Week 4

Hi Everyone,


Today was the kind of day that I would have stayed in the field 24 hours if the sun hadn't gone away....beautiful....and we have had some nice rain here at the farm the last few days. I had just started to water a few things and the rains came! As I may have mentioned before, we use row covers to cover up certain crops that are prone to be attacked and eaten up by bugs. The covers sit on metal hoops and then you hold the light weight fabric covers down by hoeing dirt on to their edges or places rocks or boards on the edges so they don't blow away, it's a definite time consuming hassle. In a "I wish that I had thought of this a long time ago" moment, or maybe even a complete DUH moment, I was reading about some new hoops that the row covers sit on in an online forum and the question came up as to how you hold the covers to the hoops and one guy said, "I just use clothes pins." Today I covered all the rows of beans and the covers look neater, tighter and it took half the time by fastening them to the hoops with clothespins!! I'm sure someone will come up with special "row cover fastener pins in natural vegetable colors" that will cost twice as much as just regular old clothes pins.

This week we have some broccoli and Napa cabbage, not enough for everyone, but a decent amount. So when you come make sure you ask for one or both if you would like them. We planted enough Napa cabbage for two weeks worth, but the sun and sudden hot weather scorched a few and honestly we have had such bad luck with spring broccoli in the past, this variety this year was simply a test to see how it would do. We think it survived the hot weather pretty well. I have found if I harvest it in the early morning and not in the hotter part of the day and immediately get it in the coldest area of the cooler it doesn't go wimpy. Some of the the broccoli last week I actually cut that afternoon when it was 96 degrees and it was a little limp on the plant. It seemed to taste pretty good unlike the extreme bitterness that seemed to plague other varieties when they ripened in the Maryland spring heat. The Fall broccoli, which are already tiny seedlings in the house, will be a bit more tasty.

New this week...Swiss Chard. Not to small, not to large, a nice green. We grow the rainbow chard so you may find stems of red, green orange or yellow. There are recipes on our web site and I believe some on the recipe newsletter.

The snow peas are getting larger, but still very tasty. I take the top and just pull the little side string off because that can be a little tough as they get larger.

We should have Blueberries next week!

We sold out of our first 100 chickens in a little over a week. There are new baby chicks in the back barn if the kids want to take a peek. They look just like peeps at this age.

This week in your crates:

Swiss Chard
Radishes
Salad Mix
Heads of Bibb Lettuce
Spring Onions
Baby Turnips
Snow Peas
Garlic Scapes
Broccoli (by request)
Napa cabbage (by request)

See you Wednesday.

Steve and Vicky