CSA for Tuesday, July 31st!

Before the 'sharing': how many, how much?

We need rain....oh, boy do we need rain!  We're just starting to see some evidence of drought-effects, especially in parts of our fields where the soil is extremely sandy.  In areas where we've managed to improve the soil with compost, things are looking better - for now.  The potato field, about four acres, was newly tilled last year after being in an alfalfa/grass mixture for many years.  It turned out to have big patches of chalky, sandy soil and the effects of high heat and little moisture are showing first there.  The dugout, our one source of water, is already down by about three quarters, but we have no reasonable way to get water to the potato field, as is.  Fortunately, we plant tons of potatoes (that's probably literally, as well as figuratively), so we can bear to lose a few!  The lettuces, which looked poorly last week, are just toasted this week and beyond all hope.  Young pea pods are kind of 'crisping' up.  The onions, carrots and beets, in full sun on a slope, continue to just 'not thrive' - rather a surprise to us!  They're okay, but not growing well enough to dig yet.

The summer squash is the one crop seemingly enjoying the heat!  As the bounty continues, try a few new things!  Check out Thursdays' CSA blog post for links for chocolate zucchini cake, muffins and loaves.  We'd love you to freeze some zucchini for your winter use!  How about zucchini fritters or hash brown?  Shred it, press out excess moisture, spice it to your taste: garlic/salt/pepper, oregano/rosemary/basil or maybe something a wee bit Oriental with coriander/five spice.  Here's a great recipe for fritters from the ever-delightful Smitten Kitchen!

As the Patty Pans get bigger - try stuffing them!  Because of their firm texture, they stuff well and hold their shape.  You can serve them out in cute little slices.  Here's a link for a meat and quinoa stuffed Patty Pan (not familiar with quinoa? It's in the rice aisle at the grocery store, as easy to cook as rice and very, very good for you!).  How about a vegetarian version with spinach?  One of Farmer Man's favorite versions is onion, cream cheese and crab meat - when he's feeling a little decadent!  You can use any recipe that you might use to stuff a tomato or pepper!  One of my other favorite new ideas I've seen on the Web, which I'm trying real soon, is pickled Patty Pans!  Wouldn't that be cute with tiny ones?

The really awesome news:  Menno and Evelyn's tomatoes seem to be loving this heat.  They didn't originally think last week that they'd get enough of a harvest to share with everyone today - but they did!  If you've never tried one of their organic, greenhouse-grown, vine-ripened tomatoes....you're in for a treat!  I was hoping to find enough fresh basil for everyone - I cut it pretty hard for Thursday's tomato treat!  It didn't happen but I got enough for 2/3's of you and everyone else will get oregano (also very Italian and great with tomatoes) or mint.  Herbs will be on a first come-first serve basis! Also a surprise today: first pick on cucumbers, the lovely long English cukes.  There was enough for the Full Shares, until I stepped on one.....so the Part Shares get first pick today and Jes and I had a part of a cucumber for lunch!  Yummy!  One of the few times we eat something before our CSA families!

We wanted to make sure the Single Shares got some peas, so this week it's Edible Pod Peas for you guys.  Full Shares had those last week, so they've got a wee treat of shelling peas this week.  Part Shares get none, but they get the cucumbers, so we're okay with that!  Everyone is getting beans galore - super pick today!  You all know that the purple bean, Royal Burgundy, turns dark green on cooking, right?  Rather always been a disappointment to me that they don't stay purple.

So, for the FULL SHARES: 3 lbs. Warba white potatoes, 1/2 lb. shelling peas, tomatoes, bunch of herb, Crookneck squash, Romanesque squash, Papaya Pear squash, Patty Pan squash, 2.5 lbs. mixed yellow and purple beans, pint of Red Mammoth raspberries.

PART SHARES:  2 lbs. Warba white or Norland red potatoes, English cucumber, tomatoes, bunch of herb, Moroccan or Mediterranean squash, zucchini, Patty Pan squash, 1 1/5 lbs. mixed yellow and purple beans.

