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Week 12 (B week + Group 2 Chickens)
Aug 28th, 2014
LotfotL is now certified organic!
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LotFotL in the Quick!
Below are the highlights that we would like to make sure our members know about on the farm.
Delivery Details: This weeks deliveries include:
- Weekly Gonzo and Staple
- "B week" Flip-flop, See-saw, Eggs and Chicken
- Group 2 Monthly Chickens
Last Minute PEACHES and Blueberries!:
I was able to get some extra boxes of peaches and blueberries with this order. So I have about 10 boxes for last minute sales on our online farm store. Order Now for delivery this Thursday.
Melons: We are growing a number of tasty specialty melons this year. These varieties are chosen for excellent flavor and texture. The drawback is that they do not travel and store well. The result, is they can sometimes arrive to their destination broken, over ripe, or bad! What to do? click here
Tomatoes: Bad year and now they have blight!
Weather: This weeks rainy stormy weather is going to make filling boxes a challenge. We will do our best to get you as much of the food as possible, but your box may be a bit light due to inaccessible fields.
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Melons Melons Everywhere!
Melons, a part of the Cucurbitaceae family along with cucumbers and squash, are cultivated largely in warm regions (like Wisconsin in the summer). Here at LotfotL, we're growing several different varieties of melons including watermelon and muskmelons. Some of our watermelon varieties include Galia, Moon and Stars, Sugar Baby, and Peace melons. Galias were developed in Israel in the 1970s. To determine the ripeness of this melon, instead of checking by the stem for softness, the aroma should be very noticeable. The Moon and Stars melon is an heirloom variety that was rediscovered in Macon, MO and features a dark green rind with bright yellow spots that resemble moons and stars. Sugar Baby and Peace melons are typically small, but pack in a lot of flavor. Our muskmelon varieties include Ananas and Crenshaw melons. Ananas melons have a similar smell to pineapples when they're ripe. Be sure to keep these melons cool and dry until you're ready to eat them. Crenshaw melons are a cross between Persian and Casaba varieties and are a rich yellow when they're ripe. Be sure to keep ripe or cut melons of this variety in the fridge. If your CSA share experiences a melon mishap and your melon arrives in an inedible state, take a look at our what to do list.
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What's in the Box?
Blue = click for storage tips
Staple and Flip-flop: SMALL BOX
Gonzo and See-saw: LARGE BOX
Box contents are subject to change at the last minute due to unforeseen circumstances.
Note: Asterisk (*) indicates vegetable is NOT from certified organic land, but is still grown using organic standards.
Remember: Click the green veggies above to find a recipe link and click the photo ID link to find photos of all of your veggies!
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Friends of the Farm: Bavette Le Boucherie
Bavette is a butcher shop, restaurant, and small grocery located in Milwaukee's historic Third Ward neighborhood. The owner, Karen Bell, opened Bavette with the goal of creating more transparency in the food system. She sources all of the meat in the shop, from beef and pork to sausages and lamb, from local farms who raise their animals on pasture and send Karen whole carcasses, so very little, if any, of the animal is wasted. The restaurant portion of Bavette features a menu with locally produced ingredients, some being from your favorite local farm LotFotL. Bavette's grocery features locally produced, artisan goods like sauces, jams, mustards and more. The shop also sells locally produced wines and beers, which can be enjoyed in shop or at home. In addition to locally produced foods, Bavette offers wine classes and butchering demonstrations. For more information about this food pioneer, visit their website or stop by at 330 E. Menomonee Street in Milwaukee. Thanks for being a great friend of the farm, Bavette! And keep up the good work!
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The Dirt on the Farm: Late Blight, and the death of 10,000 tomato plants
Now comes the bill for all the beautiful, mild, wet weather we've had all summer. Late  Blight(or phytoptera infestans for you latin lovers out there) has swept its way into our tomato fields, leaving one sickening path of destruction behind. The picture shows how the damage to fruit looks at an advanced state, sort of like smudgy oily finger prints all over both ripe and immature fruit. There are things farmers can do to prevent late blight from spreading, but once you have infection on a farm, it is inevitable that the spores will spread, and your plants will die ugly premature deaths.
Blight first shows itself on stems and leaves of infected plants. The common hallmarks are brown or black lesions on the edge of leaves, with white spores on the underside, coupled with ringing of stems in the same brown/blackness. We first found blight indicators on the farm 2 weeks ago, on our partner's tomatoes. We took some precautions, including spraying an organically approved product called ef400 and removing the infected plants from the fields, but it was to no great avail.
Some cultivars of tomato show better resistance to late blight than others, as is the case with our Blue Beauty and Striped German tomatoes. The red slicers, Italian and Russian heirlooms, Cherries, and most all other types though are over run.
What does this mean for you? It means fewer tomatoes this year, and on occasion uglier ones too. Blight symptoms in fruit can often show up after harvested fruit is sitting for a while. This can mean that the tomato will look fine upon packing and show up to your house with spots on it. Even with the odds against us, we are going to press on, and do our best to get you as many tomatoes as we can, and in as good of shape as possible. We thank you in advance for tolerating any not so pretty tomato fruits.
Farmer Tim
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Thank you:
Thank you for your support. We couldn't do this without you.
Help our family grow. Consider sharing this email with a friend.
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Contact Us:
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LotFotL Community Farm, W7036 Quinney Rd, Elkhorn, WI 53121 2629510794
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