The Summer Day (CSA Week 5)

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the first tomatoes are forming, all the different varieties of garlic that we’re growing this season & the first basil!

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Hi Friends & Farm-ily,

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We hope you all have been enjoying the delicious Spring veggies as we roll into our second month of harvest! We can hardly believe how quickly the time passes between one harvest week to another.   We’ve been extra bee-zy this weekend taking care of the farm and have been gearing up to ceremoniously begin sowing seeds for our Fall succession of crops.  Does anyone else think June is just flying by… ?  

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Two farmers, One farm.  In 4 weeks of harvest we’ve distributed 9,600lbs of produce to our members! All of that produce has been grown thoughtfully and prepped, seeded, transplanted, weeded & harvested by 2 sets of hands (each and every berry was picked by farmer Jess or farmer Brian).  With the shares getting a touch more bountiful with summer crops, that puts us on track to grow and distribute over 80,000lbs of produce for the Spring/Summer/Fall season.   It’s a pretty amazing number and we look forward to harvesting the bounty over the next 6 months.  **Last year on Week 5 we had distributed 8,400lbs of produce, two years ago at this time we had distributed 6,800lbs of produce and three years ago at this time we had distributed 2,100 lbs of produce to our members which means your farmers are growing better with each passing season. This is our 7th season running the CSA and every year it just gets better and better.**

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The new pole barn is getting close, the summer squish have arrived and the potato patch looking good!  

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Since our last harvest day we managed to plant another ¾ of an acre!  A few miles of melons, winter squash & pumpkins. We even managed to plant a third succession of corn. We sure were bushed at the end of the day on Friday and Saturday – even more than normal. I think we headed to bed around 9:30pm which was amazing.  We also begun harvesting our garlic crop and it looks amazing!  We’ll get the rest of it in the barn this weekend so it can cure and dry in order to enjoy it all season long!  Wahoo!

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We’ve been making major progress on our new WHF wash, pack & storage building! Concrete is going in this week and insulation the following. This building will enable us to expand our winter CSA by providing us with temperature controlled environment for long term storage of root crops. Our ultimate goal is to offset our summer work load by increasing our revenue in the winter. Maybe with time we can have an equitable distribution of work throughout the year. You know, cool it on the workends and tryout a weekend every once and a while. ‪#spaceisthefinalfrontier

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WHF Share 4, some beautiful romaine lettuce heads, and fennel starting to bulb out!  

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The summer solstice, the longest day of the year, is just a week way and we certainly feel all the energy as we’ve been up with the sun at 20 past 5 and heading in at sunset around 9:30.  We’ve been getting better at taking breaks during the hottest times of the afternoon/early evening to make dinner and get back out in the fields at 7 for a few hours.  We call 7-9pm the “magic hours” here on the farm… from the low, glimmering sunlight to the cooler breeze – it’s just such a joy to be out in the garden.  The animals love it too – they’re all out there filling their bellies – in the settling of the day – before perching or laying down for the night.  On the farm, we’re all ready to hit the hay hard by the end of the evening.

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Besides the long days, June is also an incredibly busy time in the garden (perhaps one of the busiest of the year). It’s a balancing act between maintaining Spring crops, weeding, sowing summer successions, watering, weeding, preparing stale seed beds, trellising tomatoes and beginning to seed all our fall brassicas (kale, collards, broccoli, cauliflower etc) and root crops (carrots, parsnips, storage beets etc) to name a few. There is much to be done and the list is ever long but we are focusing on the daily tasks at hand.  We are being mindful and supportive, patient and encouraging.  The simplest thing we can do for each other as farmer’s (and as a husband-wife team) is to remind each other of all the things we have accomplished and try not to worry too much about the things that remain on the list. The balancing act continues..!

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Garlic harvest commences, checking in on the pepper patch & Rosie cools off in the heat by wading in her wallow..

So, happy early summer solstice to you all. We hope you all find yourself enjoying all that summer has to offer. Take time for yourselves, keep being inspired in the kitchen and filling your tummies with delicious food.

p.s. Thank you all for returning berry hallocks and rubber bands.  Online WHF Farmstore. Thank you for your orders at the WHF Farmstore!  Here’s the link: http://workinghandsfarmstore.com/collections/all The online farmstore features NEW and improved USDA recipes and cuts that make our pastured heritage pork shine! Wehave products available by the share and by individual cuts.

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With kind regards,

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Your Farmers

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Jess & Brian

dirty hands, clean hearts

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We leave you with one of our favorite poets.. Ms. Mary Oliver and ‘The Summer Day’…

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The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

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Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

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