Abbe Hills Farm CSA

Greetings shareholders,

This week, we'll have onions, leeks, tomatoes, broccoli, green beans, squash and zucchinis, cucumbers, green bell peppers, eggplant, cabbage, kale, chard, and herbs.  There will also be sweet corn, but probably fewer than a dozen per share.  The Monday people will get potatoes, but we probably won't have any for Thursday shareholders this week.

Welcome to the new shareholders who are joining Abbe Hills Garden CSA this week.  Be sure to introduce yourselves to me.  For you old timers, this is the 11th week of our summer season, halfway though.   Wow, it happens so fast.

The onions I am sharing with you now are a sweet variety called "Ailsa Craig".  Please eat them as fast as you can.  They are cured, so you can store them outside of the refrigerator, but they are not good keepers.  They contain so much sugar that they start to rot fairly quickly, unlike the storage onions we will have late in the fall that can be stored almost until spring.  The Ailsa Craigs and the next ones, Super Star, are sweet and mild and are meant to be used in summer.  I'll set out my "Onions, Onions, Onions" cookbook to give you some ideas about how to use them up.

There are actual mushrooms growing under the tomato plants today.  Not a good thing.   I harvested about 60 pounds of tomatoes this afternoon, the first harvest of the year, from the first planting of 178 tomato plants, which are about 1/3 slicers and 2/3 sauce types, planted on June 1.  The plants are very sick with every kind of fungus and bacterial disease, the result of too much rain and cool, and have set relatively little fruit on most varieties.  The second planting, 275 plants on June 16, has much healthier foliage and is just now setting its fruit.  It includes the small saladette tomatoes, slicers, and about 100 sauce type plants.  Let's hope for some warm and dry weather in the next 6 weeks to help the later tomatoes keep healthy and make lots of tasty fruit.  And to get rid of those ridiculous mushrooms.

A new planting of green beans is just now ready to pick.  They are gorgeous, and we'll pick them as fast as we can for you.  At least you can pick green beans in the mud!

You'll notice that potatoes are going to be a problem this week.  And, maybe next week, too. It's not like we don't have them.  There are LOADS of them in the field.  We usually dig potatoes one or two days every week this time of year, always digging a few more than we will need so we can get all of them out of the field before fall.  (Actually, before my workers all go back to college, but we've kind of already missed that deadline!)  But, we can't dig them in the mud.  And we can't seem to get rid of the mud.  We had 1.5" rain on Aug 7, .6" on Aug 9, .5" on Aug 10, .6" on Aug 13, and 1.2" so far today.  As soon as we get 5 days in a row without rain, we'll dig like mad.  You're all invited to join us!  But, until those dry days come, we can't dig them because we can't see them.  We tried on Friday of last week, and everything just looks like mud.  So, we'll have potatoes on Monday until we run out, but no more after that until we get a break in the weather. 

A couple of instructions for the new people and reminders for the old: Remember that we have a 1-way street around the buildings on Mondays and Thursdays. Come in the farm drive and go out the house drive.  Please park as far away as you can; the best place is on the right side of the house driveway.  When you park on both sides of the drive as it passes through the farm behind the shed, it gets to be a pretty skinny slot through which to slip.  Drive out a little more and walk a little farther.  You'll feel better and I won't worry about anybody getting sideswiped.  If you can't walk that far, you can park in the shade in front of the open-front shed (and I promise I won't hassle you as long as I see you limp!)  Also, please remember - no pets.  I've seen the calmest, most disinterested, most unathletic dog you can imagine squish though a 1/4 open car window to take off after a kitty. 

We're open from 4:30 until 7:00 on pickup nights.  If you've got any questions about how the CSA operates, check out the website at http://www.abbehills.com/faqs/index.htm, or zap me a note.

Looking forward to seeing you this week,

Laura