Blue Fox Farm

What’s at Market? Week of July 19th

I’ve decided most farmers don’t make goo bloggers. Or maybe I should reword that… farmers’ best material comes when they’re in the middle of the field on a sweltering 102 degree day picking beans and they have the eureka moments that would be great to share with the world. Yes, we could have a web-able phone in the field but then we’d have to stop and peck, tap, tap in the middle of the field. Not only would we get taunted by our fellow farmers around us, the beans just wouldn’t get picked. So instead you get to experience my take on things late Monday nights after everything is “mostly” ready for the next day.

When I finish a day like today, I do chuckle to myself when people come up to me on market day and ask, “Was this picked this morning?” And I politely say no.

Today was a great harvest day. Our crew picked with a steady pace and knew that the heat was coming. My job was to make sure the operation went as smoothly as possible. But realize this: We started picking at 6 this morning- first thing to be picked: 100 pounds of salad mix. Let that set the tone for the day. 150 bunches of carrots. 85 bunches of beets. 200 bunches of greens (kale,chard,collards, etc.)- and then the harvest of about 26 other crops.  Then once they’re picked they have to be washed and packaged either for market, a restaurant, or grocery store. We pulled out of the driveway with a full fridge truck at about 5 this afternoon- and back at the home farm the crew was picking cucumbers. All in all we wrapped harvest up around 6 this evening. That’s an unusually long harvest day for us but they happen. Our crew is awesome!

Then I sorted the cucumbers, did the final organization on the truck for market, and came up here to type up a little something for you all, our fearless supporters. (Not to mention I spent the last 10 minutes quietly tip-toeing around the house looking for replacement batteries for our wireless keyboard that decided to die right as I needed to type this up.

I’ll be up at 4, leave the farm by 5 or so and then make the restaurant and store deliveries before I pull into the market to set up around 6:45 or 7 tomorrow morning. The bell rings at 8:30. That gives an hour and a half to set up all of our food.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the pace of all this. The challenge to go from parking lot to grocery store in an hour and a half and then setting out our best produce that we did our best to extract from the heat monster the day prior is the icing on the cake.

So no, we don’t harvest the day of market. Thankfully. I might actually lose it if we did.

See you at market!

This week at market:

• Arugula
• Rooted Living Basil
• Beets
• Green Beans
• Stir Fry Mix
• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Cauliflower
• Carrots
• Chard
• Cilantro
• Collards
• Cukes- Slicers and Striped Armenian
• Garlic
• Kale
• Leeks
• Lettuce
• Walla Walla Sweet Onions
• Parsley
• Strawberries
• Fingerling Potatoes
• Salad Mix
• Tomatoes !!
• Zucchini