Availability for June 28th

All these farm tours and other procrastinations of my own making has put me far behind on my chores list here at my little farm, but I was out in what has become officially the hottest weekend of the year trying to get caught up. In between many breaks for ice water and diet coke (one of my vices) I did manage to get a lot done. A few more rows of beans are trussed, a lot of weeds got pulled, drip irrigation got put down the two rows of tomatoes and the squash, and ten bales of local straw got put down as mulch. There’s still a lot to do, but I’m feeling a little better about things.

I had a little celebration consisting of the first real BLTs of the summer. Two of them, in fact. Nice toast, a large Big Beef tomato, some home smoked bacon, a pile of sunflower sprouts (a rather decent stand-in for lettuce), and mayo. They were good and drippy, so I had to eat them over the kitchen sink (which is really where tomato sandwiches ought to be eaten in the first place). We also picked the first beans, squash, and zucchini out of the gardens this week, and it’s clear why this is the season everyone has been waiting for (100 degree days not withstanding).

We’ve got a number of new items listed this week, including several live plants from a new grower in Danielsville, The Flower Girls. We may also have the first sweet corn of the season—big emphasis on the “may”. This first planting of corn got no rain at all during its growth, and the plants show it. The ears haven’t been checked yet, but they’re getting harvested this week ready or not. If they look good, they’ll be coming your way. Otherwise, they’ll be food for Luke the Mule. The second planting fared much better and will be ready very soon.

We’ve also got more herbs, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, and more. We’ll be visiting Split Creek for goat milk, cheeses, and fudge, and we’ll also go by Milky Way Dairy for raw milk, cream, and buttermilk.

Our now checkout system (using three customer-volunteers) seemed to work really well last week, and we’ll be sticking with it. We’ll be sticking with our three helpers for now, but I’ll be contacting some of you on the rather lengthy backup list individually to come by and get trained at some point, so you’ll be able to fill in some weeks and/or take over when one of our three needs to move on.

Thanks for all your support. Through your word of mouth and the recent press, we’re now almost at 450 customers, and the number of order grew by another 10% last week. I feel good about how the market is running now, and know we could handle more growth if needed, assuming we have the growers to fill the orders. I know there are quite a few people around Athens now looking at their organic gardens and thinking about how they could expand it to serve our community, and that can only be a good thing for everyone.

We’ll see you on Thursday from 4:30 to 8pm at Gosford Wine!