Week 13
​(August 10)

Cantaloupe
Carmen Pepper (Sweet)
Escamillo Pepper (Sweet)
Walla Walla Sweet Onions
Adirondack Blue Potatoes
Cucumbers
Shishito Peppers
Beefsteak Tomatoes
Cherry Tomatoes
Heirloom Tomatoes
Romaine Lettuce
Basil
Lunchbox Peppers
​Garlic

Sometimes it feels like you give everything to the farm all season long
​and, in return, some weeks the farm simply outdoes itself.
This might be my favorite share ever. 
 

​Week 12
​(August 3)

Tomatillos
Bullhorn Pepper (Yellow OR Red)
Yellow Beans
Cucumbers
Poblano Peppers
Beefsteak Tomatoes
Cherry Tomatoes
Heirloom Tomato
White Onions
Jalapeños
Fresh Garlic 

Happy August! The colored peppers are starting to turn and the second planting of cucumbers is hitting its stride with the first big harvest this week. Usually our first planting takes off more than our second, but with as warm as it was in the late spring the cucumber beetles and squash bugs came early. We are much happier with this planting and are excited for all the near-flawless cucumbers that it's starting to produce.
​Thanks to all of you who made it out for the tour and social last week and also to those of you who gave a quick hello and wave on the way through if you couldn't stay. It was great to spend some time walking around the farm and to relax a little bit in late July (which doesn't happen enough for us). For those of you that came out and ate the salsa verde, this week's Farm Box is set up for you to make that at home. You can do it on the grill or in the oven (we did it on the grill). It's straight forward and fairly easy and you can adjust the heat level to your liking with the jalapeños. We peel the husk off the tomatillos, slice the white onion to about 1/2 inch think slabs, and then char those along with the poblanos and jalapeños until they are soft. After that we put everything in a food processor/blender with salt and lime juice. We have different levels of heat-loving in our family so we usually make a mild batch and pull some of that out, then add a jalapeños or two for a medium batch and pull some of that out, then add the rest of the jalapeños to make a hot batch. It goes great on the porch or deck with a margarita or with our favorite summer cocktail, a Paloma. We're also very excited about the yellow beans. They are tender and crisp and worth the time it takes to harvest them. Enjoy those and make sure to snack on a few of them raw while you wait for the water or steamer to come up to temperature.  

Week 11
​(July 27)

Beefsteak Tomato
Cherry Tomatoes
Heirloom Tomato
Shishito Peppers
Okra
Collard Greens
Fresh Red Onions
Zucchini
Fresh Garlic
Parsley  
​
The Beefsteaks are finally ripening! It feels like they have been taking their own sweet time, but the first ones are here! Our plants are looking happy, they are loaded with tomatoes, and they are enjoying the cooler weather this week too. It gets hot in the hoophouses, even too hot for tomatoes to ripen evenly sometimes. These 70s and 80s make for much better ripening and much happier tomatoes (and farmers picking and thinking about tomatoes too). It looks like we picked a good summer to try our first planting of okra since it likes it hot. We're going back and forth this week on either breading it with cornmeal and frying it or making gumbo. We recently learned from the show "High on the Hog" that "ki ngombo" (often shortened to "Gombo") is the word for okra in many parts of West Africa. Besides the okra, this week is full of first of the year items like the shishito peppers and collard greens too. The shishitos are mild, with an occasional spicy one, and we love to char them on the grill then dip them in soy sauce while still hot for a quick one bite appetizer. You can do the same thing in a hot skillet. The collards are for stewing, especially with some ham or bacon if you are a pork eater. Their thicker leaves take longer to soften than some of the other greens like chard and kale. We cook them low and slow and hit them with some vinegar right before they are finished. 

