Memorial Day Weekend

It is the un-official summer kick-off weekend. School is out and neighborhood pools are opening. Time to clean off that grill and get together with friends and family. Lots of good food available at this time of year for a wonderful holiday meal.

Farm
John is wiring the Pavilion so that Doe Run can have electricity for any function on the farm. John and Judy are planning on having a workshop or starting farm tours from the Pavilion this fall. Judy will be driving the tractor to lift John up (in the platform on the tractor) so that he can reach his work areas. John was an Electrical Engineer before becoming Farmer John—he will do this job very well!

Today John and Judy picked up more work tables for the packing shed as they were running out of counter space for packing all our CSA boxes for delivery. The finishing touches have been put on the two new walk in coolers in the packing shed. They are great!

This week John and Judy will be cleaning out two of the high tunnels and planting crops in there that will tolerate summer's heat. John will be installing the new sand filter for the pump. That should allow the water they irrigate with to flow more freely and give them one less problem to contend with. It was an expensive fix (filter) but, should be worth it in the long run.

Doe Run has some gorgeous Savoy cabbage that will be showing up in CSA boxes soon, and Judy thinks it is the prettiest she’s ever seen! The summer squash and zucchini are looking wonderful. The chard, lettuce and broccoli are all doing very well too. All those yummy vegetables will be showing up in CSA boxes over the next few weeks, and before you know it, those luscious tomatoes will be here. I can't wait.

Unfortunately, it seems this may be a short season for strawberries. Doe Run has had some of the best strawberries this season, but with this heat, they’re not sure how much longer they will be around. After talking with other farmers in the area, the consensus is that they will be short lived. Judy says not to worry though, blackberries and blueberries are coming and we can look forward to eating them! When you eat what's in season, there's always something delicious just around the bend………

Recipe

Creamy Sweet Slaw
1 large cabbage, shredded
4 celery ribs, chopped
1 small green bell pepper, finely chopped
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup white vinegar
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 t salt
1/2 t black pepper

Combine vegetables in a large bowl. Stir together sugar and next 5 ingredients; spoon over cabbage mixture, tossing to coat.

Farm Happenings

It's been awhile since I have made a contribution to the blog, so I will try to catch you up on things going on here at the farm!

We have been busily planting more of just about everything, so far so good for our plantings, though we are a bit behind schedule, not much behind so far anyway. That can change though as plans often do around here. On any given day, what you have planned may have to be put aside for something more pressing.

I have just gotten off the tractor a few minutes ago. I drove while Barry and Susan, one of our helpers this summer, planted tomatoes and cucumbers. Boy is it hot out there today. We tried to do the planting fairly early, but it got hot pretty fast today! I had several run-ins with sweat bee's and wasps which is all you need while trying to drive down the raised beds in a straight line.

It looks as if we may have a pop up shower which really we could use, but not until we have a couple hundred heads of lettuce and that many bunches of turnips harvested and put in the chiller.

Overall things in the fields look pretty good right now, though we are fighting to stay ahead of our nemesis,the weeds. They are always a challenge on an Organic farm, we can't just go out and buy something to spray on them to kill them off. Some we can pull, hoe or weedeat, some we have to just live with.

John has been busy trying to stay ahead of the cabbage moths, that lay their eggs on cabbage, choi, broccoli and the like, and which in turn become cabbage worms. They flit around in the field like they own the place:) You have to spray them with BT often to keep them in check. If it rains after you've sprayed you have to come back and do it again, they are really persistent!

We have been having a time with our irrigation pump filter that cleanses the water from our irrigation pond. The filter keeps clogging up on us which has caused us problems. John informed me this morning that he has found a solution by purchasing a sand filter for the pump which should take care of the problem. Unfortunately that filter costs about $1500. Since it is heavy, I most likely will have to drive to Ky. to pick it up from the Supplier. What a way to start off a new week.

Our CSA Shares for this season are sold out and we are getting into the new routine with our new delivery locations. Please continue to check out our website often as we try to keep it pretty well up to date. We are adding new Recipes to our Recipe Archive most every week now for your use and enjoyment.

Time to run to the Greenhouse and give the plants in there a drink of water!

With Memorial Day upon us this week, we wish all of you a wonderful holiday weekend and we wish you safe travels if you are going to be away from home this weekend! Judy