With week #12 upon us, we are now half way through the season!

In Your Share This Week

• Carrots
• Cucumbers/Sweet Peppers (rotation)
• Eggplant (rotation)
• Kale
• Parsley
• Red Slicers
• Summer Squash (rotation)
• Sweet Corn

Crop Highlights

Cucumbers: This is it for our cukes! The plants are yellowing and production has severely slowed. We will try to get everyone cucumbers this week, but if we can’t, not to worry! Sweet peppers are coming on, so we will substitute those instead 🙂

Parsley: We are happy to be putting herbs on your table for the third week in a row! This Giant Italian parsley is super dependable, abundant, aromatic, and tasty. Here’s a picture of Zack and Berenice bunching and washing it in the packhouse:

Sweet Corn: Last week we gave you Luscious sweet corn (very sweet!), and this week you will be receiving either Luscious again, or Candy Mountain (sweet). Other silly-named varieties of corn we have grown at SIO in the past include Temptation, Sugar Pearl, Sugar Baby, and Sugar Buns (my favorite name). Here at SIO, we love corn-picking days; it’s the perfect raw snack for us to munch on at break or lunch. It’s also great grilled, or sautéed with other summer veggies. If you want to make an easy vegan sweet corn ice cream, shave the kernels off and freeze them, and then put them in a food processor with some frozen coconut milk. Yum! This will be the final distribution of corn for the ear, so cobble it up!

Remember to check out Katherine’s recipe blog for new, delicious cooking tips:
http://www.cookwithwhatyouhave.com/sauvie-island-organics-recipes-tips/

Around The Farm: Eclipse Special!

A lot of folks took Monday off for the eclipse, but those of us who stuck around to work (thanks everyone!) took a half hour to hour long break to watch its peak. The farm was a great place to be while the moon passed in front of the sun. Berenice and I were harvesting parsley from 9-10am when the light grew progressively dimmer, the air chilled, and the birds became restless and flew to their sleeping places. Here are some pictures taken by Rachel (who brought homemade eclipse cupcakes to share with us) while we all watched the eclipse together:

          

          

Year after year, August is always the craziest month at the farm. We are still seeding and transplanting (not for long, though!), pigweed remains our main competitor, restaurant orders are through the roof, our ‘hot crops’ need consistent attention, the irrigation schedule is tight and never ending, and we are tired farmers. But our team is great, we love working together, and we are proud of the delicious food we grow and the sustainable manner in which we grow it. We are also very grateful for you and your appreciation of our work and delight in our veggies, so thank you! The eclipse Monday provided us (and probably many folks) with a much needed respite, allowing us to slow down and cherish the beauty of the universe, the earth, and our lives.

Week #11! 

In Your Share This Week

• Basil
• Cabbage, savoy
• Cucumbers
• Eggplant
• Onions, tropea
• Red Slicers
• Summer Squash
• Sweet Corn

Crop Highlights 

Basil: Yum! I can never get enough basil in my life. The aroma of basil in our packhouse after harvest is one of the most joyous things about the summer. Eat it with its tomato companions, or make pesto! Like last year, we decided to put the whole plant in your share, saving us time and also giving you more. We recommend keeping your basil on your countertop in a glass of water, and using it within the next few days. Its ideal storage temperature is around 50 degrees, so best not to keep it in the refrigerator. Enjoy 🙂

Cabbage: Our kale wasn’t looking so hot this week, so we decided to sub Savoy cabbage instead. This pretty green crimped cabbage is sweet, tender, and cooks quicker than other cabbages.

Red Slicers: Tomatoes are finally here! After a cold, wet spring which forced us to push tomato transplanting back a couple of weeks, we are as excited as you are about their juicy ripeness! We have been growing New Girl and Big Beef as our slicers ever since I have been working at SIO; they prove to be delicious and reliable year after year. The heat and dryness of the past two weeks helped spring our tomatoes into action, and hopefully there are not more crazy temperature swings in store for us for a while (70s and 80s feels like paradise!), as tomatoes do better with consistent warmth. Right now the plants look great, so expect to receive tomatoes at least through the end of August!

Summer Squash: Our green, striped, and gold zucchini are still heavily producing! Like a lot of our other summer crops (eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes), we decided to plant fewer zucchini this year, with distribution in mind for our CSA only. It’s working out nicely: a crew of 4 people can go out for 2-3 hours and harvest all of our ‘hot crops.’ We do this on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, to keep up with the fast paced growth of these veggies. Zucchini can amazingly get baseball-bat sized in a matter of days!

