Officially Summer

We always welcome the summer solstice, as that means the days will start getting shorter again. And at the moment, we are outside until almost 9 every night, so we ready for it to get dark earlier! Since the solstice we have been enjoying a respite from the heat, with it being cool enough that we can actually work outside all day! It looks like that will end later this week, and we will again have to come in during the hot part of the day, but we sure enjoyed it while it lasted, and got a lot done. Rain has accompanied the cooler weather, and rain is always welcome!

The rain has also brought some chanterelle mushrooms, which are one of our favorite wild mushrooms. We have only found a few so far, but hopefully we will find more in the next few weeks.

Cukes and Zukes!

This has been a busy week as we continue to try to get all the rest of our seedlings in the ground, as well as direct seeding winter squash, watermelon, and more green beans. Last Thursday we had quite the storm and got 1.5" of rain which helped everything tremendously. We water regularly, but there's nothing like a good rain. Our summer squash are just starting to produce, right now our cocozelle zucchini are what are producing. This is an Italian variety of zucchini that are delicious even when huge! Our cucumbers have started producing in earnest, and everyone is getting some this week. These cukes are mostly the smaller, pickling type, and we will have bigger slicers coming on later. The small ones are great for snacking (our kids LOVE them), and are still good for slicing too!

Our spilanthes plants are also doing well. Spilanthes is an herb, also called "toothache plant," and are one of the craziest plants we have ever encountered. When you nibble on the flower, it has an analgesic effect and makes you whole mouth tingly (think poprocks) and go numb for about 5 minutes. It is also antibacterial, antifungal, and stimulates the immune system, so it is often in natural mouthwashes, and has been used medicinally for centuries. We enjoy nibbling on them, and kids usually love the unusual sensation. If any of you would like to try some, we would be happy to throw a few in your bag, just let us know! 

Oysters are spawning!

Last night we assembled our first bags for oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) propagation. We layered wet rice hulls, grass, and mushroom spawn into bags, cut slits in the sides, and hopefully in 10-21 days we will have oyster mushrooms for you all! Mira had fun spraying the hose (sometimes into the bags, sometimes just on the ground), and Quin enjoyed observing the operation from on high. This is our first foray into mushroom cultivation, and we can't wait to see how it turns out. 

It is the tail end of the sugar snap pea season, to our dismay. We already ripped out some of the plants because we picked every last pea off of them, and we will pull out the rest soon. We might get one more week of peas, we'll see. We are always sorry to see the peas come to an end, but we are excited for tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, and summer squash that are right around the corner!

We also discovered some ripe wild blackberries. Unfortunately there were only a few--it seems that the birds and critters knew about them before we did!

Two more of our broody hens also hatched out chicks, one hatched out 2 chicks and the other only one. These are a bit smaller clutches than we would like to see, but chicks are always cute and all 3 are doing well.

Welcome 2018 Members!

This year brought us a long, cold spring, which meant that all of our spring crops grew very slowly. As with every weather occurrence, there are some winners and some losers. The asparagus loved it and exemplified its third season with an extended bumper crop. Unfortunately, our sweet pea plants did not appreciate 2018's series of meteorological events. The cold spring severely delayed their growth. A few lovely warm weeks convinced them to begin flowering but then it got hot, really hot, and peas don't like the heat (they don't do well over 80 degrees). So our poor pea plants have been producing in the 90+ degree days, but it will be a short pea season, and from the start these peas have been ugly. They often get brown spots on the pods by the end of the season, but this year they've had them from the start. The good news is that this is purely cosmetic, and has not affected the flavor at all. We keep tasting the ugliest ones, and it seems the uglier they are the more delicious they get! It just goes to show, never judge a pea by its pod. We usually just snack on them raw, but they are also delicious in salads and stir fries. 

You will also find garlic scapes in your bag this week. Garlic scapes are the long flowering stalk the garlic sends up, we snap them off at bud stage to encourage the plant to put its energy back into building up the bulb. These tender scapes taste like mild garlic, and you can use them anywhere you use garlic. They are even mild enough to eat raw in salads. You can use the whole thing. 

Some of you will also have radish pods in your bag, these are the seed pods from radish plants, and they taste like a radish. If you are not a fan of the heat, simply cook them gently (saute or throw in a stir fry at the end), or make refrigerator pickles, and they mellow out. Many of you are also getting lamb's quarters, which will look like tall stalks with small leaves all over it. Lamb's quarters is the second most nutrient-dense wild green (second only to amaranth), and can be eaten raw or cooked like spinach. 

We hope you enjoy our late spring veggies, please let us know if you have any questions or comments!