Hi Friends, we've made it to the official half way mark of our csa season and our farming season and it feels so good! The farm is busy, busy busy right now; we wake up with the sun and work 'til dark with little rest in between. The farm demands so much this time of year and I feel my energy being pushed to the limit, but it also feels good. Good to see the farm thriving and know all the work is directly correlated with how amazing the season has been thus far.

We harvested about 1,500 storage onions last week and they are curing nicely in the field. Hopefully these will be making a debut in next week's share and through the remainder of the season. We also harvested our first round of meat birds and for all of our apprentices it was their first time participating in a meat harvest. Even though our goal on the farm is to be efficient and production oriented we also try to balance that with our morals, which include a deep respect for the animals we raise and eat! The apprentices did a wonderful job of keeping pace with the harvest, and I think it felt good for all of us to know we were providing the meat for next season's farm crew. Processing day started off with some unforeseen mechanical errors. We borrow a homemade chicken plucker from a neighboring farm and it kept having issues, but with the help of the crew and a bit of duct tape and faith we got her working and got through 40 birds with ease. We decided to take another 30 of our broilers to a USDA certified processing plant so that we can sell them at our farmer's markets. I'm really pleased with the way our birds turned out this year, they're around 4 1/2 pounds each which is the perfect size for a family of four. We just got our second round of birds out in the field and it is great to see them exploring the great outdoors and helping to fertilize our pasture.

The weather has finally cooled down and I'm definitely feeling fall in the air, everything seems to be happening so early this season! We got our fall transplants out in the field two weeks ago, and although we've experience a bit of loss due to flea beetle damage most of the babies seem to be taking off. The kale looks especially great and will be in CSA shares next week.

We know we've been giving a lot of summer squash this year (and this week you can take as much as you can carry) so here's some recipes to try to get your squash inspiration on:

Zucchini Bread from Smitten Kitchen

Sauteed Summer Squash from 101 Cookbooks

Grilled Zucchini Boats from the Kitchn

In this week's share:

1 bunch green onions
2 leeks
1 pound green beans
1 pound eggplant
5 tomatoes
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1 bunch dandelion
1 head lettuce
As much as you can carry summer squash
1 bunch dill
1 bunch parsley

'Til next week...