We got more rain this week, of course – last night we had almost an inch of precipitation – but some of it didn’t turn to water until it sat for while … hail bigger than quarters! It was incredibly loud, and tore up some leaves, but didn’t do too much damage, fortunately. You’ll probably find some bruised and holey leaves in your box from the barrage though.

Hmm earlier in the week, non-weather related things happened.

On Wednesday morning, we discovered several chicken eggs chewed open, and one of the three chicken youngsters that have been sleeping outdoors was missing. Investigation uncovered its lifeless, headless body. I set up a game cam on the spot to see if we could determine what the killer was – a raccoon, a mink, a fisher?

On Thursday morning, the video revealed … none of the above.

Well, this was a new problem. I set the live trap up with canned fish as bait, after locating a good tarp and carefully planning how I would proceed if the trap was successful … I really didn’t want to get sprayed.

On Friday morning I woke up to find the trap sprung … and a skunk inside. I carefully covered it with the tarp and loaded it into the trailer for relocation far from here.

But we didn’t get more than a couple of miles away before we had more company … a raven on the side of the road, looking dedraggled and apparently unable or unwilling to fly away. I talked to him a bit and once he trusted me, he came along for the ride too.

Then it was time to deal with Stinky again. If I was going to get sprayed by a skunk, I wanted to get it on video for everyone else’s amusement of course – so Otis ran the camera while I coaxed the skunk out of the cage …

Fortunately for me, my plan worked and the skunk simply ran away into the woods without a backwards glance.

inside Box 3

Prime time for Stir Fry.

• Snow Peas– snap peas flat siblings, always a crunchy hit in stir fry.
• Broccoli – it feels wonderful to have beautiful stalks to share after last year’s broccopocalypse. We hope you enjoy them too.
• Lettuce Mix – last of the lettuce until the fall salad crop!

• Bok Choy – a CSA sautee and stir fry staple!
• Cilantro – tacos and guacamole!
• Green Onions – we try to give these weekly because we use them tons and so should you.
• Microgreen Mix – Kale, broccoli, red cabbage, radish, amaranth, sunflower & pea shoots. Instantly elevate any dish!

Thanks to members Walter and Dante for helping harvest and deliver today’s CSA shares!!

We should really call this the Weekly Weather, because really that’s what it always seems to be about. We hunkered in our root cellar storm shelter on Wednesday, after a tornado warning went out for our hood. Nothing hit us, but it did some damage nearby.

When the threat passed, we emerged and found another beautiful rainbow – this one dividing the different colors of the evening sky.

Although the tornado and the subsequent thunderstorms, down bursts, and hail storms also missed us, the rains mostly didn’t. We are glad to have sandy soil this week, or we would be farming in a mud puddle – we’ve had more rain in June than we had all last year, and the field is an unfamiliar kind of squelchy.

We had our first uncomfortably hot day this week, too – and took a wallow down in the ice-cold spring-fed Wolf Creek to drop our core temps to comfortable levels. The mosquitoes were happy to meet us there, but it was worth it for the kind of deep cooling that lasts for hours.

The plants have loved this weather, and things in the field really seem happy.

Box 2 is Brought to You By the Letter S

Satisfying Stuff for Stir Fry, Salads, & Snacking:

• Strawberries – never sprayed, picked yesterday. We had to battle our boys and their buddies to get any of them for you all.

• Salad Mix (lettuces, arugula, tat soi) – chop it up, or enjoy the larger leaves intact.

• Sunflower Shoots – a green source of protein! Best raw.
• Sugar Snap Peas – The earlier of the twp varieties we planted this year.

• Salad Turnips – Mild and crunchy. Great in stir fry, but also delicious raw, snacked on whole or sliced into salads.

… also some things starting with other letters, for balance:

• Green Onions
• Garlic Scapes – chop em up and use just like garlic
• Oregano – can be dried or used fresh.

We’re off to an awesome start … hope you have a beautiful week.

Here. We. Go.

OK. So. By the time you read this, you guys will probably already have your hands on the box of stuff that we brought into the world for you. But at the moment, I’m in the van with the family – the boys, the boss, the Widget, on our way into the Cities to deliver them.

