Back in June a mama cat and her two kittens moved into the second floor of the barn — Maggie, the mama, stuck around until the kittens were weaned, and we haven’t seen her since. But the two babies – named Tulsi and Spicy – have persevered, playing in the hay bales and peering over the edge of the second floor to tilt their huge ears in our direction. Tulsi is a little black cat and Spicy – the hissy-er of the two – is grey and white, and we hope that the huge ears mean that they’ll both be expert mousers. Between the mice and the voles, they have their work cut out for them. On the garlic harvest day last Friday they were definitely curious about the unusual activity as we traipsed up and down from the third floor of the barn, hanging thousands of garlic bulbs to dry.

Thank you to our CSA member extraordinaire, Sam Clark, who pulled 90% of the 2020 garlic from the ground! The rest of us shuttled the bulbs from the field, graded them, bundled them, and hauled –  via a pallet on a pulley –  over forty loads of 150 bulbs at a time up to the third floor of the barn to be hung to cure. The garlic bulbs are small this year, but they’re still delicious, and we’ve put aside the largest ones to plant in the fall. We had gotten a bit casual and started planting cloves of every size, and the result after about three years is much smaller bulbs. Now it’s time to start being a bit more careful how we plant and we’ll work back up to the larger harvests of years past.

We mostly lucked out with the wind in last week’s storm, but we also missed out on getting any rain. This is one of the driest years we remember farming through, and many of the crops are really struggling. We irrigate as much as possible, mulch the crops wherever we can to keep them from drying out, but day after day of beautiful sunny skies is wreaking havoc in the fields. We hope you are enjoying the early August crops we’re still able to bring, but know that the losses in the field weigh heavy on us, and we wish we could be bringing you more. With a few solid days of rain so many of these crops could catch up, but with no rain on the horizon, we continue to fret.

This is the first week of blueberry deliveries – if you are one of the lucky ones on the list, you will receive an email the morning of your berry pickup. The cost is $42 per box, and you can bring cash or check (made out to HCF) or venmo (@Reba-Richardson) payment.

Have a great week, we hope you all get blueberry pie or smoothies or muffins some time soon, and take care!

Reba and the HCF crew

CSA Vegetables Week Nine (of 22): Lettuce Mix, Chard or Kale, Parsley or Cilantro, Basil, Green Pepper, Zucchini/Zephyr/Patty Pan Squash, Cucumbers, Onion, Cherry Tomatoes, Slicing Tomato, Garlic, (mildly) Hot Pepper

Week 9 Add-ons: Cheese, Mushrooms, Fiore, Milk, Bread, Eggs, Tofu, Yogurt, Ferments, Flower, Blueberries

This week’s recipes: Summer Panzanella, Fried Rice with Tomatoes, Summer Squash and Parmesan, Sweet Basil Pesto Tapenade