Click here to link to Sheila’s recipes for Box 7. And watch the video below!

The transition from summer to fall is always an awkward one for us since we lose most of our farm crew when school starts up again. We have a crack team of teen neighbors – and one daughter left of our own – who work for us throughout the summer and do a terrific job. They are very much missed. But thankfully this week, we had a ton of help from cheerful friends and farm members who got the harvest in and the boxes packed. They brought wonderful food for potluck, too! We’ll try and get a few of their recipes (and pictures of the Labor Day Work Party) up on facebook this week. Make sure to check back here tomorrow, for our Box 7 Video Blog. We missed Sheila’s video and recipes last week, when she was on vacation out west. In the meantime, here’s what’s in the box: continued »

We find ourselves this week in a transition between summer crops and fall. Some things are petering out (cucumbers), others are just getting rolling (eggplant), many are peaking (tomatoes) and a few are just barely starting to produce in these surprisingly harsh warm days (lettuce). This is one of the few times of year you can pick everything you need for a recipe (ratatouille) or salad (cukes and salad greens). Enjoy it while you can! These are mighty heavy boxes what with tomatoes, melons and squash all jammed in there. continued »

The air doesn’t always smell so great on a farm. We’ve got pigs in the backyard, after all, as well as chickens in the front, cows on the side and ducks wandering everywhere. But after yesterday’s multiple thundershowers, the gentle humid breeze is just as sweet as can be. Perhaps it’s the scent of fall on the way. If not for the sudden proliferation of autumn flies and picnic-diving bees, I’d say our Wisconsin August is about perfect. continued »

This week we’ll pass some milestones in the garden season. Box 5 marks the halfway point in our CSA delivery season. Meanwhile, in the fields, we are finishing up planting all the crops we hope to harvest in the fall. We inhale a deep breath now and and take stock of what seems to be thriving, what we are likely to need in the end-of-season boxes and what customer feedback has prompted us to repeat. We also give up on a lot! I’ve been emptying flats of plants I wanted to experiment with if I had space open up, and putting away little packets of seeds I’ve been shuffling around, trying to discern whether it was realistic to plant them. I’ve also been tilling in crops that got too weedy or too dried out or too burned up to harvest. If early spring is the time for idealism and hope, late summer is the time to draw a lot of hard lines. continued »

Looks like today will be the last really hot day of the summer (or at least for the length of the weather.com forecast graphic). Oh Lord, let it be so! continued »

Sheila’s got our box-opening video up here at her website for Optimal Body Balance, along with tons of wonderful recipes for the box ingredients. Cucumber-Sorrel Smoothie, Zucchini Chickpea Fritters with Feta, Baby Bok Pizza – she really is a Party in an Apron!

If you got more snap beans than you think you can eat this week, check out this easy no-can Dilly Bean recipe.

Bon Appetit!

What a treat it is to get a break from the heat! We’ve moved 6 am harvests back to 7 am, pulled the shade cloth off the baby bok choy, and this morning I’m celebrating by baking (in the oven!) the fabulous Basil Chocolate Cake shared below. Summer on the farm is like labor with a child – you can do it as long as you get some rest in between the really hard pushes. And the payoff is tons of amazing food… continued »

Wow. What can be said about this weather? Truth is, I barely have enough energy after a day in the heat to think, let alone write. Certainly, the past few sweltering weeks haven’t been my favorite as a farmer! But I do feel immensely grateful. I’m grateful for the hard work of my young crew members, who’ve come out at 6 am each day this week to get the harvest in before the heat index became dangerous, and for the volunteers and work share members who came out this weekend to pick beans, do some much-needed weeding, run some much-appreciated electrical wiring, and share in the season’s first pesto meal. I’m grateful for our new drip-tape irrigation system, which we installed just in time this June. And I’m grateful for our almost-finished Cool Room – which will hold our tomato harvest at the just the right temperature (between 50 and 60 degrees). That project is wrapping up just in time, as well, as we are just now picking our first ripe tomatoes. Maybe we’ll sleep in the Cool Room tonight! continued »

We feel that we’ve been through the wringer in the past few weeks. (We literally could have used one of those old clothes wringers to squeeze the sweat from our clothes a few times a day!) With the constant pressure of the heat combined with the lack of rain, we feel we’ve done nothing but run from one side of the farm to the other keeping things alive – applying water here, shadecloth there and prayer everywhere! We have rarely been so thankful for a small farm! Then Monday morning the dry spell ended in a burst of violent rain and wind – pounding the crops with 2 inches of water in a half hour, and laying many of them flat on the ground. And yet the earth produces and we have food. It is truly amazing. continued »