3rd week of May 2008

Lettuce Bowl This past week was full of salad with orders for 19+ salad bags. It is the time of year when the lettuce is most tasty and happy with cooler weather and plenty of moisture. It also is quite beautiful in all the shades of red and green and many leaf shapes. It is a pleasure to just look at the freshly picked tub. Right now there is an abundance of early edible flowers that help to make the final salad even more beautiful to eat. Johnny jump-ups, chive blossoms, claytonia, pea blossoms, arugula flowers and kale blossoms are what I'm picking currently and I'm carefully watching my early started nasturtiums for their first blooms.

Salad and Flowers The first batch of broiler chicks arrived last week - 150 cute balls of yellow fluff. Unfortunately we experienced a "chicken house massacre" over the weekend. We found a pile of 30+ dead chicks on the ledge of the chick shed. We're guessing a weasel slipped in through a hole in the floor and did his ugly work. Most of them had only a slit on their head/throat area and some were still slightly alive. So the hole is patched and we're figuring out how to trap the culprit. The good news is that there are also many kinds of new life on the farm, look for pictures next week of some of our new farm additions.

I'm thankful for a rainy day today to prepare for my "Home Dairy" demo at Lehmans store tomorrow (May 22) and Sat May 31. I'll attempt to make a small batch of hard cheese during the demo using a hot plate plus will have displays of yogurt, soft cheese with herbs, molded butter and a butter churn folks can help crank. I also am gathering photos of milking, cheese making and more to give a better picture of things I can't bring along to the Buggy Barn.

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