Share Notes, June 26th, 2025

We’re still easing into the summer season, just delivering to roughly half of our  locations till the crops come in with greater abundance.  The rain-saturated month of May that we had this year really caused some problems: it mucked up our onion and garlic crops, it cut the Spring season short by a couple of weeks, it stressed out our summer crops (which, by and large are recovering very well) and it even prevented the planting of a couple of crops we hoped to have this summer. 

When conditions are overly dry, you can add water to eek by. When conditions are too rainy, there’s nothing you can do to get rid of the surplus water.  In our 15 yrs, many more crop losses have come from too much rain than from drought, so y’all pray for just the right amount of rain! A quarter to a half inch per week is the sweet spot. Our plants will be so happy.

Until the crops come in with greater abundance, we’ll be spreading the yield around to all our different locations as fairly as we can.

 

Here’s your vegetable line-up this week:

• Potatoes – A mixed bag: Red new potatoes, white kennebec, and a few yukon gold mixed in.  These are excellent for boiling, roasting, home fries, or potato salad. Yum!
• Onions – A trio for all. The onion harvest for this year was small, (exceedingly wet conditions) so we’ll only have onions for you for a few weeks before we run through the whole crop. Enjoy them while we’ve got them!
• Garlic – A few small heads of garlic. Just like the onions, they did not like the boggy conditions they were growing in throughout April and May. And when we harvested them, they were caked in mud, so the papery outer coating may be unattractive, but the innards are delicious! Most years we have such amazing and beautiful garlic that we’re so proud of. Welp, better luck next year!
• Sungolds – Loads for everyone! These bursts of sunshine are a customer fave that are long anticipated every year and we’re so excited they’re here! The best cherry tomato around, super sweet and delicious for snacking and salads.
• Cabbages – nice cabbages for everyone. We’ll be turning ours into fantastic Thai peanut chicken salad this week.
• Squash – This crop is just starting to produce, and we usually get 4 delicious weeks out of it.  We’ve got a yellow straight neck for you as well as a really cool green and yellow striped squash called zephyr. It’s tender and delicious.
• Zucchini – Closely related to squash of course. This veggie has featured in our kitchen through fantastic zucchini boats stuffed with mushrooms, sausage, topped with parmesan, we’ve made zucchini noodles to sub in for pasta for a low-carb-eater in our house, and we even have a favorite lasagna recipe that swaps in thinly sliced zucchini and it turns out wonderfully (although I can never leave well-enough alone: I follow his recipe mostly, with a few edits).
• Winona Fruit!! Blueberries for the regular shares, plums for the Mini shares, and PLUMS AND BLUEBERRIES for the Large shares! These were grown by our friends at Winona Orchards, just down the road. They’ve longtime friends of Red Moon Farm. They strive to be sustainable, but they are not organic. Although the owner, Mr. Sattler, explained to me that these blueberries have had nothing sprayed on them at all this year, so you can consider them squeaky clean!
  • Poor Winona has the exact problem we’ve just begun having about a week ago: the birds are behaving more ravenous than we’ve ever seen them. They’ve nearly wiped out the blueberry crop and I am praying that they don’t start in on the peaches, which are mostly still out there on the trees and need several more weeks to ripen. I’ve never seen so many birds trying to get at the garden.  Is it the wet spring? Were their usual food sources effected by the wet conditions?  Most summers we try to include their fruit in the boxes most weeks, but of course that only works out when they have enough. We’ll have to see what is possible.

Veggie Storage tips:

• Everything wants to be washed well before cooking, but keep the dirt on till then, to prevent faster spoilage.
• Fridge storage this week: cabbage, squash, zucchini, all sealed up in a container or plastic bag, and blueberries.
• Counter storage:  plums may need a few days to ripen. Move them to the fridge as soon as they’re ripe. Don’t refrigerate your tomatoes or onions either.
• Dark cabinet storage: Potatoes keep best away from the light, but in the open air. Don’t keep them in the plastic bag, switch to a paper bag or a basket in your cupboard.

 

Regular Share

 

Regular Share – top row left to right: squash and zucchini, blueberries, Sungolds, (2nd row) cabbage, onions, garlic, potatoes.

Large Share

Large shares – top row left to right: squash and zucchini, blueberries, Sungolds, (2nd row) cabbage, onions, garlic, plums, potatoes.

 

Mini Share

Mini shares – top row left to right: A squash and a zucchini, beautiful plums, Sungolds, (2nd row) cabbage, onions, garlic, potatoes.

 

Flower Shares:

 

This week I made two different types of bouquets. You’re either getting vintagey pastel shades, or you’re getting bold and bright colors.

In the vintage bouquets: Queeny Lime series zinnias, Ballerina zinnias, Cinnamon basil, Purple Kisses ammi, Coral Fountains trailing amaranth, lots of cupcakes cosmos and cranberry cosmos, a little bit of our magenta celosia, and beautiful brown sunflowers.

In the bold and bright bouquets: Oklahoma series zinnias, Lemon basil, Emerald trailing amaranth, lots of hot pink cosmos, bright Cockscomb Celosia (these look like coral, or brains, they’re so cool!) some purple flox (check out the fragrance on these!), and our beautiful bright and cheery rudbeckia.

I hope you love the color scheme you received this week! Snap a picture of yours and show us on instagram!

 

 

We’d love to hear stories and recipes of your culinary adventures this week. Tag us on Instagram or Facebook, showing us how you’ve used your CSA share.

Your farmers, Jess & Justin