We have had an exciting week at the farm for several reasons. Today we introduced our egg subscribers to the first of our farm produce on a retail basis. Of course over the years we have gladly shared various surpluses with friends and family and even sold some of our honey to eager neighbors but we never quite got comfortable putting out the farm stand and setting a price on our raw efforts from the fields until now…(of course my jams, honey, pickles, granola, etc. are always for sale, year round at the Artery!)

There would be no better way to open the doors than to offer the goods to our wonderful group of dedicated egg customers. We have been harvesting modest amounts from our fields for the last couple of weeks but yesterday we picked enough radishes, turnips and garlic scapes to offer them up this morning for sale.  As you have heard here before, lots of work goes into the planting, weeding, watering and care for these plants but a lot goes into washing and prepping for sale as well. So yesterday we brought in trays and trays of veggies. That we then washed, sorted and cleaned up before weighing and bundling by the pound. We then need to properly store them before and during the sales time. Thank goodness for all the refrigerators, sinks and counter-tops that we have for this effort. Of course at sales time, a warm morning meant we had our trays on ice on the screened porch. We did research on pricing according to a range of sources including CSA prices as well as local stores and made sure we were not over charging. I hope everyone found they got a good deal and will enjoy the first batch of weekly summer fruits and veggies.

As a good example for all, Kate collected her bounty the night before and sent this photo of her impromptu dinner creation with the turnips, garlic scapes and eggs (she added bacon of course…you can never lose with a bit of bacon!) I showed the photo to our customers this morning…maybe I’ll get her recipe and add it to the egg subscription cookbook. She said the turnip ‘coins’ were like butter and the garlic scapes tasted like tender green beans! Good job, thank you, Kate!I hope everyone enjoys their first taste of what is to come. Speaking of that, I had a bit of a shock yesterday when I looked at the blueberries and realized they were coming along very fast and were already blue! This, of course doesn’t mean they are ripe yet but we will be picking very, very soon, a task that takes hours each day and continues from early June until August but is worth the effort!!

The next big excitement was getting more of the fields planted now that the rain is under control. Dave installed the giant tomato posts again this year while I planted 34 tomato plants – 4 varieties – including the famously reintroduced Rutgers 250 tomato variety in celebration of 250 years of Rutgers University in New Jersey. We had read this story in the NYTimes last year found here but were unable to get a hold of this variety until now. Here is the fascinating story behind this tomato from the Rutgers perspective. I’m sure Dave’s grandfather (the original Sauerhoff family ‘Gramps’) sold these tomatoes up and down the south shore of New Jersey and eastern shore of Maryland as part of his business in the fruit and vegetable supply business.

Pssst…while Dave’s grandfather was selling shiny fruits and veggies on the east coast, this is what my family was doing…sending cattle to the meat market! My paternal grandmother, Sohpie Graupner is not the lady on the far right, but isn’t this lady just grand? I can relate to her! This is one of my favorite photos. My paternal grandparents did have a cattle farm in western Missouri which I visited often as a child and so these large steers are not that foreign to me as you might imagine.

I’m sure we will report on this tomato success and all varieties and their production. Here are the results of our joint effort in the tomato patch. Below you see our very own Stonehenge of sorts…8 foot tall posts planted in the field to supply support…a favorite spot for owls to perch at night with a view of potential prey! The rows of tomatoes get reinforced with a string method of tying along the rows from posts to post which are located every 12 feet. We found this to be a very effective method of securing the plants over time rather than individual tomato cages. We added landscape cloth this year to help keep the weeds at bay. We bought large rolls of the the ‘good stuff’ at a local supply house as well a box of 1000 anchors to pin the cloth in place. I hope not to be griping as much about weeds this year but they have loved the excessive rain more than anything!!!The bees are continuing to be a source of educational entertainment for me. I had an opportunity to take some photos (not an easy task when wearing heavy gloves and other protective gear) of the life cycle of the bees. I know, I know, not everyone is as wild about the bees as I am but seeing the evidence of their very intricate life cycle is so fascinating to me and I’m thrilled to get to share it when I can. So I opened up the hive body of one of the nucleus colonies that we acquired this spring and this is what I found. The photo above shows a hexagonal grid of wax comb that the bees are ‘drawing out’ (from the base of the foundation upwards – meaning perpendicular to the flat foundation) to eventually hold a nascent bee in the cell structure. But, look closely at the bottom of the black ‘spaces’…and you will find a very narrow white line in the center of it. This little line is the egg that the queen has laid in the cell. It is deposited by the queen into a cell that has been previously supplied with a bit of nectar to both feed it and help it adhere to the spot. This egg hatches after 3 days and becomes a larvae.  That is what you see in this next photo of another section of the frame I was able to photograph. In this photo, you can see various stages of larvae developing. They look like little white ‘C’ shaped worms or grubs…some smaller than others. They continue to be fed nectar during this stage for 5 more days by nurse bees whose only job is to care for the survival of the future brood until they are finally capped with a papery substance until they hatch. If the bees were wanting to make a queen bee out of an egg, they would need to start feeding that egg a super food called Royal Jelly within the first 2 days of the egg being laid. Since the queens are larger in size, they also (in addition to continuing with the steroid food regimen) would build her a roomier cell, called a queen cell to accommodate her grand physique. Sometimes this queen cell is built first and then an egg intentionally laid for the role of the queen. Here is a photo of a throng of bees covering a sea of capped brood cells…waiting for their new workers to emerge. In anticipation of all the honey we hope to be harvesting in the next weeks/months, I have patiently waited for the company from which I order my glass jars to offer their once a year free shipping deal. Glass is heavy and expensive to ship so this is a big deal to me! I ordered 30 cases (360 jars) from them and for the first time in 4 years I received one case that had breakage. I immediately contacted them about this and they very kindly said they would send a replacement case for free. Wouldn’t you know, this is how the replacement case arrived!!! Perhaps the label on the front was read as “Break Me” rather than “Fragile Glass” to the company doing the delivering??? Actually, the jars were in tack despite the rough handling of the box. Thank goodness the overwhelming rain has stopped for now and we have been able to play catch up in the fields and orchard. The grass needs cutting every day it seems and Dave let me try my hand at the zero turn mower for a while since we can tag team if needed with him using the mower on the tractor while I zip around with the crazy hand controlled machine of the Z-turn! I lament mowing down the white clover though since the bees love it and we allow it to flourish in the back for their delight. We cut it in patches so that they always have some available to them in one corner or another. The bees have also loved several varieties of Salvia which have flourished among the peonies in front… as well as in several new beds of pollinator friendly flowers on the north side as well as in the rear terrace bed. I enjoy receiving starts of plants from friends and gladly entertained this special one pictured below from a beekeeper who was sharing this specimens from the back of his truck at our last club meeting. It is a banana tree…not exactly contextual in my non-tropical garden space, but amusing to watch as it unfolds from its winter dormancy. I am told it will have tiny ‘bananas’ after it blooms, so it should fit in with our orchard, right? Where was our best little helper during all of this? Coulter was at the lake visiting with his PawPaw Bill for the Memorial Day weekend. He loved the boat ride but could not stay awake for long!  I find myself in the same situation these days…too tired from our efforts but happy all the same.