Happy summer! Yesterday was the official first day of summer. It has felt like summer and then some lately, and our farm's bounty is finally starting to look like summer, too. Sweet corn! cherry tomatoes! vidalia onions! hot peppers and basil! If you are at the farmers markets early this week, you'll likely see a smattering of larger slicing tomatoes as well. We just started harvesting a few first tomatoes late last week, and I don't like to include an item on our availability list for the week until I'm confident of the quantity and quality of the harvest - especially with tomatoes!
Another week of triple-digit temperatures ahead. "Heat-tolerant" greens can take a few days of that particular treatment, but are in no way built for a few weeks of it. I'm afraid all of our leafy greens are done for the summer, except the shade-grown lettuce. The remaining fennel slow-roasted to a nice crisp brown in the field (which was probably really tasty, for a little while). The beet greens are looking mighty sad as well; we have just the beet roots without the greens until they are gone. A few more weeks of carrots and cabbage. Keep your fingers crossed that this heat wave breaks soon, otherwise I fear that our entire field of corn is going to ripen all at once. I'm keeping a vat of butter and salt handy just in case it roasts in place, and goes the way of the fennel!
Thank you all from the bottom of our sweaty little hearts for getting your orders in a bit earlier than usual last week. It's a tremendous help to know well in advance how much we need to pick, get it all harvested as efficiently as possible early in the morning, and get ourselves and your vegetables out of the heat as soon as possible. It allows us to bring a better quality product to you, and gives you a better chance of still having living farmers around next week :) Please do keep it up!
Thanks so much for your business, eat well, and have a great week!