It didn’t rain, and continued to not do so, until suddenly it did. It was very exciting, I must admit, watching the radar and rooting for rain … and then winning! One and a third inch, almost doubling our July total.

Before the rain crashed the drought though, we finally ran the field irrigation for the first time this year. And so of course we also had our annual well-trouble-anxiety. Pretty sure the problem isn’t urgent and can be fixed without much ado or adollars, In the meantime, it works fine for our purposes.

We had a waspy week. Kristin got stung a couple of times inside the little greenhouse, where she must water the microgreen trays and where they build nests and are generally peaceful until some angry defensive phase of their nest building kicks them into asshole little monster modes. So then I went to knock down their nests, and stumbled backwards in my non-OSHA-approved flipflops as I retreated from the ensuing buzzswarm and thusly deeply sliced into my big toe with a switchblade of a hose clamp. And then yesterday Otis, doing Otis things back behind the outhouse somehow drew the pointy ire of a solitary wasp that nailed his hand, causing it to swell up exactly like the hand of a hammer-smashed cartoon hand.

Living with nature is like that sometimes. We’ll take it.

Before the rain the weather was ridiculously beautiful, and after the rain it’s been pretty much more of the same except hotter. It’s not bad. Like winter, you adapt habits and coping mechanisms to suit the changes. It’s pleasant not paying an air conditioning electric bill.

Otis has been working on Scooby Doo style traps in his quest to capture and hold the free-ranging chicks. Jasper stayed busy doing Jasper things.

inside the box

• a Red Cabbage – Have you tried snacking on cabbage leaves with peanut butter? It’s a thing and it turns out it’s quite tasty. We were skeptical too, but they were right … “you’ve eaten peanut butter on celery, right?” But Grandma Deb makes a delicious recipe = a cabbage slaw with raisins and pecans.
• Beans Beans Beans – Dragon Tongue, Purple, Yellow, Green
• Radish Micro Greens – popular at the farmer’s market due to their transformative potential. They make good stuff better.
• Cherry Tomatoes – these have been taking their time.
• Tomato Tomatoes
• Zucchini – I bet you’re familiar, and hope you’re a fan.
• Onions:

• Broccoli Side Shoots – choice edible flower buds
• Basil (Lettuce Leaf” variety) – That salad thing with tomatoes and basil and maybe mozaerella cheese? Pesto. BLT lettuce substitute? Or, do like most folks do and wear it in a fabric bag around your neck or waist.
• Dill – Time to make fridge pickles? Or …. just sell or gift it to the pickle hungry ghosts that haunt your local Marketplace and Buy Nothing pages, or make an offering to the compost gods.
• Cucumbers (pickling & slicers) – crunchy hydration snack packs

Life’s events seemed to accelerate a bit this week, with more things happening more quickly … but gradually, and after giving us time to build up our stride and keep pace without losing our breaths. The garden is hitting its stride, too, with the first of summer’s bounty coming into ripeness.

The walking spaces between the rows have narrowed in the field and in the greenhouse; where it once seemed like vast open spaces where the only concern was accidentally stepping upon a tiny seedling, we now have to turn sideways and do the midwestern “ope!” as we pass through the sprawling leaves and vines, lest we anger one of these feisty beasts and get consumed ala Little Shop of Horrors.

What else … there was a bear at the bird feeders that required swearing at, a chilly morning that demanded blankets, a hen who decided that 3 chicks were not enough so she hatched out 12 more (we had been wondering why she kicked out her babies so quickly!). The hens in general are taking advantage of the lush undergrowth and hiding eggs everywhere, making every day an easter hunt. We could keep them penned up, sort of, but we so enjoy having the goons running around everywhere.

We almost finished the deer fence this week, and have been pleasantly surprised by the difference it makes in how the field feels to be in. I’d feared that it would look like a dog kennel, or feel constraining, but it’s actually … quite nice. Somehow it makes the same patch of rows feel so neatly contained – defined in a way that strengthens and concentrates it.

The rain held off for the most part, missing us on both sides other than a few mists.

Inside Box 7

Zero Peas – none! It’s over!

Red New Potatoes – tender skins

Tomatoes & Cherry Tomatoes – SO IT BEGINS. Kristin avoided the early season blossom end rot by feeding them calcium this year, and they look just lovely. I hope you like tomatoes, because here they come, it seems … just a handful today though.

Cucumbers (slicers and picklers)

Zucchini & Summer Squash – is it just me or are they extra pretty this year? I think they might be in a row with some richer soil perhaps.

Bean Medley (Green, Dragon Tongue, Purple, & Yellow)

Sunflower Shoots – want some ideas? I found this recipe page for you.

Curly Blue Kale

Cauliflower or Broccoli – we’ve never had such a successful cauliflower early season! Thanks, spring rains!

The first fall season transplants went out into the field this week. With rabbits galore and entitled chickens, the farmer cannot relax with such fragile babies under threat of predation. A motion sensor wirelessly sounding an obnoxiously strident doorbell makes for a watchful eye and sounder sleep.

Which is to say, we’re into the heart of summertime now.

And as such we had a few days of a heat wave, with a smattering of rain as the laden, bountiful rain clouds this skated just past us. Fortunately we had a pretty decent soil moisture going in, and so we still hadn’t run the irrigation until we watered the new transplants in.

One hot day we got a huge chunk of the new deer fence built, with a crew of the Grandparents, Marty, and WWOOFers Taylor ‘n Chloe, covering the Southwestern corner where the soybean scarfing deer had been hopping in.

Next up: the northwestern front, oft-invaded by the freerangers and the wild wabbits.

