CSA Newsletter // Week 9

Greetings All,

I hope you guys had a great week! I wanted to start by sharing that we finally picked some tomatoes! It's not the bumper crop we were hoping for but every year is different and I am proud that we were able to get the yield we are seeing out there. We pumped water off the field more than once this season trying to dry out the tomatoes, and it worked! We lost a few dozen plants on the one end of the field but we did everything we could; and saved thousands of plants.

Rest assured that we do have a LOT out there right now! The problem is they don't want to turn red! We picked the first few baskets just on Wednesday afternoon and we're looking forward to picking those every few days for the next month or so! They are a little behind, just like the muskmelons and watermelons, but that will just make those even sweeter when we do harvest them :)

We WILL have tomatoes in your CSA Shares this coming week! We are just getting a handful at the moment but we expect to start harvesting a lot more, so hoping we can start plugging in a good amount of tomatoes, though it might be smaller than the normal quantity this week as we're gearing up (depending on how many are turning). On a normal harvest day we can pick 200 pounds of more, I think our all-time record is 800# in one day. So needless to say- we have lots of treats ahead of us!!

I am not doing the online store for canning orders because peppers are also a little behind, so I'll roll that out for next week and ya'll can start getting in your orders for canning supplies (CSA Members get a discount!).

We are so busy right now we haven't watched tv in weeks, maybe even more than a month? Ben & I work around the clock and even though my pace is slower I am still contributing to our goals for the season. There is no rest in the farm season; no matter how you feel. The livestock and commitments don't end regardless of how you're doing. I went down and delivered the chickens on Tuesday morning at 4:30am. That was very hard! I have only driven to deliver CSA Shares one time since the accident (so this was a lot of driving for me).

Then the next morning I went and picked up the finished product, which looks so good. It's a quick turn around but we were happy to have these chickens to offer our Members over the weekend at our sale here which was a great success!

Thank you to everyone who came out this weekend, it was amazing to see so many of you guys show up for us, with plenty of hugs and encouraging messages; I appreciate your input more than you'll ever know!

Right after the sale we hosted a birthday party for our son William, who is 13 tomorrow! A few kids for William's b-day party, and the girls had friends over too (to keep them busy and out of the boy's hair). It was a busy-busy day! We made campfire pizzas for dinner per his request and his friends and they had a sleepover in the ice castle so that they can "game" all night long, which didn't last nearly as long as I expected. The girls inside stayed up later than the guys outside!

Kelsi and I were bringing lunch down for Grandma & Grandpa Brown on Thursday and we stopped at this super cute flower stand in Big Lake. We saw a sign on the road and had to turn around to get to it, but I am so thankful we did! Grandma said they're beautiful and she has them right next to her chair where she spends most of her time these days, right inside the window from the hummingbird feeders. Grandma Brown is in hospice now since last week; she is mentally cognitive which we are grateful for, but her body is not very strong. I brought preachers' stew (which is hamburger and rice, a few other things but very easy to swallow). She's still at home with Grandpa and has a nurse who comes into the home every day to help with different tasks, they're in their 90s now (or 89 I think?).

On a sad note, Ben lost his Grandpa Dawson this week. While we are thankful to have Grandpa D in our lives and our kids' lives for so long, we are happy that Jesus came to take him home. He was a man of faith and a Great Grandpa (in both senses of the word)! We are thankful for the time we had here with him but it's never easy saying good-bye. We have his funeral tomorrow on Monday, which is also William's b-day. But CSA deliveries will remain as normal; part of the reason you're not getting this newsletter until right now. We're trying to work ahead a little so it's easy for everyone to do the work without us tomorrow morning for a few hours. We're also down 3 employees this week because of a family trip (that was planned in advance). I will be leaving before the trip to the cemetery so I can get boxes delivered on time. It's easier than rescheduling the whole week of Shares, less stressful for us and our family in the long run. I think that's what Grandpa would want. He loved Ben so much. Pray for the family if your heart feels led, we could use prayers today.

