Day 88-91

Happy 4th week! Our schedule was all crazy-dazy cause of the holiday. Monday we did CSA, most of the prep was done on Sunday which just left blueberry pickin. Unfortunately, with the significant heat wave the farm was reduced to, well it ain't pretty. Instead CSA peeps got onions. Blueberries for onions, not fair right? Wrong, they got loads of goodies so stop your whining. On the up side, I broke down and bought some blueberry mustard! Delishious!

In The Box

-2# mixed Heirloom Tomatoes

-1 Pint Cherry Tomatoes

-1.5# Potatoes

-1# Cucumbers OR Summer Squash OR Eggplant

-1 Sugar Baby Watermelon OR 2 Arava Melons (Cantaloupe Honeydew cross)

-1 pint Blueberries (From nearby Hard Labor Creek Blueberry Farm- we can't resist!)

-1 bunch Baby Arugula

-1 head Summer Crisp Lettuce

-4 Ears Sweet Corn

 After CSA biz Daniel and I went to make more spicy ketchup in the kitch with Penny and Chef Andrew. I know, I know, we've been through this before, but this is the prep which I missed last time for the spicy k process plus this has better pics, promise.  We took the tomatoes, cut out the core and baddy spots then cut an X in the top. At this point I believe you're supposed to cut them in half and squeeze out the seeds but we forgot to do that (oops) so I'm not 100% sure.

  After boiling them they got a cold shower so we could take the skins off easier.  Thus concluding our spicy k prep. Another recipe in the works was taking cherry tomatoes and cooking them with onions, butter, garlic, and basil then mushing them together to make a sauce. Andrew calls it Jason's sauce because it's similar to the sauce Andrew helped Jason make for the tomato challenge...cheaters.

Totally unrelated sauce, not to be confused with spicy k

Oh and Erica was on vaca this week, traveling with her bf to London, so I'm Puddy sitting! Whoohoo! We go on walks together and hang out all day when I'm not working, it's love.

Tobacco all grown up

Nemesis=Okra

What's not love was me picking okra on Tuesday. The plants have grown significantly, enough for me to start calling them trees. There's an irritant in the leaves that gets on your skin and feels like fire. It was bad before, but now there are more okras and you have to dig deeper. It reminded me of when I was waterboarded in Nam, oh wait that never happened, but I bet it'd be similar. From now on I wear long sleeves when picking okra.

The super coolest thing this week was that my bestest friend Kim came to visit for the fourth! The sunflowers have come up in a field close by, so we hung out there and took some pics. We bought fireworks including sparklers and grilled out, so traditional.

Do not mess with fiery frog

 Kim and I also visited Monastery of the Holy Spirit, it's kinda a tourist attraction in the area. They have two large gift shops (and plenty of donation drops) along with having exhibits and a bonsai nursery. Anyone can plan retreats or day visits here. The nursery was my favorite part, the bonsai were really something!

Holy Water

 Back to work with ya! When we got in on Friday at 7 there was so much work to do. We had to harvest and make up for Cory and Erica not being there. Ended up working from 7am-9:30pm with an hour break. Then getting up for market and meeting up at 6am. It sucked, but had to be done.

Market was a success, between that and restaurants we sold $3489 in produce! Elizabeth came to help out again and was quite the seller! I cut open a watermelon and honey dew for people to see and realized we'd been selling a cantaloupe instead of a honey dew...I'm blaming Daniel for the confusion.  I even argued with a lady about it swearing it wasn't a cantaloupe, whoopsies. All and all it went pretty smoothly and was a lot of fun, some friends stopped by as well.

Okra ear, I'm tired okay?

Market Lovin