Weekly Weeder

Olin-Fox Farms Volume No. 9 Issue No. 21 August 8, 2007

www.olinfoxfarms.com Summer Season Week 12

STANDARD REMINDER

Please be sure to wash your weekly share thoroughly before serving. To preserve freshness, it is NOT ‘table ready’ (i.e., pre-washed). We deliver your Olin-Fox Farms’ produce right from the fields to ensure highest quality.

Next week is an OFF week. The Summer Program will resume August 22-25.

A gentle reminder to our members that the Summer Program ends on Saturday September 1^st, and all payments should be completed by that date. Please note: we no longer receive payments via PayPal. Payments may be sent by check or money order to: Olin-Fox Farms, P.O. Box 222, Reedville, VA 22539. Please contact us if you need to make other arrangements.

This Week's News From The Farms

Word is that the colorful array of wind socks flapping in the furnace-hot breeze has succeeded, thus far, in keeping those dastardly darlings, the wild turkeys [not the bottled variety] out of the Lemongrass patch, probably because the constant movement makes them nervous.

With the drought, weeds exalt and flourish when everything else is struggling to survive.  Efforts to repress them have been in vain.  Naturally, they can still be turned to good use tilled under to enrich the soil or added to the compost heap.

The other day, I had the pleasure of joining the wholesome crew of OFF for a sumptuous midday meal, like the Sunday dinners of bygone days.  In Nova Scotia, the noon meal is still the largest and heartiest one of the day.  On the farm, we feasted on chicken salad, a roasted medley of vegetables including eggplant, tat soy, bell peppers, and squash, plus sliced tomatoes, multi-grain bread, sage Derby cheese and French brie with red grapes, colorful vegetable sea-salted chips, chilled Belgian peach nectar with a slice of fresh peach perched on the rim of the glass and a sprig of mint plucked from just outside the kitchen door topped off with a platter of mini éclairs and sliced figs.  After the meal, John and I took a quick tour of the farm, commenting as we went on trail and tribulations, experiments and ideas for seasons to come … before making a hasty retreat back to the shading front porch with its whirling electric fan churning the muggy air enough to evaporate the wetness a bit from our sweat-drenched clothing. 

While writing the newsletter for this week, when I called Olin-Fox Farms at 9 o’clock on Tuesday evening to ask Farmer John to share his observations for his weekly report, Alice and Stevie were still there, helping John unpack the produce from his rounds of the other farms.  Thought our members would appreciate their dedication to ensure you receive the best, freshest, homegrown produce for you and your families. 

I did speak to John and he mentioned that one of the farms had to round up all of their field cats and bring them indoors in the blessed AC as another indicator of just hot stinking hot and humid it was again today.  We’re melting like butter sizzling in a cast iron black skillet over a roaring fire, people!  Such diametrically different weather from those ten cool, breezy days I enjoyed recently on vacation in Nova Scotia, with fog banks drifting in from the sea, enshrouding the rocky islands and balsam fir forest, drenching the lush green lawn in glistening silvery droplets of moisture.  Here, the grass crunches under foot and the dusty ground is as unyielding as desert stone, even after the merciful rainstorm we received on Sunday evening, lingering late into the night. 

This is what I can imagine that the punch-drunk, giddy natural world in these parts might have exclaimed, in response to that marvelous cooling rain we received Sunday:

“Ahhhh!  Luscious liquid benediction descending upon the parched thirstiness of us all, requited at last, finally quenched, heavenly drenched by pure, sublime grace, cool and refreshing on the face of creation, delighting in alighting, releasing our collective sighs of contented satisfaction unto sheer elation. 

The message that we bear, ladling liberally out of thin air, carried here by the crystalline distilled drops of fluid light sings praises unending (one can harken to with the inner ear, by patiently attending) clearing that which is being flushed up to the surface, according to each individual’s personal ‘baggage’ into legacy through the permutations of alchemical transformation, the movement ahead of the implacable current called evolution, segueing into our next collective manifestation, both personally and as a nation, a people, even all humanity, as self aware individualizations of Self-same, seamless continuum … causal, etheric, astral, consciousness-soul, energetic, unto materialized wave-form frequency consolidation physical expressions identifying as I, you, and me, we--- Being contiguous, enough, sufficient, whole, complete, fulfilled, even as it’s morphing from chrysalis into liberated flutter bye.  Beloved, loved, loving.”

Only two days later, you’d hardly believe it’d rained at all, except for a few of the deeper lingering muddle puddles, like the ones I saw today with crows and grackles splashing around in them, like happy children at play. 

Decades ago, when I still took for granted the mixed blessing of having near total recall of everything I ever read, I recollect reading somewhere that the great ‘Sleeping Prophet’ of Virginia Beach, Edgar Cayce, once predicted in a reading that the climate of this region would eventually become sub-tropical.  If this summer’s weather is any indication of a long-term trend, then it would appear that as early as the 1940s, Mr. Cayce accurately foresaw what was coming.

In Your Produce Basket This Week

Cubanella Sweet Peppers, Eggplant, Basil, Okra.

Please see your location's Produce List for more details.

For those with fruit shares: Peaches

Please Note: With elements beyond our control such as the start or the end of a harvest, or extreme weather conditions that may limit the quantity of produce coming in, we systematically address each delivery and pick up group each week and do our very best to see that everyone receives some of everything.