Week 18-Volunteer Uprising

Hi Everyone,

Boy do these weeks fly by or what! Tina, who volunteers on the farm a couple of days a week, was very concerned when she saw me tossing unusable produce into a pile into the mowed area between our various fields. I asked her what was up and she said that she didn't like seeing things wasted. I made it clear to her that absolutely nothing is wasted on the farm. If we can't eat it or you guys can't eat it...it goes to one of two places, to the chickens or to the compost pile. It's amazing the difference in the amount of chicken feed we go through when the chickens are getting a lot of the "seconds". Apparently I got to serious for a moment because the next thing I knew I was hit in the head with a half rotten tomato. I felt THAT was very wasteful.

Speaking of chickens, a fox has made off with a number of the flock and our production numbers are down a bit. I am frantically looking for about 50 pullets to add to the flock. What is a pullet you ask? Now the educational part of the program....a pullet is a hen around 18 weeks old that is or just about to, start laying. Once a hen starts laying it also takes her about a month to get the eggs up to size. Her first eggs are quite small and slowly build to the size they will be.

In your crates this week you will find a bag of turnip greens. We think they taste pretty good. They have a little bite to them and may be nice to mix in to salads and of course you can cook them the old southern style with a piece of ham or ham hock and onion, sugar, and crushed red pepper. For measuring purposes, you have a pound of them. If you get a green gourd like thing, that is a buttercup winter squash, to be cooked like all other winter squashes. Also, we're throwing in a sizeable zucchini. Many people that have stopped by the farm have taken them to grate and freeze for winter zucchini bread. That's my story and I'm stickin to it.

Be aware that within the next couple of weeks we will be getting back into salad greens, radishes, carrots, and eventually cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, kale, etc. We sampled some arugula today, no bug holes, tender and spicy!

Week 18

Tomatoes
Buttercup and or acorn squash
Summer squash
Garlic
Basil
Beans
Turnip greens

Have a nice weekend and week!

Vicky and Steve