After a full weekend event like the Permaculture Convergence, there is an odd thing that happens on a Monday morning. On the one hand, you’re exhausted from the constant engagement required for learning new skills and information, meeting people, hearing their stories, and telling your own. On the other hand, you’re completely energized and ready to apply some of the things you’ve learned to your daily work. This week seemed to fly by, and didn’t deviate too drastically from the established patterns of cultivation, harvest, washing and packing. Our brassicas, summer squash, cucumbers, and melons have responded very quickly to last week’s “crop mob” and I think we’ll be seeing our first zucchini very soon. Our greenhouse tomatoes have been heavy with green fruit for weeks, teasing us. Our first cherry tomatoes are so close we can almost taste them, but we’re still holding out for that first glint of red. Our lettuce, on the old hand, has just exploded all at once. We had far more lettuce this week that we could reasonably give our CSA members, so we sold some to a few restaurants, went to our usual markets, and I even went to a brand new market this week in an attempt to get some of these greens off our hands. Princeton is the closest town to the farm, and while its flea market has been running for forty years now, this is the first year that they’ve had a separate farmers market. It is still small and still getting established, but I think if we establish a strong presence over the rest of the season it can be a great market for us. It fits well in our established harvest schedule, Wednesday being the same day we deliver our boxes every week. Especially once we start getting into the hot and heavy summer crops that you really have to pick every day, I think it will be a great outlet for produce that won’t quite make it to the weekend markets. I’m looking forward to building our most local customer base!
Thinking about: precision, patience, priorities
Eating: cripsy, crunchy, curly, etc. salads, fried cheese curds in the park (Happy 4th!), lots of sandwich and salad combos
Reading: Roberto Bolano’s 2666, The Fedco Seed Catalog, Dave Jacke & Eric Toensmeier’s Edible Forest Gardens, Ron L Engeland’s Growing Great Garlic
