Farm Happenings

What a jolly success the garden tour was on Saturday. There were guests from Lowville to Dickinson Center to Massena, including several new transplants to the region. In the fields we are growing out a variety of lettuce that was brought from France to the Lewis County area in the 1830s. Virkler lettuce had been cultivated in northern New York for 150+ years and then the thread was lost with the passing of an older generation. In 2021, Bob tracked down some of the seed from a national seed exchange. If all goes well, we’ll be able to gift it back to the descendants of the original Mennonite settlers of Lewis County.

In unfortunate news, our main planting of snow peas was actually impure seed. As a result there’s snow peas and shelling peas intermingled in the same bed. We hadn’t planned on planting any shellers this year, but the mixing makes makes it difficult to harvest since they mature at different times and the snow pea pod is edible while the shelling pea pod is inedible. This area is no longer marked for harvest. We are contacting the seed company to let them know about the bad lot of seed, and we apologize to the shareholders if you experienced any confusion in the fields.

This is the last week for the summer broccoli heads. There’s more of that tasty crop in store, when the broccoli side shoots start to deveop, we will add them to the board as a you pick item. In addition, another round of broccoli will be transplanted for fall harvest.

Tips for Success

• Wash stand etiquette
  • While most items won’t be harmed, when using the hose in the wash stand to clean off produce, be mindful not to spray in the direction of the sign-in sheets. The papers have gotten soaked a couple times recently!
  • When finishing washing produce, clean off table by picking up any debris such as bits of greenery and putting in the white food waste bucket.

Crops Available

This list and availability are subject to change, check the share whiteboard at the start of every visit. If you are unsure about how to harvest: ask us! In person, via text or email.
Cell phone numbers, Flip: 315-854-5399 and Bob 315-854-5395.
*New this week

• Beets
  

  There’s a healthy patch of autumn beauty sunflowers in the cutting garden. This is a branching type, which means that as long as we keep cutting them, we’ll have harvest over a longer window of time than the single stem varieties.

• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Celery stalks
• Cutting flowers
• Fresh garlic
• Kale, curly or dinosaur
• Lettuce greens
• Mixed salad greens*
• Rainbow chard
• Scallions
• Spinach
• Summer squash*
• Purple tatsoi
• Zucchini*

Culinary and Medicinal Herbs

• Basil
  

  We harvest the zucchini and summer squash every other day and put it in the shareholder fridge.

• Bee balm
• Borage (edible flowers)
• Calendula
• Cilantro
• Dill
• Fennel fronds
• Lavender*
• Lemon balm
• Lime basil
• Mint
• Oregano
• Rosemary
• Sage
• Thyme
• Tulsi holy basil
• Winter savory
• Yarrow

Summer sunset,
-Flip & Bob