Veggie Pa--looza

Whew! This hot weather has brought on the veggies. The squash went from teensy three leaved plants to mammoth in three short days and the fruit was quick to follow. It's always so refreshing to change seasons from spring greens to actual vegetables that can be diced, roasted, marinated, whatever you can think of.

Sunday I got around to getting my share box out of the walk in cooler and getting it organized in the fridge. I took two hours to wash and prepare the vegetables, make two salads and eat lunch. Both salads were made up inventions. The first was a sliced zucchini, summer squash, Sungold cherry tomatoes, garlic, onions, feta cheese, oil, vinegar, salt, pepper and basil. I robbed the newly transplanted and suffering terribly, basil plants in the garden for a few leaves. They don't seem to have minded the reduce work load of not having to feed four more leaves. The next salad is called turnip/carrot - basic but very, very good. As the title says, it's shredded Hakerui Salad Turnips and baby carrots with a soy, chili dressing from the Moosewood cookbook. It is also good.

Yesterday the ram came home to the farm all wrapped in paper, ready for the freezer. Our local butcher shop processed him into ground lamb, breakfast lamb sausage and spicy Italian sausage.
We will use the sausage at our 4th Annual Field to Fork Dinner on July 10, here at the farm.

Our other meat for the Field to Fork Dinner is going to be chicken. The batch of broilers will be ready for processing at the end of the week. They are pretty funny running around, playing Big Fighting Rooster with each other and then getting distracted by a passing bug, ending the play fighting. The broilers have three teeny little hen chicks as roommates, which is quite the combination. The hens came from a neighbor who hatches pretty darn cute little chicks and we ended up with an Archana (sp?) and two "mutts", as she calls them. The Mutt Sisters hang out in a flock of three and the only speed they have is motorcycle-legs mode and stop. They are no contest for the hefty, thunder thighed broiler chickens whose only weapon is a mean glare. The Mutt Sisters motorcycle around the big chickens with amazing speed, chasing bugs and darting for shelter before the big chickens try to steal their bugs.