Week 8 CSA Pick up

What you'll find in your basket this week.

• Zucchini
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Cabbage
• Beets
• Onions
• Beans

Extras this week (Please email by 6pm the day before your pick up if you would like any of these):

• Dill
• Parsley
• Kale
• Beets - large bag for canning, freezing, or making jelly

Typically the broccoli, after forming the first main head, sends out little shoots of new broccoli flowerets.  This year it isn't doing that very well, so I think we're done with the broccoli unless it starts producing more.  Josh isn't sad (it's not his favorite), but Johnny is.  He loves having frozen broccoli in the winter.

 

The gardens are looking good.  We're starting to water again.  It's just crazy how the weather can go.  It was so wet this spring, but now it is so dry!

We have white butterflies now.  They lay eggs that hatch into those little green worms that eat cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli.  Hopefully you haven't found any.  Josh has an organic spray he uses to control them.  He just sprayed last Friday, so hopefully it'll control them for now.

News...We have some exciting news (and sad too).  We will be moving to Valley City after the CSA season.  Josh has accepted a job with KLJ, an engineering firm.  We are very excited to be moving closer to family.  My parents will only be 30 minutes away and Josh will be working with Jake, one of his brothers, everyday at KLJ.  We will miss working with you, our CSA and chicken customers.  We plan to buy a house "in town", so that will be an adjustment for us, but hopefully a good one.  We are looking forward to spending more time just playing with the kids.  We plan to eventually build a house on a my parents farm, so we will be in the country again.  We do really enjoy gardening and raising chickens, and we hope we've inspired you with the fresh food.  We'd love to encourage you to plant your own garden next summer.  Please let us know if you have any questions about gardening next year.  We're thinking about using the "square foot" gardening technique at our house in town.  (supplemented by gardening with my parents on the farm).  Maybe I'll try to post about our square foot garden to give you some ideas.

Week 7 CSA pickup

What you'll find in your basket this week:

• Zucchini
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Cabbage
• Beets
• Sugar Snap Peas
• Broccoli
• Onions

Extra Options (available upon request by 6pm day before your pick up)

• Dill - you can freeze the heads for making dill pickles when the cucumbers are ripe
• Parsley
• Turnip
• Kale
• Beets - large bag for canning, freezing, or making jelly

I was complaining to Josh about picking peas last week.  He consoled me in the fact that there weren't any more peas to pick and that the other two veggies that we have to pick like that (picking everything every 2-3 days) are beans and cucumbers and they won't be ready for another couple of weeks.  That lightened my mood til today when we went to look through the garden...I picked enough beans to fill a small bag, so the bean picking began today.  The peas are done though.  Tuesday pick up people will get the last of the sugar snaps, but I don't think Thursday pick up people will get any.  But there will probably be enough beans for you to get them on Thursday.  There will definitely be enough beans for everyone next week.

The gardens are looking great.  We got about a half inch of rain yesterday.  It'll make everything grow so much better than irrigation water.

We finished butchering chickens this week.  We'll have more time to work in the gardens.  We're excited about that.:)

Week 6 CSA Pick up

This is what you'll find in your basket this week:

• celeriac
• peas
• sugar snap peas
• cabbage
• broccoli
• onions
• beets
• carrots
• head lettuce
• beet jelly

Upon request (by 6pm the night before your pickup):

• Kale
• Leaf lettuce

The gardens are looking good.  We've been doing a lot of watering, since it's been a long time since we've had any sizable rain.  Our lawn is starting to dry out.  We plan to butcher chickens this Thursday and Friday, so we'll be contacting you sometime this week about when to pick them up if you ordered any from this batch.

These pictures are two weeks old.  Josh and I were so amazed at how the kohlrabi did this year.  It was the best it ever looked!

Josh is covering the cabbage and kohlrabi with the row cover after picking.  The row cover protects from the white butterflies laying their eggs in the cabbage.

