Popping cherry tomatoes, slicing up cool cucumbers, and enjoying sweet stone fruit—it doesn’t get much more divine (or physically demanding) than the late Summer harvests of August. The crew picked several flats of tomatoes today as a load of lovely Peaches arrived from Okanogan. The Peaches are freshly picked and still firm, but the sugar is there. A few days on the counter at room temp should do the trick—but you can experiment with bagging and other techniques if you’re trying to expedite the process.

We’re halfway through the Summer season, and that means that Mark and I basically no longer in charge of the farm. Not to worry. This doesn’t mean that you’ll find us catching up on our rest just yet. We’re actually everything but complacent, because this is the time of year that we give ourselves over to the will and wherewithal of our late-Summer overlords, the fruiting crops. For much of the year, I wake up, and make a list of exactly how much I want us 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, the Zucchini, and as of today, the various Tomatoes and such—they decide how much or how little is ready for harvest and insist that we pick them several times a week. They start out with a modest output (like this week’s first little Tomato harvest, which we will split up amongst the CSA and only have a limited amount of extra for sale) before gaining in output as the weeks go by (which is why we will get around to those bulk sales soon but not just yet). So this week is a literal taste of what is to come.

This week’s newsletter is going to be brief, because we just wrapped up hosting a Farm Walk at Wild Hare today. Mark and I had the pleasure of sharing an in-depth look at our farm and practices with a group of farmers, certifiers, researchers and professionals from our local food system. Luckily, today’s event was recorded in multiple forms of media, and with folks in the form of a virtual tour in the future, which is beyond amazing. Mark and I are truly grateful for days like these, and after four hours of sharing ideas, gadgets, stories, and techniques, I’m having trouble finding the words, let alone string them together into sentences.