Please note: this list is prepared the week before we harvest your share.  Some guesswork is involved:  some things may be in the share that are not on the list, and some listed things may not be in the share.

• Lettuce
• Swiss Chard

• Beets
  

Alliums

• Garlic Scapes
• Scallions

Crop updates
Focus on Strawberries and Cucurbits

For many of us, the delicious strawberries from the farm are one of the reasons why we keep coming back.  Each year since 2004, we've planted 5 beds of strawberries, with the idea that the first year, the strawberries would not produce, but that the three following years would be their productive years.  So this season should have been a dream year for strawberries - what happened?!  The story of our strawberry drought takes us back to the winter of 2005-2006.  Following a very dry August and September, which did not provide the strawberries with enough moisture to really get some vegetative growth going after they produced, a cold snap without snow cover froze them hard, even under their protective covering of straw mulch.  In May of 2006, we uncovered the old strawberries as we were planting our 5 new beds, and it quickly became clear that not very many had survived the winter, and that the beds were not worth trying to manage in future years.  After the June harvest, we sadly turned in both the 2004 and 2005 plantings, leaving us with only the 5 beds from 2006 to overwinter.  Now, 5 beds of strawberries are not nearly enough for our CSA, so in spring of 2007 we planted 10 additional beds, and we are considering adding more in the fall of this season.  As a result, we have very limited strawberries out there this year, definitely not enough for all of our shareholders this season, but we are looking forward to a bountiful berry year in 2007.

Grrr ... groundhogs strike again.  The chubby little varmints have wrought havoc on our first and second plantings of cucumber, summer squash and watermelon transplants at our Lyman Estate field.  The first planting is damaged but possibly recoverable, but the second is beyond saving.  Meg made some super-quick phone calls to find some extra cucumber and summer squash transplants for us to put in to replace the ones that got eaten, and we plan to direct seed a bunch of all three crops this week.  We also have plans to put up flash tape, pinwheels and bird fencing around both plantings to discourage our furry friends.  Don't be surprised, however, if cukes and summer squash are not on the menu quite as early as we had hoped.  We'll keep you updated.