harvest

It was a beautiful Memorial Day morning.  I pulled my rain-pants (waterproof overalls) on so that I could gather up the still-wet-with-dew Reemay cloth from the rows & place it in the path so we could harvest!  Succulent spinach & lettuce.  These fields are just exploding with greens!

The "Bright Lights" chard glows in the morning sun.
We cut the spinach off to the ground, hoping that the next few weeks will not bring really hot weather so we can get another harvest out of these plants.  Spinach likes it cool.
Lettuce is harvested two ways.  Direct-seeded "salad mix" lettuce we cut to about 2" from the ground, and this will re-grow.  This is sometimes called the "cut-and-come-again" method.  In other rows we have transplanted seedlings we started in the greenhouse.  These make nice heads, as we've spaced them regularly.  We cut every other head of lettuce, allowing the remaining ones to fill in & get really big!  The ones we've cut for tomorrow's distribution are still pretty large.  We dunk them in a water basin, shake them off, and pack them into boxes.
I can't wait until all our CSA members take that first bite of salad they've brought home from our fields!