This Week's Fruit Trio - $17.50

2# peaches, 1 pint blackberries, and 1 cantaloupe

FRESH PICKED - NEW FRUITS THIS WEEK

Yellow Doll Watermelon - $5

An early ripening, small seeded watermelon with bright yellow flesh and black seeds. This one cracks easily so you'll never find it at a grocery store as it is difficult to ship.

Peaches - 2 types this week

Red Haven Peaches - old fashioned free-stone peach

Cling Peaches - what we have had the last couple weeks, bursting with flavor and juicy. Some folks call these "paper towel" peaches.

We feel very lucky to have these peaches this year. Our supplier has a large orchard. He used to pick peaches by the pallet. This week he got 46 crates. It's hardly worth picking, but he's doing it for us. He did raise the price this week, but I still think it's very fair. There's no way he's making money at the volume they are picking.

Cantaloupe, Aphrodite - larger, tender flesh and plenty sweet - a medium large sized muskmelon with a looser netting, tender flesh, and floral nose.

Blackberries - big, plump blackberries, just like last week's share fruit.

Peach Pies

Gooey homemade peach filling lightly sweetened and topped with a decorative lattice top.

Served in our signature crust of house rendered lard, organic whole wheat flour, and local butter for a flakey and tasty double crust pie.

Zucchini Bread - Healthy and Delicious

A summer classic, our zucchini bread features organic flour, organic sugar, and homemade applesauce for a natural sweetness and moist texture. Great toasted and slathered in butter.

Just $6

Sweet Corn - just in

I was expecting another week still, but the hot days and warm nights helped it along. Extra sweet corn available in the online shop.

Raised on rows of "black plastic mulch," which is the same type of setup that most of our other vegetables (peppers, zucchini, etc) get. Black plastic mulch is a weed suppressant and it increases the soil temperature. It's very labor intensive and costly to put down, but it makes management easier and, in this case, gives us sweet corn about 10 days earlier than the field varieties. Most sweet corn is direct sowed in the ground with the earliest varieties usually coming around August 1.

Sold by either 4 ear, 6 ear, or a full dozen.

Weekly Meats - 10% Off

As usual, the meat in the shares is 10% off. This week that's:

Green Onion Brats .

Boneless Pork Chops

Christmas in July - Cookie Dough Sale

Lauren and I were talking about promotions this week and she suggested Christmas in July. I asked, "What Christmas foods could we do?"

She didn't skip a beat. "COOKIES." Of course. I don't have capacity this week in the kitchen to do sugar cookies, but we do have plenty of cookie dough.

If you haven't tried the cookie dough, here' s a good chance. There are 14 cookies per package. Simply take them from the freezer and pop them in the oven. It's a great item to have on hand at all times.

Flavors:

Chocolate Chip, Salted Double Chocolate and Oatmeal Raisin

Carrots w Tops

Mike at Busy Bee Organics doesn't grow much, but when he does, it's the best.

Mike is one of the area's inspectors for certified organic farms. His day job is consultant and inspector, but on his small farm he also pioneers the practices he teaches.

Mike focuses on high-tunnel production, particularly of tomatoes and grape tomatoes. He also has a small blueberry patch and grows a few specialty crops, including last week's celery and some carrots this week.


Carrots are very labor intensive without chemicals. He grows a small amount and this week they are one of our feature special order items.

One of the coolest thing Mike does on his farm is make his own fish fertilizer. There is a local sportsman's store nearby that hosts an annual "fish shoot." Yes, they have a big tank loaded with fish and sportsmen try spearing the fish with a bow and arrow. Not very sporting, but it's a thing. Anyhow, the gets the fish afterwards to take back and compost. It's a lot too. Like a full dump truck load. He then covers them in wood chips (carbon) and turns them periodically. This compost is then added as a side dress to the blueberries and tomatoes, providing plenty of nitrogen and soil biology.

Pickling Cucumbers - GET CANNING

One of the girls who works here in the farm kitchen also has a certified organic farm at home. Maddie and Amanda (sisters) work 2 days per week and really enjoy baking pies and cookies.

At home, they grow for their farm stand and for Fresh Fork. Pickles, cabbage, and roma tomatoes are three of the big crops she grows for Fresh Fork.

This week she hit the peak harvest on pickling cucumbers. If you were thinking of doing any canning, now is the time.

Sold by the

Quart - approx 2 #

Half Peck - approx 5#

Peck - approx 10#

In 90 Degrees out, but 99 in the Brooder.

There is no relief from the heat right now on the farm. Chores outside can be tough and exhausting, and usually a chance to step inside is a relief.

Not in the brooder. The brooder is where the baby poultry are started. Chickens like it hot - 95 degrees - but turkeys like it hotter - 99.

For the first week, we try to keep the brooder toasty, then start stepping down the heat over the next few weeks to harden them off.

This is our big group of "Market Turkeys", the broad breasted bronze that most customers enjoy at Thanksgiving

Turkey Time is Real - The Logistical Shuffle of Birds



In just 2 more weeks, these curious little birds will get moved back to another building - our "Flex Barn" - to make room in the brooder for another group of broilers (meat chickens).

But first, we have to empty the flex barn.

• Piglets - weaned from momma, moved outside to pasture
• Sows - momma pigs - moved in with boars for you know what
• 
  

Once the flex barn is cleared out, we'll reset it for these Market Turkeys. This means making it Turkey Proof - anything and everything to keep them from perching on top of the water and feed lines where they can break things and contaminate their food source.

The Poultry Rotation is currently in overdrive

Our poultry rotation is intense in the summer and a logistics nightmare. There are a lot of 3 AM morning wakeups to catch birds before the sun comes up.

Right now, we are at full capacity. The turkeys mentioned above are just part of the story. We also have the heritage turkeys. The heritage turkey hatch has been great and our heritage turkey barn is getting full as they size up to go outside.

For the laying hens, they are starting to slow down and we just pulled a couple hundred of the ugliest ones out for breeding. Why the ugliest? When the hens have their back feathers missing, it means they are being "covered" regularly by a rooster. To hatch chicks for next year's laying hens we need fertile eggs. These are the birds we want. They are now set aside in 2 different groups with about 1 rooster per 10 hens. Those chicks should hatch before September and start laying eggs in early 2027.

And broilers. We have 4,500 on pasture right now and another 4,500 in the brooder. We schedule these to the day. When the ones outside are harvested, the next ones get moved outside, just before the next chicks are hatched. For broilers, we only have 2 more batches for the season - 1 hatched first of August and another first of September.

Oh, and don't forget the ducks. Our second and final batch are almost 8 weeks old and in 4 weeks they'll go for harvest.

From the flex barn, the turkeys go out to the pecking patch

The turkeys will spend the better part of August in the flex barn sizing up to be hardy enough to go out on pasture. By end of August, we'll start them on a rotation outside.

Their first stop is the "pecking patch." You'll hear more about this in future newsletters, but it is a tall pasture of sorghum, sunflowers, and buckwheat designed to provide feed and shade during the heat of summer/early fall. This also keeps them from crowding and piling up in bad weather.

The pecking patch was planted on June 26 this year and it's knee deep. Hopefully today's rain will push it along.

Like the weather, subject to change.