And then there was four

As you already know, our biggest news is the birth of our son, Quinlan! We had a home birth in Kirkwood at Holly's mom's house, in the same room Mira and, many moons ago, Holly were both born in. Holly's sister is a midwife, and delivered both Quin and Mira. We stayed at the house for about a week to recuperate and enjoy the love and support of family. Randy's mom was in town to visit, and she was able to stay at the farm and keep all the animals fed and cared for while we were busy caring for our new baby. Holly and Quin are still taking it easy for the next couple of weeks, but they will be back at market soon! In the meantime, Randy will be doing market duties. 

We returned from our away time to find more huckleberries than we knew what to do with! We decided to experiment with a vanilla huckleberry kombucha flavor, which turned out super delicious (we will have a limited amount available at market). Our peppers and tomatoes are also in full swing, but the mice are still getting all of our ground cherries. The peppers you will be getting are sweet peppers, but most of the varieties don't look like a bell pepper. We grew sweet banana, cubanelle, and cono de toro, which are all producing well, and are all long tapered green or light yellow peppers

Spectacular Solanums

This week your bags are full of solanums, or members of the nightshade family! This family includes tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplant, huckleberries, and ground cherries. Several of you already got to try huckleberries, but if you didn't last week, you will this week! These can be thrown in pancakes or muffins, fruit salad, smoothies, salad, on top of oatmeal, yogurt, or cereal...the possibilities are endless! Most of you are also getting tomatillos, a versatile member of the nightshade family most commonly known for its prevalence in Mexican dishes. And indeed, they are delicious in salsa or guacamole, or added raw or cooked to burritos, tacos, or enchiladas. But we also like them fresh in salads, thrown in with cucumbers and onions in refrigerator pickles, or added to stir frys or summer pasta salads.

Ground cherries are one of our favorite solanums, and we were excited to share them with you, but, alas, so far some little field mice have beat us to them. We keep checking under the plants to find countless little paper wrappers (like a tomatillo, they have a thin paper covering) and the inside eaten out, and have seen mice running away from the scene of the crime. We've never really had to deal with mice as pests before, and are trying a small gauge wire fence, hoping that you will all be able to try ground cherries one day!

Surprise, surprise!

This week was full of surprises! On Thursday evening we got two inches of rain, which we badly needed. Usually forecasts say it might rain, and then our hopes are dashed and the ground remains parched, but this time we got some! The ground has been so hard this summer that it's been difficult to get the posts in the ground when we move the chickens tractors, but the rain gave us some soft earth and the opportunity to set up some new chicken areas. We keep them in one of our empty circles for a few weeks while they eat bugs and fertilize, and then we move them to a new circle.

We were dismayed to see that about half of the tomatoes in one of our tomato rows were decimated by the tomato hornworm. These little devils get huge, up to four inches long, and will eat every single leaf off the plant. If plants are young when hornworms attack, they can usually bounce back, but if they are already pretty big when they're stripped of their leaves, they often die. This is one reason why we are glad we have several patches of each type of veggie, so that pests and diseases (hopefully) don't spread to all of our plants. The silver lining to a hornworm attack is the frenzied excitement of our chickens dining on the pests.

Finally, we were excited to see that our huckleberries are ripening up! We had seen a few here and there for the last week or so, but now there is enough for some of you to try them! Huckleberries are in the same family as tomatoes and peppers, and are originally from Central America. They have a light, sweet flavor, and are great on top of cereal, in salads, fruit salads, smoothies, pancakes, muffins, or just eaten by themselves. This is a new crop for us, and we were happy to see them thriving.

As Holly's due date draws closer, we are working on getting everything weeded and mulched, and getting the last few stragglers out of the greenhouse and into the ground! Stay tuned for updates on the new Rosy Buck Baby.

Slow Food and Blue Tailed Skinks

The Slow Food Farm Tour on Sunday was awesome! The Slow Food crew had everything organized and under control, so we were able to focus on sharing our farm with new people. There was a great turnout, and despite the July heat, everyone had a great time checking out our veggie patches and picking Flower Hill flowers. This was the first Slow Food Farm Tour, but it was such a smashing success that more should happen soon!

Last Thursday evening, we were working in one of our circle beds, doing some transplanting with the help of a workshare member, when we were startled by quite the menagerie of critters. We found a baby rabbit, a box turtle, a field mouse, a blue-tailed skink, and what looked like a young Midland Brown snake! And the other day we found a newt burrowed into one of our beds. This is why we love our no-till system. Although the rabbit and the turtle might nibble a few of our crops, we would much rather be able to coexist peacefully with the wildlife than make our farm space inhospitable by using heavy machinery.