Farm News- June 30, 2011

Circle Brook Farm
Circle Brook Farm

Hello Dear Friends,

Welcome to another addition of the farm update. First the obligatory weather report: It was another wet week with 3” of rain, most of which fell in a 2 hour period on Thursday, causing considerable flooding. We once again count ourselves lucky as parts only 5 miles from the farm experienced hail and damaging winds which we were spared. I have been trying to get the pumpkins and winter squash planted, as it’s getting late. The beds were all prepared and ready to go on Wednesday and I was about to begin seeding when our delivery truck had a front tire blow out on Rt. 80. I had to leave the farm to deal with the crisis and get the deliveries made and the following day the rains came and made the fields too wet to plant. The ground has dried out sufficiently now, but the beds will all have to be tilled again before seeding. The week ahead looks good, relatively dry with only a few isolated storms in the forecast, so hopefully I can get caught up on my planting.

It seems like everything on the farm is in flower at the moment. From arugula and tatsoi (things we don’t want to flower) through tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. For the former this means the harvest is over, for the latter it means we will have fruits to harvest in 3-4 weeks. We have been cutting loads of lettuces and escarole to keep ahead of their tendency to bolt and become bitter. Much of the potato field is in flower, too, a beautiful sight. Once the plants finish with their feeble attempts to reproduce by seed they can get down to the business of producing a much more dependable means of reproduction- the tuber.

This week’s share will be rather similar to last. I like to keep things changing and varied, but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way and we have to ship what we have in abundance and that which may not hold quality for another week. We have lots of the white salad turnips and in another week they will become large and stronger flavored. We still have loads of endive and escarole which has to be cut and the cooler is jammed full of crates of lettuce. The spinach is almost gone and the only mustard green left is broccoli raab. We will offer these as a choice with Swiss chard and kale (a 4 way choice that site coordinators hate; sorry!). Broccoli and sugar snap peas are maturing in abundance now, so if you haven’t received these previously you can expect them this week. Summer squash is beginning to come in, so you may see a couple in your share, but no promises.

The share for this week will be:
2 lettuces, a red romaine and a leaf lettuce, choice of escarole or endive (frissee), salad turnips, scallions, peas, broccoli or kohlrabi, choice of spinach, chard, broccoli raab, or kale, Bok Choy and choice of an herb.

Enjoy!
Farmer John

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