Looks like there will more choice than ever in the Week 4 CSA share. Thank you mother nature! Here's what we think will be on offer this week: Lettuce; endive; scallions; carrots; herbs; chard or kale;  salad turnips, kohlrabi or beets.

Our carrots are a tiny early season variety called "Mokum". Endive, the curly variety we grow, is a chicory - a bitter green best served with a strong cheese or baked or cooked. I had a pizza last week that was topped with endive and parmesean and mozzerella. It was sooooo good!

Here's a quick plug for a community farm recipe wiki that I've been supporting for a number  of years. The Shared Harvest Recipe Wiki is sponsored by the Newton Community Farm. CSA shareholders from many CSA farms in eastern Massachusetts can share recipes using this site. I love it for a number of reasons.

>It's a collaborative effort, tapping the enthusiasm and resources of shareholders in our farming community.

>It offers a larger experience of community than is available on a single CSA farm. There is a strong and supportive CSA farming community in this part of the state. The Shared Harvest Recipe Wiki offers our shareholders the possibility of community across the farm fences!

 >It provides CSA farmers relief from the work of searching out recipes each week. (Yes, many of us love to cook, but really, we'd rather be farming this time of year!)

So much food! I had hoped to sell 200 CSA shares this year. To date, eighty CSA shares have been sold. A late start and limited time for marketing CSA shares has left us with a lot of produce and a significant revenue deficit. To generate more revenue, I plan to sell Late Summer CSA Shares. These shares run from the first week in August until the last week in October and cost $300 for TTOR members, $350 for nonTTOR members. No, I'm not trying to sell you another CSA share! The Late Summer CSA is simply an abbreviated full-season CSA. If you know folks who missed the CSA boat so far this season, please let them know about this opportunity. Information about it will be posted to our web site and the blog soon.

While I am searching for other markets and ways to meet our revenue goals, I am loath to waste good food. We've begun harvesting produce for donation. The Open Door Food Pantry comes to the farm once a week to pick up produce harvested specifically for their food pantry, mobile markets and food programs. I've chosen to work with them because they have the capacity to use and distribute all the produce we can supply. Their ability to provide boxes for the produce and to come directly to the farm greatly reduces the cost to the farm of these donations. To date, we've donated over $1,300 of top-quality, just-harvested, organically-grown produce to the Open Door Food Pantry. If you would like more details about our produce donations, let me know. 

CSA Community Gathering; Help Needed On Saturday, July 9, come to Moraine Farm at 9:00 AM to meet your farmers and to lend a helpful hand.  Park in the CSA parking lot and join us at the picnic tables for some conversation. We'll get busy on various projects by 9:30 and stop for lunch at 12:00.

There are a number of projects needing to be tackled this season. If you have any of the skills listed below, and are willing to share them with us, give me a call. We have all the equipment that's needed, we're just short on time! Do you know how to:

*Drive a tractor?  I'd like to disk about 8 acres of winter rye and plant some of it to buckwheat now and peas and oats in early fall

*Use a hammer and saw? We need a few more benches and tables built for our CSA distribution area. We'd love a big compost bin, perhaps something built out of the pallets we've been collecting.

*Paint?  The end walls of our greenhouse really need to be painted or stained - it will help to preserve the wood

*Bait an electric deer fence? I'm looking for volunteers to help us keep our deer fences baited with peanut butter. As the demands of the farming season increase, it becomes more and more difficult to find time for this very important task. This involves walking the perimeter of the fence with a jar of peanut butter and a roll of aluminum foil.

*Weed wack? We use a string trimmer under the deer fence. This is a task that needs to be done weekly July through early September.

*Move small rocks? We've still got a boat load of rocks to move from our fields. The tire tracks between rows of eggplant and peppers are littered with rocks that make it difficult to walk safely.

*Move big rocks? We've got at least two big ones that need to be dug out of the field.

Lastly, we're looking for donations to help us with our work. Let me know if you have any of these items and would like to donate them to the farm.

*used back packs (for carrying tomato twine while we tie tomatoes)

*used bikes (2 or 3) for getting around the farm

*five gallon, food grade buckets (great for harvesting tomatoes)

*old single-wheel wheelbarrows with or without the bin

That's all the news I've got for now. See you at the farm!

Gretta