Every week on the farm we are privileged to view miracles and sometimes participate in them. This week Paula’s father passed, at the age of 95, after a long and productive life. He didn’t really start to lose quality of life until he was 93. And it was at the time that Paula and Danny started ramping up their care of him, even though he was 2 hours away in NH. Right around January 1 of this year, Paula basically dropped all of her other responsibilities to take care of her dad, moved in with him for a time, and then eventually Danny and Paula moved him down here to Gardner to live with them.

Watching from the sidelines as these two remarkable people continued and upgraded their care of Paula’s dad, I felt fortunate to be able to witness and provide a small amount of comfort to them in their efforts. He passed on July 31, and Paula noted that the last thing he said to her was, “I love you, sweetheart.”

I know that many of you have cared for loved ones as they prepared to pass over, and I can only imagine the strength of character that it takes to do this work, often unseen by others. Blessed are those who do this important end-of-life work.

Special Gratitude this week

To Leslie – site coordinator extraordinaire!
Good morning!

Thank you again for the bounty each and every week. The flowers the last few weeks have been an extra boon, too.

We are out of town this upcoming week so don’t need our Friday, August 9/Shrewsbury share.

I’ve cc’ed Leslie on here so that she’s aware, too. Leslie – thank you for so thoughtfully staging the vegetables inside on Friday. It was SO hot and given your generosity, our bag did not suffer whatsoever.

Take care,
Kara

Ah, so glad that you are happy with the share, Kara, and yes, Leslie is so diligent and thoughtful to the Shrewsbury shareholders. Thank you, Leslie, Julie

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Hi Leslie

Just wanted to thank you for being the local pick up for the CSA. This is our first experience with a CSA and we are loving the produce we receive from MHOF. We appreciate having a close to home pick up and you make it so seamless- your garage setup, moving stuff inside on these super hot days, long pickup window…

Thank you
Mary Wood

Very nice, Leslie and Mary. Thanks for making the experience a good one for folks all the way through pick up, Leslie.

Julie

What is in your CSA Share this week?

Share week of July 29

I had the occasion on Saturday to unpack a large share for someone who didn’t pick up and was actually impressed with the quality and quantity. Sometimes I don’t see the forest for the trees, and it was a good reminder that we are cranking out some quality food.

For those struggling to make use of all of this bounty, I remind you that preserving food now for the winter will reap you immense benefits. Looking down this list, I remind you that kale, Swiss chard, collards, broccoli, beet greens can all be blanched (this means to bring your water to a boil, then immerse the cut greens in the water, boil them for 1-2 minutes, then remove, plunge in cold water, squeeze out the water and then pack them in whatever size plastic bag you want to freeze. When you want to use this food in January, just pull it out of the freezer, cook it quickly in boiling water, remove and eat and remember the freshness of August. The basil can be chopped, mixed with olive oil, and frozen in ice cube trays, to be then bagged and pulled out to add to soups and stews. The tulsi can be dried for a nourishing tea, dill, marjoram, oregano can be dried and powdered and stored – all of these herbs in a jar in a dark cupboard. The summer squash can be lightly cooked, pureed and frozen for soup or baby food later.

In Jack’s and my book, Many Hands Make a Farm, we wrote a very extensive chapter on food preservation that you might want to refer to. https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/many-hands-make-a-farm/

Best guess for week of August 5

• Mint – mostly peppermint
• Potatoes – Soraya this week, a yellow potato, my favorite – new crop
• Basil
• Tulsi
• Squash
• Cucumbers
• Lettuce
• Cilantro – new crop
• Chard
• Kale
• Pepper – new crop – just the beginning, this crop looks super healthy
• Green beans – very small quantities, just for some
• Onions
• Garlic
• Fowers for flower shares

We are still taking new shareholders – here is where you can sign up  — https://mhof.net/csa-order-form/

Crawling through the squash and cucumbers

Red bag crisis

We got new bags; if your old one is shredded, let me know and I will replace it.

Volunteering at MHOF

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday – 8-12, or 7:30 if you want breakfast. Saturday mornings we host volunteers from 7 sharp until 9:30 – breakfast included.

Items that you can buy for your own food preservation

Starting now we will have some crops in enough abundance that you can buy them in quantity for preserving for your use in the next year. We now have kale, chard and collards at $3/lb. It is of exceptional quality, and is one of those superfoods.

Jennifer’s recipe for the week

Squash Baby Food or Soup

My granddaughter just started eating purees, so I was so excited to make her some fresh squash puree from the farm, and she loved it!

I cooked the squash in a small amount of water until tender, then drained it and added it to my blender with a dash of pink Himalayan salt and 2-3 tablespoons of ghee. I blended it until it was super creamy.

This puree is great for baby food but also makes a delicious standalone soup. You can add fresh herbs, more ghee, and cream if desired.

Squash is the perfect summer food as it is cooling, easy to digest, and hydrating. It contains a good amount of Vitamin C, magnesium, and fiber. Additionally, it acts as a diuretic, helping to eliminate excess fluids in the body, which is beneficial during hot, humid weather. Squash also helps relieve acid reflux and constipation.

Farm Doins

This week the turkeys moved out onto the front lawn, soon to be making their way to the field, but hanging around close by until they get a little older. Despite some consternation on their arrival into the bright world of sunlight, they are managing well.

Enjoying their last day in the house with some scrumptious comfrey

Out in the big world

We took the layers over the bridge over the creek in our pond field and they are heading for the house. Matt and Declan spent most of Wednesday moving the pigs into their third woods space. They love life in the woods.

In the planting department we put out new beds of cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, arugula, cilantro and keeper (the big ones) beets. That took parts of three days.

We are almost done with the second round of weeding of the summer onions, and cleaned up leeks, squash, marjoram, dill, flowers, basil and a few other tidying chores. We finished weeding the red raspberries, and also weed whacked around the blueberries. Weeding often happens on our super Mondays when we have a lot of staff – during CSA picking, and then in afternoons when time permits.

We only took two garbage bags to the dump this week (8 last week), which gives one a real marker of how many bags of kelp we spread. However, on Saturday we passed out a bunch of kelp to blueberries, black raspberries, celery, hoop house cucumbers which are all germinated, and about ¾ of our orchard trees. Jim has been carefully mowing around each f these trees to make it easy to spread. Kudos to our mowers – Declan, Jim, Luke – for taming the crazy growth of grass this year.

Fruit picking proceeds – still some mulberries, blueberries going strong into the late crop, red raspberries done, blackberries coming on, apples – the early mushy ones so far are making quarts and quarts of sauce, and peaches are starting up.

The dogs are doing their night guarding around our meat birds – the favorite dish of a number of wild operators, and enjoy riding around in the car with me to do chores. They get out at each spot and run around, except when we do the pigs, for fear of the evil electric fence, when they wait patiently in the back seat. Usually Harriet rides shotgun, but sometimes it is Skippy . . .

We had a belated birthday party for Jason on Friday. Happy 21^st, Jason!

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We are now in August, and although it seemed that Thursday and Friday were two of the most challenging days for heat and humidity, I suspect that things will start to cool off some soon. There is only one more seedling starting date left for the year, and we are certainly off of the hump and traveling down the other side.

Julie

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Link to buy J and J’s book – Many Hands Make a Farm-
https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/many-hands-make-a-farm/