Week 6

broccoli forest

This weeks share includes Oregon Sugar Snow Peas, Watham Broccoli, 2 Bags of Lettuce Mix with Borage Flowers, 2 bundles of Northern Lights and 5 Color Silver beet Chard, 1 bag of Spinach, 1 Bundle of Lacinato and Red Russian Kale, some Southern Frill Mustard Greens, Strawberries and Garlic snakes.

learning the letter B

We love Raw Kale Salad which is surprisingly delicious. Simply strip and rub the leaves with olive oil and toss with shredded beets, broccoli, sunflower seeds, sliced strawberries and a little tarmari soy sauce. We like to add roasted cashews glazed in maple syrup and lemon juice (baked at 375 till bronzed).

"that's our rooster"

Over the weekend we put in what may be the last round of outdoor fall garden beds with less than 50 days till our first frost-hard to believe. So, we are developing a couple of low riding tunnels to experiment with extending some succession started cabbage, chard, cilantro, turnips and late season lettuce as the high tunnel is maxed out and we only use the greenhouse for potted plants and starts.

3 year old representational butterfly

We also discovered that digging trenches for greenhouses are best done on the south side first in the morning instead of starting on the north side and working around. The irrigation on the flower garden was somewhat of a respite from Saturday's swelter in Montana. We started filling in the back-up foundation with wash rock today as my idea of bottle caps and pulverized glass, although resourceful, doesn't provide the necessary "zero compaction base" required in stable structures. Still, I had one victory in my hopes of using as little cement as possible by dry stacking the rock foundation to fill in around the concrete piers. Just a small investment in some really cool rock chiseling tools.

We're also still looking for clay/silt subsoil for our natural plaster wall over the straw bales. So if anyone runs across some in the valley give us a whistle so we can start the "community building" project.