-climactic. There’s all this build-up and excitement only to realized there’s a pencil-sized baby root in your grip. We’ve been guilty of these early harvests for years. Carrot beds were left to age a little longer this year as, with good conditions, they store well in the soil. We certainly grew bigger carrots. Rabbits cut into our yield a bit, nibbling at the tops but, as with our over-ripened tomatoes, we reserve these oddballs for our own supply to be saved with our storage potatoes for leg of lamb roasts in the fall and winter.

Leaf Lettuce

We’ll have a mix of leaf lettuces bagged up this week. It’s a mildy sweet mix of familiar gourmet lettuce varieties. These delicate greens and reds will compliment the more substantial, broad-leaved bunches of rainbow Swiss Chard.

Cilantro

We have a row of heritage Cilantro growing fast and we will start distributing this week to accompany your tomatoes and peppers. While it quickly regenerates, it’s unclear as to whether a critical mass will be available for both harvests this week but we’ll start by bunching some for our home delivery folks Wednesday.

Eggs

Half dozens for all families this week as production continues to fluctuate this summer. Thank you again for your patience.

Flowers

Despite being back to teaching full-time, Erin continues to arrange unique and creative bouquets for your dinner tables this week. We hope that they bring joy to your families as they do for ours.

Let us know how you’re preparing your food this week and thank you again for participating!

Erin & David