Remember to check out Katherine’s recipe blog for new, delicious cooking tips:
http://www.cookwithwhatyouhave.com/sauvie-island-organics-recipes-tips/

The Packhouse

All of the photos shared with you this season have thus far been of our fields, so I thought I’d change it up this week! Our packhouse is a key structure at the farm. Post-harvest, we bring everything to the packhouse, give it a light watering down if necessary, and wheel it into our walk-in refrigerator. In the afternoons, those of us who work in the packhouse will hand-truck our stacks of veggies out of the cooler and onto the packhouse floor, where there are tubs or tables designated for washing certain veggies. Once washed and packed accordingly, back into the cooler they go! While it can get kind of hectic in the packhouse from time to time, it is also organized and runs smoothly, thanks to everyone’s experience and attention. Jen and Jesse must be pro Tetris players, because they somehow are always able to fit the stacks of bins and boxes in our cooler when it seems impossible (those of you who pick up your shares at the farm may have an idea of how crazy our walk-in can look sometimes). We hope to make a time-lapse video of it some day!

Photos taken Tuesday, August 15th:

1) Betsy offloading salad mix and other greens.
2) Inside our walk-in. Not too full right now!
3) August power washing ‘reds’ at our bin washing station, next to the packhouse.

Welcome to week #10! Thank you for understanding our cancellations last week; we will be building additional veggies into your shares for the next few weeks to make up for the loss. If you are curious about what we were all up to last week, read the “Beat The Heat!” section below 🙂

In Your Share This Week

• Beets
• Cilantro
• Chard
• Fennel
• Onions
• Summer Squash/Cucumbers/Eggplant

Crop Highlights

Cilantro: We harvest and distribute our cilantro (or coriander leaves) with the roots still attached. They are edible (and delicious!) and also help the cilantro store for longer in your refrigerator. You can either wrap the cilantro in a bag (damp, but not wet!), or place it in a jar of water on your counter top. While most of us at SIO love cilantro, there are a couple of farmers who think it smells/tastes like soap. If you’re similar, not to worry! Research suggests that aversion to cilantro is genetic.

Eggplant: This slender eggplant is a Japanese variety called Orient Express. We have been growing it for years and it is the only type of eggplant we decided to plant this year, because it is dependable and tasty! It has a delicate flavor and is quick cooking. Enjoy in meals with your other summery veggies.

Remember to check out Katherine’s recipe blog for new, delicious cooking tips:
http://www.cookwithwhatyouhave.com/sauvie-island-organics-recipes-tips/

Farmer Of The Week

Meet August Schwartz! This is August’s third year with us- he joined us in early 2015 as a full timer, and now works two to three days a week. The most endearing of the SIO crew, he spouts (mostly) good farm puns and other jokes all day long. His favorite farm activity is hand transplanting (a rare favorite), and the energy he puts into grunt activities like it is contagious; we all wish we worked with him more often. He also spends at least one day a week doing irrigation, his other favorite farm job. Thanks for helping keep everything alive last week!

In addition to farming, “Augdawg” does landscaping and carpentry with his friend Jay, who he met working at SIO in 2015. He is very knowledgeable about plants and enthusiastic about gardening. His greatest love in life, though, is playing ultimate frisbee! He plays offensive handler (a distributor/assister) on Rip City Ultimate, a men’s club team based out of Portland. Ultimate season is in high gear during the summer, so he often travels on the weekends for west coast/northwest tournaments. Fun to be around on and off the field, SIO wouldn’t be the same without him.

Beat The Heat!

Last week was no joke! Fortunately SIO’s management is made up of a lovely team of people, and they adjusted our work schedule accordingly: work days were cut down to 5:30am-noon, and we canceled CSA and Friday restaurant deliveries in order to save our bodies and veggies from the afternoon and Thursday’s heat. We spent early mornings harvesting delicate greens for our wholesale and Wednesday restaurant accounts, and late mornings harvesting large quantities of carrots and beets. We provided our irrigators with assistants so that we could set up pipe and run water earlier, and our managers stayed late to shut these sets off, keep our greenhouse starts alive, and process our produce in the pack-house. Thank you Brian, Jen and Jesse! I hope everyone was able to enjoy a couple of afternoon siestas as much as I did. This weeks’ low 90s feels like quite the treat.

