Alex and Lilly harvested clover honey from our 11 bee hives right here on the farm and we have lots in the farm store!
This Week’s Share:
Lettuce Heads
Salad Greens
French Breakfast Radishes or Beets
Kale or Chard or Collards
Scallions
Cucumbers
Zucchini
Korean Melon
Recipe:
Korean Melon Popsicles
Korean melons are small, almost personal-sized melons with a bright yellow skin and pale yellow-green flesh inside. They are very mildly sweet, the flavor is a bit like a honeydew and cucumber mixed together. They will ripen a little more if you leave them on your counter for a week, but generally they keep a firm crunchy texture even while fully ripe. The whole fruit is edible, including the seeds and thin skin, but it’s also great peeled and seeded. While we enjoy growing watermelons, we have had devastating damage from groundhogs who live all over the farm and creep from the woods to gobble up the hypersweet melons while they ripen on the vine. For now the small and mild Korean melon is flying under the groundhogs’ radar so we hope you enjoy them!
Farm Notes:
It sure is fun to see the share slowly change from all green to new spots of color as new items become ready in the field! Beautiful red beets, another round of crunchy pink radishes, and bright yellow Korean melons are all pleasing to the eye, as well as delicious. The rainbow chard is also showing off a beautiful range of colors from sunset orange to hot pink to firetruck red, and we love how productive and healthy those plants have been this year. But nothing really compares to the thrill of the earliest cherry tomatoes getting started in the tunnels! We are so glad to have them earlier than field growing conditions allow, and are looking forward to thousands more pounds of tomatoes of every shape and color, as the plants start producing in the new few weeks. This year in the tunnel we have the yummy and large red Sakura, bright and tasty orange Citrine, and the supersweet pink Sunpeach. You will get the chance to try them all! In the meantime, we are happy to say that green beans are also slowly trickling in, and the summer squash and zucchini has lightened up a bit. We are glad not to be buried in an avalanche of squash quite yet. There’s still time for that later. Have a great week, and thanks for being part of our farm community!
What’s on U-Pick?
In the raised brick beds, also known as the Cleeland Garden:
Mint
Oregano
Garlic Chives
Calendula
Sorrel, Thyme, Sage, and Lemon Balm (to allow for healthy growback for these plants, pick the largest leaves from the outside, do not cut from the stem of the plant!)
In field “G” behind the pizza oven/parking lot:
Dill
Cilantro
Parsley
Italian Basil
Greek Basil (small leaves, round plant shape, smells like basil!)
Thai Basil (Dark purple flowers & stems)
Holy Basil (Light purple flowers and stems, used for calming tea)
Any Flowers:
Cosmos, Dianthus, Statice, Stock, Gomphrena, and Strawflowers are all blooming!
Flowers from the G field are looking awesome. Shoutout to Kayla for taking on the management and care of the herb and flower fields! She learned a lot from Elissa and has worked hard to keep the fields tiptop. Farming and cooking wouldn’t be nearly as fun without flowers and herbs to brighten everything up. Everything that is available for U-pick has a wooden sign labelling it. If you seen something you want to pick but it is unlabelled please leave it alone as we allow it to grow into maturity. Thanks and enjoy!