5th CSA Pick-up

It is pouring like crazy out right now with lighting & thunder, I'm glad it waited until I was home safe and sound from my Charlottetown CSA pick-up. It was another great harvest day weather wise, over cast and a decent breeze although the black flies were still their usual pesky selves. I unfortunately forgot my camera at home and did not get a picture of the share but superstar CSA member Shawn used his phone to snap a few quick shots for me, thanks Shawn!!!

The large share had potatoes, multi-colored carrots, dill, cilantro, peas, romaine, daikon radish, fresh garlic, candy cane beets, broccoli and summer onions. The grab box had yellow and green zucchini, garlic scapes, chinese cabbage, regular cabbage, turnips and regular red radish. The first broccoli planting is pretty much done but there are a few heads left for the Thursday large shares. We have more broccoli plantings coming along very nicely as well as purple cabbage and cauliflower.

The first planting of carrots is now done and now I'm waiting for the next regular ones to size up a bit more. This weeks carrots are a mix of three varieties, white satin, yellowstone and yaya. We have another coloured variety called purple haze but they need another week or so but they are so beautiful!! We grow the coloured ones mainly for restaurant sales which require a specific baby size so we plant every two weeks to try and keep them in supply throughout the season. Let me tell you it takes a lot of digging to get enough baby carrots to fill those orders!!!

The variety of beets this week is called chioggia, aka candy cane beets and they are wonderful. They are red and white just like a candy cane and they are super tasty. We have just been steaming them with other veggies but they are also quite tasty raw. The picture below is from last year as I forgot to take one today.





A mixture of super sugar snap and snow peas for both small and large shares. Members got a chance to weigh out their own!!


Red norland and Superior potatoes, again members got to weigh their own

I'm finding that there just are not enough hours in the CSA harvest day so today I took one of my packing tables down to the pick-up and set up peas and potatoes market style so people could weigh out their own for their share. It sure saved me some serious bagging/weighing time!!

The G finally made its official weeding adventure last night. We have been having some issues with the starter or battery (not really sure what yet) and we want to widen it out to fit our current bed spacing but we were really anxious to try it out so Derek got the tool bar all fitted up and away he went. It took some adjusting but overall we were quite pleased.


Before weeding, look at those weeds, yikes!!


First official weeding


Weeding machine

I have my yearly organic inspection tomorrow morning at 10am and I have a few things left to find so I had best get at it. Let's hope the predicted "severe thunder storms" are not too severe!!!

Jen