Time really flies when you’re having fun. Somehow we’re already in August, and this week marks the halfway point of our Summer shares. Feels like just yesterday we were filling the first box of the season.

Janaki has been taking some well-deserved time off of the farm. While he’s away, the crew is hard at work trying to beautify the farm for his return. What does this mean? Weeding, weeding, and more weeding! Every time we turn around, new weeds have popped up.

When we aren’t weeding, we are hard at work harvesting. It seems the crops were being shy the last few weeks, but we are about to enter veggie abundance. On the farm, we do what’s called succession planting. This is where you plant a vegetable, then a few weeks later you plant it again. You do this over and over until you have as much of a vegetable planted as you want. Sucession planting allows you to have a continuious stream of one vegetable. We do this with a lot of our crops. Cucumbers get 3 plantings to ensure they last for most of the summer. By the time the first planting of cucumbers is starting to slow down, the third planting is producing sizeable cucumbers. We do this with lettuce and broccoli as well. This is how these vegetables are able to keep showing up in your box week after week.

Sometimes we do a succession planting as a way to slowly bring on a crop, and eventually have it reach abundance at the peak of the season. We mostly do this with zucchini and basil. It slowly brings on the crop which is great for getting it into your CSA boxes, without overwhelming the crew. Then the next succession reaches its peak, and we suddenly have enough to start sending to wholesale or sending as preserving shares. The timing of each seeding and harvest has been carefully planned throughout the years. However, every once in a while, the crops and mother nature have a different plan. This year is one of those times.

The first planting of our zucchini wasn’t getting pollinated properly, so it took a while for it to produce useable fruit. The second planting of zucchini got pollinated well, and started producing useable fruit from the very beginning. Unfortunately, this means that the first and second plantings were producing useable zucchini at the same time. Cue zucchini mayhem! Our basil decided to do a similar thing this year. The first planting matured on schedule. The second planting shot up, and matured very quickly. We suddenly have basil abundance…and two more plantings starting to germinate and grow.

This talk of basil abundance is a great reminder that if you ordered a basil preserving share, keep an eye out for communication from Catherine on scheduling a day to get your basil. We want to make sure everyone gets their preserving share when the plants are looking their best. The plants are so happy, and the basil is beautiful right now.

In your share this week:

Lettuce – Cilantro – Basil – Cucumber – Zucchini – Kale – Carrots – Green Onions – Tomatoes

Blueberries are in season right now, and this Blueberry Basil Lemonade is the perfect thing for a hot summer day. It’s not too sweet, but it’s very refreshing. Raspberries are also in season right now, and are excellent in this in place of the blueberries. If you have some strawberries leftover from earlier this summer, you could try that too. Basically any berry mixed with basil, makes an incredible lemonade.

With Summer winding down, I’m eating all the fresh veggie salads I can. If you’re looking for a fun way to use your carrots and kale, try this Lemony Roasted Carrot and Kale Salad. Bonus, it uses parsley! If you still have parsley hanging out from last week, this is a great way to use it up.

This week’s box is begging for a salsa to be made. I love this Mixed Fruit Pico de Gallo when I want something that isn’t as tomato heavy. The juliets or the slicer tomatoes would work great for this recipe. swap out the fresno chili for the jalapeno that’s in your box. Serve it with chips, on fish tacos, or just eat it by the spoonfull.