​Week 10
​(July 20)

Cherry Tomatoes
Heirloom Tomatoes
Green Beans
Fresh Shallots
Poblano Peppers
Fresh Yellow Onions
Green Pepper
Jalapeños
Zucchini 
Basil
Fresh Garlic

Tomatoes! Yeah for tomatoes! This week we have a couple heirlooms and a pint of cherries and can't hold back on including basil with them for those summer Caprese salads. The first red beefsteaks are just starting to show a little color so, while they are on the way, they are still a few weeks out.
As of 6pm today all of the approximately 5,000 garlic bulbs are officially out of the ground and curing in our shade covered greenhouse. It will be in there for 3-4 weeks so you should still keep your garlic in the fridge until we give the all clear to store it somewhere cool and dry.  
We put in some extra weeding effort on the onions and shallots early in the season and we couldn't be happier with the results. The weeds are starting to overrun them a bit as we have switched our time and energy to tomatoes, peppers, and more summer crops, they continue to bulb up and be happy. At this point they are good size and the only downside of the weeds coming in is that we will have to make sure we stay on top of them early next year in those spaces. The poblanos are one of our favorite peppers with more smokey flavor than heat and when we have them our kids request white bean chicken chili weekly. We are starting to see the first signs of color on our red bell peppers, orange lunchbox peppers, and red and yellow-orange bullhorn Italian frying peppers. 

​Week 9
​(July 13)

Green Beans!
Purple Carrots
Fresh White Onions
Green Pepper
Cucumbers
Radishes
Zucchini 
Parsley
Fresh Garlic
Green Head Lettuce

Beans are here! Green beans might not be everyone's (anyone's?) favorite crop to harvest by hand, but it is in nearly everyone's top five favorite summer vegetables to eat. They are time consuming to harvest but oh-so-worth-it. We have been eating them for the past week as we waited to have enough on the plants for all your shares, and no matter what else we were eating everyone in the family ate their pile of beans first. These ones are growing nearby some yellow ones that are just about to flower and will be finding their way into the weekly shares around the last week of July/first week of August. The peppers are starting to come in as well with our first green pepper this week. We'll harvest some of the first peppers from these plants and then let many of them stay on the plants to ripen to sweet red bells. The jalapeños keep setting more fruit and the poblanos, shishitos, sweet carmens, and sweet escamillos are looking like a bumper crop this season as well. We're excited for these purple carrots as we have never grown this variety before and are happy with how they are coming along. There are more in this planting and we're going to leave them for a few weeks to see just how big they can get. The white onions are fresh so can be topped and stored in your fridge. Like the red ones, the ones we still have in the field will continue to get bigger over the next few weeks. 
This week has us making one big push on the weeding end before everything starts to be ready to harvest. That doesn't mean we won't be weeding any more this season (it never really ends), but many of the crops are big enough now to out compete any of the weeds that may come in near them. All the garlic is coming out and getting moved to the greenhouse where we have a shade cloth to prevent sunburn and where they will cure over the next 3-4 weeks. We'll be sure to let you know when it is good to store outside of your refrigerator, but until then keep it refrigerated until it's used up.
We are starting to harvest some cherry tomatoes now (1-2 off each plant) from the orange, pink, and red varieties (still waiting for the yellow and purple to start) and it's looking like the first pints will be in boxes next week. We can't wait for enough of those to send your way! 

​Week 8
​(July 6)

Jalapeños
Fresh Red Onions
Cucumbers
Shiso (Parilla/Beefsteak Plant)
Shelling Peas
Zucchini 
Fresh Garlic
Green Head Lettuce
Purple Kale
Basil