SINGLE SHARES:  1.5 lbs. Norland red potatoes, edible pod peas, tomatoes, bunch of herb, Crookneck squash, zucchini, Patty Pan squash, 1 lb. mixed yellow and purple beans. 

Water Is Not Really Our Friend This Year!

Manitoba has experienced an over-abundance of water this year - the 'Flood of the Century' and such has been an interesting experience.  Things are slowly returning to normal in Brandon, some dikes have come down, levels are receding.  Farmer Man has, just in the last two weeks, finally managed to plow most of the land we've been unable to use this year.  We went, rather quickly, from cool, rainy and waterlogged to record setting heat and humidity the past week.  In the 'Careful What You Wish For' category, we were saying a nice little storm would be good: cool things down, settle the dust, give the gardens a little drink.  So, what did we get this morning?  A rumbly thunderstorm that dropped about four inches of water in an hour!  The pathway from the barn to the house partially washed out, a field of beans just recently planted partially washed out, young plants battered to the ground including all the corn and leaking in the sun room!  Just talked to some friends in town who said Brandon's 10th street was a lake, water was up over the grass in front of the store front and water was coming over the door sill in the back of their shop!  Well, everything did get a drink, though.....

I See Soil!

It's true - Spring is coming.  In the last few days, we've gotten just a wee bit above the freezing mark!  We're starting to see results.  Top photo is last this afternoon, bottom photo is yesterday morning.  Look how much that patch of soil has grown - very encouraging!  The photos are of the walkway up to the barn and, beyond that, the chicken coop.  It's a gravel walkway, which makes it impossible to use a snow blower and hard to even shovel.  We tend to just trek out after a snowfall, and the pathway slowly becomes packed down.  A slow melt would be best for us here in Manitoba, considering our flood forecast.  But it's been such a long, long winter.  Everyone around here just wants the snow gone, we want our bare feet in sandals and we want to sit outside and feel the sun on some part of our bodies other than our faces!  However, the forecast tonight:  a mix of freezing rain and snow!

Dirty Girl!

It's been windy, rainy and cold for almost a week now. Hard times for a chicken, who likes to take a dust bath. Not much dust right now! So, The Hens have been trying, anyway, and getting something a bit more like a spa experience. I wonder if we could package and sell Aagaard Farms mud bath.....The results show the most on the white Leghorns, but I know the Isa Browns are a little caked right now, too.

Rain, Beautiful Rain!

It's been raining/drizzling/snowing off and on for a few days now. Boy, could we use it! We have had low precipitation averages since last September - yes, that's last September! As Farmer Man found when he tried to disk the fields last week, it's like powder eight or nine inches down. As you can see from the photo, we're just at bud-break here, so rain will really help all the awakening trees and shrubs! Some days, it is hard to be cruising The Web; I read that the Pacific Northwest is harvesting asparagus, California is eating the first strawberries of the year. Problem for us, is that our temperatures are rather low - frost is still a huge possibility. But the rain has come at a good time for another reason: Farmer Man has put his back out - waaaaay out- and can hardly walk! A rainy period is a good time for down time!

Rain. Beautiful Rain!

A beautiful, light rain all day! Just what we needed. Not a heavy downpour that would beat down the seedlings or compact the soil. Just a gorgeous, steady drizzle all day, slowly soaking in to nourish the seeds and seedlings. We knew it was going to happen, of course. We HAD just washed the truck.........

The 'girls' are rather filthy tonight - maybe they haven't learned yet the difference between a dust bath and a mud bath. Rain is suppose to happen tomorrow as well, which is wonderful for our sandy soil - it almost can't rain enough! What rained this morning has probably soaked straight through to the other side of the planet already and is making their crops happy. But, we're happy not to have to use the precious water in our dugout to water now. That water is best saved until the usual drought mid-July.