SThis week, we’ll wrap up our final harvests of the 2023 Summer Season at Wild Hare.  I want to thank you for allowing us to grow for you, your families, and your friends this Summer.  Thank you for trying new recipes and sharing them with others. Mark and I are beyond grateful for the community and care that you help us bring to this little piece of land in the Puyallup Valley, and we hope that you enjoyed more than a few memorable meals, cut some beautiful bouquets of flowers, and above all, that you know how thankful we are for your support and enthusiasm for what we do.  We will roll right into our Fall CSA Season and begin our Fall Hours next week (just Tuesdays 12-7 and Wednesdays 10-5) on October 3rd and 4th.  September 30th will be our final open Saturday of the year. The sugar pumpkins, the colorful squashes, and the flavorful roots—they’re looking top notch this year, so get ready for incredible soups, roasts, slaws and stews!

Say CHEESE! (It just goes so well with Broccoli) With two weeks of Summer harvest to go, there’s plenty to smile about, even on a drizzly Monday morning. With several tons of Winter Squash cut, collected and curing up for Fall and Winter, the crew has a whole lot to be proud of. I wish I could say that our work was done, but alas—the last crops of Summer are still trickling in and bed after bed of greens, roots, and aromatic vegetables of all kinds are awaiting their moment in the spotlight (and the root cellar). Summer is playing us a pretty juicy outro this year—we’re going to finish out the season with tomatoes, by goodness, not to mention corn and beans and likely peppers. As you’ve probably gathered from the photos of your wonderful farmers, we’ve got another beautiful round of broccoli for this week, and wouldn’t you know, the number of heads has nearly doubled over the course of seven days! So, I made sure to share an equally bountiful list of recipes for you to draw inspiration from below—soups, casseroles, breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Broc-ON!

Guess who showed up about three weeks early? Broccoli AND Napa Cabbage! Thanks to this extended patch of warm Summer weather (80+…again?), our Fall Brassica crop is coming online a little earlier than we would have planned or preferred, so we’re picking them, along with the the Melons, the Romano Beans our third rotation of Sweet Corn, and yes, more amazing Tomatoes. It is the perfect excuse to prep a make-ahead slaw or weeknight stir fry!

Many of our big bumper Summer crops have begun to taper off just in time for us to get ready for our next big project—storage. There’s a changing of the guard at play between the Summer Squashes (they’re done) and the Winter Squashes (they’re being cut and cured in the field on these dry days). And I don’t mean to sound the alarm, but the Tomatoes seem to be pumping the brakes just a little. In fact, today was our annual Pizza and Passata Day for the crew. Socking away a few quarts of sweet sauce is a treasured but humble way to celebrate work they’ve done to bring us thousands and thousands of incredible tomatoes this Summer. They pressed a little bit more than 25 quarts after the morning harvest, and we fired up some pizzas in the backyard for lunch. (The color of the sauce is like nothing other, and it makes for a relaxing albeit messy afternoon.)