text: It looks like the next month might be a bit of an upside-down harvest, with some of our 'warm-season' crops maturing before the 'cool-season' crops make it to maturity. While we're still waiting on spring's potatoes, sweet onions, and other typically early produce, the tomato vines are growing about a foot a week, squash is already in, and we picked our first handful of cucumbers this afternoon. It all makes for some good eating, though, regardless of whether it comes in backwards, upside-down, or sideways!
  No head lettuces this week? We've been having a bit of a bunny problem lately. Some voraciously hungry rabbits have been getting into the current succession of lettuce heads. They hop in, eat a few bites out of the heart of each head of lettuce, then move on to the next one. Which renders the whole head unsaleable, and makes me absolutely furious! I hate seeing the produce I grew (or any food) go to waste. Watching a herd of rabbits take just a bite or two out of each plant puts me in the mood for rabbit stew. If you're in the neighborhood, and hear someone yelling at the wildlife to "finish your vegetables!" that was probably me. We'll have more lettuces in a week or two, assuming I can outsmart some rabbits. In the meantime we still have plenty of the mixed baby lettuce for your green salads. U-pick rabbits are free!
  Carrots are back for a spring finale for about the next month. The roots are still a bit on the small side, but I like to move them all before summer's heat truly sets in, and they start to develop some off flavors. We also have two additional types of summer squash: 'Lemon' squash and 'Poquito' zucchini. Both are round squashes about the size of a lemon or lime. They taste much like any other summer squash, but their size and shape makes them perfect for stuffing, or just slicing in half and throwing on the grill.
  Still more new great things to eat this week! Red and green cabbages, yellow squash and zucchini, and beets. Beets are one of my favorite late spring vegetables; we grow two varieties: regular red beets and 'Chioggia' beets. Chioggia beets are an heirloom variety from Italy that have lovely red-and-white stripes when cut open. The stripes bleed together and fade a bit when cooked, steaming the beets is the best way to preserve that lovely pattern. Chioggias are a bit milder than red beets, with less of the earthy flavor in a fed beet. We're starting to turn the corner between spring and summer already: asparagus season is over, most of the leafy greens won't last too much longer, this is likely the last week for radishes until fall - eat up!
  We were so disappointed that we couldn't share our new Food Truck with you last Saturday. We had been planning and designing this for many months. Andy fine-tuned it all week, had the truck in perfect working order. He started it up at 5am on Saturday to let it warm up a bit...then it went kaput. He tinkered with the engine for about an hour, but then it was time to get to the market, with or without the mobile garden. And go figure, when he turned the key later that afternoon, it fired right up. We are going to try again to get it to the Midtown Farmers Market this Saturday, before the crops in the bed are overgrown and I have to start eating it all!
  Last chance to get your hands on tomato or pepper plants for your garden this week. We're starting to run low on some plants, sold out of others, and it's high time to get either tomatoes or peppers in the ground if you want a backyard harvest later this summer. Check here for the list of what's still available.
  What does a potato plant look like? How do beets, zucchini, or cauliflower grow? Many of you might never be able to get out and see a real working produce farm, so we're bringing a little slice of our farm to Raleigh this Saturday, and we are hoping we can inspire you to grow a little something on your own. It doesn't take eight acres and a cranky farmer to grow quite a bit of food!
  We have (I think) a pretty neat event lined up for you this Saturday at the Midtown Farmers Market. This is a food truck, but a totally different kind of food truck. This is a mobile food garden in the bed of an old pick-up truck! Come on out to the Midtown Farmers Market this Saturday May 16th - gawk, ask questions, show the kids how their vegetables grow. Children can help harvest greens, pull radishes, and go on an underground treasure hunt for for new potatoes. Learn how you can grow an astonishing amount of food in a fairly small space, and maybe get your hands a little dirty. We had a lot of fun putting this together - I do hope you'll come visit this weekend!
  Also, bring your own creative containers filled with garden soil - it could be an old boot, a bucket, a shopping cart, you name it - and I will bring easy-to-grow vegetable seeds and help you plant it with edibles. Recycle something you don't use anymore! If it will hold dirt and drain water, we can make it grow something. The most creative garden container will win $10 in Market Bucks to spend at the farmers market. Let me share my passion for growing good food with you, and maybe spark a desire to get your own little veggie patch growing!
  Here on our own farm, after quite a bit of rain this weekend and ever-lengthening warm days, it looks like most of the crops doubled in size overnight. Plants grow and ripen so quickly over the next couple of months, we're often discovering 'surprise' harvests on Friday that were nowhere near ready when I do my Monday-morning crop walk. Lots of new items this week, including broccoli rabe, broccoli, cauliflower, and beautiful red-blushed bibb lettuces. Squash, cabbage, and beets are right around the corner!
  Nothin' but blue skies and sunshine ahead this week! A farmer's dream of a forecast after so much dreary, chilly wet weather. The warm sunshine has popped the asparagus back into action, and all of your crops are cruising right along after a good long drink of rain or six last week.
  The Downtown Raleigh Farmers Market opens this Wednesday. We will be there for a somewhat shorter season than in past years, so if you are a downtown market fan, get yourself out there and make these next four months count! With both markets and all of our pick-up locations in full swing, the farm fully planted out to both spring and summer crops, May also marks the start of our truly busy season. We're incurable list-makers around here, which helps keep things from getting too chaotic...until the lists start growing longer faster than we can cross tasks off of the list. Or even add them to the list. We have been known to add tasks to the list after they've been completed, for the small pleasure of crossing said task off of the list at the end of the day. Whatever it takes :)
  Sometime back in late January or early February, when the bulk of our crops are coming out of the greenhouse and every spare inch in there counts, I had a little space to spare to sow a couple of rows of what I hoped would be quick-maturing crops. I let you all put a majority vote to it, and you surprised me by picking, of all things, turnips and kohlrabi. The turnips grew quickly, then sold out even quicker. The kohlrabi, which I expected to have completely harvested out of the greenhouse, oh, a month or so ago, turned out to be not as quick as planned, but at any rate, here they are. Kohlrabi is a cool-season vegetable, and it's rapidly getting too warm for them in the greenhouse. They're still a bit on the small side, but out they go and onto your dinner plates this week before they become bitter or woody.