Harvest #9 (Week A) should include cabbage, carrots, eggplant, lettuce, scallions, fresh garlic, zucchini, cucumbers, basil, Swiss chard, Italian dandelion, parsley, and cilantro. Some items will be a choice. U-pick should include snap beans, cherry/grape tomatoes, flowers, and herbs.

What a whirlwind of a week. Looming planting and harvesting tasks, out of control pest pressure, daily thunderstorms, high heat and humidity, more work to do than we have time for. A week filled with the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good: Ample rain was received and the ponds have filled back up. The waterway improvements worked as planned. Thanks to some great help from CSA members, all of the 2020 garlic has been retrieved, tied, and hung to cure and seventy percent of the carrots were harvested (over 2,000 pounds). The rest of the 2021 strawberry plants arrived and were planted. The 2nd planting of tomatoes, which is inside the hoop tunnel, have been pruned and trellised (for now). The house vacuum seems to have saved our flats of fall broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and rutabaga from the dastardly flea beetle. Hours of sucking then putting the flats inside the greenhouse stemmed the tide. Lesson learned/remembered: don't give the flea beetles a mid-season snack after the spring brassicas have been mowed and don't leave the flats of fall brassicas in the hoop house unprotected after they've germinated under the shade cloth.

The bad: The heat, humidity, and daily rain showers have made cultivating and weeding a tough task to keep up with. We were faced with constantly too moist soil conditions to reshape and/or hill beds and kill weeds. A tropical storm dumped heavy rain which carried some soil downhill and out of the fields.

The ugly: We've lost the summer celery battle to a soil borne disease that causes the interior of the plant to rot and the leaves to curl rendering it unharvestable. We managed to only save approximately 40% of the crop. We'll either have to identify a variety that isn't susceptible to this issue or forego (spring/summer) celery in the future (we still have the fall planting to transplant and harvest). I was just thinking about how much I enjoyed it in my breakfast smoothie. Italian dandelion, which we used to perceive as immune from any kind of growing hardship, is now acquiring some kind of leaf tip blemish.

But more good: Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, okra are starting up; cucumbers and zucchini continue their prolific ways; watermelons should be ready soon; flowers are looking spectacular; ample sunshine will hopefully dry things out a bit so we can plant all those beetle beaten brassicas. Onward!

If you signed up for a share with work discount, please consider joining us soon.

Per the PA Dept. of Health, masks and social distancing are required.

Workshifts scheduled for this week:

Last week, I posted an abundant amount of information about what I had done with my harvest. I made so much that we were eating all the salads for several days. I don't know about you, but when I find a recipe we like, especially a new one, I keep making it. Along those lines, I made the Vietnamese Cucumber Salad again last night. And plan to make the Refreshing Summer Squash Salad today. Salads are a great way to incorporate the delicious, nutritious herbs we are receiving. Since I had so many large salads, I don't have new things to share this week, but would love for you to share with your fellow members how you are enjoying your harvest so email me at lindadansbury@comcast.net. And, please put Anchor Run in the subject line so I can find your message.

Squash, thyme - found a new zucchini bread recipe, which I am posting this week called Lemon Zucchini Bread with Thyme and Olive oil. Not very sweet, and it incorporates a lot of zucchini, so even the pickiest eaters will eat their veggies.

Eggplant was a pleasant surprise in last week's share - FYI, Derek and Dana generally let me know what the harvest will be either Saturday or Sunday morning. They take a weekly walk on Sunday morning, taking notes on how each crop is doing to help for future planning. Part of the walk is to determine what crops are ready for harvest. I had already finished my part of the newsletter last Sunday when they realized the eggplants were ready in enough quantity to add to the shares - one of the many fun things about the farm. Eggplants are botanically a fruit and are in the same family as tomatoes. They contain several key vitamins, minerals and fiber plus have significant antioxidant properties. Eggplant is far more delicate than you might realize. It doesn't do well in extreme temperatures, including both the heat and cold. Keep your eggplant out of direct sunlight and in a relatively cool spot, such as in a kitchen cupboard or pantry. Refrigerators are too cold and often cause eggplants to spoil prematurely. On the other hand, many kitchens get too hot during the summer months. If your kitchen is warm, try storing your eggplant in the coolest place in your home - possibly the basement. Two things cause eggplant to spoil quickly - moisture and ethylene gas. To store eggplant, wrap individually in paper towels, a paper bag or a perforated plastic bag. If your kitchen is cool, you can keep it on the counter. If you feel like you must refrigerate it, make room in your crisper drawer, or place on a shelf. Wherever you store, keep eggplant away from fruits and veggies that produce ethylene gas, including bananas, tomatoes, peaches and plums. Eggplants are at their best when enjoyed within 5-7 days. Check out this site for a lot of eggplant recipes, many of which have been submitted by fellow members. A couple of my favorites are Eggplant and Green Beans in a Spicy Garlic Sauce and Eggplant Salad.

Cabbage is making its farm debut for this year. The variety we will be receiving is call Farao, which is a tight heading variety. The flavor of Farao cabbage plants is mild and peppery. The leaves are thin and tender. This is a great cabbage for stir fries but will also hold up to pickling, sauerkraut, and roasting as well. You can also eat it raw and fresh if you would like. It's great in cole slaw, especially with farm carrots. Cabbage is very nutritious - Half a cup of cooked cabbage has about a third the vitamin C you need for the day. It also gives you doses of fiber, folate, potassium, magnesium, vitamins A and K, and more! To store cabbage, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap if it's been cut already, or put it in a resealable plastic bag if it's still whole. Then, store the cabbage in the crisper drawer in your fridge for up to 2 weeks.

Farm carrots are so sweet and delicious that I don't think I need to say much about them. Placed in an open or perforated plastic bag n the crisper drawer of your fridge, they will keep for up to a month - although I am sure they won't be around nearly that long! Since it is summertime, most of my carrots will be eaten raw with other farm veggies, possibly dipped in Baba Ganoush or Eggplant Dip.

Celery was the other surprise last week - Yay! Celery is very low in calories and a good source of Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, Pantothenic Acid, Calcium, Magnesium and Phosphorus, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Folate, Potassium and Manganese. Plastic bags trap in the ethylene it produces, which hastens spoiling. For the best results, keep celery heads whole, wrap them up tightly in aluminum foil, and then keep them in the refrigerator crisper drawer as usual. When stored this way, celery stalks can maintain their freshness anywhere from two to four weeks.

The 2020 garlic harvest started today, so we will be receiving fresh, aka, uncured garlic for the next few weeks. Note the wonderful aroma as you near the barn this week. There are differing opinions on storing fresh garlic. Some say store in the fridge, while others say leave on kitchen counter in a paper bag. I have always kept it in the fridge, which didn't really make sense to me because the garlic is hanging in the barn in the heat to cure. I think this year I will keep on the kitchen counter, saving me from having to root around the fridge looking for the garlic bulb!