This week brings the first of the never-have-we-grown crops for this season (there's a long list of these that we are having a lot of fun with so far this year). The Shiso (pronounced "She-so") is a member of the mint family and is also known as Parilla or Beefsteak Plant. It doesn't taste like mint, or beef for that matter, but is unlike anything we've tasted before with a bit of cinnamon and a lot of umami flavor. It is used often in Japanese and other Asian cuisine while pairing perfectly with rice or included in a spring roll. There are a lot of recipes online from cocktails, teas, salads, and sauces (plus more). We would love to hear and see what you do with it this week either on a direct email or tagging us on your social media cooking posts.
We're also incredibly excited about the fresh red onions. Like the garlic, these haven't been cured, so they should go in your refrigerator. All the onions are still growing and bulbing up so they will be larger than this later in the year, but we just can't resist the beautiful color and delicious taste of these early red ones.
We are growing a number of different peppers this year that include green to red bells, shishitos, poblanos, carmen (sweet bullhorn red), escamillo (sweet bullhorn yellow/orange), orange minis, and the jalapeños that are in this week's box. All the plants of all the types are loaded down with growing fruit and blooming flowers. You'll be seeing all these plus more summer crops coming on strong in the wonderful bounty of peak season over the next few months.      

​Week 7
​(June 29)

Shelling Peas
Zucchini 
Fresh Garlic
Baby Carrots
Purple Kohlrabi
Golden Beets
Lettuce Mix
Radishes
Squash Blossoms
Buttercrunch Lettuce (Red OR Green)


Yea for shelling peas! Some, but not all, of you know that Dru's family's love language is shelling peas. We only grow 'Green Arrow' which is the same variety that her great grandma Lydia grew. I (Adam) had never had a fresh shelling pea before I met Dru and let's just say I've never looked back. They have a short season, don't love the heat, take forever to harvest in larger amounts, but they are a labor of love. When they are ready I can't come in the house without a handful for Dru and we can find our kids and their friends picking and eating them in the few weeks we have them. These are ones that you have to take the shell off of to eat so remember to shell them. If you really want to cook them you can do it quickly in some boiling water and add butter while they are hot. But, our favorite way is raw, preferably standing in the yard or sitting on the porch with either your own thoughts or with someone you want to share something special with. They obviously mean a lot to us so we are always incredibly happy to share one of our loves with all of you.
The other thing to make sure to do this week is store the fresh garlic in the refrigerator. It hasn't been cured so has a very high moisture content and will mold if left out. We'll cure them after the full harvest around July 15th and will let you know when they can be stored outside of the fridge (around early-mid August). You'll also notice that you can't crack these open like the cured bulbs so will have to shallowly (and carefully) cut into them to peel back the layers. There is also an extra layer on each clove that has to be removed. All of those will dry down after curing, but for now the extra work is worth the amazing fresh garlic flavor. Don't be afraid to eat it all this week as from here until the end of the season (or until we run out of garlic) there will be a bulb in each week's bag. 
​Lastly, those baby carrots...you'll never go back to the shaved down ones formed from the broken pieces of larger ones ever again. 

​Week 6
​(June 22)

Red Looseleaf Lettuce
Cucumbers
Dill (with flowers)
Cutting Celery
Garlic Scapes (last of the season)
Scallions
Green Buttercrunch lettuce
Basil
Baby Fennel
Swiss Chard


Happy Summer Solstice! We always get excited on the longest day of the year because all of the onions we grow are triggered to start bulbing when daylight gets shorter. We have had some good onion years, and also some challenging ones where we didn't keep them weeded enough and the yields were less and size was smaller than we would like. With their small root zone, they are notoriously bad at competing with weeds for nutrients and water. This year we really stayed on top of the weeds, have kept them watered well, and are happy to report that all of our onions (red, yellow, and white) plus our shallots and leeks are standing tall. They look great and we are very much looking forward to watching them bulb up. Before we know it fresh onions will start to find their way into each week's share. Since this marks the last week of garlic scapes that also means that fresh garlic will be available soon. We usually harvest around July 15 but they might be a little bit ahead of that this year. Watch for garlic bulbs in the bags soon too.
Most of the time on the farm we feel like we are always thinking a season ahead. In the Winter, we are thinking about and planning for spring and now that it is summer, we've begun to think about fall. This week we will seed a number of crops that will be ready for fall harvests. Broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage are all being seeded in the greenhouse this week and we are shifting the carrots we are planting to ones that grow better in the fall and store longer in the cooler than the spring and early summer varieties we grow. The two hoop houses that held most of the early Farm Box crops are starting to clear out and we are planning what will be going in those that we will harvest in the final few weeks of the season. Some of those late season crops grow all summer long and now is when they really put on their growth. The sweet potatoes are perking up and unfurling new leaves after being transplanted about 10 days ago, the Brussels sprouts are chugging along, and we just ordered some parsnips that, although it's a little late for planting, we think we can get them planted and through the 100+ days it takes them to reach harvest for the last week or two. In the meantime, all the summer crops are setting fruit including the tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos.     