The season has started out well. After three years of drought, lasting right up through this barren winter, somebody turned the sky water back on. It started raining in April. I wasn’t relaxing – last April was raining too – right up until we needed it; the drought set the day after we planted hundreds of little trees, and then deepened as we started planting our crops. By summertime, even the quackgrass was brown and crispy beneath our feet. The drought sunk into my brain. We adapted.

So this year, I’ve been continually surprised when the rain falls, again, and again, in non -trivial amounts, The mosquitos rejoiced. The dragonflies returned. The woods filled in in a thousand shades of crayola green, and we awakened the idle lawnmowers with wrenches and starting fluid and swear words.

So I dare believe it and even say it aloud: it rains here now. Our daily irrigatory rituals are now limited to the insides of the greenhouses. We have learned to find other things to do with all the available time.

As a result. the field looks pretty darn spiffy: neat and mulched and not like a bowl of dust at all. Sure, the voles and the cut worms are omnipresent, reveling in their robust populations coming out of the balmy winter – but the rain’s positive powers are far mightier.

Oh, and the deer. Last year they were desperate to get inside to sup upon the crops, which were among the only plants in town that had been receiving the nourishment of water. This year, not one has come in.

Of course, we are not lulled into complacency. The deer will return, sooner and later and in between,. But Kristin got a grant, and we got paid to build a great defensive wall. Well, a fence, but a mighty fence, eight feet tall and built to keep out any critter larger than 2″ in diameter.. (So also great for preventing the roving chicken squad from tempting death by angering the farmer).

It’s a game changer. Or a Level-Up, as the grant was entitled. I’ll get better sleep, not responding to the endless motion sensor alarms, and the plants should fare much better, not being devoured regularly by the voracious beasts.

Here’s some of what we’ve thus been able to put into your box this week:

Week One – Inside the Box

Sorry, I didn’t get pictures this week of this stuff …

• Salad Mix (lettuces, arugula, pea shoots, tat soi)
• Green Onions – the tops and the bottoms are all delicious. The bulb is more pungent, the greens, more mild.
• Green Garlic – these too – but the tops are more fibrous, so you’ll want to chop em up, similar to celery.
• Radishes – It was a tough year for radishes – the cut worms had a stronghold in their row it seems. Another one with edible greens – great for pesto, or chopped roughly and sauteed with garlic and salt and lemon juice, perhaps. The radishes are awesome straight and raw but perhaps even moreso when fried or roasted.
• Pea Shoots – Top your stir fry, sandwich, or whatever.
• Mountain Mint -Tastes like peppermint, kinda. We’ve found it delicious in tea. I hear it makes nice mojitos too.
• A Canned Good – probably grape jelly made from the infamous Neighbor Marcia’s vineyard, but maybe something else as demanded by your dharma.

That’s all for now. Hope you enjoy!

I spent the drive to The Cities trawling through our Year One CSA Newsletters on Facebook, posted a full decade ago. Memory Lane was quite a trip. The decade that has passed since then has somehow gone by as quickly as this whole season has. We’ve had seemingly infinite experiences in that time, which somehow elapsed in almost no time at all. Ten years ago, we didn’t have irrigation, greenhouses, indoor cooking, or gray hair. But Deb and Jim were steadfastly there helping through the harvests and the celebrations and the growing pains, and Widget ran by our side. A lifetime ago and just around the corner.

It was beautiful. I love having all these weekly missives to look back on – love letters from the foundational past, reminding us what it was, who we were, what we were, how and why we did,

After ten years, we have learned a bit. We’ve learned not to panic over every inevitable, unavoidable, unpredictable setback – learned that we had been wiser than we’d known back when we named our farm after the importance of finding peace and finding flow with our limited abilities to control, to even predict.

This was the worst year of drought we have ever faced on the farm. There was so little rain, so much heat, and wildfire smoke that made us sick. The spring crops fighting to emerge were set upon bu hordes of ravenous critters what found little to forage from the unirrigated woods around us. It seemed bleak at times, but we did what the years have taught us to do, and focused on all that survived and even thrived in spite of it all, and by the end of the season we were laughingly cursing our abundance problems, and this week it even finally really rained.

This year, some crops did poorly. Others flourished. We ourselves struggled here, and blossomed there, and overall were quite glad for the experience.

All year you have been making meals with what we have lived to grow on this Little Farm on the Barrens – the bounty that we wrested from the drought, the sand, the heat and the critters and the vagaries of weather and fickle fate.

