Greetings!

We hope everyone is enjoying these cooler temperatures and beautiful days. We sure are!

In this week's market bag:

• 1 3/4 lbs of mixed potatoes
• 1/2 lb "sweet olive" grape tomatoes
• 1 1/2 lbs. "sungold" and "gold nugget" cherry tomatoes
• 1/2 lb royal burgundy beans
• 1/2 lb cherokee pole beans
• 3 ears super sweet bicolor corn
• 1 acorn squash
• 1 shallot
• 1 bulb hardneck garlic
• "bright lights" swiss chard
• 2 "chioggia" salad beets
• "costata" zucchini
• rosemary
• dill
• basil
• thyme
• citrus thyme
• tarragon
• green onion

Business:

Folks received the first super sweet corn this week, which is very temperamental and difficult to grow organically. There will be some insect damage at the very top of the ear, but it should not affect the main part of the ear. What we do is simply cut the very top off before boiling and serving.

Subsequent corn plantings are coming in, and we're hopeful, but the drought makes their maturity questionable. Farmers out our way have already written off entire feed corn crops, silaging the stalks for the animals instead, and the sweet corn is suffering right along side. So, enjoy it now, and keep your fingers crossed for future harvests!

I've added a page at the newsblog for our newsletter archives, which some of you may have already discovered. You can now access past issues right online.

Tip:

This month's share bag includes three kinds of tomatoes. The sungolds and gold nuggets are delicious raw, popped into your mouth just like candy! The sweet olives are tasty raw, but our favorite way to have them here on the farm is roasted in a grill basket or sliced in half on pizza. Something about roasting them concentrates and releases the flavor, making them one of my favorites for this very reason. They also make excellent sun-dried tomatoes.

News:

Well, it's official: the US Drought Monitor has updated us to moderate drought status. But the heat has broken, and the temperatures are far more bearable for both the plants and the animals. (Not to mention the humans!) I see more tomatoes beginning to ripen, which hopefully means some slicing tomatoes in next week's share bag. The laying hens, too, seem to be inching back up in production, as the heat took a major toll on them. With any luck, we'll begin having extras shares again soon.

The grapes are ripening nicely, and it looks like we'll have seedless table grapes in the share bags next week along with some yellow squash. The peppers are still sluggish, which is incredibly frustrating. I really can't make any promises there, though I wish I could, and the eggplants have done nothing this year.

Happenings:

This week, I've begun listing the shares on the chalkboard both so folks can see and to double check that I don't forget anything. So, I'm enlisting everyone's help going through the list at pick up each week.

Also this week, everyone received a few slender yellow beans in their share bag. These are the beginnings of the Isar French fillet beans, a tender and delicate gourmet bean picked young and small.

We're continuing to irrigate once a week, getting new soaker hoses in place in both the tomatoes and melons, and continuing to water the beans and corn by hand. Perhaps everyone could resume raindancing again and hope for a wetter August!

Pitch In!

We're still collecting sheer curtains for row covers, so if you have any to donate, they're much appreciated

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 to all who've brought theirs in!

Happy Eating!

Danielle at Touch the Earth Farm