Sundog CSA June 19th, 2023

If you love fresh beans, this is your kind of bag! It does not seem to matter when we plant green beans, they all ripen at once. It is like a “bean race” and we, the bean pickers, lost! Or at least our backs lost as we spent quite a bit of time in the “green bean” position today. I dream of green beans that I can pick standing up! We are late getting this bag picked so the newsletter is short this week with lots of pictures!

The gauge had .81 standing in it this morning and the mud puddles registered about the same. The storm blew in here around 2:00 last night (writing this on Sunday night) with a lot of wind and rumbling, dropping rain furiously here on the hill. Our neighbors had between .10 - .15 so we were definitely the lucky ones this go round because we needed that moisture. Hard rains mean run-off and as an experiment to stop the loss of soil and water, we have been dragging long pieces of cedar trees to use as “slow-downs” and it seems to be helping. We lay rocks up against the cedar logs, making a barrier to keep the water from washing paths and plants down to the neighbors. In the past we have also taken old tires, filling them with dirt and making a barrier wall and that also helped. The cedars are part of pasture clearing project that we have been working on now for the last couple of years and it feels good to use them as a resource for the land.

We spent some time weeding carrots and onions inside one of the tunnels –

And while we were doing that weeding, we found some potential problems who had to be relocated. And we also found about 1,001 chiggers who we wished we could have relocated.

Another project that we have been working on is moving the calves from patch to patch and in order to accomplish that, we have been trying on halters or at least the calves have been – Last summer we took some lessons in haltering from a good friend, Shawn and she even made us a “Haltering 101” video! Halters look simple but we had them everywhere except where they belonged on our first few tries!

Hank is a little outnumbered and after his “meet and greet” attempt, he decided to leave rather quickly!

YOUR BAG THIS WEEK – - -grown in an organic manner! 😊

• Green Beans
• Yellow Beans
• Summer Squash
• Onions
• Kale/Chard Bundle
• Cabbage

Sometimes a person is in the right place at the right time and it comes at the strangest of times. The other night, I was talking with the Bryon, from the pest service who was checking our house for termites. I did not expect to think about anything other than knowing whether or not we were going to have to choose eviction options for termites. And instead, it became an interesting conversation about Bryon’s experiences as a college yearbook photographer and other work that he had done as a “picture taker”. That conversation made me think about memories and how pictures connect us to those memories. We can look at images and go back in time and we can share our history or experiences– so here is my image of Tuesday evening and my conversation with another picture lover. A hummingbird moth flying into the larkspur blossoms and although my pictures are not quality, they are memories and sometimes that is more important!

Blessings from the farm - Izzy, Dan, Seth, Katy, Jen, Zach and Teresa