Today I saw the very first ripening tomatoes …  

inside Box 6

Today we had help from Amy, Marcia. & Marty with the veggies, while Grandpa Jim did mechanical repairs and Grandma Deb wrangled kids and prepared lunch for us all! Many hands make light work, many friends make light hearts. Also, many dead bugs; we did some potato beetle slaying when we finished the harvest pretty quickly!

 

• Peas – another pound of the champion crop of 2024! It’s finally flopping over under it’s own weight, and the heat wave this week put a hurting on the plants as well. Tired of the usual? Search out a new recipe, give them to your friends and neighbors, or preserve them for later enjoyment via blanching & freezing.
• Cucumbers (slicers & picklers)
• Zucchini & Summer Squash
• Bean Medley (green, yellow, & dragon tongue)
• Green Cabbage – refer to recipe idea links from last week, or maybe roast in slabs. Pairs great with bacon, sausage, or parmesean cheese. Make kraut. It’ll last for a good long while in your fridge if you don’t want it right away, too.
• Broccoli Side Shoots or Cauliflower – one or the other!
• Blueberries – our friends & former long time CSA members at The Munch Bunch are out of town all season this year, but there was a silver lining – they are not home to enjoy and use their abundant blueberry crop! Kristin and our friend Amy went over yesterday and harvested bucketloads for y’all.
• Arugula Microgreens

It rained a few times, and I did some math to quantify how unusual this summer has felt after the three year droughtstravaganza. This May & June we had seven and a half times more rain than the same months last year ~ 13″ vs 1.75″!

I still find it hard to believe it will continue though – every time a raincloud just misses us, I think “oh here we go again,” and expect that they will ALL be missing us as they did for years. I think I have some kind of PTSD from the climate abuse …. but hope springs eternal and perhaps I can learn to accept love and rainfall once again.

TBD.

This week was busy but not hectic.

We welcomed two new WWOOFers – sisters Taylor and Chloe, who took two week vacations from their jobs in Illinois to come experience the Farm. Mowed down a bunch of old crops and weeds for new plantings.

Started seeds. Repaired the leaky hose manifold to the Little Greenhouse, sought and destroyed the bandits that dug up all the cucumber seedlings in that same greenhouse, heard a fox hunting our rabbits in the night, weeded the whole carrot patch (only took an hour thanks to a new and effective pre-carrot weed control regimen and/or luck), got bitten by a squirrel that is more wild than friend, got chased by deer flies when we went to the creek, and saw the first deer prints in our field, clues in the Scooby Doo Mystery of the Missing Edamame.

In related news, we will be restarting Operation Giant Deer Fence on Thursday. Motivation thanks also to the relentless interest of the chickens.

Inside Box 5

Peas!!!! (sugar & snow) The amazing abundance of peas continues, as the plants tower above the highest trellis string we provide them, tottering but never falling over and folding under their delicious burdens. Enjoy your share!

We’ve been slicing the flat podded snow peas thin and having them with Asian themed noodle bowls and in creamy pasta dishes …

Onions

The last of our early onion planting

Zucchini 

The incredibly versatile vegetable! –

Zucchini with Sage recipe

Golden Zucchini & Crisp Sage recipe

Cucumbers

Some “slicing” cucumbers and some “pickling”. Both are good for fresheating, but only the smaller pickling ones are recommended for pickling. If you want to pickle cucumbers in quantity… let us know.

Cabbage 

Good for making coleslaw or sautéing:

Creamy Coleslaw

Vinegr Coleslaw

Cabbage & Sage Pasta

Sage

I like them battered, or maybe you could have them crispy fried this way

This brown butter sage sauce also sounds good.

Radish micro greens 

“Zippy!”

It rained some more. It’s hard to keep up with mowing because it never really seems to dry out in the deep grass and weeds. Sandy soil like ours can be a challenge in many situations, but it’s a blessing when it;s wet like this – we aren’t working in mud puddles, and our plants aren’t literally drowning with rotting roots, as many of our fellow farmers face with their richer clay soils.

This week we attacked the growing menaces of weeds and potato beetles. We tried to get fancy and use a 18v battery vacuum on the potatoes beetles, but it wasn’t really any faster or easier than old fashioned hand picking, so we returned to the tried and true, the bug guts goo.

The weeds are a little different this year – in the areas where we didn’t till (most of the field) it’s dominated by Mare’s Tail, which is kind of nice. They are weakly-rooted and easy to pull. Anyplace where we tilled is the usual lamb’s quarter and quackgrass dynamic duo.

We fed the fruiting tomato plants some calcium to ward off blossom end rot, and built the pole beans a trellis to maintain their upright stature.

It was a good week, with no disasters or stress to report. Hope your week was similar.

inside box 4

• Zucchini – so it begins. The zucchini plants are off to a slow start this year it seems, due to the cool and rainy weather … but started they have. Here’s some of the tender first wave. Great as part of a veggie sautee.
• Salad Turnips
• Mint (peppermint and/or spearmint) – mojitos or teas, or just tuck some inside a facemask and walk around huffing it for joy
• Broccoli – these have quite enjoyed this cool season.
• Snap Peas – oh my so have these. We haven’t seen pea plants this tall and productive in many years here.
• Snow Peas – if you’re overwhelmed with peas at the moment, these might be good ones to blanch and freeze for later.
• Kale – the hail put a lot of holes in our kale leaves, but the plants aren’t perturbed. We picked the pretty ones for y’all.
• Green Onions
• Broccoli Microgreens – Not all heroes wear capes; widely considered a Superfood thanks to their nutrient profile and sulforaphane content.