Dear meadowlark community of eaters,         

Finally, the sun shines down after many days of cold cloudy wetness.  We roll with the flow of this wet summer season and keep our eyes and senses open to the differentness of this year.  We await the arrival of new bugs(the latest is a metallic yellow fly with zig zagged stripes that we have yet to identify), and we watch out for disease as we seem to be in a state of perpetual dampness.  We look to the horizon for ripening crops and anticipate the broccoli rising into full force next week as well as the beginnings of the much beloved sugar snap pea.  Boxes this week include:  triple washed salad mix, in the big bag: purple kohlrabi, dino kale( has dark green crinkly texture), joi choi bok choy;spinach,Italian parsely in bag with red lettuce, green summer crisp lettuce, green onions and garlic scapes.  Asparagus, broccoli, collards for premiums and strawberries for fruit shares.   Remember not to wait on the strawberries!  Eat them today…          

Have you ever seen how garlic grows?  Garlic is an annual crop that has a special place in our hearts here at meadowlark farm.  The type of garlic we grow is called “hardneck” and is winter hardy with big cloves and a delicious bite.  We love this garlic, once called “german red”.  We’ve been saving our garlic seed and replanting it each year for about 13 years, so feel justified in calling it now “meadowlark red”.  We grow about ½ acre of garlic and here’s how it works:  in October, we separate the heads of garlic apart into individual cloves and plant each one by hand.  A clove becomes a head.  We hand plant around 20,000 cloves of garlic each year!  Then comes winter and our meadowlark red grows roots then sleeps through the long cold time.  In the early spring it sends up green growth, some of the first alive plants around.  Now, at this time of year, mid-june, it starts to send up a flower stalk or scape.  What in the world is a garlic scape? Our beloved garlic, if left to it’s own will, would send this flower stalk or scape, straight to the sky.  We have learned to pinch off the scape to encourage energy into the bulbing part of the plant, making bigger heads of garlic.  After the scape is pinched, the garlic heads are ready to harvest in early july.  We invite you all to come and help bring in the garlic harvest and will let you know exactly when as the time approaches.  The garlic is pulled from the ground and the top is cut off and then it cures in our old barn for 6 weeks emitting an aroma enticing and wonderful to behold.  Then, it’s ready to eat and we continue the cycle again and again.Have a great week and thanks for returning your boxes!  The meadowlarks