Speaking of treats and beating the heat, check out Salt & Straw this month! They are making their Carrot Cake Batter & Hazelnut Praline ice cream with SIO carrots, and their Green Fennel & Maple (my favorite) with SIO fennel. Get it by the end of this month! Back in June they used our stored celeriac for their “Rescued Food Series” to make a delightful Celery Root & Strawberry Celery Leaf Jam ice cream. We are excited to have partnered with them now for the past three years, and look forward to future indulgences.

Enjoy this picture taken by Nate of sunrise this morning, Tuesday, August 8th 🙂

Week #8!

In Your Share This Week

• Carrots
• Chicory, treviso
• Kale
• Lettuce
• Onions, tropea
• Summer Squash/Cucumbers

Crop Highlights

Chicory, Treviso: These bunches of chicory we are giving you are typically known as a red, cold-weather chicory. This is our first time growing it, and they are growing very well in the summer! The long, pointed leaves are staying green (some of them with pretty red speckles). Like other radicchio (red chicories), Treviso is bitter. If you like the bitter taste, make wraps out of it or put it in salads. If not, sautée it with other greens and a spritz of lemon!

Cucumbers: We have been giving you a mix of our green Marketmore and white Silver Slicer cucumbers. Silver Slicers have become a favorite of ours over the years; they have extra thin skin and are praised for their more mild flavor and extra juiciness. They make a delicious, thirst quenchingagua fresca– try juicing them with some limes, add fresh mint and a touch of sugar, and pour over ice for a nice summer treat.

Onions, Tropea: Like the Wallas from last week, these onions have not been cured yet. They are red, torpedo shaped, and originally hail from Italy’s Calabria region (the foot of the boot). Since they grow taller rather than wider, we can plant twice as many plants in the same square footage as the  traditionally round shaped onions. We have peeled them only slightly, to protect the inner layers from bruising. Eat them raw in salads, cook them in sauces, grill them, roast them, make jam out of them!

Remember to check out Katherine’s recipe blog for new, delicious cooking tips:
http://www.cookwithwhatyouhave.com/sauvie-island-organics-recipes-tips/

Farmer Of The Week

This is miss Rachel Funk! Rachel joined us last year, and boy have the farm laughs increased since she did! As well as being absolutely hilarious, Rachel is a fast learner and has picked up a number of activities around the farm. She is an expert kale/chard buncher, takes part in the massive head lettuce harvests we do twice a week, and helped bring you those Walla Wallas last week. She is also experienced in the packhouse and recently trained in irrigation (our first female irrigator since I have worked at the farm!)

Rachel moved here from New Mexico five years ago. She also works with adults with developmental disabilities, and was working at Full Life on NE Sandy before joining us last year. Outside of work, she likes to play dungeons and dragons with a group of her friends (her character is a dwarf druid named Parsnip and she has a bear companion named Pippen!) She recently joined an herbal group that forages for wild plants, which they use to make tinctures and herbal remedies. In her relaxation hours, you can find her wearing her crocs, petting her cat Gus (pictured below), and watching The Simpsons.

Hello week #7! We can’t believe we are already more than half way through July!

In Your Share This Week

• Beets
• Dill
• Kale, lacinato
• Lettuce, romaine
• Onions, walla walla
• Potatoes, mountain rose
• Summer Squash/Cucumbers

Crop Highlights

Dill: Fresh dill is a great companion to new potatoes! We harvest our dill by cutting it at the base of the plant, making nice clean bunches that need minimum washing. Wash just before you use it, and store it wrapped in a damp paper towel inside of a plastic bag to keep it fresh and lovely.

Onions, Walla Walla: These onions are prized for their large size, juiciness, and sweet flavor. They are best when eaten fresh (as opposed to cured onions, which you will be receiving late summer-early fall). Treat yourself to some onion rings this week if you’re feeling ambitious! 

Potatoes, Mountain Rose: Mountain Rose is another good variety of early potatoes, and they are extra special because of their pink flesh! They are high in antioxidants and delicious when baked, fried or mashed. Eat them with your dill for a stunningly weird pink and green meal! 

Remember to check out Katherine’s recipe blog for new, delicious cooking tips: 
http://www.cookwithwhatyouhave.com/sauvie-island-organics-recipes-tips/

Farmer Of The Week

Meet Buford! Originally from Akron, Ohio, Buford moved to Portland ten years ago. He is a seasonal man and has worked all over the country, from blueberry farms in Maine to fisheries in Alaska. He has been with SIO for only a year, and we hope to keep him around for as long as possible. Last week Brian trained him in irrigation, which he will be doing one or two days a week (it’s nice to have a few irrigators, so one person isn’t stuck carrying around pipe every day of the week!) He also learned how to ‘flame’ (or “flamethrow,” as he likes to call it), in which he uses a propane-fueled torch to kill weeds. We do this just before or after direct seeding as a method of weed control, giving our veggies a jumpstart when they germinate.

