Our garlic is hanging to cure in our big shed!
If you hadn’t noticed, we have a lot going on out here on the farm these days. Between the work of the Full Diet and Vegetable CSAs (not to mention restaurant sales), there is activity every single day on the farm. We’re at one of those points in the year when that activity is fairly routine day-in and day-out. These are the weeks of summer that feel like the flat apex of a curve — time almost stands still in this moment of pause between the big planting season (spring) and the big harvesting season (fall).
… Except that of course the fields are still in exponential growth mode. One day Casey walks out and finds a handful of cherry tomatoes in the entire planting; a few days later he finds a handful on each plant. Things are bursting.
To keep up with that, we just go go go with our routine work. What exactly do we do this time of year? Here are some highlights of our normal work this last week:
- Every day, our milking crew milked the cows. Cows must be milked, regardless of season or day! Afterward, the rest of the animals got tended, watered, fed, moved. We move all the animals to new ground daily.
- Every day, Casey moved irrigation pipes through the fields. We are in the peak of irrigation season, for sure!
- On Monday, the crew harvested for the Veggie CSA. On Tuesday, for restaurants. On Thursday, for the Full Diet CSA. On Friday, for restaurants. These weekly harvests take a lot of hours in all seasons, but in the fall we add the storage harvests to our weekly routine.
- On almost every day, something got weeded. This is the season of their growth too, and it is a big part of our summer work to keep up with cultivating and hoeing all of our vegetables!
- Casey slaughtered and butchered a hog.
- Casey plowed and harrowed an acre and a half for planting over-wintered greens and onions. Our tractor is in the shop right now (we like the idea of biodiesel, but it turns out our tractor doesn’t — lesson learned), so he’s had to make due with which of our implements will work well with the loaner. I’m not sure there’s ever a good season to be without our tractor, but I suppose this is better than spring!
- Folks took care of miscellaneous other farm chores/jobs: washing harvest bins, preparing a space for new turkey poults (came in the mail on Friday!),
- I did paperwork, as usual — emailing customers, depositing checks, writing the newsletters, etc.
- The kids learned how to pull out clover blossoms and chew on the sweet ends.
- And, on Wednesday, the crew harvested and hung our garlic harvest!
The garlic is the first of the “big” storage harvests, and I’m almost tempted to think it means that we’ve begun the downhill slide to fall — but experience tells me differently. The garlic is the foretaste of the feast to come. We get a break between that harvest and the start of the big ones. So, to enjoy this “pause” (not sure if that’s the right word after looking at the list of our recent activities), our family is headed to the beach this weekend. We’ll probably be gone through late Tuesday, so we won’t see you at next week’s CSA pick-up. We hope you enjoy this week’s vegetables (and next!).
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
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First CSA event coming in August! If we have your working email address, you should have received an invitation to our first CSA event of the year, on Saturday, August 17 (Full Diet folks will receive details in their weekly email). We are asking folks to RSVP for this event — check your email for more details (or check in with us at pick-up). If you can’t make it to this one, hopefully you can get to our pumpkin patch open house, which will be on Sunday, October 27! Save the date!
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Meet this week’s vegetables:
- Basil
- Fennel
- Broccoli & cabbage
- Green & yellow beans
- Chard & dino kale
- Cut lettuce
- Carrots
- Summer squash & zucchini
- Sweet onions
