Moving on...

It's been awhile! I meant to update this blog months ago.

I've moved my posts over to www.jesslynlittlepage.com and combined them with posts about all aspects of my blissful life. Check it out!

More squash and greens

The strawberry planting workshop was a success! We had so much fun. It was the first time that Guy or I had the chance to work with real farm equipment (i.e. tractors and attachments). We are used to doing all the work by hand. I can hardly wait to taste these delicious strawberries next Spring. Yum!

Here's our share for this week:

From the top left, anticlockwise: Green tomatoes, delicata squash, jalapenos (these were freebies from Farmer Jones at the market; thanks!), radishes with greens, turnip greens, daikon radishes, some kind of winter squash/pumpkin, and spicy greens mix (chard, arugula, and mustard greens).

Here's last week's haul:

From A Guy, a Girl, and a Dinner Plate

We got more spicy greens (lamb's quarter, mustard greens, and arugula).

From A Guy, a Girl, and a Dinner Plate

More delicata squash, two crookneck squash, a bunch of radishes with greens, and a late honeydew melon! That melon was the best honeydew I'd ever had. It was so ripe it could only be described as luscious.

From A Guy, a Girl, and a Dinner Plate

Turnip greens.

From A Guy, a Girl, and a Dinner Plate

A few garlic greens (I want more!), two zucchinis, a cucuzza, and a Japanese (SuYo Long) cucumber. Those cucumbers are just asking to be pickled. Too bad we only get one little guy every now and then.

Funny story about the squash blossom: we were given it as a special treat by our lovely Farmer Marie with instructions to stuff it with our homemade cheese, fry it, and post pictures. But when we went to stuff it, we found out a little caterpillar was already making it his dinner! He had destroyed the whole inner flower and it was inedible (for us, that is). Maybe next time...

More shares!

The garden is in full swing now and our shares are pouring in.

The last two weeks we have gotten more squash, spicy greens, and turnip greens.

At market this weekend, we also bought jalapeno relish, green tomatoes, and a sweet potato from one of the other vendors, Farmer Jones. This was the first time they sold produce at the market and I really hope they come back next time.

Tomorrow morning we have a strawberry planting workshop out at the farm. Guy and I are really excited about that. As CSA members we get to participate for free!

Summer make-up shares

Well, folks, after a long, dry, hot summer with very meager shares, the CSA is finally producing again.

Normally this is a little break period where the garden is ramping up for the coming fall harvest and Farmer Marie sells the small amount of available produce to supplement the farm's income. But this year she's giving that produce to those of us who stuck with the CSA through the tough summer months. I think half of the shares ended up leaving.

It was very interesting for us to see first hand the hardships that farms deal with. It certainly made me appreciate my vegetables and my farmer more.

Last week we received 3 lbs of summer squash, plus purslane and summer spinach. This week it's: 3 lbs of summer squash (a tiny cucuzza, some patty pan, a crookneck, and two varieties of zucchini), 3.5 oz of purslane, 3.5 oz of summer spinach, and 10 oz of spicy green salad mix (arugula, baby mizuna, and baby mustard greens).

Perhaps you're not familiar with purslane or summer spinach (both pictured here); I wasn't until this summer. Purslane is delicious raw or cooked (lightly steaming brings out the tartness).

The mysterious "summer spinach" may be malobar spinach but I'm not really sure. It doesn't look like any pictures I've found, but, whatever it is, it's delicious, especially raw.

100+ degrees...

For more than two weeks we have had 100+ temps and it's killing the garden. We've been working but there hasn't been any food.

But the squash and melons are looking good and we are hoping for a bountiful harvest in early September.

Stay tuned...

CSA haul #20

Oh my! We finally got the carrots out of the ground and our share alone had 121 carrots! I see carrot soup, lots of juices, and salad on our plate in the near future. Plus, the first batches of tomatoes are starting to come. We will soon be overrun with tomatoes, a problem I would love to have.

Our share this week:

3 colors of carrots, 11 tomatoes (3 are huge!), and lamb's quarter.

Today on the farm, I helped some other work share members pull up all these carrots. Over 100 pounds! It was a lot more work than I thought pulling carrots would be. In the cartoons, it looks so easy.

Guy spent the whole time cutting down lamb's quarter and getting it prepped for the shares. Also a big job and he didn't have any help!

Plus, we got a little special addition to our share.

Farmer Marie knows we love to make raw sauerkraut and she had a whole row of cabbages that weren't really suitable for putting in the shares.

Basically we got the last ditch effort that these cabbages could make after they'd been harvested earlier. She was going to compost them but thought of us first.

Guy has started them fermenting, so we'll see in a week or two if they are suitable for kraut.

Next week, my mom will be visiting from Missouri and she's going to join us out on the farm! Fun, fun!

CSA haul #19

This week at the farm we mulched rows to prepare them for melons, pumpkins, and squash, as well as doing a little weeding of the tomato plants. I love weeding, especially tomatoes because the smell of tomato plants makes my heart sing!

Anyway, we got a pretty small haul this time but every single item is a favorite of mine, so I'm happy. We got 1 lb of tomatoes, 1 lb of yellow squash, 1/2 lb of cucumber, and 1 lb of peaches. We had another peach but it didn't make it home for the picture. :grin: The peaches, cucumber, and squash are all from Larken Farms, but Farmer Marie splurged and bought them for us because our farm's been so slow to produce.

This week was also market day, so we bought a pound of organic Fair Trade coffee from Fresh Life. They started coming out to market day last time, but we didn't need coffee. I'm so excited to have a Bold cup of coffee tomorrow morning!