Hello farm-ily! A big thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate our farm stand opening day last Wednesday evening! Seeing all of your smiling faces after a very long and wet winter/spring was just the inspiration we needed to dive head first into our busy summer season with renewed energy. We can’t wait to share the bounty of our farm with you this season! Always growing better:
Michael and I spent the slow season tackling a number of different farm projects that will help us “grow better” this season and seasons to come. First off, we built a 100 foot long caterpillar tunnel to house our early and late tomatoes. We are super excited to utilize the caterpillar tunnel to its full potential and stretch out the season of our favorite crop - maters’. This season will be the earliest we have ever had tomatoes, and we hope to continue to harvest long into fall. Rumor has it we even found a handful of ripe red tomatoes hiding in the caterpillar tunnel this week! Of course Michael and I bit into them right away to perform a proper taste test and boy oh boy did they pass with flying colors! Just about one more week until it’s slicer tomato galore at the farm stand, until then we do have a couple of cherry tomatoes coming into to tide us over. Our next winter project was organizing our wash/pack area so we can efficiently move our veggies out of the field and into proper cold storage as fast as possible. One of the reasons why our veggies last so much longer than grocery store veggies is how fast we are able to properly store them. By removing the field heat from veggies ASAP after harvest we slow down the veggie's metabolism and extend its peak freshness period. Last and most important, Michael and I completed a huge irrigation project over at our Lincoln farm to ensure that our veggie babies will be property hydrated all summer long. It’s true that water is life, that being said Michael and I were pretty stressed out when our irrigation system went on the fritz last summer right smack dab in the middle of those 100 plus degree scorcher days. Yes it was pretty scary and yes we got through it, but it was not fun - that is why it feels so great to finally have an irrigation system that we can rely on. All together it felt great to knock some of the big “to-dos” off the list and to head into our 2017 season more prepared to provide our community with highest quality produce.
What’s growin’ on right now:
I love starting our farm stand at the beginning on June because it’s like spring and summer has collided on our farmers markets tables. I call it the “springtime explosion” when gorgeous heads of cabbage are growing right next to zucchini plants just beginning to produce. It has been such a joy to start our season out with a prolific berry harvest, but these delectable treats don’t hang around for very long. With last week’s heat wave our olallieberries are already done and our boysenberries are on their last final push. No worries, our triple crown and navaho blackberries are just beginning to show a red flush and pretty soon we will be filling up basket after basket of those delectable lil' gems for you all to enjoy. In other exciting news, our cucumbers just started to produce this week! We love snacking on cucumbers all summer long to keep us hydrated as they are majority water. This year we are growing our favorite variety called marketmore, which is an English slicing variety that has really thin skin and a small seed cavity. We are also growing lemon cucumbers, armenian and a small white cucumber called a martini. We are looking forward to seeing y'all at our farm stand tomorrow evening and sharing the bounty of “springtime explosion” with you!
Wishing you all the best, Michael and Shanon
