Peter and Bernadette with some freshly-harvested garlic
This week's offerings: You are seeing the last of the garlic scapes this week, and the very first bulbs of garlic. First of the green beans, and green cabbage, as well! The garlic crop is looking pretty good! We will harvest the entire garlic crop within the next two weeks, and give it out regularly, though we will still be drying a good percentage of it for safekeeping till the winter months! For those getting broccoli this week, we note that the heads are a little off-color, which we can't explain, though the taste is fine. We are giving out singly both the zucchini and cucumbers, expecting one to possibly be sufficient for the small shares, and expecting that the larger shares would end up getting at least a couple, which is usually the case. You can always swap, or purchase, what you especially may be looking for on any given week! Collards for the Greens Shares this week!
Coming next week: Some beets, celery again, fennel, and gradually more cherry tomatoes, (starting in half pints). Lettuce and salad mix plantings are coming along regularly, (despite a few deer eluding our fence, and nibbling on some of the nicer bibb heads,) so those greens will continue to be part of the contents of your totes. Zucchini, summer squash, and cucumbers continue as well!
Also next week: sweet cherries from Michigan! We get them from Edmonson Orchards, up by Traverse City. These would be a separate purchase from your regular vegetable box, and you can choose from either a 5 lb. box, or a 20 lb. box. You will need to order them ahead of time, and here's the link: Barn2door cherries
(They will not be listed at the Harvie site with the other vegetables.) They have traditionally been excellent, though we regret not being to offer organically-grown sweet cherries. Maybe someday! Deadline for ordering: Thursday, July 8th! Delivered to your pick-up site on July 16th!
Occasional extra veggies: Once in a while we underestimate how much of a given crop will be ready at harvest time when we tell Harvie what produce they need to work on dividing up into the shares, since it is usually 3 to 5 days before the actual delivery date that we need to announce to them what will be available, and sometimes crops can mature quickly, especially with the warmer temperatures! And then, after we harvest the higher quantities, we are likely to just put them into (some of) your totes, unannounced. (We usually only do that with vegetables that virtually everyone has rated highly, so we can avoid the situation of sending you something that you might not care for.) So if you might at some point in the year get something in your tote that was not listed on your 'ticket', it is most likely because you are the recipient of a 'freebie' because of our too-conservative or mistaken estimate on our weekly tour of the entire farm! Much less frequently we may overestimate the harvest of a particular crop, in which case we have to communicate to you that you may be receiving a substitute, or credit, for something that showed up on your ticket, but which we can't fulfill. We aim to never make that mistake, as we are quite fearful of promising something that we can't deliver on, though it usually happens a couple times during the entire season!
Wide variety of crops now available: This week, and likely for the next couple months, we will be harvesting from a wide variety of crops, this week numbering 15. Of course, only the large shares have the possibility of receiving in their totes all, or a vast majority of the harvested items. Small shares typically have 8 or 9 items, and the medium share 12 or 13. We often will have a small excess of some of the veggies, and they can be traded for, or purchased separately, if so desired!
On the farm: We have had some good rains recently, so crops (as well as weeds, to our chagrin), are growing well. Potatoes got planted a little later this year, but they came up well, and it looks like we will have lots of different kinds of spuds for you this fall! But still a couple months of growing first!
Have a good week!
Peter & Bernadette
