Weekly Abundance
This week, we are planning on harvesting the same great items as last week, plus a few new ones. In addition to sweet, tender spinach we’ll have a lovely butter head lettuce named “Nancy”.
We’ll also have Pea Shoots. What does one do with Pea Shoots? Well, they taste just like edible pod peas so you can gobble them up fresh or lightly sauté them. Either way, you’ll love them.
Shopping List
Butter Head lettuce
Pea Shoots
Spinach
Tokyo Bekana
Bunched Musculan Mix
Green Garlic
Red Pac Choi
Red Mustard
If you’ll be visiting us at the Orenco Market on Sunday, be sure you stop by the Golden Orchard booth for some Red Raspberry Creamed Honey, Golden-orchard.com. It makes a great sweet salad dressing to go with either your Tokyo Bekana or your butter head lettuce. They’ll even give you a recipe.
Farm Life
We are almost finished with our summer plantings. Today, Tuesday June 14, the last few squashes and tomatoes were transplanted. By the end of the week the last of the peppers and eggplants will be in the ground as well and our major summer planting will be complete.
Of course, we will continue to plant for several more months. We plant lettuce and bunching onions every two weeks. In fact, in two short weeks, we begin sowing the fall crops. They will be transplanted in mid-August to give them plenty of time to grow before the autumn chill arrives.
Have you noticed the three different time periods mentioned in this short blog entry? One of the complexities of farming sustainably is that one must be thinking about the short term, mid-term, long term, and very long term, all at the same time. For example, this morning I walked the fields to prepare a list of the items to be harvested this week. While I was doing that, our staff member, Elan, was transplanting items to be harvested in August. All the while, Elan and I were discussing inoculating the soil with mycelium spores to ensure it remains healthy a decade from now. If someone ever asks you why organic food is more expensive than industrially grown food, tell them it is because organic growers farm for the present… and the future.
