5th week of June 2010

Colorful Veggies Summer bounty is starting to explode in the garden. Pictured is some of the colorful summer fare that this week's veggie customers enjoyed in their baskets. When things get colorful in the garden, the flavors increase as well and this is such a good tasting time of year. I was grateful one of my veggie customers waited to arrive to pick up her basket after my friend and I had time to "borrow" her veggies for a photo shoot. We are adding last minute photos to Local Choices, our local foods book that should be released late July from Carlisle Press. We are in the midst of editing, cover design and other details and are very excited to see it all come together. Lisa Amstutz, my co-author, and I started gathering local foods stories over 2 years ago to create a book that will be friendly and inviting to the beginner on the local foods scene. Watch my website for release date, ordering details and book signing events.

Lettuce Under Shade Cloth The summer heat arrived a bit early this year. Lettuce is well suited for spring and fall but when the heat arrives it wants to bolt and get bitter. Since my customers ask for salad all summer long I need to be creative in keeping tasty lettuce coming. I use varieties that are more heat tolerant and try to plant them in partial shade. Here one of my cold frames becomes a support for shade cloth (two layers of black snow fence.) The dappled sunlight does keep things a bit cooler and the lettuce is still looking nice and tasting sweet. The heat also means we are already picking beans, both Provider and Dragon Tongue, and piles of zucchini and patty pan squash. My favorite is the Italian Costata Romanesco zucchini which has a nutty flavor and is less watery than the traditional black zucchinis. Still, a few of our children claim the only way they like to eat zucchini is in bread, cakes and such. So I obliged and baked a zucchini chocolate cake using my mother-in-laws trusty recipe - delicious!

Rye Bundles We harvested part of my rye cover crop to use in fall decorations. I'm working on bundling the seed heads and then finding a place in a shed to hang them along with my bearded barley where the rodents won't turn them into a feast. I came home from the greenhouse with some more fall decoration materials, three flats of purple millet plants. They were almost ready to compost any leftover plants and I offered a barter to bring back some of the fall decorations to sell when they have mums to sell. The greenhouse folks were pleased to see them used in a creative way and I was thrilled too. Another set of plants that an Amish friend shared with me this week were lemon grass and lemon thyme. Now I need to research how to use and preserve the lemon grass.

In looking ahead to winter barn space we knew it would be wise to sell some cows so everyone would have ample room. We advertised the grassfed Hereford brood cows and ended up with buyers for nineteen cows and calves. It was a little sad to see our girls go but I was thankful a neighbor bought three of the heifers so we can watch them over the fence. We have enough feeder stock for two more years of meat and plan to let our Jerseys provide some bull calves to keep at least a small grass fed meat supply coming in the future.