Abbe Hills Farm CSA

Greetings shareholders,

This week, we have potatoes, sweet summer onions, beets, green beans, cucumbers, summer squash, basil, cilantro, kale, collards, kohlrabi, cabbage, garlic, and broccoli.  We had pretty perfect rain over the weekend (unlike about everybody else in Iowa) and things are growing very rapidly as a result.  We're doing our best to keep up and looking forward to a couple of days - at least - with not too much mud.  

The potatoes are gorgeous and are making me very happy.  (No so much for the workers who are spending a great deal of their time digging potatoes.)  A few of the sauce tomatoes have turned red, so I expect we will be picking the earliest tomatoes in about two weeks.  Bell peppers and chili peppers are getting fatter and might be ready by next week.  The onions are making about one-third of what we expected them to yield, likely due to the leaf diseases they suffered with all the rain.  Luckily, we planted too many, so we'll probably have plenty of onions anyway.

I haven't had time to hike out to look at the sweet corn, but I think we should have some in the next two weeks.  My dad - final authority on sweet corn maturity - will have to figure it out.  Unfortunately, I already know that there won't be the avalanche of sweet corn that I like to give you each summer about now.  With all the rain and mud in late May and most of June, I had a very tough time getting the sweet corn planted and the weeds cultivated.  But worse than that, the 150-or-so Canada geese that claim this farm as their birthplace and hang out here discovered the field and ate more than half of the seedling sweet corn plants.  I think we lost at least 1500, maybe up to 2000 dozen plants.  They also ate at least two acres of my field corn.  It has been awful!!!!  At $4 per dozen for sweet corn and about $2500 per acre in seed sales, it's been a pretty expensive experience.  I am looking for some serious goose hunters for fall, so please keep me in mind if you know any.  I'm not sure how I will solve the goose problem if hunting isn't successful, but I've got to think of something because they are WAAAAAY too much trouble when there are so many of them.

Many of you know that most of my eggs this summer are unexpectedly being needed by the Lincoln Cafe.  I'm not sure when I'll have eggs for you again, so in the meantime, here's another nearby source.  Carlena Minor also raises chickens and told me last week that she has eggs available now.  Her cell number is 558-7749. 

Many of you know that I'm not so great with growing carrots.  Every year I try, and most of the time I fail to get a decent crop.  They are just so unbelievably hard to get to germinate, and I don't spend the time agonizing over them that they require to make a good crop. For the first time in several years, I actually do have some carrots in the field right now - enough to give everybody about two carrots - maybe even three - sometime soon!  Yippee.  Another garden miracle.  I was feeling optimistic, so I planted a second crop in the hoophouse, which actually looks like it might make a few more carrots, and a third planting on July 2 in the small garden east of the shed, enough to give everybody a pound or two.  Please take a look at it when you come for your vegetables this week.  I want you to see just how pathetic they look after three and a half weeks of growth.  There are four rows.  If you put on your bifocals and get out the magnifying glass, you might be able to spot a few skinny baby carrots in there, and I think you'll have an idea of why field grown carrots in Iowa are SO hard to find.  Maybe they will make something for us for October.  We'll have to wait and see.

Local Harvest CSA in Solon will be butchering very well raised ducks this week.  If you would like to know more about the way they were raised, prices, and pick-up times, contact Danny Jutz at (507) 766-3671 or email him at j_danny21@hotmail.com .  Danny's ducks are much smarter and meatier than the silly running ducks that you see around here. 

Remember the open house and farm tour next Sunday, August 1.  Field corn workshop is at 2:00 (mostly for farmers, but anybody is welcome if you want to learn about improving heirloom corn).  Garden tour from 4:00 until 6:00.  One guest will be the Iowa State graduate student studying our pollinators this summer.  She'll explain her project and talk about pollinators and habitat.  I'll highlight the pest problems we've encountered this summer, and show some of the practices we use manage rainfall and runoff.  At 6:00, we'll serve a light dinner from the garden.  Everyone is welcome.  Please come and bring a neighbor.  Hopefully, it will be as nice as it is tonight.

I'm still selling raffle tickets for the Southeast Linn Community Center fundraiser.  I'd be happy to sell you some.

See you this week,

Laura