In this picture Buford is adding gas to our weed-whacker, kneeling in front of our lettuce field (which we have an electric fence installed around, because the deer have been un-relentless this spring/summer!) Buford enjoys being around the birds, bunnies and other creatures drawn to this shared ecosystem. One of his favorite farm activities is harvesting carrots (he had a hand in bringing you last week’s Yayas), and on his off days, he and his beloved pitbull Staci like to lounge in parks and by rivers, munching on these carrots together.

Welcome to week #6!

In Your Share This Week

• Cabbage, caraflex
• Carrots
• Chard, rainbow
• Lettuce
• Parsley
• Potatoes, new red-gold

Crop Highlights

Carrots: We have started our weekly bulk carrot (and beet) harvests, so you can expect to be receiving them fairly consistently through the end of the season. We are excited to be getting into these more hearty root vegetables; they have a variety of uses, are nice and filling, and absolutely delicious. Here is a picture from last year of Tabitha washing carrots with our root washing machine, the Wilsi (short for Wilson), with which she can wash up to 200lbs. an hour!

 

New Potatoes: Like last week, we decided to bag these potatoes unwashed so as to preserve their delicate skins. Enjoy!

Rainbow Chard: Rainbow chard bunches are one of my favorite things to harvest, because the fields are always so gorgeous! Cook it with carrots, cabbage and potatoes to create a delight for the eyes and belly. Here are some pictures of us in our chard field Monday morning:

             

Remember to check out Katherine’s recipe blog for new, delicious cooking tips:http://www.cookwithwhatyouhave.com/sauvie-island-organics-recipes-tips/

Welcome to week #5! We hope you all had a nice 4th of July and were able to catch up on your veggies a bit, because here come a lot more!

In Your Share This Week

• Beets, mixed
• Carrots
• Fennel
• Kale, red ursa
• Lettuce
• Potatoes, new red-gold
• Scallions, shimonita

Crop Highlights

Beets: The white beet in these mixed bunches is called Avalanche, and they are milder (less beety tasting) than the others. We started growing these last year, and I love the addition of them to our batches of mixed beets! Roast ’em, grate ’em, juice ’em!

Carrots: We seeded these Yaya carrots with the tractor in early April, and are stoked to finally be harvesting them! They are living next to our beets, and starting next week we will be busy with weekly beet and carrot bulk harvest for our restaurant/wholesale accounts. A favorite of many of our CSA members, these carrots are so sweet and crunchy. We are leaving the greens on for you this week-try making pesto out of them, or tossing them on salads!

New Potatoes: These potatoes are my favorite! Red gold potatoes are a variety grown to be eaten as ‘new potatoes,’ meaning they have not reached full maturity- the skins are not yet fully developed so they do not do well stored for too long. Our tractors have been weeding and hilling these potatoes since we seeded  them in April (a very fun project that involves sitting on the back of the tractor and constantly placing potatoes in a chute while it drives you up and down the beds). These potatoes are sweet and delicious; you can cook them any way you want, but my favorite is to simply sautee them with olive oil, scallions, salt and pepper. We decided to send these potatoes out unwashed so as not to damage the delicate skins, so give them a rinse before use.

Fennel: We were hoping our fennel would have sized up more by this week, but they are still cute little bulbs, so we decided to give you two! TIP: If you find the flavor of fennel to be overpowering, or isn’t you’re favorite, try cooking it. Sautee it just like you would onions. The flavor becomes very muted and savory. You might even experiment with tossing the whole fennel on the grill with a little olive oil and salt!

Remember to check out Katherine’s recipe blog for new, delicious cooking tips:  http://www.cookwithwhatyouhave.com/sauvie-island-organics-recipes-tips/

On The Farm

Here are pictures of our new transplanter in action! Brian is driving the tractor, pulling the transplanting implement, which Tabitha and August are sitting on facing backwards. We bought this over the winter, and it has been awesome to use, greatly speeding up the transplanting of our many brassicas (kale, cabbage, choi) as well as our chard, head lettuces and salad lettuces, all which we have previously transplanted by hand. Transplanting most starts by hand can take two people ~30 minutes per bed, but with the transplanter a bed takes less than five minutes!  It is also fun to use and easier on our backs than hand transplanting , a win-win for SIO and its farmers!