I'll see if I get the chance to go around and take pictures of the gardens this week.  We've been busy painting our small buildings the last couple of weeks.  We thought we could get it done in one weekend, but when you have old buildings, it seems like they need little fixing here and there before you can get to the actual painting, so we only have 2 of the 4 done, but they look really nice.  We plan to have a pumpkin picking open house this fall, so hopefully you'll get to see our paint job then.

Week 5 CSA pick up

What you'll find in your baskets this week:

• Turnips
• Peas
• Kohlrabi
• Onions
• Beets
• Leaf Lettuce
• Head Lettuce

Extras (upon request...please e-mail me before 6pm the day before pick up)

• Kale
• Fennel
• Radishes?...there are just a few left

Please remember to return your boxes and bags.  Thanks for everyone who has been.

Between the birds and a disease called leather rot, we won't have strawberries again this year.  I'm beginning to think that maybe we should stop trying to grow them....Oh well.

Grasshoppers

GRASSHOPPESRS

Do not be alarmed if you find a weed, straw, or small grasshopper in your lettuce.  We raise our vegetables organically, so it's a little tricky keeping them free of pests.  I found a grasshopper in my lettuce bag last night when making supper.  I found one in a bag this morning when I was picking for New Salem...Some lucky winner won't have a grasshopper this week.;)

Josh has called the NDSU extension service about controlling the grasshoppers.  They were so bad last year that we couldn't even find the white potato plants in the fall when we were digging them.  We only found the potatoes underground.  Grasshoppers eat the leaves of plants.  So if you see little wholes in your lettuce leaves, that's what it's from.  They are still okay to eat.

I'm going to contact an organic seed producer, Prairie Road Organic, to see if they have any suggestions.  They've been gardening organically a lot longer than we have, in fact longer than we've been alive (since 1974).  They are family friends.  I grew up with their kids.  If you do any of your own gardening, consider buying seed from them.  Here's their website:  http://www.prairieroadorganic.co/Prairie_Road_Organic_Seed/Welcome.html

BIRDS...

The robins are devouring the strawberries.  We've got to figure out something, because they are good at sharing with each other and not us.  Everyday there are more in the patch.  Seems like they keep telling their friends.  We're going to try covering some of the rows with row cover to protect the berries for our use.

RHUBARB

By the way, we didn't have rhubarb this week.  After taking a second look, it's getting to the point that we should let it rest for the rest of the summer.  Hope you enjoyed it while it lasted!  We sure did.:)

Week 4 CSA pick up

Thank you to everyone that came to the open house!  We enjoyed showing you around.  We plan to have another open house in the fall when the pumpkins are ripe, so you can come pick out your own pumpkin.

This week New Salem will have pick up on Wednesday.  Bismarck pick up will be the same as usual, on Tuesday.  Please remember to return your boxes and bags each week.-Thanks

What you'll find in your basket this week:

• Kohlrabi
• Baby Beets
• Green Onions
• Leaf Lettuce
• Head Lettuce
• Kale
• Fennel
• Radishes
• Rhubarb

The gardens are looking good.  We have everything mulched.  Now we get to go through and weed again (just in the rows this time).  That weeding seems to be an endless process.  We've been watering lately and love to have the drip irrigation.  It was definitely worth it.  The peas are almost ready.  The strawberries are ripening, slowly.  Josh pulled up a potato, and they are just starting to form spuds....Lots of things to look forward to!:)

CSA Open House

We are having an open house this Saturday, June 29th 2-4pm.  Come out and look at the gardens and chickens.  The strawberries are slowly ripening, so you can take a stroll through to see if you can find a few to eat.

Directions:
Our address is 1005 Birch Ave, New Salem.  If you're coming off the Interstate from Bismarck, take a left to head South towards New Salem.  Drive South until you get to the stop sign.  Turn left/East onto Ash Ave.  Turn right/South on 5th St.  Drive straight through the stop sign on Main and across the RR tracks.  The first street after the tracks is Birch Ave, take a right to drive west.  Our house is gray with red trim, right after the road turns to gravel.  We are the last house in town on Birch Ave, so if you drive by the chicken coop, turn around and come back:).

Please RSVP. - Thanks!