​Week 5
​(June 15)

Carrots
Iceberg Lettuce
Green Cabbage
Cilantro
Garlic Scapes
Scallions
Red Buttercrunch lettuce
Spinach 
Parsley
Cucumbers

This recent rain and the warm (read HOT on Wednesday) weather has really made all of the warm season crops take off this week. We are working on keeping the weeds to a minimum around them as they love this weather for growing too. Some of the new to us crops we are growing this season are getting us excited now that they are growing and some are even starting to flower. The first flowers opened on cantaloupe while the okra is growing taller by the day. There are no flowers on that yet, but we will be sure to post a picture as soon as the first one forms and opens as they are beautiful. We are working on staying hydrated and hope that you are too. Take it easy this week in the heat, do some grilling, or cool down with a red butter crunch salad. We have been growing iceberg for a few seasons now and love the crunch (and flavor) that is so much different than the store bought iceberg. We have been tending the personal sized cabbages since very early in the season. Onions (and their cousins leeks and shallots) are always the first crops we seed since they take the longest to germinate and grow, but the cabbage were one of the first crops we seeded in the greenhouse after the onions. They were also part of the first plantings that went into one of the hoop houses. We are glad to say they have formed nice, tight heads and are ready to be made it delicious cole slaw with those carrots and scallions. 

​Week 4
​(June 8)

Carrots
Dill
Radicchio
Romaine Head 
Lettuce Mix
Basil
Garlic Scapes
Spinach
​Cucumber 
Purple Kale

This week marks the shift to most of the leafy greens and lettuces coming from the fields instead of our early plantings in the hoophouses. The spinach, romaine, lettuce mix, and dill are all from outside, and will be until we head back into the fall months. We have been trying for years to get carrots before June 10th and everything came together in terms of planting at the right time, getting warm enough temperatures, and prioritizing weeding in a notoriously slow-growing crop that doesn't complete with weeds very well. Needless to say, we're ecstatic about having carrots right now, have a few more plantings in (one of which really needs to be weeded in the next few days), and are planning to seed them throughout the season. There are always farm production goals, and then there are farm carrot goals. We're glad to have hit our first carrot goal of the season! You have a taste of the first cucumbers of the year, and, even though there is only one of them in the the box this week, the plants are loaded with beautiful little cukes that will soon be finding their way to your plates. The basil is in the same boat as the cucumbers as we are just harvesting the first few pinchings off the plants with much more to come. And, for those of you that have been asking about (and waiting patiently since last year for) the garlic scapes they are here! We will have these for the next few weeks before we start pulling fresh bulb garlic in mid-July. For those of you who haven't used them before, you can chop them and use just like you would garlic (similar to the green garlic from the past two weeks). They are the immature flower stalk of hard neck garlic and are tender, delicious, mild, and keep forever in your refrigerator.      