The air conditioner in the cooler went out yesterday during the sale. Completely burnt up the outlet and the A/C unit is fried. It was a good 5 years while it lasted. Ben went and bought a new one last night after working his 14 hour day at the stand, but it had too big of a power draw and we didn't have the right breakers so I had to go get a new one today from Elk River. Don (Ben's Dad) helped me replace the outlet with a GFCI so it wouldn't draw too much power and now the walk-in cooler for veggies is chilling down after a day of being open- at least it wasn't 95 degrees today. Then on my way home my credit card was charged 10 times for stores down in TX, of course today would be the day that my credit card was stolen (for the 3rd time this season). I don't even have it saved on google wallet or any automated payments anymore. So frustrating. Cue: mental breakdown. Some days it's harder to find things to be thankful for than others; but there is always something to be grateful for.

I should probably apologize for 'over sharing' but after talking to some of our Members' recently, I have had some reassurance that everyone is dealing with different things in your personal lives too. You've watched us go through this season with some serious ailments, Ben says this will be the season we talk about for a decade. "Nothing could be worse than 2025"...

From talking with a few of our Members: a death in the family to parent's divorce, money troubles and sending kids away to college or school dilemmas, we are all only human so it's good to share it. You could hold onto all of it by yourself, but the weight will drag you down. Instead of having the same "it's fine" conversation with all of you, I decided to be honest, it's a weight lifted but does give me a lot of anxiety knowing that I could be hiding all of this and giving you a more fun experience. Honesty seems like the fairer path here, you deserve to know what I am not posting as much on social media or as involved as I usually am; I am not 'back to normal' yet but I sure am doing my best.

Farming is not for the faint of heart; sometimes it feels like we're doing something wrong here, but I know this too shall pass. We are doing the right thing for our family and our community. It's not like we're 'quitting' but geez it would be great if we could catch a break. I pray we have some more 'sunny' days ahead.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT NEXT WEEK:

Jumbo and Family Shares: Sweet Corn, Red Cabbage, Carrots, Cucumbers/ Pickles, Zucchini/ Summer Squash, Roma tomatoes!

Single Shares: Sweet Corn, Red Cabbage, Cucumbers/ Pickles, Zucchini/ Summer Squash, Green and purple peppers & Roma Tomatoes!

Sweet Corn! Just an FYI- we are starting a new patch this week and it looks awesome!! The cobs are a little smaller but so are the kernals. Now that you're becoming an expert on what fresh corn tastes like, maybe you will be able to tell the difference between these two patches. They're the same variety of corn but like I said, these kernals/cobs will likely be a little smaller. I personally like corn when it's barely ripe- but Ben's Dad is always after the biggest ripest cobs! So it's really just about what your preference is; my point is you'll have some comparison now and you'll have to see if you can tell the difference ;) Red Cabbage! This is a lot like it's green counterpart but it is a little denser than the green cabbage. The leaves are firmer, and they have a lot of the anthocyanins that are found in purple vegetables. Don't even get me started on purple vs red vegetables, lol! Why are red onions actually purple?! You know the color I am referring to, haha. The anthocyanins are really good for us and I'm sure you've heard to expression "eat the rainbow" before. It's good for us to have a wide variety of nutrients from our food!

We harvest them and bring them in from the fields in the big bins and then take the leaves off and give them to the hogs. These hogs LOVE cabbage greens. By their reaction to these being brought into their pens, you can tell that these are their favorite. Anything in this family of brassicas, the brussel sprouts and broccoli too- there is nothing better to hogs! So we give them all the damaged heads of leaves that we pull off of the nice heads.

CARROTS! We are adding these to the Jumbo & Family Shares to start this week. We topped these so you won't get the greens but after all these rain storms recently, you wouldn't want the greens for anything except the compost. By taking the greens off and putting them in the plastic bags, they'll hold for a long time in the fridge. You can peel them if you choose but you don't have to. It's really a personal preference but it doesn't hinder the nutritional value if you peel them.

