This Week's Vegetable Harvest: Green Cabbage Bell Pepper Zucchini Summer Carrots New Potatoes Cucumber Dragon Tongue Green Beans Beefsteak Tomatoes Sweet Onions Garlic This Week's Fruit Harvest (from Mick Klug Farms, St. Joseph, MI) Saturn Donut Peaches White Peaches Blueberries Red Have Peaches

What's New at the Farm Stand

Cherry Tomatoes - The tomato season has begun and cherry tomatoes kick off the show leading the way with sweet flavor. Our most popular cherry tomatoes are available in the farm stand for a limited time. Take advantage while they are here! The Farm Stand is open daily, 7am-7pm.

Tomato Update! Since we've received questions, we thought we'd share an update on ordering tomatoes in bulk. Yes, we intend to provide this availability towards the end of August or early September! The selections we can offer are dependent on the weather. When we are ready to take orders for cases, we announce via this newsletter. As always, thank you for loving farm-fresh, organic tomatoes.

Farm Journal

Good evening from the farm!

Thank you again for your kind words in response to last week's newsletter story about our student farm crew member, Riley. In the third story in our series, we share the story of David and Miguel, brothers from Sinaloa, Mexico.

David worked with us for the first time in the 2022 farming season. David's warmth and kindness are evident when you first meet him -- and don't take our word for it! Our farm neighbors have enjoyed meeting him and learning from him after he brought a toy ball to their sons to play with. As I say often, actions speak louder than words, and without sharing a language, David's show of generosity demonstrates his character.

When we invited David to join us for a second season, we invited him to extend the invitation to his brother, Miguel. Miguel was new to farming, but certainly not new to working hard and while he may be one of the youngest members of our team, he is a quick study and takes direction from his brother without a second thought. Watching these brothers work together in the field is an inspiring sight, as we've often had our boys working together with a bit less patience being demonstrated!

Back in Mexico, David has his own auto mechanic shop and provides his knowledge on a variety of new and older vehicles, which has proven useful at the farm. With our tractors from the 1960s and pickup trucks from the early 2000s, David's knowledge of older makes and parts are extremely helpful assets to our farm. In fact, our old stick shift car made David feel right at home as he mentioned most cars in Mexico use a stick shift.

David has fixed everything from tractors to coolers, trucks to hand tools, and in particular this season, greenhouses to several hoophouses. We can always count on him to offer clever solutions to solving problems. Miguel often serves as his second, and with few words needs between them, they swiftly work to get any mechanical job done quickly and well.

David's dedication to our farm is something we don't take lightly, as we've joined Facetime calls with his wife and son during farm lunchtimes. We know he misses his family, so we do our best to show his family our appreciation via these phone calls, too.

As he did last season, David and Miguel will drive home from our farm to their home in Sinaloa with a vehicle filled with luggage, power tools, and gifts. While the trip is a very long one, David feels there is nothing better than working or traveling with family by your side. We couldn't agree more!

Thank you for caring about the people who grow your food and more stories to come. In the meantime, enjoy the summer harvest! Cheers, ~ The Miller Family, David, Miguel, Cleto and Anacleto P.S. Photo credit goes to David for sharing his pictures from Mexico.

Notes from the Farm Kitchen

Carrots are one of our specialties here at the farm. As we mentioned in this 2020 newsletter, Jeff uses carrots as a window in our soils' health when he measures their sugars using a Brix meter. A Brix meter measures sugar content in crops, and the higher the sugar content or Brix, the higher the nutrition level. This is because the sugar that is produced by the plant is illustrative of what nutrients the crop can access in the soil. In other words, the higher the Brix, the healthier the soil and thusly, the healthier the crop.

We are again sharing a seasonal favorite, Saturn 'Donut' or flat peaches.  The Saturn variety is rosy in color, though the tango variety is pictured here to demonstrate the interesting look of how they grow! Saturn flat peaches have a sweet traditional peach flavor, while this week's white peaches are even a bit sweeter. Use both sweet peaches together in salsas, pies, jams, cobblers, etc., or use them separately to balance the flavor of a more tart nectarine.

As mentioned before, we decided to experiment with a few new varieties of crops this year, and dragon's tongue green beans is one of them! These bush beans are tender, sweet and good in salads or cooked. The purple speckles disappear upon cooking so we like to very lightly cook or just eat!

Seasonal Recipes in the Farm Kitchen Peach Muffins Ten Best New Potato Recipes Dragon Tongue Beans with Pancetta  Blueberry Basil Smoothie Swedish Cabbage Rolls

• Tags: Blueberries, Cabbage, Green Beans, Peach, Potatoes

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