Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm. Welcome to Week 1.5 of our 2022 CSA. Happy Father's Day!
Week 1 CSA boxes have been delivered and ordering for Week 2 is underway. Hopefully everyone is enjoying their boxes. Week 2 is not an egg week.
CSA members please remember to treat our share boxes gently and either leave them at or return them to our CSA drop sites. We do reuse these boxes and this year they have not only double in price, but they are in short supply nationally. We are looking into alternate boxes for delivery. The wax coated boxes are certainly not ideal, but they do keep our produce fresher and they fold flat for easy storage at our delivery sites. We also reuse clean egg cartons and paper pint and quart "berry" boxes.
Can you believe the wind and cool temperatures today? Actually feels like fall out there. I am sitting now typing with my sweatshirt on and my winter slippers! Looks like the weather is to warm up towards the end of the week. Strange we spend all winter craving the warmth of summer and all summer craving the coolness of winter! But, right now the farm could use some warm temperatures to push along our summer crops. Peppers and tomatoes don't like these cold temperatures! Peppers will even drop their flowers if the temperature remains in the 50's for too long. Once the flower has dropped from the plant it, the flower, cannot mature into a fruit, or pepper in this case. Plants will make more flowers and hence more peppers, but as farmers those dropped early blossoms can mean an entire picking of peppers lost.
With that being said, our fields are actually looking pretty good. Farmer Don is pushing this week to get as much planted as he can. And our greens love this cooler weather. He was looking at the spinach bed last night and decided what he wanted to plant there next when he realized the spinach he harvest for week 1 is trying to grow back. He will give it another week and see how it does. Usually in heat spinach immediately "goes to seed", meaning it diverts all its energy into making seeds and shoots up a large inedible flower stalk. It is all up to the spinach at this point! We will be holding off a little bit on planting our entire crop of cabbage. This means Farmer Don has assigned me the task of "potting on" the cabbage transplants. Potting on means removing the small cabbage plants from their flats and repotting them into bigger pots. The goal is to keep the plant from out growing its space and gives the plant another boost of nutrients from our potting mix.
Friday kind of sums up how my week went. Friday morning I woke up and got going on laundry. The sky was beautiful blue and there appeared to be a slight breeze. Perfect! for getting some wash out on the line. I proceeded to strip the bed, complete with the winter comforter, and collect dirty clothes from their various laundry piles and lugged an overflowing basket of laundry to the washer. Stuffed the washer full and noticed the water level was on small. Small! That wasn't going to work, reaching for the knob it wouldn't turn. It seemed stuck and stuck good. I even tried using the pliers thinking maybe I needed better leverage. Nope, not budging. In the meantime, I shut the water off, but most everything had gotten wet. So, I pulled out wet laundry and gracefully, well many not gracefully, threw it on the floor and reloaded the washer with what I hoped was a small load. First load done and second one loaded and I carried the first out to hang on the line. Got about half hung up and I noticed the wind was a bit more than a breeze. At which point, I was close to throwing my hands up in defeat, but instead I pulled most of the load off the line and threw them in the dryer. My clothes line is a bit temper mental and tends to blow down with wind, especially when drying something as billowy as sheets. On a positive note, I did get my laundry done, one small load at a time and I was able to avoid picking clothes up off the ground and having to have Farmer Don get the ladder out to re-hang the clothesline.
So, it is strawberry season! I have already eaten enough to make myself feel sick. But, I just can never get enough when they are ripe and local. We purchase them from a neighboring farm and I generally freeze quite a few quarts. I also need to get busy drying herbs. Often drying herbs takes a back seat to other kitchen tasks and before I know it the season is over and I am left with no stored herbs. So, let's say in our kitchen we are already busy with canning and freezing for the season. We are also busy enjoying all the fresh veggies starting to be harvested! I find myself really craving those first greens of the season. Tomorrow night Farmer Don and I will sit down and go over meals for next week and I am thinking of adding a massaged kale salad to one of our meals.
Speaking of Farmer Don and supper. He just walked in the back door to tell me he is going back up into the field to try and row cover what he just planted. Then he has to give Dilly a bath, since she found something dead to roll in and then he will be in for supper. Good thing leftovers are on the menu tonight and they can simply be turned down.
Alright, I know, this newsletter is pushing the limit. So, I will end here with my usual HUGE thank you for all of your support.
