Wrapping up the Week

The past two weeks,  one of our intrepid interns, Bethany, has been on vacation with her family (a road trip east covering 4300 miles, two countries, 1 province and 13 states!) We all missed her, but especially Brendan, I suspect, and not just because he had to cover some of her chores! She arrived back at the farm yesterday, and within an hour got to work feeding the poultry and milking the cow before we headed out  on our evening adventure...

going to Suncrest Gardens Farm, a pizza farm near Cochrane Wisconsin, about an hour away.  Rog and I have been toying with idea of establishing a pizza farm ever since we moved here, so we love going to other pizza farms and seeing how they run things. Suncrest Gardens Farm has developed a lot since we last ate there a few years ago, with lovely perennial gardens, baby animals, and great playground  equipment for children. They grow many of the ingredients for their pizzas and are lucky to be located next door to Great River Organic Milling, so even their flour is about as local as it gets.

The pizza was delicious, but the real draw was Jen, the wonderful intern who stayed with us briefly a few weeks ago. This is her last week at this farm before heading on to her next adventure. It was delightful to catch up with her, although she was kept too busy taking orders and making pizzas  to talk much.

We did get a "farm family" portrait with our summer interns snapped before we left.  Good luck, Jen, and keep in touch!

This morning, Brendan and Bethany got up early to harvest  pears. Our neighbors had given us permission to harvest from their two huge tress down the road.

Why do most of the pears grow on the highest branches?  (click photo to see pears!) The plan was to use some of the pears in tarts for this weekend's Farmers Market baking, but they are still a bit too green.

Instead, Bethany made our tantalizing tomato tarts, with caramelized onions, gruyere cheese,  colorful little garden tomatoes and  kalamata olives.

I have been meaning to post about the four special new chicks we acquired last week: two Black Jersey Giants and two Silkies.  The Silkies are fluffy, look like muppets and are banty-sized; the Jersey giants will be huge when full-grown, so this little sub-flock is kind of an odd group of buddies.

We are handling these chicks a lot so they will be tame enough to allow visitors to our farm to pet them.

Final big news of the week: a couple hours ago, our high tunnel greenhouse arrived!!  It's hard to believe that in a week or so this pile o' pipes and plastic will be transformed into 26 x 48 greenhouse!  We have our work cut out for us.

P.S. Our  Farm store is going great and will be open weekends through September. Visit the Squash Blossom Farm Facebook page to get a 20% discount coupon for a Profound Object.  The Nodding Wild Onions will play this Sunday from 2:30-5:00.