Truly it is mid-summer…the temperatures are soaring, the air isn’t as crisp and fresh as it was in early summer and the sunflowers are now blooming! All signs that we are in the thick of summertime so we hope you are enjoying it to its fullest potential.

Yes, let’s talk about the heat. If you know a farmer, you know that’s basically all we can talk about. This extreme heat has us chitter-chatting a lot…between drinks of ice water and fanning ourselves! Whew! The biggest impact aside from not being able to work much in the afternoon is what it did to our pie cherries. The interns went to harvest yesterday only to find out the cherries had literally bakedon the tops and were now mush. So, our cherry tree now is referred to as the Cherry PIE tree. Haha!

Lots of crops started to really produce this week. We are seeing good harvests off the cucumbers, summer squashes and just today the peppers started to hit. Looks like the green beans will be in full production later this week. We are still watching the corn and tomatoes. We are probably a few weeks out from those harvests.

Farmer Jon and I celebrated our 27th Wedding Anniversary this past weekend. When we got married we committed to always making time to get away and celebrate. Our sons are awesome because they all stayed at the farm this weekend to work so we could get away! We just went to Spokane but always have a great time exploring and brainstorming different ideas to grow our farm! It was a wonderful weekend and we are grateful to have made this life journey together and we look forward to many more years of love and adventure!

The most exciting thing on the farm this week was our trial of Goat Milk Ice Cream!! It was a huge success! We would highly recommend trying to make it yourselves! It would really impress your friends and family! It’s super easy and oh, so yummy! We used 10 cups of goat milk (which is similar to half/half), 2 cups of sugar, 4 tablespoons of vanilla extract, 4 vanilla beans, scraped out, 1/4 tsp sea salt. Mix all ingredients together into a freezer for an ice cream maker and run the maker per instructions. We served it over fresh fruit and it was soooo heavenly! We are milking goats everyday and have plenty of milk in the Farm Store, so if you want to give it a whirl, stop by and grab some milk!

Okay, here’s what is in your bag today!

~Zucchini: We made Greek Gyro Zucchini Boats last night on the Traeger grill. Scooped the inside of the zucchini out, mixed it with lamb meat, greek seasonings, tomatoes and onions. Cooked it and then filled the hollowed out zucchinis with the mixture. Topped with mozzarella and feta cheese and then grilled for 30 minutes. Sprinkled flat leafed parsley on top before serving! It was a perfect summer meal!

~Curly leaf lettuce

~Cucumbers: some of the first of the season! So crisp and refreshing on a hot day!

~Broccoli and Cauliflower: These plants are magic! Even in this heat, these cool-weather loving plants are producing! Super impressive! Don’t forget you can blanch these in boiling water for a few minutes, then submerge in ice water before putting in a ziploc bag and then freezing for the winter months!

~New Potatoes

~Apricots

~Cherries

~Radishes

~Flat-leafed (italian) Parsley

Alright folks, we hope you enjoy your eats this week! Stay cool these next few days! It looks like some more moderate temps are heading our way! Wahoo!!