- Tomatoes
- Cherry tomatoes
- Eggplant
- Tomatillos
- Hot peppers
- Cucumbers
- Zucchini
- Basil
- Kale
- Onions
- Garlic
- Green and purple beans
- Apples
- U-Pick black berries
It was a huge harvest this week. There were lots of cucumbers and zucchini and finally a nice amount of tomatoes. There are u-pick blackberries as many as you can harvest. We had great helpers today, Agnes and daughters Monica and Sasha and Dani and her daughter Bryn. Our kids helped out too and we got the harvest done in 5 hours. So as you can see lots of hands are needed for each harvest really for the next 8 weeks. We need your help at this point more than ever, so if you can spare the time, come out and help harvest the bounty. There are 17 harvests left in the regular season (8 weeks remaining).
We had the sheep and llamas sheered this week by an Australian professional, amazingly quick and talented at handling the animals. We have a video, but it may take more talent than I have to figure how to get it onto the website, I will ask the local expert.
We said goodbye to Jespen our student intern. He was a great help with the weeding and harvesting. He has completed his work study. The weeds seem to have the better of us, more to do and too few hours in the day. Maybe with the cooling weather we will get to use the afternoon hours better. Diego and I worked for about 1 hour in the heat of the day yesterday and that was all we could take.
The canning party is just around the corner. We are asking members to bring ½ pint jars as they are more useful than even pints. Mary Kay and I were brainstorming ideas for what to put up and it sounds like some new and some tried and true. Arrive early to help harvest and get your recipe processing early. There should be tons of apples for the kids to press into cider.
Save Helvetia is putting on the third annual Helvetia cultural fest on Sunday September 18th in the afternoon and we hope many of you can join us. This is a great event held in an amazing barn just about 2 miles from the farm. It helps to raise money to fight the legal battles ahead to try and keep them from developing Helvetia. We are still setting the goal of $1000 to be raised from among our members. If we can get each share to contribute $10 then we’ll chip in the rest to get us to $1000. I have heard that this offer is really helping to lift some sad spirits among the committee from Save Helvetia that has dedicated so much of their time and energy.