Good afternoon. This week was another full one. Tying up tomatoes, trellising cucumbers, and weeding, weeding, weeding. Plus, of course we spend a good bit of time taking care of the chickens, harvesting an increasing number of crops, and staying on top of seasonal projects like harvesting our winter wheat.
We plant our wheat in the fall so that it germinates and starts to grow before winter. We keep an eye on it into the springtime and try to keep the weeds back without using any chemical sprays. Come mid to late June, Susanna starts to taste the wheat to see if it is getting hard, which means it's ready for harvest.
We use a small combine to harvest and bag the wheat. Then we lay it out on tarps to rake and fan it dry for a few weeks. After that we will store it until this winter when we have time to clean it with an assortment of machines from a generous seed cleaning company in Meadville.
Then, the fun part. We have partnered with Mediterra Bakehouse to turn our wheat into fantastic loaves of sourdough bread. The ingredients are just wheat flour, water, and salt. Man, I do love their bread. Feel free to add on a bread share to taste the bread grown right here at the farm.
Please keep any and all feedback coming our way. We want to learn what is going well or not so well with your CSA share.
Have a great holiday week. We'll catch up with you again next week.
On behalf of the farm crew,
Neil
ps--This picture shows Susanna using our Korean style combine to harvest our winter wheat.
