Newsletter #11-09

Last Friday we had 41 people for dinner by hosting a farm tour for OFCM. Of all the pleasant days we’ve enjoyed in the past few weeks, this wasn’t one of them. It started out with fog and a significant amount of rain. The farm was a sea of mud.  Some urbanites came in shorts, bare feet and sandals, exposing a lot of succulent skin to the hordes of hungry mosquitoes that swarmed us as Rene towed us around the field with his tractor. In spite of these  unpleasant circumstances, everyone claimed they found it interesting or they enjoyed it, especially since  we ate our meal indoors. Stefan cooked up a feast of Blue Lagoon produce and at the end of the day there wasn’t a crumb left.

Another corny tale has to be told this week. Since we had such a late cold spring and I wanted to make sure you all got some sweet corn to eat, I germinated each kernel on paper towels in our germinator, planted them into six packs and when it was safe to move  them outside, we transplanted them into the mulch. There was no local corn anywhere this summer until now. We waited a long time for our corn to ripen and watched it anxiously. Will we get corn this year? Some experts in the field alerted us to its readiness. We found hundreds of stalks broken as greedy little fingers stripped the ears and gorged on the tender young kernels. The ground was strewn with half eaten cobs, covered with flies. This week you share all that was left by the raccoons. We picked everything with dried silks. No time to wait for it to reach the peak of perfection. Enjoy. This week even the focaccia is corny.