Expert weeders Jane, Jordan & Angelica, using stirrup hoes to get the third planting of chard and kale ready for fall harvests.

We hope that all those of you who wanted greens and berries have your freezers and pantries well stocked by now! It has been a very busy week at the farm, what with all the berry and greens pickups on top of everything else. It’s been great to finally meet some of you in person.

The cucumbers have finally come fully on, and the onions are sizing up enough to pull. Since the first planting of zucchini was permanently stunted by the rain and cool temps, it’s good to see the second planting responding so well to these current days of sun and heat.

The late blight is officially on the tomatoes, and though we hope to slow the spread of the disease with the continued spraying of copper, we know in reality it will probably be at best a couple of weeks until the tomato plants have to get pulled out of the ground. So in the meantime we’re giving CSA members every last little ripe tomato we can grow, and eventually you might get to have green tomatoes (fried green tomatoes, anyone?) in your share. Thanks to so many of you for your kind words of support after reading last week’s letter. We are so very appreciative of you all.

The New York Times had a great op-ed about the blight in last weekend’s paper, titled ‘You Say Tomato, I say Agricultural Disaster.’ You can find it here: http://tinyurl.com/nytimestomato.

One of our wonderful apprentices this season, Jane, leaves this week to return home to Oregon. A new apprentice, Carolyn, will arrive on Sunday, and Angelica and Jordan continue to work hard with us at the farm. Bill and I talked this week about how, without such great apprentices and members, this would have been a much tougher season to get through. So yet another reason to feel grateful!

Have a great week,
Reba and the HCF crew

Week 10 veggies:  Potatoes, Tomatoes, Cucumber, Zucchini and/or Zephyr Squash, Fresh Onions, Green Beans,  Broccoli, Mesclun Mix

 This week’s recipes:  Eli’s favorite Zucchini and Apple Muffins, Green Beans with walnut and shaved Parmesan in lemon dressing, Oven roasted cherry tomato and broccoli pasta