*The propagation house from above, loaded with plants, after the old plastic is removed, before we pull the new plastic over the entire structure with the new extension added, photo by Adam Ford*

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have yellow onions, carrots, red potatoes, yellow potatoes, fingerling potatoes, baby spinach, cooking spinach, salad mix, scallions, green curly kale, baby kale mix, and pea shoots.

We are in between a few plantings this week, so there are a few less items to choose from….next week we will have several more varieties of veggies to choose from, such as radishes, baby arugula, and baby bok choi.

Salad mix for this week: We will have the mesclun mix and baby lettuce mix you are used to, but we may run out of one or the other. If you are ordering with the form for delivery, and you prefer one over the other, just select the number you want for “salad mix”, and then in the comments, let us know your preference of mesclun mix versus baby mix. (If you don’t indicate a preference, we will pack whatever we have most available after harvest.)

“Baby spinach” and “cooking spinach”: This week we are harvesting brand new baby spinach plantings that were planted this spring. They are smaller leaves, excellent for tender salads. The “cooking spinach” is the same spinach you have been enjoying for the past few months… these overwintered plants are producing larger (but still tender) leaves, so starting this week, we will be harvesting them a bit bigger and packing heavier bags of the “cooking” spinach. (For clarity, I still eat this raw as well as cooked, but they aren’t the instagram-able little leaves you would decorate with goat cheese, candied nuts, and slivers of onions.)

If you are coming to the farm to pick out your veggies from the display cooler, you don’t need to use the order form below.

CSA Bag Delivery Order Form

Fill out the delivery form by noon on Tuesdays.

CSA pickup and delivery days and times

*baby beet transplanted in the tunnel to be ready in a few weeks, photo by Adam Ford*

Summer CSA Signup

Thanks to everyone who signed up for the summer CSA. If you haven’t yet, and you are planning on it, you can sign up here.

Summer CSA Details

Farm News

(Optional bonus reading)

The biggest project that took our attention this week was completing the expansion of the propagation house and then reskinning it. Tunnel plastic needs to be replaced every 4 years, so we saved the project of expanding our space in the prop house for when that plastic needed to be replaced. The steps of this project are roughly: sitework for the expanded zone, pound in the ground posts, put up bows, attach all the cross ties and purlins, remove, replace, and extend the baseboards and hipboards, remove the old plastic, take down the endwall on the side we are expanding, smooth out new ground, cover that new space with landscape fabric, move all the new greenhouse tables in, put up a new endwall at the end of the expansion, put new plastic on each endwall, pull two layers of new plastic over the whole structure, fasten the plastic everywhere, reinstall the back door, add ground augers on the extension, drink beer, take a hot bath, go to bed early. (Our kids didn’t get the memo on the whole “going to bed early” part, though.)

It’s not the perfect time of year to change the plastic on a propagation house, because it’s loaded with the whole season’s tender, little baby plants. So Ryan had to pick a two-day window when the overnight lows would be warm enough to have the structure uncovered, followed by a morning with minimal wind predicted. Even the smallest bit of wind, can be game over for pulling large pieces of plastic over these structures. One year, when we were skinning one of the high tunnels, the wind was originally projected to be minimal, but as issues kept arising with the project that morning, and the actual plastic pulling get kept getting delayed, the wind picked up enough that during the plastic pulling part, a gust came up that actually lifted several of us off the ground, and we had to let go, and try again another day. So that experience has us be exceptionally precise with what day we choose to tackle this type of project.

This event went well with all the variables and details that had to be juggled for it to be a success. Wednesday is one of the busiest days on the farm with so many deliveries going out all over the place, with more harvest and managing CSA pickup at the barn, but the ideal weather for this project landed on a Wednesday, so Molly expertly held down all the harvest and order packing details while Ryan and the team pulled off the expansion and reskinning project.

But doing a “small” project like this has us marvel at what feels like the impossible years of all the bigger projects we managed to start (then move and restart) a farm. Just this 20-foot prop house extension project totally wiped us… maybe it’s because we aren’t 25 anymore, maybe it’s because we have a 2 1/2 and 4 year old, maybe it’s because it’s tiring enough to just run a veggie farm in the spring, but wow, it makes us wish we could borrow our younger selves when we have to tackle infrastructure projects!

Here is a link directly to our friend Adam’s website, where he made a little video of some footage from the day we were working on the prop house project.

The team also potted up tons of tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, tomatillos, and ground cherries, transplanted more tomatoes into the tunnels. This week we will put so many long season veggies in the ground outside.

Hope everyone has a great week!

-Kara, Ryan, Cindy, Sam, Molly, Taylor, Katie, Grace, and Morgan

There is a lot going on in this picture…. the 10 small black rectangles towards the bottom center of the picture are the new greenhouse tables the team built, waiting to go in the extended area. The prop house is uncovered and the endwall is being r… — There is a lot going on in this picture…. the 10 small black rectangles towards the bottom center of the picture are the new greenhouse tables the team built, waiting to go in the extended area. The prop house is uncovered and the endwall is being rebuilt in preparation for the new plastic. On the other side of the hedgerow to the right of the prop house is what we call “implement land,” where we line up all the tractor implements and large tools to be able to easily back up and hitch up whatever we need. And I enjoy seeing all the lines in the grass indicating the natural traffic patterns around this place, photo by Adam Ford

Weekly Recipe

Molly has been busy uploading years of older recipes to the new recipe index on the website site so that you can easily search and browse all the ones that we haves shared in the past. Eventually all the historical recipes will be there. Below is the button for this week’s featured recipe for a maple mustard tahini salad dressing to use on any fresh salad you arrange with your veggies.

Get The Recipe