2021 CSA Week 4 Newsletter

Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm!

CSA members.  We hope you are enjoying your Week 4 boxes.  Week 4 was not an egg week.  Week 5 is an egg week.  A huge "Thank you" to everyone who has returned boxes to us.

Ah yes, the weather.  Today brings clouds and cooler temperature.  I just checked radar and it looks as though we may remain dry this evening and night.  But, that has not been the case recently, when each day brought high temperatures and evening storms.  Other than Thursday, I cannot remember a day recently without the storms and rain.  On farm, we have been easily getting 0.5 to 2.0 inches of rain a day.  This much rain is almost as challenging as a drought on farm.  With these heavy rains, we are lucky that our fields drain fairly quickly.  However this much rain and days of high humidity means foliage stays wet and wet plants leads to disease problems.  Weeds also love the rain, so many of our fields are starting to look a bit like a jungle.  Time to get out the hoe and even the weed eater to tackle those pesky weeds.

 Our fields are filling up and believe it or not, soon we will be transitioning to planting late summer and fall crops.  Cucumber are setting fruit, so we should have cucumbers available in the next week or so.  Greens continue to be harvested and look really good thanks to the rain!  The Chard and Red Russian kale are both looking beautiful right now.  Red Russian is my favorite kale.  I think it less bitter and I am convinced the red hue is giving me some different, healthy, phyto-chemicals then green curly kale.  Try a massaged kale salad with this red kale for those hot days when cooking seems exhausting.  Our Romaine Lettuce continues to be harvested and we are waiting a new planting of leaf lettuce to size up soon.  A second planting of eggplant went in the ground today and our next planting of summer squash, cucumbers and lettuce has also been planted. 

The farm is still collecting pets.  The most recent is a chicken.  This chicken has decided she should live at the house, not in the coop with her 100 or so sisters.  Each night she makes her way to the porch.  We watch her walking down from the barn, through the yard, a bit before dusk.  She then walks along the railing, cooing and clucking, until she finds her spot to roost.  When chickens roost they tend to poop a lot, so now Farmer Don has to muck the porch!  A job he is not fond of.  We have tried several tactics to get her to go back home, to the coop, at night.  We have shooed her off the porch only to have her clucking and cooing her way back before we even get a chance to sit back down.  Farmer Don has carried her back to the coop and placed her in the far corner near the roost, but she was not deterred!  Nope, she followed he and Dilly all the back to the house and proceeded to once again find her roost on the porch railing.  She has been doing this long enough that Dilly now considers her a member of the house pets and rarely even gives her a second look.  We have to be a bit careful with the chickens and Dilly.  She is not as gentle as Rosie was with them.  Rose would herd the chickens away from the house and back towards the barn.  She sometimes would nip at them to move them along, but she never grabbed them with her mouth.  Dilly, on the other hand, does not have any herding instinct.  She would prefer to grab the chicken and proceed to carry it back to the barn.  Kind of comical to see Dilly, who as I have said before, is not that large, carrying a full grown chicken around.  And as you can imagine, Dilly is not as gentle with the chickens as we would like.  She usually initially grabs them by the neck and unfortunately the outcome is not always a positive one for the chicken.  Since our chickens are free range, Dilly has fairly constant access to them.  For that reason we have spent a good bit of time teaching her not to "carry" chickens and for the most she has learned.  Only occasionally do we now find her with a chicken in her mouth.

It seems our kitchen has been filled with leftovers recently.  We seem to only cook one or two dinners a week and eat the leftovers the rest of the time.  I think we need to learn to cook smaller quantities!  Farmer Don made a really good ratatouille which we had for three meals!  As a side dish to chicken the first meal and over pasta for the next two.  I also made use of beets to make one of my favorite, pickled beets and eggs.  My sister and I are already starting to plan for canning.  We are hoping to can peaches this year and of course tomatoes, tomato sauce and hopefully applesauce.  Last year we didn't get much canning done, as I was not feeling up to it.  This year we are determined to get some jars on the shelves!  Stay tuned for our canning adventures!

Let's see, I talked about the weather, the fields and harvest, the adventures of the farm and now the kitchen.  I am thinking it is time to wrap this newsletter up.  I am ashamed to say I started it over a week ago!!!  

So, as Farmer Don would say:  "be safe, be well and enjoy those veggies"

Until next week (hopefully)...