Week 3
​(June 1)

Lettuce Mix
Kohlrabi
Golden Beets
Arugula Microgreens
Spinach 
Swiss Chard
Cilantro
Endive
Cabbage Leaves
Green Garlic

This week felt like the first "Oh My" week on the farm this year. It usually happens around this time and means that at least a few times throughout each day we stumble onto something we hadn't noticed yet or something that is really surprising. Occasionally it's a "Oh My that spinach sure need to be weeded" but more often than not it's something really exciting. This week our "Oh My" moments have been discovering some small cucumbers developing that we had to taste test for quality control (coming your way soon!), carrots that grew exponentially in the last week (also headed your way soon-ish), and (very) small tomatoes forming on some of the cherries along with the beefsteaks and heirlooms too (coming in the future). We had all kinds of animal "Oh My" moments this week too that included a pair of Sandhill Cranes and their just born colt, two blue herons hunting in the marsh between home and our rented land that we spotted from the tractor, two just born baby fawns with wobbly legs in the brush near our Big Hoophouse, and a painted turtle that was cruising it's way through the cucumber house headed for somewhere else just this afternoon!
New items this week include kohlrabi (a fun white variety that we have never grown before), swiss chard, endive (a bitter green in the chicory family similar to radicchio - which is coming in next week's share), and arugula microgreens that really pack a peppery punch. We're off to move irrigation, which is clearly the theme today, and make sure all the just planted watermelon, cantaloupe,  winter squash, zucchini, tomatillos, and okra are getting the water they need in this heat.     

​Week 2
​(May 25)

Lettuce Mix
Green Garlic
Mizuna Microgreens
Red Beets
Radishes
Purple Kale
Arugula
Green Buttercrunch Lettuce
Red Spring Onions
Zucchini Blossoms

Week 2 and the colors are starting to show up around the farm. This week's box is full of reds along with the greens from last week and even has a touch of yellow-orange from the zucchini blossoms. Having those in the share means that fresh zucchini (and cucumbers too!) is only a few weeks away! Our favorite way to eat these is the traditional stuff with ricotta, batter with a tempura-style batter and deep fry them, but they are also amazing, and beautiful, pressed into a fresh tortilla or even just simply sautéed instead of fried. The microgreens are mizuna this week, which you had as larger leaves last week. It's always fun for us to have different sizes/ages of the same crop in back to back weeks so that you can see and taste the difference (spoiler alert: the micros next week will be arugula). This week on the farm we have been spending our time planting, weeding, and potting up plants in the greenhouse to larger containers. The tomatoes are starting to flower and we'll start pruning their leaves and suckers by the end of this week, the peppers have their first support string up and have tiny buds that aren't quite open yet, and we are battling with our first groundhog of the year. It may have got a jump on us when we weren't expecting it but we're onto it now and have traps set to make sure it doesn't get a chance to eat any more of our delicious, tender crops.     ​

​Week 1
​(May 18)

Asparagus
Spinach
Peashoots
Arugula
Spring Onions
​Cilantro
Chinese Cabbage Microgreens
Mizuna
Chive Flowers
Japanese Salad (Hakurei) Turnips

Welcome to Week 1 of the 2022 Ten Hens Farm Box!

We've missed all of you returning members since the final 2021 Farm Box and are so happy to welcome all you new ones this year too! The past few weeks have ranged from cold and flooding through hot and (very) dry, but it feels like this week we are finally settling into a bit of spring. One of the reasons we pushed the season ahead a few weeks was so we could share more of the early greens that a June start date doesn't allow for (since most of them like cool temperatures). So, this week we have plenty of greens for you and, for the first time ever in Farm Box, Asparagus!
Most of you know we love to cook and can never get enough pesto (the first basil was just planted in one of the hoophouses yesterday) but before the basil and garlic is ready for harvesting we make ours with arugula. You can blanch it if you'd like, but we are planning to just toss it in the food processor as is with some of the spring onions, a bit of the chive flowers (a little goes a long way with those), olive oil, salt, pepper, and parmesan. We've been picking asparagus for about two weeks and have been charring it in a pan or tossing it with olive oil and grilling it on the evenings where the light stretches past 9pm (which feels so great!).  
We are looking forward to seeing all your faces tomorrow and hearing how you enjoy these first tastes of the year!