July Twenty-Seventh
The Small Family Farm is truly a family farm. We’re a mom and pop sorta place with little kids running around in the yard while the crew is working in the fields. Sometimes you hear children laughing or crying while pulling weeds or garlic. We’re a husband and wife operation with a small crew of paid employees working alongside an entourage of worker shares. We’re young and ambitious and living the dream. Without any one of these teeth in the gear, the Small Family Farm wouldn’t be spinning around the sun time after time, year after year. 
My loving, loyal and amazingly hardworking husband deserves more credit than he receives. He’s a pretty quite fellow that you would have to spend years working alongside to really know who he is. He has lots of hidden talents like kicking butt at bowling or ping-pong and playing guitar when you didn’t even knew that he has ever played any of these things because he rarely leaves the farm or picks up his guitar anymore. He has a great poker face and is remarkably good at poker and euchre. He’s much better than me at making bread and raspberry pie. He’s the farm’s IT guy and can solve almost any computer problem that may arise. He’s mister cool, calm and casual all the time. Patience is a strength of his. I sometimes think he can even predict the weather, but he reminds me fairly regularly that he cannot.
I give him major kudos for being an increasingly impressive farmer. He took an interest in soil health, cultivation and pest and disease control a few years back which have all completely transformed the farm. Because we can now mechanically cultivate many of our crops, we can keep most of them out of the weeds and managed and it is Adam that does the farm’s mechanical cultivation. Farmer Adam studies the field tests. By “studies”, I mean studies. He’s buddies with the Soil Agronimist at Organic Valley and calls him on the phone with no hesitations frequently. Adam stays up late researching the mineral and nutrient needs for most vegetable crops on the computer while most people are checking their social media. Adam doesn’t do social media. He even knows just what OMRI listed sprays to use to organically control the pests on our farm that have historically destroyed entire crops. He even takes preventative measures to help control the spread of inevitable diseases that strike almost yearly.
Oh, and did I mention irrigation? Adam also single handedly manages all of the irrigation needs on the farm. He’s the one who knows where to lay the lines and how and when to hook everything up and keep up with the crop’s water needs. He’s a total nerd. But I think he’s cute.
Adam is also the one who regularly does field walks. He takes the time to just walk around the farm and look at everything. Adam noticed on this last rainy Saturday afternoon field walk that the raccoons had gotten into our first succession of sweet corn. He noticed that the whole first planting was completely wiped out. He is also the very same guy who took action on this very rainy Saturday afternoon and set up the electric fence (in the rain, did I mention) that we put up around the sweet corn every year to keep the raccoons out. He did it alone, and he did it for us. It took him into the evening to complete. He was out pounding t-posts into the muck while I made chicken, mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli for supper in the dry house while watching the kiddos. At supper I was thankful for Adam and for sweet corn and for this crazy little farm of ours.
Sooo….What’s in the Box????
Melon- One melon per member this week. The melon variety is Dewlightful. They are a green-fleshed honeydew melon. Most of these were very ripe, so enjoy sooner rather than later!
Broccoli- A nice head of broccoli for everyone this week!
Cauliflower- Amazing looking cauliflower for this time of year. Cauliflower is a cool weather loving plant, and they don’t always perform well in the heat of the summer, but most of these looked really great this week!
Cucumbers- A great cucumber year, eh? A hefty 7 regular slicing cucumbers per box this week! Bust out your favorite cucumber recipes this week! Truly sharing the bounty now! Cucumbers prefer 50 degree storage.
Pickling Cucumbers- Another heavy harvest for this week. Think our strong crew out there hauling cucumber bins all day! 9-10 picking cucumbers should be enough to fill a couple quart jars for refrigerator pickles. Yum! Use them up quickly for the freshest and crunchiest pickles!
Summer Squash and Zucchini- 2-3 nice Summer Squash and Zucchini this week. The plants slowed down in production a little, but we still stay faithful to harvesting every other day. Summer squash and zucchini also prefer 50 degree storage.
White Onions- The first week of real, whole onions. We did our best to pretty these up a tad. So nice to eat onions right out of the ground like this!
Green Top Carrots- Carrots freshly dug with their greens still attached! What a treat it is to eat carrots that are so fresh out of the ground that they still have their cute little white root tips and dark green tops on them. Carrot greens are edible and can be used like parsley. Carrots are in the same family as parsley. Check out our carrot top pesto recipe!
Lacinato Kale- Lacinato kale also goes by Dinosaur Kale or Tuscano Kale (an heirloom variety of kale originally from the Tuscany region in Italy). This variety seems to be all the rage these days. It has a very deep green color and a smooth texture that is nice for adding to soups or anything!
Green Leaf Lettuce- We’re down to just one head of leaf lettuce per box this week. Another week or two of lettuce and then there may be a dry spell for a bit during the mid summer heat spell that usually makes it too hot to grow lettuce anyways. We won’t miss it with all of the other wonderful veggies filling the boxes!
Garlic- The first week of green garlic! You’ll notice as you go to peel the green garlic that the membrane that is around each clove that is usually paper thin is still a much thicker, living layer on the garlic. Go ahead and still peel this away, but know that it’s a little harder to detect since this garlic isn’t cured down just yet. 
Celery– Okay, so local celery is no comparison to California Celery. I don’t know what they do to that stuff to make it so crunchy and light green and contain so little leaf. But I’m here to tell ya folks, this is what local celery looks like! It’s even a pretty good year for it with all of the rain that we’ve had. The stalks are pretty juicy. Local celery has a stronger celery flavor. Don’t forget to use the greens in your cooking, salads and soups!
Next Week’s Best Guess:
Disclaimer: This is only our best guess from what we see up and coming from field walks. Next week’s actual box may look slightly different from this projection.
Red Cabbage, Melons, Broccoli, Celery, Summer Squash, Zucchini, Cucumbers, sweet corn, beets, Eggplant, Green Curly Kale, White Onion, Basil, Hot Peppers
Recipes-
Garlic and Herb Roasted Zucchini and Summer Squash with Fresh Mozzarella Balls