Welcome to week #4!

In Your Share This Week

• Bok Choi
• Broccoli
• Cabbage, Caraflex
• Chard
• Hakurei turnips
• Lettuce

Crop Highlights

Broccoli: My coworkers and I have been consuming an amazing amount of broccoli this past week, and we hope you have also been enjoying it. This week will be the second and final distribution of broccoli. Like bok choi and turnips, it doesn’t do as well in the heat. If you have yet to try the stems, I suggest you do-just remember to peel the outer layer off first.

Cabbage, Caraflex: We started growing these conical cabbages last year, and they are so cool! They are smaller than other cabbages and are often called “green sweetheart,” coming from the French word “Chou” which means both “cabbage” and “sweetheart.” Caraflex have thin, crunchy and sweet leaves, great for wraps, salads, and cooking.

Remember to check out Katherine’s recipe blog for new, delicious cooking tips:  http://www.cookwithwhatyouhave.com/sauvie-island-organics-recipes-tips/

I know many of you are itching for carrots, but hang in for one more week! Last year we were able to get carrots to you in June because we seeded them in the greenhouse. This past winter/spring we had mustards growing in our greenhouses until April, so we have been letting the soil sit for a couple months (pictured above). Soon we will be planting cilantro, curly parsley, kale, chard and chicories in our two greenhouses, for harvest in the late fall/winter.

Just across from our greenhouses are several beds of carrots. These (pictured above) were tractor seeded by Brian on May 10th (the ones you’re receiving next week were seeded earlier), and we happily weeded them by hoe and hand last Wednesday and Thursday. It always feels great to have a handful of people working on a project together and seeing it to completion.

Farmer of the Week

Nate joined the SIO crew for a few months in 2014, and then returned as a full-timer in spring 2016. Like Tabitha, he can be called upon to do a lot of activities. He is one of our irrigation guys, and works on Sundays to keep everything in our propagation greenhouse and fields watered and alive. More recently, Nate has become one of our delivery drivers, and drives one of our two restaurant routes on both Wednesdays and Fridays. He is working toward a career in farming, and his favorite part of the job is seeing the seasons change throughout the year.

Nate is one of SIO’s few Oregon-natives. He grew up in Beaverton and graduated from U of O. Outside of work, Nate enjoys spending his time at lakes and rivers, as well as with his cat, Peaches (pictured below). He is also a soccer lover, and currently plays on three indoor teams. I have the pleasure of playing with him at Portland Indoor Soccer, where he also referees a couple of nights a week. He is a busy man and a joy to be around; say hi if you ever happen to see him driving our truck!

Welcome to week #3, and happy solstice! We are so excited that the long-awaited summer is finally here, and we can continue to introduce you to a variety of our crops. This week’s share is a bit heartier than the last two, so make space in your fridge and your bellies!

In Your Share This Week

• Beets, mixed
• Broccoli
• Cabbage, napa
• Garlic, young
• Kale, mixed
• Lettuce, summer crisp

Crop Highlights

Beets: The bunched beets you are receiving are mixed! When you cut them open, the pink/white swirly chioggia beets are a sight to see. Pronounced “kee-oh-gee-uh,” this variety comes from northern Italy and is also known as the candy cane or candy stripe beet. They are sweeter than red beets and absolutely delicious when grilled.

Broccoli: Broccoli is here! I don’t know about you, but broccoli is one of the only vegetables I liked when I was a child, so broccoli-time always makes me a bit nostalgic. The variety of broccoli we grow (belstar) has a fairly meaty stem, which is my favorite part (and reminds me of kohlrabi). You can peel the outer layer of the stem if it seems tough at all and cook it a tad longer than the florets.

Napa Cabbage: Napa cabbage originated near the Beijing region and is known by many as “Chinese cabbage.” It is one of the many types of cabbage we are growing this year, and last year we successfully grew it in the late summer/fall, so you might see it again in a few months. It is good for making kimchi, can be shredded and eaten raw in salads or slaws, and is also good when cooked (I like cooking it with onions and carrots and eating it on top of rice.) While most of the napa we are harvesting this week looks nearly perfect, sometimes the heads can develop “pepper spots,” which looks like there are flecks of pepper on the leaves. This is just cosmetic and does not affect its taste or edibility.

