Halfway point!

I believe this is the twelfth share, so the halfway point in our season long journey!  Crazy, huh?  Lots of late Summer and Fall shares still to come.

In all shares this week:
Lettuce-  Head lettuce is back in the shares this week, after escaping deer predation for a few weeks we have a nice new planting on!  It's back!
Chard-  We have the nicest planting of Swiss chard we've ever had this time of year.  Usually as the weather gets really hot and dry the leaves get smaller and less vibrant, but they're still super nice right now somehow in spite of the driest Summer ever.
Strawberries-  After packing the shares on Wednesday of last week, we picked the berries again on Thursday, and the fruit was suddenly just bigger, shinier, juicier and sweeter than it had been just a few days before...I don't know why, the berries are a total mystery to me this year.  But it made me feel like we should have waited a week!  Then I thought, what the heck, no one will mind getting strawberries two weeks in a row.  And we suddenly have so many!
http://www.food.com/recipe/simple-strawberry-sorbet-236642
Tomatoes-  The tomatoes have definitely been a bit slower to hit their peak this year than in the past few seasons, but they are really starting to produce heavily and ripen more quickly now.  We should have some really nice ones for the shares this week.
Apache bunch onions-  These are the red bunching onions that were in your share back in the late Spring, but this is a new bed that was direct sewn, so the onions are a bit smaller but really delicious, like big sweet red scallions.
Radishes-  Radishes haven't been in all shares for a good long time, so here they come.
Summer squash-  Just one or two squashes to round out this week's share.  Bobbie wants to get a spiralizer after we had some delicious zucchini pasta at a friend's house last weekend:
http://inspiralized.com/the-three-best-ways-to-cook-spiralized-zucchini-noodles/
You can do a version of this with just a peeler, too.
https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/how-to-make-zucchini-noodles-with-or-without-a-spiralizer/


Large shares only:
Beets-  A handful of topped mixed beets in the large shares...use your beets, radishes, and chard in a flash:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/roasted-beet-salad-with-flash-pickled-radishes-and-chard-56389491
Sweet corn-  Our earliest beds are still going, but the newer beds haven't started, so we still don't have tons of corn on yet.
Lemon cucumber-  A few more of our little round yellow lemon cukes.  Great for snacking.

Well, Max and Angela have headed South, but I'm so happy that Jack is back for a few weeks to help us get through the rest of the Summer!  Jack has been working with me at Ebb Tide for four years now, but left this season to pursue a career teaching high school math...about as far from farming as you can imagine!  Fortunately for me, he has some time to kill before beginning his classroom observation requirement in mid September, and decided to spend it on a working holiday back on beautiful Whidbey Island.  By the time he has to leave in September I'm hoping that things will have slowed down a bit and we will be caught up on some big harvest projects to get by with just myself, Jess and Brian.
The warm dry weather continues, but it is great for all of our fruiting crops right now.  I am preparing for the first signs of Fall and trying to enjoy the last bit of high Summer!