A quick update from the farm this past week, mainly photos.
Peas are fruiting strong, fall cabbages and kohlrabi and lettuce mix are getting transplanted out, and summer fruits are looking promising.
After (amid) much conversation, sketching out plans, standing around pointing, consulting the Wholesale Success book and Google (Chris Blanchard, Atina Diffley, thoughful and experienced farmers who’ve posted tours of their vegetable wash set-ups on you-tube), we’re starting in earnest on our pack shed construction. We harvested garlic this week, a whole heaping mess load of disappointingly tiny heads. And there are pretty blooms on pert near everything.
There are a few native wildflowers getting established along the property line by the gate to the field. This week we found a couple of assassin bugs patiently lurking in the flowers, one even had her mouth full. Like crab/ flower spiders, the assassin bugs hang out on flowers and snatch prey as they come seeking nectar or pollen. In the photo below, the assassin bug on the blanket flower has its probiscus/ rostrum in a native bee.
The little chickens are now out on pasture in our young orchard. We’ve been moving them along through the tall grass every day or two. They’ve transitioned from the brooder to the field well; they are completely jazzed for leaf hoppers.
Seed from our kale breeding project has been drying out on a tarp on the porch for a bit over a week. We’ve threshed and winnowed about half of this pile. A few especially helpful tools/methods employed in this process include tarps, a big trash can, KEXP’s Positive Vibrations streaming show archive, dancing, and a box fan. The seed looks beautiful. And now we know what 2.5 lbs of kale seed looks like.
Our CSA newsletter for this past week, week 6, can be found here, as well as a recipe for herbed salmon (or mushroom, if you prefer) and chard. Additional recipes for chard are on the farm community cookbook site, here. Happy feasting, friends!
Big smiles and thanks, t and j
Cycle Farm 