Genuinely Newsy

EVENTS
1. The Tom Sawyer Work Day planned for August 17 is canceled.  There number of replies were very few.  Those who did reply, we would be willing to set up a volunteer time if you wish to come out to the farm.
 
2. Summer Festival Part II
When:  Friday August 30th 5-8pm (trying to start serving food at around 5:30pm)
Who: CSA Members past and present, friends of the farm, family, etc.  Bring your family – our farm is used to lots of kids who enjoy the chance to roam around on the open lawn spaces.
Bring: Potluck – bring a dish to share and a serving utensil (try to bring a notecard to label what your food is, who made it and what’s in it – this helps those who have special dietary concerns); also bring lawn chairs or a blanket to sit on; a sweatshirt or jacket – plan on it being 5-10 degrees cooler on the farm and usually a lot more wind; bring a lawn game if you have one you enjoy and want to share
What will be here: We’ll provide the lemonade and ice tea plus s’more makings; we’ll also provide table service and cups
Please RSVP by Wed. Aug 28^th  so I know how many s’more makings to have on hand.

Crop Report
Last year was a bad year for garlic.  A disease commonly known as "aster yellows" attacked many midwest farm's garlic crops last year, including ours.  Typically, we select our own garlic for seed the following year.  But, we were aware that our seed was not likely to be viable, so we purchased seed garlic from Blue Gate Farm.  We planted some of our seed and had only a 5% germination rate, so this purchase was a good one.  The BGF seed germinated at about 95%.  And, here is the result:
 

New Varieties
We managed to get a few pictures of some of our new (to us) varieties.  We thought you might enjoy hearing results so far.

Cocazelle is an open pollinated zucchini.  These tend to stay thin, which means it takes a bit more to get the 'Louisville Slugger' type of giant fruit.  That's fine with us.  We are picking 2 times a week right now with the cooler weather, so it is nice to not have to worry about these ballooning out over night.

Green Finger cucumbers are a European type cucumber.  Smooth skin with very little to no spines.  The skin is not bitter and CSA member response has been overwhelmingly positive.  These also tend to long/thin fruit.  This is a High Mowing developed variety.

Golden Zucchini is an heirloom seed from Seed Savers. We tried to grow them last year and the pests took all but a couple of plants out very quickly.  This year, we planted these into paper mulch and we're getting some decent production out of them.  

Full Truck and Full Bags
Packing the truck is getting more challenging.  But, we consider this a good thing because it means more produce for your shares!  We're feeling pretty good about the variety and amount of veg we've been bringing to our CSA Farm Share members this year and are working to keep it going.

The broccoli is showing signs of producing soon.  Here are a few of the rows we have planted just after cultivation and weeding this week.