Newsletter #6

"If the farm is my office, my kitchen is my happy place. With minimal ingredients I feel like I can create magic!" 

― Andrea Bemis, Dishing Up the Dirt

Happy Friday Everyone! 

Out with the old and in with the new! I would say that's certainly the theme this week on the farm. All of the peas, fava beans, and broccoli was harvested and pulled from the beds and replaced with pole beans and a second succession of beets, carrots, onions, parsnips, and a whole mess of greens. Additionally, this week was the much anticipated garlic harvest! It couldn't have happened at a more opportune time too since right after we harvested the rains hit. Garlic prefers to be dry several weeks leading up to harvest and although we weren't able to make that happen we were able to prevent any crop loss by getting it out of the ground in time. I love garlic! Seriously, I dream of owning a huge garlic farm with hundreds of different and weird varieties of garlic. It's just the perfect crop in my eyes- minimal pest and disease pressure, high yields, and super easy to manage! Garlic is planted in the early winter, typically around November or December and then harvested in late June/early July depending upon the year. Our garlic harvest will now cure for several weeks and then you'll start seeing more of these spicy bulbs in your shares. We always grow way more garlic then people would expect but honestly, we use every last bit of it (minus the bulbs we save for next years seed). One trick I've learned in preserving the garlic harvest is to make garlic powder. It's a real process but it's totally worth it! We peel each bulb, thinly slice each clove, and run them through our dehydrator. Then once they are nice and dry I will use my food processor to grind it into a fine powder and put it into small glass containers so we can use it throughout the year. Lots of work up front but it's so nice to just sprinkle some on a meal whenever we want. 

In the space where the garlic was we planted our sweet corn. I've been hesitant to plant corn in the past because. it takes up so much room (and we're working in a tight, tight space!) and because it's a heavy feeder on the soil. However, last year we planted some on a whim and ended up with enough corn for our CSA members, our family, and a ton preserved for the winter. Last year was a lot warmer then it has been this year so fingers crossed! Which reminds me, a quick note on weather. This season has so far been a more wet and cool than previous years. I personally LOVE the cooler weather and it's not uncharacteristic of the PNW, however, the past several years farmers have anticipated the increase in temperatures (because it's been really hot the last several years y'all) and adapted our planting schedules to it. This is all to say that we expected to have our summer crops producing by this point but they're not. It looks like the weather is starting to warm up now so we're hoping to see summer squash, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and beans soon. 

Your Farmers,
Shannon, Taylor and Juniper Kane
Wild Grown Farm