Production Update

The heat we have received this last week has really pushed things along. Over the next few weeks we have beautiful blocks of celery, broccoli and cauliflower that will be ready for harvest, as well as a new field of summer squashes that is now in bloom. Over the next few days we will go through and “blanch” the cauliflower plants by pulling the outer leaves together over the top of the plant and tying them together with rubber bands. This keeps sunlight from reaching the cauliflower and turning the heads yellow. In the Pajaro and Salinas Valleys where cauliflower is commonly grown in fields as large as our entire farm, there are crews that do nothing but blanch cauliflower for 10 hours a day. They pre-load their left arm with hundreds of rubber bands, and with a single motion that is incredibly fast, they hook the outer leaves together and wrap them with a rubber band that they pull off of their wrist—over and over and over again. Our crew isn’t quite as fast, but they get the job done, and then they get to go do something else.

The “new-to-me” 30 year old John Deere 71 planters that I picked up in the Central Valley for planting beans have worked really well so far. We got great stands of fillet, green, and shelling beans that have really taken off with the recent heat. We will continue to plant beans every two weeks through the summer so that we will have a steady harvest through fall.

The potatoes have all sized up as much as they are going to, meaning it is time to cut off the water and let the plants die off so that the skins will set. The potatoes in your box this week definitely are still “new” potatoes, but over the next month you’ll notice the skins become more set and they’ll be better for storage. For now, keep storing them in the fridge. The Sangre variety that you’re getting this week is a nice red-skinned white fleshed variety. We’ll continue to rotate the varieties for you.

We have a planting of leeks and one of cipollini “spring” onions to harvest this week. Cipollinis are a flattish-shaped onion with a pungent sweet flavor. The “spring” designation means that the onions are not cured for storage. They are harvested with their greens attached and sold intact. As with new potatoes, this means that they are more perishable than cured onions. The advantage is that you get a truly fresh onion with amazing flavor, and you can also use the greens as you would green onions – a two for one deal!