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Letter from Farmer John: September 25th, 2007

Hello Everyone,

We continue to experience dry conditions, with no substantial rain now for over 3 weeks. We are moving the sprinklers around constantly to help germinate newly planted seeds and keep other crops growing rapidly.

I expect to sow the last few beds of direct seeded crops this week- arugula, salad turnips and some oriental mustard greens. We will also be transplanting another batch of lettuce plants this week, which will be ready for harvest in November. I will finally be done with planting for this year!

Tomatoes have become rather scarce at the moment, but a late planting of plum tomatoes and some heirlooms are getting close to ripening. Hopefully we can begin harvesting these by next week, and with some luck from the weather (no frosts) will continue to have tomatoes well into October.

We again have beets with tops, there will be a choice of white, candy cane, or an elongated red type-aptly named Cylindro. The beet greens are quite nutritious and can be steamed, sautéed or used in soup. We also have edamame soybeans this week. These Japanese treats are prepared by boiling in the pods and then slipping the seeds out with your teeth! We will also be offering celery or fennel as a choice this week. This will be repeated again next week, so you will have a chance to get both.

This week’s share will be: Lettuce, yellow onions, potatoes, sweet corn (conventional), peppers, eggplant, edamame soybeans, beets, celery or fennel, melons, choice of an herb, and maybe tomatoes.

Enjoy!

Farmer John

Farm News \ Farm News \ weekly update

Letter from Farmer John: September 18, 2007

Hi Everyone,

Well fall is in the air, with some very cool nights this past week, but for now we will continue to enjoy summer vegetables. Peppers have begun to ripen abundantly to beautiful shades of red, orange and yellow. We still have lots of melons and watermelons.

The edamame soybeans are almost ready, but will need one more week for all the pods to finish filling out. These can be quite time consuming to harvest and so we need to wait until all of the pods on the bush are mature and can be harvested at one time. I am also waiting on a planting of lima beans to begin producing.

The Rattlesnake beans have slowed down considerably, probably due to the dry conditions for the past 3 weeks. It’s uncertain whether we can harvest enough to put in this week’s share. Cucumbers are also in short supply.

The fall broccoli and cabbage plants are growing beautifully and should be ready to begin harvesting in 4 or 5 weeks. As I mentioned previously we are out of lettuce for the moment, but I am buying some from another local organic farm to put in the shares this week.

This week’s share will be: Lettuce, Swiss chard, garlic, potatoes, melons, peppers, eggplant, carrots, tomatoes and choice of an herb.

Enjoy! Farmer John

Farm News \ Farm News \ weekly update

Letter from Farmer John: September 11, 2007

Hi Everyone,

Summer is in it’s final weeks, but the summertime veggies continue to be abundant. While most of my tomato plants have been stricken with early blight, I have a late planting that should start to produce in the next few weeks. I also have second plantings of zucchini, cucumbers, and beans which if the weather stays warm will start to produce in early October.

This past week I was finally able to seed many cool weather crops such as spinach, radishes, turnips, broccoli raab and various other greens. Some of these will be ready for harvest in just a few weeks, while others will come in during October and November.

We’ve had a good run with the lettuce, with some in every share thus far this season, but we’re approaching a gap in my lettuce production. This week we will be cutting some romaine lettuce for bunching, that was direct seeded for salad mix. After this there may be a few weeks without lettuce in the shares. Melons continue to ripen abundantly, and the warm weather has insured their sweetness. There will be a choice of cantaloupe, honey dew, or watermelon, this week.

The share for this week will be: Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, red onions, melons, cucumbers, bu