In the Share - Week 19

Bean picking

TOMATOES (F/P) A quick flush from the summer planting of hybrids

BROCCOLI (F/P)

KOHLRABI OR BEETS (F/P) Mostly beets, Chiogga and Cylindra. Not a beet fan? Give the Chioggas a try with Tom's hash recipe.

RADISHES (F) Partial shares get a choice with the kohlrabi and beets.

LETTUCE (F) Two heads

JADE GREEN BEANS (F/P)

GARLIC (F) A choice for the partials with the herbs.

HERB CHOICE (F/P) The full shares get the choice of okra or basil, parsley or thyme.

SALSA OR OKRA OR SUMMER SQUASH (P)

CHINESE CABBAGE (F) The perfect stirfry or Asian slaw green. Check Tom's blog for more.

ALSO THIS WEEK: Bread of Life Bakery delivery

NEXT WEEK: A few more tomatoes, okra and squash. Peppers and eggplant return. More broccoli, radishes, green beans and kohlrabi. The first of the fall Hakurei turnips, sweet potatoes and leeks.

THE FIELDS: The fall harvest is in full swing. The green beans are especially exuberant at the moment. Those who answered my plea for help with the picking tomorrow are much appreciated. We realize most of you can't drop everything to pick beans, but we encourage as many of you who can to do so. Today we spent the entire day harvesting for tomorrow's shares to reduce the amount that needs to be done. Still, we've got herbs, lettuce, chinese cabbage and yes, beans to pick. A super size crew did a bang up job on Saturday.

We also managed to harvest the first crop of sweet potatoes on Saturday. We have three rows, 2 are the standard orange-fleshed type, Beauregard. We dug the third row which is a Japanese variety with white flesh with a jewel-like purple skin. Very pretty. They will be in your shares next week.

Tom and I are often asked what we do when we are not farming. The question always stumps us as for the most part we spend all our waking hours either physically working on the farm, writing about working on the farm or planning for our work on the farm. But every now and again we actually leave the farm to do something entirely different. Such was the case this past Sunday when Tom and I and our pals from the Bad Seed, Brooke and Dan went to work on a vineyard. I know, quite the 'busman's holiday', as someone pointed out to us in the vineyard. Ah vel. Last season we started the tradition of picking at our friend's vineyard and making wine from the grapes. We've been drinking last year's product for a couple of weeks now and it is pretty decent table wine already. Here's the process in nutshell with some steps omitted (there is a 'racking off' process at some point, and we let the wine age for a year before it is bottled. Ask farmer Ruggieri for the real dealio on making your own vino).

grape harvest

crushing the grapes

Then, the pressing

and bottling