This week started off just like most weeks. We were weeding our little hearts out. Then all of a sudden, the end of the week appeared, and it was big decision time. Do we harvest garlic, or do we harvest carrots?

Ultimately, we decided to harvest carrots last week. We are way too excited to see those beautiful carrots on grocery store shelves, we couldn’t stand to wait any longer.

This meant breaking out and dusting off our carrot harvester. This hasn’t been used since we harvested our final box of carrots last fall. You might be asking, then how are those delicious carrots in my box being harvested? To that we say, lovingly by hand! Until now, every item in your box has been lovingly harvested by the hands of our hard working crew and volunteers. Each pepper, tomato, broccoli crown, cucumber, snap pea, etc. has been picked by hand. That means a lot of time, attention, and love has gone into ensuring that only the best produce ends up in your box.

The way our carrot harvester works is, a plough loosens the soil around the carrots. Rubber belts grab onto the top of the carrots, and it rides up a pulley system. Once it reaches the top of the pulley, discs work to slice off the tops. The carrot then fall onto a conveyor belt, and the tops get dropped back into the field. Once on the conveyor belt, our crew tests how fast their hands can move. Their job is to sort out any tops, weeds, or bad carrots…as the carrots go wooshing by at a fast speed. Once the carrots reach the end of the conveyor belt, they drop onto a fall breaker (a piece of fabric that helps to soften their landing so they don’t break), and into a pallet box. Once the pallet box is full, it gets taken down to our washing station.

Once at the washing station, the carrots are dumped from the pallet box onto a conveyor belt. This conveyor belt moves slower than the one on the harvester, so the carrots go through their second round of sorting here. Once the carrots reach the end of the conveyor belt, they are dropped into our barrel washer. This is basically a giant washing machine for veggies. The carrots spin around while water shoots down to clean them off. Once the carrots are clean, they drop onto an inspection table. This is a table with a bunch of rollers to rotate the carrots. This stage is when the carrots go through their final stage of sorting. They’re now clean, and the rolling table allows the crew to inspect all sides of the carrot. Once the carrots get the Food Farm stamp of approval, they drop into a new pallet box where they will stay until they get packed for their final destination.

Since carrots were taken care of last week, we get to spend this week harvesting garlic!

In your box this week:

Green Beans – Beets – Carrots – Jalapenos – Green Bell Peppers – Zucchini – Onion – Cucumber – Greens Mix – Tomatoes

This is the time of year where people seem to have too much zucchini. One of my favorite ways to use up extra zucchini is to make this Lemon Zucchini Cake. It’s super moist, and very light. I especially love it because you can make a bunch of these, and pop them in your freezer to save for the winter months when you want a little taste of summer.

This one may seem like an unlikely pairing, but the Summer Beet and Tomato salad is so good. The beets add a little sweetness to balance the acid from the tomatoes. Mix and match your favorite herbs. Then top it all with cheese. A delicious salad that is Summer on the plate.

We gave you big bunches of basil last week. If you still have some leftover, this Black Pepper Jalapeno Chicken Recipe is a great way to use some of it up. This dinner is also a quick and simple way to use up your bell peppers and jalapeno. You can adjust your heat preference by using more or less jalapeno. Our jalapenos are very spicey, so I’d reccomend stating with a little and tasting before you add more.