Cherry tomatoes!
A young garden spider helping to keep our tomatoes safe from unwanted bugs.
All the garlic is up and in the loft of the barn. It seems like a good crop. It will spend a few weeks drying out and curing and then find its way into your boxes for week 11.
Japonese beetles have been working hard at eating the leaves of my Hazelnut trees. It looks like there will be a good crop this year (of hazelnuts , that is)! We had a group of women out here on Monday and had they go after the beetles. They filled up 6 or 8 quart jars FULL of those nasty beasts. What a sight! Sometimes picking pests by hand is the only and best way of reducing their numbers. We do the same thing for the Colorado Potato Beetle (not a big problem) and for Harlequin bugs (a real pest). We rely on many of our biological friends to help maintain a somewhat balanced ecosystem out there in the fields. Of course, it is hardly natural to grow vegetables with lots of individual plants of one variety all in a row, so the system is inherently not balanced. But we do what we can. We plant beds of flowers between many of the vegetable beds and try to not to plant the same family of plant in the same area two years in a row. There are many, many beneficial insects out there that help us keep pest insect populations down. Lady-bird beetles & their larvae are voracious eaters of aphids. Many species of wasps prey on caterpillars. There are probably hundreds of varieties of spiders eating all sorts of pests. There are Blue Birds and Swallows that eat day flying moths & butterflies, as well as grasshoppers. One of my personal favorites is the Garden Spider. They start out each year as tiny little white spiders in the greenhouses. As the weeks progress they get bigger and bigger, sometimes making the harvest of tomatoes somewhat frightening. By the end of September they start to lay egg sacks and the females are 4-5” in diameter, just beautiful.
We’re going to send out a separate email with Evite for the farm party. Please let us know is you will be able to attend. There will be good food, farm tours, drinks of all kinds, swimming in the pond (if you’d like), and some good conversation. We hope you all will be able to come out and see where your food is grown.
The Farm Party is scheduled for JULY 12th! Mark your calendars and we hope that many of you will be able to attend. It’s a potluck get together and a chance to see where all these vegetables are coming from!
******Worker members, we are ready to put you to work! Please take a moment to look at your calendars to see when you might be able to fulfill your work commitment.******
The boxes we use for the CSA shares are waxed and are not recyclable, but we do reuse them. So PLEASE remember to BRING THEM BACK next week.
Ideas for Cooking
Knives – Proper knives make slicing and chopping easy. Bad ones are a real struggle.
First, keep them sharp. Like cutting a piece of paper you’re holding up sharp. More accidents happen with dull knives than with sharp ones. Pay attention, and you won’t have to go to Urgent Care.
Learn knife skills. It’s easy. There are lessons on U-Tube.
Teach your children how to use knives.
Have good knives. One’s that will hold an edge. I like German knives myself. They are pricy, but a once in a lifetime buy. Victorinox makes great knives at low prices. Their chef’s knife runs about $40, compared to in the hundred plus range for German ones.
Be safe.This Week’s Recipes