Greetings from the folks up at Waratah Downs,
We are picking and preparing all of our vegetables for the CSA deliveries tomorrow morning. We hope everyone is enjoying their shares thus far. We are starting to feel like it may warm up one of these days and help along our basil, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and other warmth-loving vegetables. Things are sometimes growing a little slowly still due to the wetter and cooler than average weather we have been having this season. It has not been easy to get in and out of the fields some days as the rain has made it difficult to drive any vehicles out to our far fields. On the bright side, the lettuces are loving the cool weather and we haven’t needed to irrigate our fields once so far this year! It certainly is a stark contrast to the growing season in 2016, one of the driest in memory for this area.
Summer squash are just beginning to size up this week so we have picked what we have for our Medium shares. Abundant summer squash will follow! We are also starting to see many fruit on our tomato plants and are racing to finish the top strings for our trellising system. We have been using a new technique this year to apply our long used ‘basket weave’ or ‘Florida weave’ for the tomatoes to support them as they grow. We have actually improved our time efficiency for trellising enormously. It is very exciting to learn a simple twist on an old favourite that helps with our time management. If you’d like to check out an example of this technique, we are doing it somewhat as pictured in this youtube video: watch . We will attempt to get a video of our team here doing this activity before we are done for the season. It’s funny what excites us in the thick of the growing season, hopefully you all can share in this excitement as well.
In the next few weeks we will look towards harvesting new little potatoes, carrots, basil, and as mentioned above, our zucchinis as well as cucumbers should be starting to come on full flush. We look forward to the continued diversity that our efforts are bringing in. Thanks once again for your invaluable support, we couldn’t do it without you! As follows are the share picking lists, a photo of our share for this week, along with a few recipes to inspire.
For the small and medium share this week we have picked:
- Bunching onion
- Fennel(2 small each)
- Salanova Red Oak leaf
- Salanova Green Sweet Crisp
- Scape bunch
- Mixed greens(mild spicy)
- Rainbow Chard
- Tat soi***(only for small shares this week)
In addition to this list Medium shares will receive:
- Summer Squash
- Peas
- Magenta Lettuce
- Kohlrabi
This idea to roast fennel looks amazing, and not sure why I have yet to try this:
or why not try it in this fresh salad!:
Also, a fun little description of Kohlrabi and suggestions for use in this series from Huffington Post called WTF, CSA?(I couldn’t help but chuckle at this often appropriate title):
Enjoy the harvest, and as always please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions, concerns or comments about our farm, vegetables or Waratah Downs CSA.
-Waratah Downs Farm Team
