In your bag
Lettuce (some adolescent romaine – a new style of harvesting lettuce mid-summer – what do you think?),
Kale
Scallions, Cucumbers, New Potatoes,
Fresh onions, Fresh garlic, Kohlrabi
Zucchini /Summer Squash or Cabbage, Carrots
Basil, Parsley

This Week's Recipes
Braised Kohlrabi
Kohlrabi with Parmesan

Coming Soon
By next week, we should have some beans, maybe even the first of the peppers. We’re likely to do another round of new potatoes and carrots. For greens we’ve got some Swiss chard ready soon and endive is on the horizon.

Organic Fruit & Veggies May be Better!
Member Jim Hare passed on this piece from the “Times Online.”

Organic fruit and vegetables may be better for the heart and general health than eating conventionally grown crops, new research has found.

A ten-year study comparing organic tomatoes with standard produce found that they had almost double the quantity of antioxidants called flavonoids which help to prevent high blood pressure and thus reduce the likelihood of heart disease and strokes.

Alyson Mitchell, a food chemist, who led the research at the University of California, believes that flavonoids can also help to stave off some forms of cancer and dementia.
She found that levels of quercetin and kaempferol, both flavonoids, were on average 79 and 97 per cent higher, respectively, in organic tomatoes. Her findings are due to be published in full in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Farm News
Last Tuesday, about a half hour after our harvesters left for their destinations, it started pouring down rain here – and I’m talking pouring. It rained hard for just over an hour and a trip to the rain guage showed we just gotten 3” of rain. WOW! A little bit of hail came along with the rain – an unwelcome reminder of how things can change really quickly. (You may have some hail damage on the zucchini and summer squash in your bag this week.) We were thankful for every drop of it, the whole farm irrigated at once! The break from irrigating was wonderful and just as we thought we needed to get started again, another ¾” came Sunday afternoon. YEA!

Last Saturday officially began this year’s garlic harvest. Saturday’s crew harvested a couple of rows of the 22 rows planted last fall (thanks again Lynn & Scott). After covering the greenhouse with its shade cloth, the 500 or so heads of garlic were laid on racks inside the greenhouse to dry. The garlic looks terrific and is such a wonderful treat. As always, some of it (generally the largest ones) will be saved for seed, and the rest we’ll send to you over the course of the season.

On the home front, David’s baseball and Maggie’s softball seasons are coming to an end. David headed off to Anaheim, California with his Parliamentary Procedure team to compete against other state championship teams and have some fun, of course. Katie has been working at the nursing home this summer, but is off this week to fish at Devil’s Lake in North Dakota. It’s kind of quiet around here.

Next Week’s Harvesters
Tuesday, July 17 – Eschenbacher/Welch Family, Carolyn & Scott Shrewsbury, Lou Ann Keleher, Patricia Turner, Gregg Rochester
Saturday, July 21 - Michele Boyer & Melissa Conway, Jacki Betsworth & George Hunt,
Linda & Fred Harding, Cindy Hilmoe & Tomoe Katagiri