We will have:

Beets

Sungold and Mixed Cherry Tomatoes

BLUE Potatoes!

DEEP YELLOW Potatoes!

Summer Squash (straight necked yellow, green zucchini, yellow zucchini, and yellow patty pans)  - Baby and bigger.

Chard

Keeping Cool 

80 degrees with a steady cool breeze blowing over my hair, I was on hands and knees picking up washed blue potatoes in front of the fan last night getting ready for markets.  It was a hot day and I was pretending that I was in a tropical-beach type country collecting sea shells.  When sweat would bring me back to reality, I would position myself closer to the fan and continue pretending.  When I was no longer collecting "sea-shells" and was full on 3 inches from the fan closing my eyes for the breeze I knew that I had better just stick to being a farmer on a hot day and get over it.  But I did not hang out in reality too long and instead looked at my new heart rate monitor and played games with how I could get that thing moving.  So far, carrying produce up hill to the barn is my best heart rate accelerator.  Sitting in front of the fan - not so much. 

I came back from New York on Wednesday morning and went directly to the farm where I had scheduled the 11^th grade science camp to come and see the farm.  28 kids piled off the buses onto our land and instantly complaints of hot hot hot started.  Marcel, the beekeeper, came and gave them a presentation about bees.  He opened the hive and pulled a section out to show us larvae and capped honey cells too.  He showed us the worker bees (all female) and told us to stand still if a bee was flying around instead of batting at it. 

I knew that Marcel had just finished honey harvest last week when the spring was over.  It has been a wet spring and honey production was down (can't get nectar out of a upright flower that is half full with rain water.)  It occurred to me that the bees are better adapted to heat than I am since they get most of their gathering out of the way in the spring and then spend some of the hotter days of summer sitting around the hive and fanning themselves with their wings.  (Amongst other activities.)

We took the 11th graders from the farm to a glass recycling company that is run by a local woman, June Maybry, who might become one of my new persons-to-admire.  Her knowledge of the secondary waste stream is amazing.  What struck me is that plastic takes 20-80 years to degrade - in optimum conditions while glass takes 1 million years (in the ocean).  (Last night I asked the bagger in Food Lion NOT to give me a bag 4 times.  I ended up with 2 bags anyway.)  The plastic information pains me when I think of how much black plastic we use on the farm.  But that is a topic for another day. 

The last day of science camp, Shari, the worm-woman from Friends School came and had the students separate out her castings from the worm eggs and worms themselves.  She gave me the castings (HOORAY!) and the kids loved having a bowl full of worms to look at.  One kid adopted two small worms and called them her children.  I had been meaning to find out why my past attempts at kitchen worm bins always fail to break down my left overs and instead produce a swarms houseflies, fruit flies - armies of ants and frankly - a couple of nasty cockroaches.   It turns out that I did not have enough bins or worms to break down the amount of waste we produce.  It turns out that I need a whole wall of bins to break down our trash.  Shoot.  That is going to make my kitchen look bad.  Maybe in the seed room??  With a giant fan to keep the bugs down???

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We harvested:

Straight Necked Yellow Summer  Squash (Babies and Larger)

Yellow Patty Pan Squash

Yellow Zucchini

Green Zucchini

Light Green Koosa

Cucumbers

Sweet Summer Onions - Purple and White

Arugula

A small amount of spinach

French Breakfast Radishes

Swiss Chard

Cherry Tomatoes (all going to Matthews with Dane)

Red Cabbage (small amount all to Matthews)

Collards (small amount all to Matthews)

Black Italian Kale (small amount all to Matthews)

Farm Life:

We got a electric hot plate for the farm when Jenny was here.  I have been making scrambled eggs with our onions and adding some store-bought capers to them.  When I am done I put the electric hot plate under a bin to prevent it from getting wet with all the rain we have been experiencing.  I like cooking on the plate because I can put it on an upside down bin and sit myself on an upside down bucket under the cedar tree near the picnic table and then just stir away until finished.  Gregori likes it because it is his size and he can crack all the eggs into it easily and throw the shells into our woods.  This worked great until I left the burner in the rain and tried to use it anyway.  I was stirring away with a metal fork when I caught a current that ran right up my arm.  I was speaking with my mom on the cell phone at the time and did not mention anything but let the eggs finish out on their own and then I pulled the plug with something that did not conduct.  In spite of the shock, the eggs were still good and I was happy to have breakfast.  After breakfast I went to join Daniel and Ryan who were working away in the field.  Dane had them hoeing the rows to let the plants stay ahead of the weeds.  Dane is a master of hoeing - there are few as fast or nimble.  Ryan and Daniel were trying to keep up and at 12:30 after they left Dane remarked how proud he was to be faster than two men half his age.  At 6 o'clock Daniel and Ryan came back to work - but Ryan looked very very bad.  It turns out that he passed out at Daniels house after eating 3 pizza bagels at 4 pm.  PASSED OUT??  Yup, doubled right over and collapsed on the floor.  Gave himself a bump on the head.  We drilled him - how much did you drink? (lots of gaterade and water), How many cigarettes did you smoke? (these are not allowed on the farm - but both gentlemen smoke off site.  "somewhere around 8 spread through the day")  What did you eat?  (Pizza bagels at 3:30 pm.)  After much drilling we found that Ryan's only meal that day was the pizza bagels at 4 pm.  He was still to loopy to work Friday and harvest was tough to get out without him. 