In a very real way you’ve made this life we’ve lived possible, and for that, gratitude comes easy. The rewards of living close to the ground have been amplified and clarified as The Boys have begun to grow into their selves, profoundly shaped by the Farm and its rhythms.

Today I am a little bit sad, because the weekly CSA harvest cycles ends for another year, and although it will be less work, less hustle and strain, I will miss it; I like the weekly cadence of the harvest season, and I love to see the sprawling labyrinth of labor and love neatly condensed into colorful cardboard cornucopias …

Thanks y’all, It’s been a lovely year.

Inside Box 17

• Tomatoes – we really tried to fill the available space in your boxes with ripe, varied, perfect tomatoes. Note that one variety that’s really hitting this week is pink, not red, when ripe – if you wait for them to turn crimson you’ll be sad. Most of the tomatoes are ready to eat now but should also keep fine on the counter for several days. If you have too many, freeze them!
• Potatoes – POTATO LEEK SOUP!
• Leeks – did I mention POTATO LEEK SOUP?

• Brussels Sprouts and Greens (unless you’re Bree who hates them)– this is the part where you know your farm is organic … cabbage looper moths/caterpillars also love hot dry summers. We fought hard to get these tattered li’l guys to you – the holes are their badge of no pesticides and survival against the odds. The greens are the tender tops of the plants – if you roast the sprouts, toss these in too (after a bit, because they’ll cook faster), or use elsewhere like tender kale or collards.
• Carrots – the carrots in the box come in different colors, but beware – none of the are white. Those white things are:
• Daikon Radishes the not-carrots in the carrot bag

• Sweet, Sweet Peppers
• Sage – there are few scents so autumnal. You very well might use it with those potatoes and leeks
• Winter Squash (A tetsukabuto plus either a delicata or a Jester Acrorn Squash) – Eat the little one first, but put the larger green one (the tetsukabuto) aside in a cool park place for a few weeks, or more – the starches slowly convert to sugars making it much tastier, later.

The farm party is coming – on the 8th. If you;’re reading this, I reckon you’re invited and we would love to see you there. It won’t be hot with wasps and lady beetles everywhere, and it won’t be cold and snowy.

We’ll have a bonfire, and some good tunes and good pizza. You can chat with other good humans and with us and with our Boys, and see the field and the greenhouses and the woods and the array of shacks and shanties that we call Home.

We’ve made it around the sun again; let’s celebrate the cycle together.

I almost literally cannot believe that next week is the final week of the CSA season. I mean yeah – 17 weeks is one shorter than we used to do, but it’s not just that – one more week would barely blunt my surprise. It still feels like summer. It still feels early. I’m not ready – for the transition toward winter, for our snowbird flight, for wood stove and wood piles, snow load supports and snow blowers. We haven’t even gathered leaves yet … I guess I’m getting ahead of myself. Phew.

But yeah, Nature is really driving home the transition feels lately – the fall colors are intensely peaking (sorry we suck at taking pictures this year), and over this weekend we had a long, slow soaking – four inches worth of rain., That’s more than we had in all of July, or June & August combined. Better late than never for sure; it un-cemented the carrots and potatoes, gave soothe and succor to our elderly and baby trees – and the salad bed row found it really peaceful and safe, as you can taste.

Tomatoes by the dozens were dissected, boiled, smashed, flavored, boiled more, and sealed into airtight glass containers in a pressurized, repressed metal shell.

We just got to our destination and I gotta go and Dad.

We hope you enjoy the food: it was a beautiful week growing alongside it.

hdhdhdh

Inside Box 16

There are no cherry tomatoes in the box.

• Wasabina Mustard Greens – if you want to eat these raw, toss with a vinegarette for improved texture. Otherwise, sautee with some onion, garlic, maybe some ginger. They’ve got zip – note thje Wasabi in the name!
• Onions
• Butternut Squash
• Potato Medley -great for roasting!
• Fennel – would go great sauteed with the peppers, perhaps served with sausage – or, you can just eat it raw!
• Ground Cherries
• Salad Mix – I think this is one of the most mild and tender salad mixes we’ve managed to get out of our field! Not an easy accomplishment in this soil and climate, I’m proud of the little things.

• Tomatoes – Amazing to have such pristine abudnance this late into the season.
• Sweet Red Peppers – another silver lining of the drought. Wow.
• Broccoli Microgreens