Week 4

View of the broccoli field

We have a couple of important announcements for next week. First of all, we will be open for the holiday Thursday, July 4th. However, our hours will shift to 11am-5pm for that day. The week of July 8th we will return to normal hours.

On Monday, July 1st, representatives from the Le Creuset store in Kittery, Maine will be in the shareroom to do a cooking demo and they will also have information about discounts on Le Creuset pots available to CSA members.

Also, we want to thank everyone who has sent in their full share payments for the season. Payment was due June 1st, and this year was the best year ever in terms of on-time payments! We are still waiting on a few outstanding balances, so if you are unsure whether or not you still owe money for your share, please check with one of the shopkeepers when you pick up your share to find out if you have a balance.

Once again, this past week was a bit wetter than we would have liked. With an additional 3 inches of rain, many of our already saturated fields flooded again for a couple of days. As all of the well-drained field space is already spoken for, we have hit a bit of a wall with transplanting. Because of the wet, currently we have no place to put the 3rd summer squash planting, gourds or the last of the winter squash (a few beds of Red Kuri squash). We've also had difficulty finding dry space to put our weekly greens and lettuce plantings. In order to make space as quickly as possible, we've been mowing in crops as soon as they are finished, but it takes time to work in the debris enough to make new beds.

Another consequence of the rain has been that the weeds have really taken off. When it is this wet, tractor cultivation and hoeing are not very effective at controlling weeds, as they re-root easily in the soaked soil. Wednesday we had a brief respite from the rain, and the fields dried out somewhat. We took full advantage and had all 3 cultivating tractors going at once while the rest of the crew hoed and hand-weeded our tomatoes, peppers and winter squash. It was a productive morning and there's no doubt we set back weed growth in those fields. However, Thursday's rain brought a new flush of tiny weeds and also helped some of those pesky weeds re-root. A farmer's work is definitely never done! Hopefully we'll have some sun this week and be able to continue attacking the lambsquarter, nutsedge and crabgrass!

What's in the share: Lettuce, Greens, Kale, Napa Cabbage, Kohlrabi, Fennel, Radishes, Hakurei Salad Turnips, PYO strawberries, PYO peas, PYO herbs, including cilantro and dill.
New this week: Carrots, broccoli, and garlic scapes.
With a lot of new and exciting items to harvest, we are taking a week off from harvesting beets, but don't worry- they will be back in Week 5!