We needed to clear the bed of Hakurei Turnips to make way for some fall roots so there are quite a few of those in the share this week. As always with roots it's best to separate the tops for storage if you're not going to use them right away. The greens should be used soon, but the roots will keep well if you want to save them for later.

We also cleared the radishes so this is the last of the small round roots for the spring. Lettuce continues with some shares seeing a bit of Kweik and some getting Samantha. Kweik is a green butter, Samantha is a red leaf.

Two new items in the share today are green onions and red mustard. The mustard has a little bite, but not as much as the name, Magma, would suggest.

It's very wet in the fields so we're hoping for a bit of dry on Thursday so we can plant all of the summer crops. It's getting close to summer even though the weather has reverted to spring.

Yesterday's crazy weather meant we weren't able to get into the field to plant, but that didn't mean we didn't have anything to do. There was plenty of clean up and preparation that we've been behind on with field projects taking most of our time recently. It did turn out to be dry enough for us to do a bit of cultivation, which was very good. At some point it started pouring which drove everyone into the barn where we finally rearranged the "furniture" so that we could actually get to everything that's been accumulating without having to move something else.

In addition the rest of the irrigation systems are now ready to go (what would do you do on a rainy day, work on irrigation!). We also have more hoops pre bent for upcoming plantings, which due to the cold weather are going to need a little extra protection with row cover. And, I finally got around to changing the old Slow Hand Farm sign on the delivery bike over to an Our Table sign.

The warm weather sped up the second planting of radishes and spiced them up. Shares have two weeks worth in them this week, and you'll probably notice a flavor difference from the early spring batch.

Hakurei turnips, lettuce and Spring Raab are back in the share this week. Last week we were thinning the raab so the stems were less mature and longer. This week the small bunch is shorter, but just as tasty. In addition to the raab leaves, both the turnip and radish greens are also good for eating.

The weather is a bit more typically spring-like these days. We're still pushing ahead with the summer planting though. With a little luck we'll get squash, melons and cucs in this week. We'll definitely be covering them though, as the weather is forecasted to be quit chilly in the evenings.

We generally try to avoid any hand weeding on the farm, favoring preemptive hoeing. This bed of carrots was just a little too valuable to let go though, and the hoe can't get everything. The crew spent a few hours yesterday carefully cutting out smartweed with knives. Smartweed is prolific in this previously neglected field. The carrots were seeded a little over a month ago. They were weeded with a propane torch a week after they were seeded. They came up shortly after, very evenly and with excellent spacing. We did hoe once which makes the hand weeding much easier. Unfortunately carrots are very slow, and smart weed is not so it's been getting the upper hand, until today that is.

There's a lot going on in this photo. It was on and off spitting rain drops all day yesterday, which made other hoeing more difficult as soil clogged the hoes slowing our progress through other crops. Despite the little precipitation we still need to irrigate, and so during the day we took advantage of the calm weather to soak areas where we'll be working up ground and planting summer cover crop before late summer plantings of greens and brassicas.

You can also see the potatoes to the left of the crew. They're up nicely (also with a good understory of smartweed). We'll be gradually hilling these with rakes over the next couple months, until harvest in late August or September.

To the right of the crew are beds of salsify and scorzonera that were seeded last week and haven't quite germinated yet. These root crops won't be harvested until late into the fall, and with a little luck will go all the way through the winter.

I was running late today so I just typed up a quick post on my phone with the intention of posting more later. Unfortunately it failed to load, so here's what I said in that first post.

The share looks good with more lettuce and delicious Hakurei turnips with greens. New this week is spring raab. Eat the whole thing: leaves, stems, and flower buds. It's a bit like very tender broccoli. Great cooked, but also very tasty raw. 

Off to deliver while the crew gets the tomatoes planted!

Josh
Super quick bike delivery guy

Well, super quick bike delivery guy is happy to report that all of the vegetables are now delivered (at least the ones that were delivered by bike). And, using the old standby home computer I think I'll finally get this blog post up.

Hope you all have a great week. I'll try to post more field notes soon - it's a super busy time of year in the fields with lots of plantings just about to go in.

I haven't been very good about getting updates up on here, except for little posts about the actual shares. This is definitely testament to how busy we've been in the fields. Yesterday I finally got the new boxes built (except for the lids), and printed. Last week we set up irrigation by coming out to the farm for an extra day. There's been a lot of extra work setting up new systems this year, but I think we're starting to catch up a little.

Having the boxes finished, and new bags (which I'll post a photo of soon) means we'll start delivering in cloth bags this week, and putting those bags into the new boxes! This is exciting as we've been making do with plastic produce bags, which are harder for us to pack into, and the old Slow Hand Farm boxes, which we don't have enough of, and are starting to get a bit worn out (not to mention they don't say "Our Table"!)

I've been spending a lot of extra time on the boxes and other little fiddly things around the farm, but we're still getting a good amount of field work done. That field work hasn't included much time for photography unfortunately so here's a week old photo from the first irrigation using Nelson Windfighter sprinklers. We now also have drip set up on the recently planted onions, shallots, herbs, chard and kale!