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~ In the Box ~
Week 12 ~ Monday, July 2
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~ A la Carte ~
Our a la carte store is well stocked with sunflower oil, eggs, maple syrup, honey, and our own salsas, preserves, soups, and more. Log in with your email and password to see what's being offered for delivery with your CSA. We'll update it as needed, so check back often.
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~ Recipes ~
The sugar snap peas will likely be a one-time treat so snack on 'em super-fresh and raw or blanch them minimally for this cooling and simple Peas with Mint dish, served hot or cold. And be sure to check our website for more recipes.
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Questions?
Robin (in Chicago)
708-370-8017
or
Chris (farmer/owner)
608-712-1585
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Check out our
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We're in the middle of what looks like is going to be the third hottest stretch of weather in southern Wisconsin since records have been kept--about 125 years. Today we're having our fifth straight day of 90+ temps, and the next five days look no cooler. Not until Sunday are they saying the highs will be below 90.
And the June that just ended was our driest on record, with barely over 1/4 inch of rain all month. We usually get a little over 4 inches of rain per month in June. So, right now we're experiencing our upper limit for dry and hot. We're doing okay, but the conditions take their toll on everyone and on all the crops. Nothing grows well in the 90's. The best we hope for in theseconditions is that crops don't suffer too much. Plants actually grow more and experience less stress with temps in the 80's. We have to water like crazy, every four to six days or so for most things, just to keep them from getting too dry and stressed out. This
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Sugar snap peas on the vine
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is easily the most difficult part of the year and of farming in general--hot weather. Anyone can get pretty sick of things and burned out after a few days or weeks of this stuff, so we're hoping it ends soon.
We've got a little more zucchini in the box this week. The insect pressure on the plants has been fierce, as much as I've ever seen, and can be expected when it's so hot and dry. Bugs breed more and are more active in general when it's hot, and when it's dry, our irrigated areas are amongst the only moist "oases" around. Bugs are doubly attracted to our irrigated crops. Cucumber beetles are nearly out of control on all our squash, including the winter squash. We're spraying several hours per day with a backpack sprayer, and barely holding our own. We're even considering figuring out doing all this with our big tractor-mounted sprayer, which is a lot faster, but which would spray more ground than we would want. This is expensive, but we think we can turn off many sprayer nozzles and only put the spray on the squash plants and not on the vast spaces in between. This would cut our pesticide (Pyganic is what we use for cucumber beetles, and for thrips on onions) use 2 to 4 times. In a nutshell, we're spending a hell of a lot of time moving irrigation pipe and spraying bugs.
We've got the first onions of the year in the box this week. They could be a little bigger, and in the weeks to come they will be. We just wanted to get some in the box and we'll have lots down the road. Lettuce and chard are hanging in there despite the hot weather, and the same can be said for the peas. They're getting a little stringier than we'd like, but when it's 90 degrees every day, we're happy to have them at all.
There will be broccoli later in the week, but there's not
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One of the colors of summer
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enough to put it in the box today. The same is true for our small-fruited tomatoes. Don't worry--we're keeping track of which days get what and we'll even things outover the season. It is hard to always have enough of every crop for all customers every week, so there will be some variation from time to time. (See last week's Sneak Peek for more about this.) Over the next few weeks, we'll have lots more onions, beautiful garlic which we're harvesting now, and even eggplant by the middle of July.
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Chris Covelli and
The Tomato Mountain Team
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