Week 1

Welcome to the Ninth season of Muddy Fingers Farm! Wow time flies when you are having fun! Thanks to those of you who are back for the ninth serving of fresh veggies, hard to believe we have been together for so long thanks for your renewed faith each spring!

it is so good to see your lovely faces returning and meet new members each year to our stand this and each spring after a winter apart, it bolsters our spirits to remember who it is who will be eating the food the our fields produce!

Speaking of the foods we produce, as you all know it was a cool wet spring, the affects of which will be felt for weeks, but for now, all of the plants that we rapidly outgrowing their cells and eager to be tranplanted are in the ground. the overflow tables are almost empty of plants for our farm, but there are still plants for your gardens if you want them, next week will be your last chance for tomatoes and peppers, but we may have basil and lettuce for two more weeks, depending how well they go. There are also cucumber and zucchini plants for the next week or if they last two.

We may be caught up with planting but the weeds are still ahead, so this week will involve cultivating (using a tractor pulled implement to cut weeds off just below the surface) and putting our tomato cages up around those quickly growing plants.

We wanted to take a moment and remind you where the organic beans and flour come from. The beans are from Cayuga Pure Organics in Brooktondale, right now we have black and pinto beans. We just think it is so fantastic that someone is growing organic beans and we want to help spread them around the food shed. We should have them all season a pound is a share. http://www.cporganics.com/live/


The flour is from Farmer ground flour which is Cayuga Pure Organics and Oeschner Farm in Newfield. They bought an old mill in Trumansburg and are grinding their own grains. This is so fantastic that we had to bring some of it to you! We have All purpose flour and whole wheat, a share is two pounds (five pound bags can be taken and count as two items). We also intend to have that all season. farmergroundflour.squarespace.com/

As I write this, snow is floating down in the sunset. Not actual snow, but cottonwood tufts, a nice reminder that its June and of all the things that happen in June. Of course there are the bird nests. I am watching the second robin's nest grow, four hungry beaks in the garden shed whenever we enter to get a shovel or rake, there they are begging us to stuff a worm in there! I've been tempted, but don't know the bird Heimlich, so have controlled the urge! Also two wrens with their sassy little tails and petite little eggs. A tree swallow and several barn swallows. The daisy's are just about to start popping in the orchard, their cheery little heads complement the little fruit that is growing every day. We hope to get a small crop from some of those young trees this year.

Its nice to smell like tomato plants again, but not so nice to see the ever present green marks on our towels starting to form, perhaps we should just own green towels for the summer. (Tomato plants leave an oily green film on your hands especially when you touch lots of them like we tend to, it is persistent and hard to wash off, read a great article in growing for market about what that stuff is http://www.growingformarket.com/articles/green-powder-on-tomato-plants

What is in the share this week:
Lettuce (lots of kinds and lots of it)
lettuce mix
red veined spinach
radishes
frisee (a slightly bitter green)
plants for you to grow
flour
beans

no recipe this week, make salad! Serve with slivered almonds, onion, and raisins, YUM!

thanks for supporting our farm, see you at the market!
liz and matthew