Harvest #8 (Week B) should include cabbage, beets, kale, endive, Italian dandelion, salad radishes, hakurei turnips, head lettuce, cilantro, dill, zucchini, cucumbers, scallions, and garlic scapes. Some items may be a choice. U-pick* should include herbs, snap/string/green beans, and flowers.

Swiss chard is on hold for a couple of weeks while we wait for new growth; the spring crop was damaged fairly heavily by annoying burrowing larvae miners inside the leaves.

**If anyone has a stash of grocery bags to donate to the pick up room, we are currently in need of them. Thank you!

What time is it? Tomato time! Sorry, not for ripe fruit, but for pruning, clipping, trellising, hours and hours each week. All of the tomatoes that we farmers harvest are now grown under cover in three of our tunnels. The u-pick tomatoes, all cherries, are still grown outside. Inside growing allows us to regulate the water supply and importantly keeps rainfall off foliage. All of the tomatoes are pruned to one main trunk and elevated off the ground. This allows for increased airflow and helps leaves dry off quicker, all attempts to keep disease at bay for as long as possible. It also makes harvesting a lot easier.

In June, tomato plants grow super quickly so each plant requires weekly maintenance. By mid-July we might go in there every other week. In the tunnels the plants will (hopefully) outgrow the space and will be lowered and leaned, i.e. more twine that they're connected to will be unspooled and the spool hardware will be moved a couple of feet down the wire it's suspended from. For the cherry tomatoes we try to buy time by leaning them as we go, so instead of growing vertically they might be continuously clipped at a 45 degree angle.

The soil in the tunnels is primo real estate and gets amended very heavily with compost, amendments, and organic fertilizers to support three crops each growing season. Since the high tunnel is moveable we're able to rotate tomatoes on a 3-year cycle but the other tunnels will have one year off after two on. So far, as long as we're maintaining and/or improving soil health we've only seen great production from repeated use of tunnel space for tomatoes and other crops. Maybe down the road we'll feel motivated to add another tunnel or two so that we can rotate indoor crops better, but for now all seems well.

Upcoming this week we have our big strawberry planting. In case you missed it, we treat our strawberries as annuals and rotate the patch around the farm, terminating the planting after its done fruiting in late spring or early summer. We then plant seven thousand new, dormant, bare root 'tips' in raised beds for a harvest the following season. They've been kept at 28 degrees since last fall, hence their dormant state. Once they're put in the ground here, they quickly wake up, shoot up leaves to soak up the sun's rays, and even try to flower and fruit. We try to prune these off so they don't waste important energy on this task since we don't want them to fruit until next spring and would rather have them spend their resources establishing themselves with great root systems and prolific foliage. If all goes well we can look forward to a bountiful harvest next season!

Bring gloves, water, a hat, sturdy shoes, and a pad for kneeling (if necessary for you)!

We meet under the large red maple at the end of the barn by the pick up room.

Workshift Guidelines - Workshift Sign Up Instructions

The weather has suddenly changed to summer, and with it summer veggies are starting to arrive. Here are some tips on the new veggies we are receiving now:

Cucumbers - everyone knows how they like cucumbers, but check out this site for interesting ideas for salsa, quick pickling, salads you hadn't thought of before, and even sauteing. As with so many other things, cucumbers do not like to sit sealed up in a bag all wet so dry them off and place in a plastic bag, or place a towel in the bag with the cucs. They will keep well like this for at least a week.

Cabbage - check out the cabbages in the pick up room this week - the really interesting variety that I have only seen at Anchor Run is called Caraflex - it is smallish and has a pointy shape. The tight shape helps keep pests away, plus it tastes good! As with above, check out this site for prep ideas on how to enjoy it - you may be surprised by what you find. There are a couple of recipes that call for roasting the cabbage - when roasted so that it gets brown edges, it sweetens the cabbage to reveal an almost nutty flavor - this is probably how I like it best. Store in fridge in plastic and it will keep for awhile.

Beets - the beets won't have the leaves on them, for the same reason Swiss chard is currently on a pause - leaf miners badly damaged the leaves - but the roots are still delicious. They're more elongated this spring due to the extremely dry weather in May; their roots stretched down in search of water. Store in the fridge - they do keep for a long time, but the sooner you consume them, the tastier they will be. I like roasting them and making them into or adding them into salads.

Thank you to Julianna Giglio for sending me one of the ways that her family enjoyed their harvest. Julianna wrote:

"I made a version of the Asian slaw on the Anchor Run website, but with a few twists. Radishes, turnips, and kohlrabi all shredded in the food processor, chopped cilantro and garlic scapes, essentially the same dressing on the website, but 1/2 sugar, 1/2 maple syrup and the addition of lime juice. This was a topping for our spring squash/zucchini tacos with black beans and kale. It was quite delicious!"

This is what local, seasonal eating is all about - using recipes or methods as a guide and adapting to what ingredients you have on hand. Please share your ideas by emailing me at lindadansbury@comcast.net and please put Anchor Run in the subject line.

This week has been a weather roller coaster! From absolutely chilly to ring in the Summer Solstice to humidity so high everything stays wet. My eating reflects this.

Swiss chard - I pulled a container of minestrone soup from the freezer that I had prepared last fall with all the great veggies of late summer. I sauteed the chopped stems and added to pot, then chopped up leaves and added to soup a few minutes before eating it. The chopped stems added a nice fresh texture to the soup, as did the addition of dark greens right before eating.

Scapes, bok choy, chard, turnips, zucchini, peas - made a large stir fry using all these delicious ingredients. Served over brown rice. As a side note, I also used peppers that I had frozen last fall - I will likely bring this up later in the year, but peppers freeze beautifully.

Radishes, kohlrabi, turnips, peas, cucumber - I have been eating these raw as a snack and cut up and added to salads.

Radicchio, escarole, garlic scape - enjoyed the Radicchio and Endive with Miso Dressing I added to this site last week.

Please share how you enjoyed your harvest by emailing me at lindadansbury@comcast.net - your suggestions will help fellow members!