CSA Delivery May 13

Hello everyone!
I am so glad we have gotten this rain, but it is a bit soggy around here! Missed the boat to plant greenbeans and corn this past week, but we got cucumber, eggplant, and summer squash plants in the ground and everything else is coming along beautifully! I hope you enjoyed last week's delivery.

For this week, here is what you will be getting:

Half Share:

• 1 lb. lettuce mix (includes some arugala and spinach)
• 1/2 lb. greens for sauteing (includes chard, kale, mustard)
• small bunch of radishes

Full Share:

• 2 lbs. lettuce mix
• 1 lb. greens for sauteing
• 2 small bunches of radishes
• bunch of green onions
• white and green flower bouquet

In the ground or planted in seed flats are: potatoes, peas, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, beets, onions, garlic, tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, eggplant, basil, dill, parsley, cilantro, peppers, chinese cabbage.

See you today!

CSA Sign-up window is closed.....

Hi Everyone! I cannot believe it has been more than a month since my last post, time is flying, flying, flying~~~ After a slow start and wondering if we were going to be able to do the CSA...We have had an overwhelming response to the CSA this year. We currently have about 25 memberships, the majority of which are 1/2 shares. We are looking forward to meeting everyone and growing delicious produce for you! Because of the response that we have had, we are no longer accepting memberships at this time. Keep us in mind for next year, and there are thoughts of a Winter CSA in the works.

What we have planted in the ground or ready to go in the ground now: lettuce, kale, broccoli, chard, spinach, peas, radishes, beets, potatoes, garlic, cabbages, tomatoes (in high tunnel), cauliflower, green onions.

What we are expecting to have ready for the first delivery: lettuce mix, kale, chard, radishes...maybe, possibly goat cheese from our goats. We had four pregnant nannies that had a total of 9 kids. Two had triplets, one had twins, one had a single, and 8 out of 9 of them are females. How's that for stats?? The herd is growing by leaps and bounds. All this from a one mama goat and her daughters that were all given to us when our almost 5 year old was just 1 year old. Did I mention time is flying yet?

We hope you are as excited as we are! Keep in mind that early in the season the variety is less, as are the amounts of produce, but as the season goes on you will get more than enough produce for your money! We have had a very wet spring, and hope we get another window of drying winds and higher temps to get in there and plant much, much more outside.

If you have joined our CSA, be on the lookout for an email from us in the near future making sure we have your email address on file and that it got typed into our records properly:)

First Frost, New Life!

We just had our first frost last night. October 17. Whew, am I glad I closed up the greenhouse and put some row cover on the flats of lettuce we started out there. We were gone all day and the sun was out which was perfect and helped our seeds germinate in the ground that we had planted in there a few days ago. Most of the beds are germinating!! Yay!
We are planting our greenhouse two different ways. We direct seed about half of it, which means we put the seeds directly into the ground using an earthway seeder. The earthway seeder is a wonderful invention that can be adjusted to plant different seeds and make sure you get them evenly spaced.
The rest of the greenhouse will be planted with lettuce plants that we start in seed flats. We have about 16-20 flats full of plants that will need to be planted into the greenhouse at some point in the next few weeks.
The seeds that we have started were purchased mostly through johnny's seeds--
www.johnnyseeds.com. They have an awesome catalog and website with predominately organic-minded gardening products. We love them. We also have used Baker Creek seeds--
rareseeds.com. Baker Creek is located in Mansfield, MO, which is also the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie). Baker Creek has several festivals each year and have created a pioneer village with demonstrations, rare livestock, and a sliding scale (pay what you can) restuarant. They have a great and gorgeous catalog and website as well, and specialize in heirloom seeds. Heirloom seeds are those that have been grown for many years and collected and passed down through generations. They are not hybrid seeds that are bred specifically for certain traits. Hybrid seeds cannot be collected by the home gardener because you never know what you will get. Heirloom seeds help to preserve the genetic diversity that is being lost in our seed system. Also, you can collect the seeds yourself with a little studying and know-how.
Another seed company that we love is fedco. We haven't bought from them in recent years because you need to really be on the ball and order early. They used to stop taking orders after some certain date in the spring and we were always slackers and couldn't get our order together soon enough. Fedco is located in Maine and has many different people grow seeds for them, on large and small scale. They now have a website that you can order on and it looks like you might be able to order year round? I will have to look into them again. They were strictly catalog only when we were ordering from them, so they might be easier for us to order from these days. Their website is: www.fedcoseeds.com

Finally found my sweet potatoes!

I just got in from digging my sweet potatoes. They were buried under the weeds, and I confess, I neglect my sweet potatoes every year. They are hardy plants and vigorous growers and tend to need to be weeded in the height of the summer months when the weeds are at their best (or worst). They are a pain to weed, you have to move the plants around, weed and then move them back again. I weeded them once or twice at the beginning of the summer. I peeked at them a month ago and thought that I better let them grow a little longer, since they were carrot size. With all this rain we got...they sure did grow! I started digging them up and wow was it a muddy mess. They were easy to pull out of the ground and the kids had fun finding some worm friends.

This was the first time we have grown this variety of sweet potatoes, they are called "Panama Reds". Usually we grow "Bouregards", but couldn't find any this year, so we went with what they had at the local garden center. They have a beautiful deep red skin and the insides are a nice orange/red color.

Well, I think all the outside garden is officially ready to turn in for the fall. I found some winter squashes hiding in the spent corn stalks and had already picked our butternut squash a month ago, which was probably a month too soon.

We have set our sights on the greenhouse for the last month. We started some flats lettuce, pac choi, broccoli, and kale. We also direct seeded some beds of lettuce and arugula. We are a couple of weeks ahead of where we were last year. Hopefully we will be harvesting lettuce sooner than we did last year, too. Last year we harvested lettuce in the beginning of December....if the sun would stay out we might beat that date.