After working our way through a hot and smoky week, I’ve got exciting news to share—we’re harvesting our first ears of Wild Hare Organic Sweet Corn in the morning! It is our preferred practice to pick our corn same day so that it as fresh and sweet as possible by the time folks take it home. Mark and shucked an ear or two in the field at around 8pm last night, right after we’d walked to the far fields to count heads of Cone Cabbage. I’m not saying it is everyone’s idea of dessert, but those kernels were a super sweet treat on their own. The crew had a formidable haul of fresh Cucumbers waiting for them today, along with their quotidian pick of Zucchini and Romano Beans. They’re also taking a first real pass through the Tomato house for slicers and heirlooms in the morning. We’re still sitting on plenty of green ones that have yet to fully ripen (ugh!), so we’re not ready to open up bulk sales just yet. So hold onto those canning jars for now…or fill them with Spicy Dilly Romano Beans or a small batch of Sauerkraut in the meantime.

If you ask the ten foot tall beanstalk, the height of Summer is upon us. Popping cherry tomatoes, slicing up cool cucumbers, and enjoying sweet stone fruit—it doesn’t get much more divine (or physically demanding) than the onset of August. Our burgeoning to-do lists are testing the constraints of our yellow legal pads and inboxes this week, but the good stuff coming out of our fields is a reminder of what it all adds up to…exciting, delicious, life affirming food that it is even better shared.

After too many months of waiting, it is officially tomato season. Though we aren’t opening up bulk sales just yet, we have Wild Hare tomatoes for the whole CSA this week (and some extras for sale too—little ones to start the week, and maybe some heirlooms by the weekend—we’ll see what four hot days in a row does on the ripening front!) We’ve also managed to grow a successful test crop of fresh Walla Walla Sweet Onions this year, so a nice Tomato, Cucumber & Sweet Onion Salad should be near the top of everyone’s menu this week.

We’ve reached the midpoint of our Summer Season, and about this time each year, the Zucchini and Summer Squash go bonkers. They’re the original “pick me” girls of the agricultural world, I swear. They’re relentless, and I know you feel it on your tables too! For much of the year, I wake up, and make a list of exactly how much we need to harvest in a given day (ie: 200 heads of lettuce, 12 bunches of Chard, etc). But many of the crops we enjoy most at this time of year—the Cucumbers, Zucchini, and any day now Tomatoes and Beans, dictate how much or how little is ready for harvest and insist that we go through and pick them several times a week. We do what we can to keep up; however, we’re calling it what it is and giving ourselves over to our late-Summer overlords.