week 10

Red Springs Family Farm 8/5/14

In one bag: Cucumbers Yellow Crookneck Squash

Carrots Garlic Onions

In the other bag: Lettuce Basil

And then there are Tomatoes Corn

Halona Cantaloupe and Crimson Sweet Watermelons

Ten weeks marks the mid-point of our main season, and it feels just about right. The first flush of the summer fruits – cukes and squash, particularly, are slowing down. There are new vines beginning to bloom. Some of the fall crops are in the ground – broccoli and cabbages – we're hoping they can wait out the heat and put on some size before Fall arrives in earnest.

This sweet corn is spot on perfect this week. Thank you for partaking! There's another planting, quite a bit behind this one, but coming along nicely. So, there will be more corn, just not next week. There's no end in sight for the melons though. I think I've remarked before that we've never had such a wonderful melon patch, and it's holding true. This week, the larger Crimson Sweet watermelons are ripe, and the Halona cantaloupes are perfect. There are still jumbo Moon and Stars watermelons ripening in the field and two more varieties of cantaloupes that haven't started to turn yet. Plenty more melons to come.

Eggplants have gone on vacation, but they will return, hopefully with sweet peppers in tow.

Did you know that watermelon juice is yummy? Did you know that you can freeze cantaloupe puree and make delicious smoothies and sorbets later? Some folks even like to just eat the frozen chunks when they're not quite thawed. I'm not one of those people, but you might be.

Since it's election week, I just have to stand on my harvest basket for a moment here and make a statement. There are lots of ideas out there about how to vote. Vote with your religion, your principles, your political party, your friends, your family. It all boils down to this: it's a personal decision, and it matters. I think we should all vote, and I feel strongly that we are all voting every day – with our dollars.

Where your spend your money helps shape the world. Does your money enrich your community, or flow through long cyber-pipelines of large corporations and get spread in fraction of pennies to factory workers in South Asia? Probably both, of course, with a tendency to one direction or another.

The way I see it, eating is a physical necessity, but it is also a social and political action. How you choose your food helps to determine what this world looks like, probably in even more concrete and traceable ways than your average dollar at Wal-Mart. It's something to think about.

So, we thank you, during this election time, for voting not-so-much FOR us, but WITH us this season. We promise to do our best to bring your good food in exchange for your support. Now I'll get off my harvest basket and carry on...

If you want tomatoes for canning or freezing, let me know now so I can plan ahead to hold some for you. Also, if you would like extra basil for putting up pesto I'll be glad to make that available as the season progresses, too. Pesto is probably one of the easiest foods to “put up”. A food processor makes quick work of it. It just takes a LOT of basil. I don't think we've given what I consider a full pesto recipe's worth of basil in your bags as of yet, just to give you an idea.

Enjoy your veggies, have a great week, and please, pray for rain! Thanks.

Paul, Coree, Lulah and Levon