Zucchini and Summer Squash are really gearing down, so you'll start to see less quantities in your boxes. As I mentioned before, the first planting was behind and started producing at the same time as the second planting. That's not ideal in our world, we want to have a consistent amount of these veggies all season long. That being said, now is a great time to start freezing zucchini so you can use it in the off-season! Putting up a couple bags of produce every week will translate into having a freezer full of farm fresh goods to take out all winter long.

*Most of you would like to know that last week Ben delivered just shy of ONE THOUSAND pounds of produce to the food shelf. Part of the reason we love CAER (in Elk River) is because they share with neighboring food shelves if they get bulk quantities like this; so they got a huge variety of goodies and I did call in advance just to make sure they were willing to take on that distribution role. We love their team there and they're always ready to take on more work to help others in the community; we are happy to be a part of that and as CSA Members you should know that you play a huge role in this too- you support our farming endeavors which leads to these donations. Thank you!!

I would guess we will have zucchini for another couple weeks and then it's done for the season. Depending on how this weeks' weather is, this could be the last time you get it all season. *Freeze some now if you want to have it in the winter!!

Roma tomatoes!!! For heaven's sake, don't put them in the fridge, lol! Don't do it, unless you cut it and only eat half of it (good luck with that ;P) We are going to try to get everyone roma tomatoes but if we don't have enough we'll be giving some of you guys the bigger slicing tomatoes. This is going to be just like the zucchini/summer squash flip flop. We try to alternate it every week so that you see the variety in your CSAs and you get to try a little of everything! If it doesn't work out to flip flop, we document that and do our best to make up for it in the coming weeks.

Romas are known for having a lower water content but they're also not quite a sweet as the large slicing tomatoes. My tomato conessuires out there will understand I am sure- both tomatoes have their place. Just like the cucumbers we talked about a couple weeks ago- you can use them for whatever you want but in certain kitchen applications, one variety is better than the other.

Single Shares will get the Purple and Green Bell peppers this week! We are taking a week off of bell peppers for the bigger boxes so we can let them get a little bigger before we start really busting through that patch. This rain yesterday helped a lot, we should see a lot of good growth.

WRAPPING IT UP:

I can't believe it's already the middle of August. We're already at the "state fair season" point in the summer. It's almost time for school to start, time to take the kids shopping a bunch, just crazy how much there is to do and how little time is left to do it. I still haven't taken our kids to the beach or gone swimming, I could go on but I won't. Point is- that accident really stole a lot of my sanity, and I feel like work/life balance is completely eluding me. The kids can see it too so it's not like they don't understand, but it's just hard to take it all in some days.

I am going to sign off here and go get back to work. Ben just got home from the farm stand a little bit ago and we have pigs to feed, a cooler to reorganize and sort through, clean up by the pack shed and checking off boxes so tomorrow goes as well as it can, considering we'll be at the funeral and short staffed about 5 people. One of our girls was headed back to college this past weekend but chose to stay for tomorrow morning so she could help us get through this and oversee everything while we were away for the morning. We are so grateful for our helpers and I wish I could keep her all season, Grace is one of a kind.

Unfortunately where we live there is no delivery service; not at all. Not a single restaurant or uber eats; no one will come out here lol. Which I don't mind most of the time.... but it makes 'quick' meals harder to come by. So I ordered enough pizza at lunch time to eat for lunch and dinner and I am calling this a win for today. That's where I am at today. Pizza for both of these meals is a success, because this is what survival mode looks like. It's just a part of life, all of us have had these types of weeks before, or even months. Not my best moment but again, it's easier to try to laugh it off with ya'll than pretend. So cheers to pizza!! We'll fit in some veggies too ;) ~The Farmer's Wife