Week #8 Tuesday, July 31st-Saturday, August 4th, 2007 Downloadable Word .doc for printing

In your bag
Swiss Chard, French Filet Beans
Cucumbers, Potatoes, Fresh onions, Bell Pepper, Jalapenos,
Tomatoes, Zucchini /Summer Squash, Eggplant, Melon,
Mixed herb bunch: Parsley, Purple Basil, Sweet Basil

This Week's Recipes
Fresh Salsa, Summer Sauce

Coming Soon
Look for a cabbage and carrots next week.
We’ll take some time off on the potatoes as the melons and more tomatoes come in. As I mentioned in last week’s newsletter we’ll continue to rotate the sungold cherry tomatoes and the heirloom tomatoes by pick-up site.

August Payments Due!
Many of you chose to make two payments to the farm, the second one of which is now due. If you’re not sure of your balance, give me a call or send an e-mail and I will let you know.

Harvesters Needed in August
We have several openings in August as well as all Tuesdays in September. In August we need people on August 25th and 28th. If you are available on one of these dates please contact our delivery coordinator, Michele Gersich. She can be reached at mgersich@att.net or 612-378-0380.

Farm News
It’s summer time eating! We’ve now moved fully out of the spring crops and are onto the summer ones. That means plenty of cucumbers, zucchini, beans, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant and even melons are starting to ripen. On the farm it means that most things have settled in and created a nice canopy so that only a little time is spent weeding and much of our time is spent harvesting. We’ll be working to get the spring ground into a summer cover crop like buckwheat.

Our raspberries have started to ripen and harvesters who come out over the next month or so will hopefully have time to do some picking and take a few raspberries home with them. A fresh picked sun warmed raspberry is an amazing treat!

We’ve moved on to bean planting #2. In order to keep those fresh beans coming, we do 5-6 plantings of them. As soon as the ground warms enough – usually mid-May, the first planting of beans goes in. As they germinate and the first set of true leaves appears, we plant the next round. This year the first two plantings are the filet beans. Planting #3 is a yellow wax bean followed by Dragon Tongues. Dragon Tongues are a pale yellow romano (flat) bean with red streaks through them. When they arrive, you’ll know it! After the Dragon Tongues we’ve got a purple bean planted. They are a very deep purple which makes them wonderfully easy to pick. If we’re all lucky, we’ll get one more planting of green beans in to wind up the season.

Next Week’s Harvesters
Tuesday, August 7th - Al & Margaret Bostelmann, Micheal & Rebecca Thompson,
Arthur Madsen, Dayna Anderson
Saturday, August 11th – Joe & Colleen Bartels, Jon & Beth Commers, Kathleen Morton, Chester McCoy