Week 16 box

Tomatoes-The tomato harvest is winding down. But in the meantime we are still enjoying their fruits

Cherry Tomatoes- for a time it looked like they would never stop, but they too are slowing with the late summer season

Sweet Peppers- We grilled peppers and onions with our boneless ham pieces on kebabs last night-delicious! Marie has been carefully selecting peppers to leave on the plants and ripen to a red pepper. Hopefully after about 10-14 days, we may get some red peppers. Ripening peppers is very tricky when there is heavy fungus pressure from the weather.

Squash-large shares only-the final planting of squash suffered from a severe squash bug and cucumber beetle infestation. They have not produced well.

Cucumbers- Cool, crisp and delicious as a snack, in a salad, or in a sandwich. The cucumbers too are slowing down in the garden.

Bush Green Beans-The green beans love this weather and are flowering and producing profuse quantities of tender bush beans. We used green beans in a gumbo with our spicy andouille sausage, tomatoes, and peppers.

Garlic

Basil- Try a basil marinade on your next vegetable or meat dish. Puree 1 bunch of basil leaves, 1 teaspoons dried thyme, olive oil, salt, and garlic in a food processor. Mix over large pieces of raw vegetables to make great veggie kabobs. The basil marinade is also great on chicken and fish.

Farm news

Despite our best efforts to slow time it is now Thursday morning instead of Tuesday evening when we are supposed to send out the newsletter. Oops! But everyone remembered to come out and get their boxes-enjoy!

Weighing chickens (and pigs) and training pigs.

Our meat chickens are very sensitive to the weather. In hot weather they spend most of the afternoon resting in the shade instead of exploring the pasture and eating. So they grow much more slowly in the heat than mild weather. With the cooler weather and more afternoon shade our current chickens have been growing a little faster. But we are not sure if they will be large enough at 9 weeks of age (next week) or if they need to grow 10 weeks (September 14^th) like the summer chickens. One way we can try to tell is to weigh them at age 8 weeks. So we head out tot the pasture with a scale and box. We set those up on a flat spot then catch a chicken! They aren’t too excited about getting scooped up. They are freedom chickens!

An even funnier sight was me (William) trying to weigh our piglets. We were trying to see how much they had grown since we purchased them. They don’t fit in a box on our small scale. So I brought a bathroom scale to the pasture. I weighed myself, then I had to grab the little squealing, thrashing piglets and weigh again. The scale is the kind you have to tap with your toe then wait for it to zero out. So I am holding a 50ish pound thrashing piglet while I try to reach out with the toe of my boot to tap the scale. Then once it zeros I have to try to balance on the scale and somehow look around the piglet at the numbers. Most of the time I moved too much and the scale read error. So I had to try the whole this over again.

A more fun piglet job is training them to an electric fence. Once they grow large enough we set up a double electric line and have supervised training sessions. At first the little piglets don’t really understand what the fence is. When they get shocked they run all the way back to their old, un-electrified fence. Once they figure it out though they are so excited to munch their way through our patch of millet and cowpeas cover crop.

Some business

Thank you for all the returned boxes and egg cartons. We can also reuse the cherry tomato pints as long as they are clean and uncracked.

CSA Open House, Friday September 16^th 4-7 pm

Come out to the farm and tour the garden and pastures! Talk to the farmers (and the animals.) Let your kids dig and get dirty in a special kid area of the garden and enjoy petting layer hens and feeding pigs.

We’ll also have a special deal on pork, Pork Family Packs, and ½ hogs available at the CSA Open House (and the following week at the Farm Day.)

We encourage everyone to visit the farm and see your community farm! This is an opportunity for a full tour of the gardens and pasture with your farmers. See how we raise animals on pasture and organic vegetables at Bluebird Farm and hear about our sustainable farm management .

Farm Day, Friday September 23^rd 4-7pm

Farm Day is open to CSA members and the public. If you missed the CSA Open House, you can come on out to Bluebird Farm on September 23rd. Come out to the farm and tour the garden and pastures! Talk to the farmers (and the animals.) Let your kids dig and get dirty in a special kid area of the garden and enjoy petting layer hens and feeding pigs.

We’ll also have a special deal on pork, Pork Family Packs, and ½ hogs available at the Farm Day.

We encourage everyone to visit the farm and see your community farm! This is an opportunity for a full tour of the gardens and pasture with your farmers. See how we raise animals on pasture and organic vegetables at Bluebird Farm and hear about our sustainable farm management .