We hope you had a wonderful 4th of July celebration! We took a few hours off to join some good friends (who happen to work with us on the farm) for food, games and firework watching. The cooler weather the later half of the week and some early nights to bed helped us get rested up and rejuvenate a bit. The hot long days of summer can wear us down so a little cloud cover and breeze can be a real blessing.
The summer crops are doing quite well but still not nearly in full production yet. Large tomatoes and peppers are just barely producing. Cucumbers and cherry tomatoes are producing well and increasing every week. We under estimated the cherry tomato harvest last week, having many more than expected, so we'll be putting more on the availability this week. We know these are like gold and barely make it home from CSA pickups because the kids in the back seat want a taste, so we're hoping to get you even more this week. Always a little hard to estimate and we don't want to come up short but we also don't want you to miss out on these potential treats. As always, check back in on your Harvie account Monday night to see if we've added more to stocked out items.
Bug Warfare
As you know, we don't use chemical sprays to control bugs, but instead rely upon natural means to prevent pest outbreaks. One of the worst pests we have to deal with are squash bugs which attach all cucurbit crops like summer squash, cucumbers, and winter squash. The squash bug doesn't have any natural predators. Birds won't eat them because these are part of the stink bug family and presumably they taste as bad as they smell when you squish them. Even the most powerful organic sprays derived from natural substances like neem oil won't kill adult squash bugs. These bugs (along with cucumber beetles) have been a challenge for us since we first grew more than a handful of cucurbit crops. They're so bad that we now grow all our cucumbers inside screened in high tunnels to try to keep them out and we've completely stopped trying to grow winter squashes (they just take too long and the bugs find them and kill them before the fruits are ready). And for even summer squash like Zucchini, we've had to cut back on our plantings and time the plantings such that we miss the bulk of the bug pressure in their summer lifecycles. But even with all the precautions (including rotating cucumbers between high tunnels form year to year), the pesky squash bugs have found some of the cucumbers. We've been painstakingly searching for these buggers and squishing them as fast as we can find them. It's particularly satisfying squashing a mating pair in the act knowing how many eggs and squash bug babies we've prevented. But usually hand picking the bugs is only so successful and eggs go unnoticed and eventually the plants get overrun. We'll see how it goes. We stagger our plantings and move them around and we might plant some beds in another high tunnel away from the bugs in an effort to keep the cucumbers coming. The bugs don't eat the cucumbers or affect the quality of the cucumbers they just suck so much sap out of the plants that they'll eventually kill the plants completely, so we'll be monitoring the situation closely. Organic growing has it's challenges, that's for sure!
How the Harvie cart works
I've had some questions lately about charges for "extras" and I wanted to clarify how the Harvie system works especially for the new folks. Your share price is the minimum payment you'll be charged each week, so if you swap out more expensive items for cheaper ones, you may be receiving a lower dollar value in your share than you actually pay for because the share price is the floor. If you find yourself in this situation there should be a banner that shows up on your screen suggesting that you could add additional items to your share at no charge. The best way to see how things are working is to open the cart icon (upper right corner) where you can see the quantities of all the items currently in your share. You'll see those quantities and items change as you swap things in and out. You can also adjust the quantities of individual items in the cart view and you can also see any potential "swap charges" or charges for extra items. Just to be clear, items that show up as "extras" usually involve an extra charge, so you can't swap out tomatoes and get honey for instance because honey is an extra item, not an included CSA item (if you don't have the cart view open, it might look like you can do this but you'll see an extra charge for the honey and extra room in your cart for veggies). Most items are not considered extras so you won't run into this more most things, but things like honey or berries or items like bread or cheese that we have to purchase from off farm are considered extras. Swap charges are when you've added more items to your share than are included with your share size. Harvie lets you go a certain percentage beyond your basic share contents value without charging extra but if you go past that amount, swap charges will be incurred. We just want you to be aware of how this works. I wish the charges were more transparent from the main screen but I think if you use the cart view you won't be surprised by any charges. You are welcome to add additional items (many people do) and especially as summer progresses and produce becomes more and more prevalent we're very happy for you to add additional items to your share. Feel free to buy more if you want it!
Honey...almost
Our beekeeper has begun harvesting honey off our hives and we're in the process of bottling it up. I anticipate we'll have honey available again next week (Just remember its an extra). The honey is from hives on our farm but we no longer tend the bees ourselves. We have a local beekeeper who took over the honey operation and has added to it. He sells us a portion of the harvest from our farm to make available to you (and us...we eat a lot of it ourselves). So if you want some allergenic benefits from extremely local bees, feel free to grab some when you see it available next week.
Bread and Cheese
Farm to Market Great Grains Sliced Bread
Hemme Brothers "Brother's Keeper" block cheese
Thank you so much making our farm possible. At the end of every week as we pack your boxes, we literally fill them with the fruits of our labor. Thanks for being part of the CSA. We know there are more convenient ways to get food and we appreciate your commitment to do something so unusual that you have to explain it to your friends and family. Thanks for being weird with us:).
Your farmers,
Dave and Sheri
