July 1st, 2026
Sugar Snap Peas
Green Beans or Zucchini
Scallions
Head Lettuce
Salad Mix
Radishes
Kale
Yeehaw - it feels like summer all of the sudden! Here’s just a quick update from the field and less on the items in your share because they are familiar and you’ll know what to do with them!
The summer crops are rockin’, baby birds are hatching all over the farm, and it’s hot and humid! We’re adding shade cloth to our propagation house and tomato tunnels to protect the seedlings from over heating and to protect the blossoms on the tomatoes. Sometimes the blossoms will burn out before they set fruit, causing us to lose out on an entire week or harvest. But the plants all have fruits on them and well be harvesting cherry tomatoes in a week or two!
The cucumbers are coming slowly but surely, after losing three beds to roly polies (which have become an unexpected pest for us due to our minimal tillage practices.) The benefits of minimal tillage outweigh the costs (for us - but not necessarily on all farms), so we’re coming up with creative solutions for keeping those cucumbers alive. Our friend, Emilee, who is the Diversified Vegetable Educator for the Greater Milwaukee Area for UW-Extension puts out a really nice and informative newsletter each week, giving tips for veggie production. I learned about the use of Kaolin Clay, a naturally occurring clay, that in its powdered form, can be mixed by farmers with water to create a “face mask” like coating on the cucumber seedlings, preventing insects from being able to munch on their tender stems. We dipped our seedlings in the slurry last Thursday with our Workshare crew, who was willing and excited to learn a new task and method. We have a potter and an herbalist in our group, and they had bot heard of the use of this clay in their studies. So now the cucumbers have a ghostly white coating on them, and have not gotten attacked by any insects! Considering it a win -for now!
Food inspiration: Tons of snap peas (cut on the bias), ultra-thin radishes rounds, one of the small head lettuces from last week’s share, tossed in a version of Green Goddess Dressing, but adding white balsamic vinegar using all of our farm herbs and going heavy on the mint. Topped with toasted and crushed pistachios and burrata. I would have mixed the burrata in, but was going to a gathering with some folks who don’t eat dairy. I recommend mixing in the creamy element!