We made a new rule that everyone needs to drink water every half hour and that Ryan and I will start work at 6 am and non-optional breakfast on the hot plate will be served at 8 am.  I am going to buy some new wooden spoons. 

We will have : Arugula!  Spinach!  Summer Squash (Patty Pan, Yellow Straight Neck, Yellow Zucchini, Green Zucchini), Swiss Chard.

Note: It rained yesterday and Dane spent all morning in the rain picking squash - I bet it tastes better since there was extra love put into the harvest!

Last Sunday Jenny and Hailey came to our farm, our first live-in interns, ready to try their first intern experience.  As I took them over to Dane, who was transplanting in the dirt, he held up a perfect two and a half inch by one inch arrowhead.  Unbroken.   Grey slate.  "You guys must be good luck."  He said and walked away to the well to wash his new find.  That field yields one or two arrowheads a year.  I am usually the one who finds them.  Dane says this head came from a trade or something because slate is available about five miles from our farm.   He muses about why we keep finding arrowheads within the same 20 feet of field.  He thinks burial ground - I think good deer hunting.  The ladies were suitably impressed and we were off to a good start.

The next day through a confluence of events we had 8 people helping us transplant.  I have never experienced that many people on our farm before doing work and singing songs and switching off with each other for different conversations.  There was Jenny, Hailey, Jonathan, Emily, Graham, Cass, Daniel and Ryan.  Emily and Graham only came for an hour or two, but they had the most defined purpose for being there - here is a web site to their project where they will be driving a van and growing food on the van roof and cooking it for people up and down the East Coast.  www.nourishmeant.org  I asked if they would be in Charlotte - nope.  We have to drive to go see them. 

The next day, Tuesday, we were down to Jenny and Hailey, Daniel and Ryan again and we got ready for Tuesday CSA/ Market.  It was the smoothest prep that we have ever had.  But I still managed to get lost in Charlotte and jaded the day!  We ended by stopping by to give food to Friendship Trays (meals on wheels) and that is when I started digesting that Jenny works as a fund raiser at a food bank in Bloomington Indiana.  Her knowledge of the food "cycle" is really amazing.  We both marveled over the abundance of white-flour type food donations and the lack of fresh vegetable donations.  We both concluded that many health costs perhaps may be avoided with a change in the current generosity patterns.  She went on to tell me that a farm in Indiana had donated the use of half an acre for gardening for her food bank and that she was initially disappointed not to be chosen as the one to grow vegetables on that plot.  Half an acre, that had me think.    

Wednesday and Thursday we worked (weeded) and talked and I found out that the Bloomington Indiana Market is the place to be with several musicians, great crowds, arts focus at least once a month, and many small programs like the salsa contest or the fall soup contest.  Mmm.  Fall soup!  I found out that Hailey's boyfriend uses draft horses to work his farm - except when they get in a mood - then he uses a tractor.  I found out that my internship is listed under the attra web site.  This is the same internship I listed last year at 3 in the morning and had no responses to until this year.  Go figure. 

Friday it rained and rained.  Hailey had gone home and Jenny will be here until next Thursday.  (I have already grown attached and will be sad to see her go.)  We spent Friday morning getting Fisher Farm paperwork in order, backing up my blackberry (first time), and finding out how to update the Fisher Farm website.  Jenny was amazing.  When it stopped raining we harvested and got things ready to take to Marcel.  On the way to Marcel's I found out Jenny thought she was not getting paid and that she was doing this just to learn and ask questions.  I laughed and laughed.  Of course she is getting paid.  And she should be asking more questions.  On the way home, we stopped to get some transmission fluid for Dane and I found the perfect Blackberry holder for my phone - the one I have wanted for over a year - at a super cheap price.  OK - not the same as an arrowhead - but good luck indeed!!!  I am going to make it mean something!