Abbe Hills Farm CSA

Greetings shareholders,

This week, we'll have potatoes, onions, fresh garlic, sweet corn, summer squash, cucumbers, cabbage, kale and collards, basil, cilantro, and dill.  We're digging potatoes as fast as we can right now, trying to get as much done as possible before my workers go back to college.  This week, we have Red Norland, Dark Red Norland, Yukon Gold, and Keuka Gold types.  They are all really good as far as I can tell.  Maybe you'll have one you really like.

I still have a few Ailsa Craig onions left.  They are the light yellow, teardrop shaped ones that are so mild and sweet.  Because they are so sweet, they can't be stored.  Use them as fast as you can and keep them in the frig.  We'll have some combination of white, purple, and Ailsa Craigs for you this week.  We've still got about four more racks of onions to pull and cure, plus many many rows of garlic still in the ground.  These two crops should have been harvested in mid-July, but it was so dry and the ground was so hard, we couldn't dig them.  Then it rained and got hot.  The onions are holding up well, but the garlic is a mess.  When we dig it, it falls out of its skin and we end up with a handful of peeled cloves.  I think they are fine, just not in the package we usually expect of garlic.  Since we have to save the very best garlic for seed for next year's crop, I'm going to encourage you to take the peeled cloves this week.  You can keep them in the frig in a sealed container for quite a while, or roast them in oil and keep longer in the frig in a jar with the oil.  Roasted garlic is very mild and sweet, kind of buttery in texture.  I like it much better than raw garlic.

The sweet corn on Monday (and I hope still fit to eat on Thursday) will be Bodacious.  Small ears, but very sweet.  The cooler weather is going to slow down the maturing of the corn, and help the cucumbers, squash, eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes hang on to their fruits better.  All those things should become more abundant, especially if we can get some rain.  We're quite dry again.  Although we had more than 7 inches two weeks ago, it's not enough to keep the top part of the soil, where the vegetable roots are, adequately moist.  We need about 1 inch per week to keep me happy and keep my griping about the weather to a minimum.  A little rain would also get the fall crops to germinate so they can be fully mature before the frost gets here in 54 days.

This is the last week for cabbage until October, if the new seeding has enough time to make heads by then. 

I have plenty of raffle tickets for the Southeast Linn Community Center raffle on August 13 at Sauerkraut Days.  I'd sure like to sell them to you. 

I have a challenge and I know one of you is going to be able to step up to it.  I need 5-gallon buckets. The buckets I have are old and they are falling apart faster than I can scavenge replacements.  I know that somewhere around here, some food manufacturer is throwing them away.  So I want to help them turn a liability into an asset.   The buckets need to have the metal handles if possible (we break the plastic handles pretty fast), be tall enough to hold 5 gallons, be food-safe, and be free.  They don't need lids.  If you can get them for me,  I need 50.  If they have that many, then I'll take 100 and give half of them to Local Harvest CSA.  We harvest potatoes and sweet corn together, both crops that require a lot of buckets, and we could really do better if we had some better ones than those we use now.  Go for it - all you recycling maniacs. 

See you this week,

Laura