>Summer Week 14:

>THIS WEEK’S SUBSCRIBER MENU:
• Yellow Snap (Wax) Beans
• Summer Squash
• Cucumbers
• Spinach
• Siberian Salad Kale
• Fennel
• Salad Onions
• Lemon Basil

FRUIT SHARES:
Red Gold Nectarines and Blushing Star Peaches from Rama Farms in Bridgeport

U-PICK:
Beans are available, finally. You will be picking the pole beans and we are picking bush beans.

COMING SOON:
Radicchio
Shelling Beans
Potatoes

One of the things I miss the most during the winter is being able to walk outside at night in just a t-shirt. The warm air, the stars, the quiet, and the smells of the farm in the dark. We’ve been so lucky this month to get a bit more summer. After the late start we had in June, we’re still waiting for the winter squash to finish ripening and we still don’t have all the garlic harvested. These few extra weeks of warm are just what we were hoping for back in June when it was still frosting at night.

It means that even though last year at this time we were starting to lose the herbs, beans, and squashes, we still have them so far this year. They’re still going, even though the days are getting noticeably shorter now. There is still so much to pick though, that we’ve had to get out the headlamps to start earlier in the day and continue at night.

The winter crops are all in the ground and looking good. This extra summer has been great for all of them. Greens are what we count on in the winter, and we’ll have them. The roots are doing well too, just saving them for the fall. The tomatoes plants are loaded with green tomatoes at last, and we’re just waiting for them to ripen. Luis got the greenhouse all sealed up to get it warmer inside. Hopefully that will do the trick. Our corn is tasselled and the ears are there–we just need a little more time. A little more summer.

If you walk around the farm you’ll see that we’ve started moving the cows over from behind our house. Juniper is the black cow, and you may remember her being born by the greenhouse last June (2007). She is expecting next May. She’s very friendly and sweet like her mom, Beauty, one of our milk cows. The red steer is Smarty. He will be our beef next spring, so don’t get too attached. He was our other cow’s foster calf all summer, a twin from another farm. His young mom wasn’t able to feed both calves, so our Skunky (our other milk cow) raised him and made him nice and fat.

Our septic designer is submitting his plan this week, and then we just have to wait another 3-4 months for the permit to live in our house. We’re getting closer to the dream, but it feels like it’s taking forever. It will sure be nice next spring to be living on the farm though.