Our first August share, and I'm happy to report I think we will have enough tomatoes to put a little bit in each share. Here's what all you can look forward to:
Arugula- Try as I might, we always seem to hit a little gap in the head lettuce at some point in mid Summer. This year looks like it might be no exception...although we do have quite a bit of our big green leaf lettuce, "Bergam's", we're running thin on red lettuce just for a short time. Fortunately, we have lots of nice bunching sized arugula that makes for a nice, slightly spicy Summer salad.
Carrots- Into a new bed of carrots, but they are just as big and beautiful as our earlier planting. Really nice carrots this year!
Fresh beans- Round two of fresh beans in the share this week...the purple beans aren't producing as much this time around, but we should have plenty of green and yellow beans...
Cilantro- I haven't gotten cilantro in the share yet, because it's hard to time it right before it bolts to seed. But we have a nice little patch of cilantro that is still a bit small, but should be great tasting, and with the first tomatoes in the share this week, maybe it the cilantro was destined for salsa season.
Tomato- The plants are loaded with green fruit, but it has been surprisingly slow to start ripening, in spite of this warm weather. That said, I think we should have enough to put a few slicer tomatoes in the large shares, and a half pint of cherry tomatoes in small shares. We will flip it around for next week, so if you get cherry tomatoes now you'll get some slicers soon and vice versa.
Walla walla onion- Another critical salsa component....the sweet onions keep getting bigger and better. The tops are starting to dry back now, so soon we will be bringing them out of the field to dry down all the way in the greenhouse.
Cucumber- Our first cucumber plants are starting to slow down, but the lemon cukes, which were planted a bit later and take a bit longer to produce, are just getting going, so there may be some more lemon cucumbers in the farm shares this week.
Large Shares only:
Shelling peas!- Unlike the snap peas, these peas need to be removed from their hulls, so it takes a little bit of prep work, but is well worth it for the delicious fresh peas. The hulls are great for adding a pea flavor to vegetable stocks or sauces, too.
Cauliflower- After the huge heads of cauliflower in the large shares a few weeks ago, these ones will be a bit puny in comparison, but still very tasty....and your farm share bag shouldn't weigh 30 lbs, which is nice!
Radishes- A bunch of our Summer "Rudy" radishes, another good addition for salsa or tacos! We've really got a theme this week.
I have finally gotten through the "denial" phase of our strawberry problem this year and reached "acceptance"....there is definitely something wrong with the strawberry plants! We were speculating about maybe pollination being an issue, but there seem to be lots of bees buzzing around and even green fruit that never seems to be reaching ripeness. I don't get it. It's very frustrating. I may have to try to contact WSU or some ag specialist who can help me figure out what's going on....but I'm sorry there haven't been more berries in your shares or in the stand this Summer!
But aside from that downer note, everything on the farm is going great. We planted many of the Fall crops yesterday, like Fall lettuce, endive and radicchio, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and more...
I enlisted the help of the other half of our intern duo, Max, to write something for the blog this week, and here is his brilliant submission:
Every day as I arrive at Ebb Tide I say, “Hello Farm,” and every
day as I leave I say, “Goodbye Farm.” This very well may sound like a load of
new age woo-woo hippiespeak, but it’s something I stand by wholeheartedly. One
of the things that has always attracted me to farming is the fact that, unlike
many other jobs, you are nearly constantly surrounded by a living, breathing
environment. It is not an office, with filtered air and sterilized keyboards.
It is not a restaurant, with grease traps and processed foods. It is not a
construction site, full of smelted metals and sliced up trees. The farm is
alive, and it buzzes with life. As you walk through rows of corn or
strawberries or cucumbers each plant is an entity, constantly changing –
photosynthesizing, vegetating, blooming, fruiting, dying – in response to
outside stimuli. Row after row of living breathing beings (who, I believe, you
can get to know as much or as little as you want) make up the Farm, the super
organism, the Mega Mama, the Forest to our Doug Firs, the Ocean to our Useless
Bay, the Milky Way to our Solar System.
And for such reasons, I feel a simple “Hello” in the morning is
the least I can do.
Of course, as a farmer, there is as much death in any season as
there is life (which gives rise to the ever-looming goodbye). Any seed started
guarantees an inevitable uprooting and destruction. Any harvest guarantees a
clutch of “culls” – fruit and veggies that are deemed unsellable and proceed to
sit in crates, scalding in the sun, wilting in the rain, maybe perhaps getting
taken home by a farmer whose fridge is already stocked with its own batch of
decaying veggies but are more realistically fated to the compost pit, haven of
garden snakes, earthworms, and little bits of “Whidbey Island Grown” twist ties
that always slip through. Even the act of harvest is, in itself, a major part
of the Yang – Shiva the Destroyer sitting down in the carrot patch, saying
“This will be my dinner, and this will be my snack!”
It is amazing to me, when I think about it, how much of a
culmination every weekly blue Ebb Tide CSA bag really is. Not only is it the
culmination of the physical energies of Blake, Jess, Brian, Sequoia, Angela,
and I, but it is also the culmination of all the growth (and sometimes even the
entire life) of whatever vegetables may wander into the share that week. It is
the culmination of all the rain, wind, and solar radiation we’ve had for the
past five months. It is the culmination of the eons of geologic time since
glacier seepage left this bit of sand here, this bit of clay there, this bit of
boulder over yonder. It’s the culmination of however much you want it to be.
A not-so-wise man once told me, “Some can read the whole
Bhagavad Gita and think it was just a nice story, others read the back of a
milk carton and find all of enlightenment.” So who knows what it really is.
Maybe it’s just a sack of veggies – proteins, carbs, and so on. Alls I know is,
it sure was a grand old time grabbin’ it out the field for ya.
Happy August!
Max
Off-Brand Croc Specialist
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