Enjoy, and remember to check out Katherine’s recipe blog for tips!

http://www.cookwithwhatyouhave.com/sauvie-island-organics-recipes-tips/

Farmer of the Week

Meet Tabitha! This is Tabitha’s fifth year on the farm, and we couldn’t imagine it without her. She is one of those folks you can send out with confidence to do any job; she is experienced in the greenhouse, the fields, and the pack house. Tabitha is known as the “Kale Queen” at SIO- she loves bunching kale and chard. Last year she stepped up as a field crew lead, and this year she is getting tractor trained! She has thus far learned how to mow and spade, and looks forward to more training from Brian and Jerry (our two main tractor operators) in the near future. Tabitha is a pleasure to work with, her jokes and her strong work ethic are completely infectious.

Off the farm, Tabitha stays wildly busy. She has been playing roller derby for Portland’s Heartless Heathers for six seasons, and on the all-star traveling team for three. She is also a licensed massage therapist, and gives (spectacular) massages at Unwind Massage on NE Sandy and 19th. I suggest you pay her a visit!

Welcome to week #2! We are excited to present to you more of our spring favorites.

As always this early in the season, all of the crops in the share will be the happiest if stored in your refrigerator inside of a plastic bag.

In Your Share This Week

• Chard
• Escarole
• Kohlrabi
• Lettuce
• Parsley
• Scallions
• Spring Turnips

Crop Highlights

Escarole: While it resembles a green head of lettuce, escarole is one of the handful of chicories we grow at SIO. It is slightly bitter…I like adding the more tender inside leaves raw to salads, and braising the bitter outside leaves. Escarole provides a good source of vitamins A and C, and is high in fiber and iron. Chicories (escarole, frisee, raddichio, among others) are more cool-weather resistant than lettuces, so you can expect to be seeing more of them closer to the end of the CSA season.

Lettuce-Salanova: Like the mini heads you received last week, salanova is a lettuce we started seeding and planting only two years ago. It has been happily growing into substantial heads in our salad mix field, and this is the first time we are introducing it to CSA members. We hope you enjoy either the red or green type that you received!

Parsley: We mostly grow flat-leaf Italian parsley- which is native to the Mediterranean region (think Southern Italy, Tunisia) and enjoys a large presence in Lebanese, Brazilian, and Italian cuisine. You can liven up just about any dish with parsley, and it makes excellent sauces and pesto that can be used like a condiment or a rub. Its packed with nutrients, especially Vitamin A and C. You can keep your parsley on the countertop in a jar of water (rather like a flower bouquet), but I prefer to rinse it with cool water, give it a vigorous shake, and then store in a plastic bag in the fridge. It will generally store for at least a week with no problems.

Scallions, Shimonita: These amazing scallions are well-known in Japan, but less common in America. They can grow to the size of a leek and have a nice, long harvest window (unlike regular scallions, which reach that peak of perfection and then sail past it in the seeming blink of an eye). It’s also fascinating that the green tops are inflated tubes…when you squeeze the tops there’s definitely air in there!

Hakurei Turnips: Like kohlrabi, turnips are in the brassica family. Hakurei turnips are a Japanese variety, and are also known as salad turnips. They have a sweet crunch when you eat them raw, and they also taste great when cooked with their tops!

Remember to check out Katherine’s recipe blog for tips on what to do with this weeks’ veggies!

http://www.cookwithwhatyouhave.com/sauvie-island-organics-recipes-tips/

In The Fields

Due to the extremely wet winter and spring, we got off to a bit of a late start this season! Our fields were too wet to till and prep (wouldn’t want our tractors to get stuck), so our first transplant got pushed back about two weeks. This resulted in us having to get a lot of work done in a shorter amount of time, and we are so fortunate this year to have so many returning farmers who jumped right into work already knowing what to do. June is always a very busy time of the year for us; we are bed prepping, seeding, transplanting, irrigating, weeding, harvesting, and getting things washed and out the door. This is my fifth season here at SIO and all of this is going more smoothly than I have ever seen, thanks to our experienced team. Moods are high, our veggies are growing beautifully, the birds are providing us with lovely song every morning harvest, it is quite a wonderful sight.

One of the results of having our first transplant get pushed back is that, last week, we had thousands of lettuce heads all fully grown and needing to be cut at the same time! Thanks to Jesse Olian, who became our restaurant/wholesale account manager two years ago (and who is pictured back left, with his hands out), we were able to sell 3,000+ heads of lettuce last Friday, making Thursday the grandest lettuce harvest day in SIO history. The overcast weather was on our side that day, and we filled the entire truck with bins of romaine, leaf, and butter lettuces (coming to you this year, too!) This picture was taken by yours truly at 11:30am on Thursday, June 8th, and is one of my favorites.