Heads up on this week’s honey sale, our annual Early Bird summer share deal, one last note about the PYO flower garden, and one of my favorite ways to eat green tomatoes:

Honey For Sale This Week

Arthur, who keeps bees here at Stearns and around this area, will be selling honey on Tuesday 9/18  from 1 pm -4 pm and Friday 9/21 3 pm-5 pm. Pay by cash, check, or Paypal. Prices are as follows: 1 pound jar/$15/ 8oz jar/$8.

If you’d like honey but can’t make it to the farm during those times, you can email Arthur directly: arthr31@yahoo.com.

Early Bird Sale Launches Next Week

Our generous Annual Early Bird Sale for 2019 summer shares will kick off with next Monday’s newsletter. Be sure to read it if you are planning to return next season!

Help Renew the PYO Flower Garden on Saturday

I’ve written about this a couple of times already, but here is one last announcement regarding the flower garden. As many of you have mentioned, the flower garden was pretty disappointing this season. I want to make clear that this was my own error. I thought we’d have time to totally give the garden a makeover in time to plant it all, and I was wrong.

Here’s what happened: I underestimated the amount of time it would take to create the permanent beds in the second half of the flower garden. The weather didn’t cooperate in some key ways, and it pulled us away to do other work. The weeds took over a lot of the finished half of the garden while we were getting all of that rain, and without a dedicated flower garden helper, well, the garden really suffered from neglect.

Without going into the details of production in-the-field versus production in the front flower beds (in what is essentially a small garden in comparison) I’m asking you to trust me when I say that the start of the Flower Share coinciding with a sad season in the PYO flower garden is just an unfortunate coincidence. I understand it looks suspicious, but I assure you that the two are unrelated. Giving you less PYO flowers was a not a ploy to get folks to buy the Flower Share. We had huge dreams of a beautifully whimsical and bountiful flower garden.

Moving forward: we have someone committed to maintaining the front flower garden next season, so the weeding and staking will be done in a more timely and effective way. Now we just need to finish digging the permanent beds in the second half of the flower garden. Are you interested in helping us out? We will be working up there this Saturday from 8 am-noon. Please join us!

RSVP to farmer@stearnsfarmcsa.org: I’m thinking about baking muffins for those who swing by, and I’d love to know if you are going to be there for any or all of the day on Saturday!

Pickle Those Green Tomatoes

Finally: what the heck to do with green tomatoes? I love making curried pickled green tomatoes to eat with cheddar, mayo, and mustard on baguette! Do what I do each autumn: do a quick Google and see which pickled tomato recipe works with the ingredients you have at home. Yum.

Thanks, all, for your enthusiasm, support, and kind words over the past few weeks.

With gratitude,
Mel