The summer bounty inspires festivity, celebration, feasting, sharing and reveling in some of our favorite summer crops that we wait almost all year for. The sight of a ripening tomato on my windowsill with the kitchen window left open and a sweet summer breeze blowing in brings me a sense of summer joy that I almost live for. The busy summer days filled with unlimited harvesting, hard work and bounty combined with decreasing sunlight, a tiring body and lists of things to do extending well beyond capabilities remind a person of their limits. The mid summer days are sweet, but they are long. 
Unloading a Truck ‘O Sweet Corn into the cooler.
The farm feeds our family much longer than the summer months. We are busy canning and freezing and drying and canning some more. The tomatoes are just coming into season now and we know we have plenty more canning in our future. I am reminded of a Greg Brown song called Canned Goods with a line that goes “peaches on the shelf, potatoes in the bin, supper’s ready everybody come on in. Taste a little of the summer, Grandma put it all in jars”. The song crates a beautiful image of a cold, wintery landscape happening outside with a warm family setting indoors around the dinner table with the preserved bounty and plenty to go around.
I don’t have time for canning or drying or freezing. I don’t have time for laundry or showering or mowing the lawn or scrubbing floors. The harvesting, the weeding, reading books to kids, changing diapers, making dinner, cleaning up after dinner and keeping the gears of the farm oiled and turning is about all I can manage. But somehow, in the craziness of the summer months I find myself eeking the last hours of the evening stuffing pickling cukes into jars or drying herbs on trays. I get a wild hair to blanch and freeze broccoli and cauliflower at 9pm. The time is now or never with produce. I begin to learn how much sleep I can get away with not getting.
In the early years of the farm, my mother and my sister told me never to expect as much out of others as I expect from myself or I will always be disappointed. It was a good lesson to have been taught early on. I’m a bit of a work-aholic with the farm to keep me running like a rat in a cage and the desire to homestead and put up as much food as possible in the summer months that fills a creative space in my center that helps me achieve balance. It makes me feel rich and secure and safe and whole to have a root cellar and a basement filled with roots and canning jars full of what will carry us through until next year. It’s a lot of extra work on top of the work we already have to do to keep the farm going strong.
But my hope is that you, the family that lives in town with a lawn much smaller than ours and an 8-4 job finds time to sit on the porch swing and enjoy the summer evenings and gets a good nights sleep. I hope you can taste the summer time in your CSA box, but can also feel a spark for putting some of it in jars. I hope the dill and pickling cucumbers and other bounty in your CSA box inspires you to dry, ferment, freeze and put away some of the sunshine into jars for when the December winds blow.
Charentais French Melon- Everyone received two melons this week. Everyone received a small french melon with an orange flesh that is a Charentais variety. We thought these were delicious!
Honeydew or Cantelope Melon- This was likely the larger melon in your box. The honeydews have the green flesh and the cantelopes have the orange flesh. You mave have received either one of these. Some were a little more ripe than others. You could let it sit on your counter for a day or two, but we think they should be eaten very soon!
Celery- This could be the final celery giving. We are getting down to possibly the last picking of the celery. Celery is a difficult crop to grow with high water and calcium needs. Later in the season, the hearts of the celery plant begin to start dieing back. Many of the plants we cut them apart and bunched them so we could cut out the centers that were sometimes bad. Some of the plants that we left in tact may have had centers that we didn’t see that were going bad. If this is the case, cut out the centers and use the outer stalks that are just fine! If we give celery next week, we will be cutting and bunching them all.
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Cucumbers- One to two cucubers per member this week. Cucumber production seems to be down a bit with limited rain in previous history.
Pickling Cukes- A small handful of pickling cukes to make a jar or two of pickles for the fridge. You may have received pickling cukes if you only received one standard slicing cuke.
White Onion- Gotta have that onion;)
Green Beans- One pound of green beans per member this week!
Carrots- One pound of carrots per member as well!
Sweet Corn- Six to seven ears of sweet corn per member this week.
Hungarian Hot Wax Peppers- This is the longer, lime-green colored hot pepper. Hungarian Hot Wax are also called “bananna peppers”. Despite it’s big name, these are among the most mild of all hot peppers. Technically they are considered a hot pepper, but they are not usually hot. Although sometimes they are!
Jalapeno Pepper- This is the small, green pepper that packs a little more punch. A couple members have told me they don’t think they’re very hot, but I guess I’m a little wimpy when it comes to heat, because they’re hot to me!
Eggplant- You may have received a standard sized eggplant or a longer, skinnier Japanese eggplant.
Hybrid and Heirloom Tomato Mixer Bag- A 2.5lb bag of a mixed variety of tomatoes. One of the fun parts of being a CSA member is receiving a mixed variety of slicing tomatoes. You have have received some romas, standard hybrid red slicing toamtoes or a few different looking varieties of tomatoes that could be red or pink or yellow when fully ripe. You’ll know when they’re ripe by the richness of their color. We recommend keeping your tomatoes on the counter until they are fully ripe. Use them up as they ripen. You can put them in the fridge when they are fully ripe, but refrigerators do seem to suck a little flavor out of a tomato. Try to avoid the fridge/tomato combo if you can.
Summer Squash, Zucchini and/or Patty Pans- A steady production of summer squash and zucchini coming off of the patch still. Production seems to be down a little, but you wouldn’t miss it much with all of the other delicious items coming out of the fields.
Sweet Pepper- A mixed selection of sweet bell peppers again this week. You may have received a red bell, yellow bell, orange bell or an orange canary pepper. The canary peppers are usually a longer, skinnier pepper that comes to a point at the bottom. These are a sweet pepper not to be mixed up with a hot pepper. We harvest peppers once a week for CSA boxes on Mondays, and we take everything that looks like it needs to go. Some of the peppers have good color, but they may not be fully turned yet. Peppers will ripen just a bit off the vine, but typically you can’t count on them to ripen much once they’ve been picked. We’re taking them a little on the early side as we are very excited to be harvesting them and want to give you as many sweet peppers as possible! Plenty more on the way where these came from. Pepper production is just picking up!
Swiss Chard- The swiss chard leaves aren’t looking quite as succulent and amazing as they did earlier in the season. Smaller bunches this week, but a nice giving still!
Lettuce- One small head of either red or green leaf lettuce. This is very late in the season to be getting lettuce. With very little rain in recent weeks and the looming deer pressure, we’re harvesting them smaller. This was the final giving of lettuce for several more weeks. Lettuce gets very difficult to grow in peak season like thsi because it doesn’t tolerate the high heat well.
