June 13, 2016 Veggie Box News

Box Contents

1 lb Royal Blenheim Apricots

1 bu Nantes Carrots

1 bu Basil

1 lb Summer Squash

1-2 hd Batavia Lettuce

1 bu Red Beets

1 bskt Gold Nugget Cherry Tomatoes

Special Orders

10 lbs Orange Nantes Carrots $12/10 lb bag

Pastured Pork: bacon, sausage, ham and pork cuts

 Please email the farm to place your order:csa@riverdogfarm.com

Box Notes

The first of the cherry tomatoes have arrived! Our earliest variety is Gold Nugget. It is a fast maturing tomato plant. We purchase the seed from one of our favorite seed companies, a worker-owned business based in Maine called Johnny’s Selected Seeds. According to Johnny’s, the gold nugget cherry tomato “flavor is well-balanced and delicious, and a majority of the early fruits are seedless. Healthy, compact plants with a concentrated early set. Developed by Dr. James Baggett, Oregon State Univ.”

Soon to follow in the cherry tomato department will be Sun Gold, Mini-Charm, and Sweet 100. What starts as a handful of baskets of cherry tomatoes quickly cascades into hundreds of thousands of juicy refreshing gems. We grow over 20 varieties of cherry tomatoes so that we can create a mixed medley (many colors of cherry tomatoes in one basket) that sells well and farmer’s market and to our wholesale buyers.

As a certified-organic farm all the seed we source must be untreated. A treated seed has a glow-in-the-dark fuchsia-colored fungicide coating that is not allowed on organic farms. We are also required to source organic seeds when available. The certified organic seed is more expensive than non-organic seed. This means that the farm spends a little more money on certified organic seed, creating a higher expense annually. Part of why organic food costs more is because of expenses such as these along with the higher labor costs to manually harvest the produce instead of mechanically harvesting the crops. Thank you for supporting Riverdog Farm by subscribing to the CSA and for your dedication to organic farming practices!

Field Notes

Ahhh!! It has been ten degrees cooler recently. Both last week and this week feel wonderful compared to the scorching days earlier this month. We are hoping for continue cooler weather but know any day now the temperatures will sky rocket once again as they do every summer.

Save the Date

Hoes Down Harvest Festival

Saturday October 1, 2016

11:00 am to 11:00 pm

For tickets and volunteer work shift info, please visit: www.hoesdown.org.