Greetings!

Welcome seasonal members, so glad to have you aboard.

To all our members, we not only welcome and encourage your feedback, as it helps us learn and improve, we depend upon it. Please let us know what's working and what's not.

In this week's market bag:

• red butterhead lettuce
• oakleaf lettuce
• red yugoslavian lettuce
• red salad bowl
• black seeded simpson lettuce
• French breakfast radishes
• English peas and snap peas
• Strawberries
• Chioggia beets
• horseradish greens
• lavender
• citrus thyme
• thyme
• rosemary
• tarragon
• dill
• green onion
• purslane

Business:

We will be shifting our Monday Open House hours to 11am-3pm in order to better meet our members' needs. We hope this will make pick up a bit easier on everyone and reduce the amount of time produce will sit around. Our goal is to get the freshest produce to your table as possible.

Each of you received in your market bag this week one complimentary "Evert-Fresh Green Bag" designed to keep produce fresh longer by absorbing the ethelyne gas emitted as produce matures. These bags use a natural mineral clay found in Japanese caves to help preserve fruits and vegetables longer, and they can be reused up to 8 times before losing their effectiveness. You can put these Evert-Fresh bags directly into your refrigerator crisper until you're ready to wash and use your produce.

Members are welcome to purchase these bags through Touch the Earth Farm for $1.00 each, sized according to produce portion, and we will pre-bag your loose fruits and vegetables for you each week. Simply return them washed along with your market bag, and we'll fill them again. For those interested in ordering them for home use: Evert Fresh Bags

Once again, duck and chicken will soon be available. Please reserve your birds now to ensure availability, as we have only limited numbers of each, and they're going fast. CSA members have priority reservations through the last week of June, at which time we'll begin taking reservations from outside our CSA community. Email for pricing and availability.

News:

Our big news this month is that we've finally been able to locate a local source for organic feed, working in conjunction with a local feed mill who is willing to truck it in for us from Nature's Best in Pennsylvania. We're excited to be switching over to organic feeds and pleased to be offering our animals and our customers the best possible whole foods.

Of course, also news: the effects of low rainfall are manifesting, as are the temperature extremes we've experienced this spring growing season. Peas and spinach were late to mature and are now bolting due to the hot temperatures—meaning they're going to seed rather than continuing to produce for us. So enjoy this week's peas! Several varieties of beans are growing, so it won't be long until they appear.

The first potato crops were decimated by the early spring cold, and we've salvaged what seed potatoes we could from that first planting to sow again now in hopes that we'll have a stronger yield with warmer soils. The good news is that later potato plantings are thriving and pest pressure is particularly low down in the new market garden, boding well for the rotation plan.

Happenings:

Over the past two weeks, we've added to our menagerie, welcoming three Navajo-Churro ewe lambs and two male Tamworth pigs.

Navajo-Churros are America's oldest domesticated farm animal, descending from Iberian sheep, though they were nearly wiped out due to American anti-Indian policies. These sheep are all-around easy keepers, good for meat, wool, and milk, and known for their easy lambing—all important considerations for a farmstead like ours. Navajo-Churro is listed on Slow Food USA's Ark of Taste, and we look forward to raising them here at Touch the Earth.

Our male Tamworths will be integrated into the farm along with Maya as plows and fertilizers for our market garden. One of the males will stay on as our boar while one will be butchered this fall.

Also arriving last week was our last batch of chicks and geese until fall, when we will get another round of broilers. A much smaller order, this group will help round out our breeding program of heritage chickens and geese. We'll be adding Buckeye chickens to our heritage breeding program, also listed along with the Delawares and Narragansett turkeys on Slow Food USA's Ark of Taste list.

Pitch In!

Keep on raindancing folks!

Don't forget, we recycle used pulp egg cartons, so please return them rather than throwing them away. While Maryland law doesn't allow us to reuse egg cartons for our eggs, we can use them for making homemade paper.

Thanks!

Danielle at Touch the Earth Farm