CSA Box #5 • August 2026

Written By Your Farmers

Summer finally brought us a much-needed gift this week—rain. After 17 days without measurable rainfall, the garden soaked up every last drop. Thanks to our drip irrigation system, the crops have continued growing despite the dry stretch, but the rain has given everything a welcome boost. With a little help from Mother Nature, we're hopeful the coming weeks will bring the burst of summer abundance we've been patiently waiting for.

This week's box continues the transition into peak season with beautiful heirloom eggplant, colorful potatoes, fresh herbs, and the final round of our freshly harvested garlic as we switch over to cured bulbs for the remainder of the season.

Fresh Music Garlic

This is the final week we're sharing our freshly harvested garlic. Some of you also received your first cured bulbs, which have been dried for long-term storage and will keep for several months in a cool, dark place. Music continues to be one of our favorite hardneck varieties thanks to its large, easy-to-peel cloves and rich garlic flavor.

Although we didn't quite find time to braid this year's harvest, growing a small patch of softneck garlic for braiding is already on next year's list!

  • Storage: Refrigerate until ready to use if fresh. Store in a cool, dark place if cured.

Diamond Purple Eggplant

Diamond Purple is an heirloom eggplant originally developed in Eastern Europe and appreciated for its tender flesh, thin skin, and dependable production. We also grew this variety from seed supplied by Driftless Seeds, a regional seed company committed to producing varieties well suited to Midwestern growing conditions.

Supporting small seed growers is another way we try to strengthen regional agriculture, and we're excited to share one of their varieties with you.

Purple Magic Molly Potatoes

Purple Magic Molly potatoes are deep purple inside and out thanks to naturally occurring anthocyanins—the same antioxidants found in blueberries and blackberries. Their rich color holds surprisingly well after cooking, making them a fun addition to roasted vegetable dishes and potato salads.

  • Storage: Store in a cool, dark place.

Green Peppers

The peppers are beginning to arrive! They're delicious fresh, grilled, stuffed, or sautéed into nearly any summer meal. We're beginning to suspect a few pepper varieties may have been mislabeled during planting. These should all be sweet peppers, but let us know if you discover a spicy surprise!

Return crops:

  • Cucumbers - Still one of our favorite summer staples! Slice them into salads, enjoy them fresh with a sprinkle of salt, or add them to a pitcher of water with fresh mint for a refreshing summer drink.

  • Beets - Colorful heirloom beets continue making their way into this week's boxes. Don't forget the greens—they're excellent sautéed or stirred into soups.

Fresh Herbs

Parsley, Sage & Basil

This week's herbs are ready to brighten everything from roasted potatoes and grilled vegetables to homemade dressings, soups, and sauces. Our parsley patch has been slow to establish, so only some of you received parsley this week. More will be making its way into future boxes as the season progresses.

Farm-Made Goodies

Fermented Jalapeño Sriracha

Our signature hot sauce. Made from farm-grown red jalapeños that fermented for 12 days before being blended with organic apple cider vinegar, garlic, organic brown sugar, and pink Himalayan salt, this sauce develops a deep, complex flavor with plenty of heat.

We love it on eggs, breakfast sandwiches, tacos, fried rice, grilled vegetables, burgers, and pizza.

This Week's Bouquet

This week's bouquets celebrate the arrival of midsummer with zinnias, celosia, dahlias, sunflowers, gladiolus, cinnamon basil, amaranth, marigolds, and gomphrena. We're also excited to share a beautiful second flush of delphinium, proving that some spring favorites still have a surprise or two left in them.

Bouquet Care

Trim stems before placing in fresh water and change the water every 1–2 days. Zinnias are known as a "dirty flower," so frequent water changes and a clean vase will help your bouquet stay fresh even longer.

Field Notes

The rain was certainly welcome this week—less so were the deer.

Every growing season is an experiment. We trial new varieties, test different growing methods, and inevitably discover a few things we'd do differently.

This year's biggest learning opportunities have been our onions and zucchini. We fell in love with a new zucchini variety and devoted much of our hoop house space to it, but the plants had other plans. Whether it was the intense summer heat, soil nutrition, or a combination of factors, they produced enormous plants, unusual leaf growth, and only a handful of quality fruit. A few members may have spotted one in their boxes, but we'll likely replace those underperforming plants with more productive varieties to make the best use of the space for the remainder of the season.

Our onions have had their own challenges. They went into the ground later than planned and in less-than-ideal locations that simply hasn't performed the way we'd hoped. Normally we'd be sharing fresh onions by now, but this year's crop is running behind and may not fully mature. Every season helps us make better decisions for the next.

Of course, we aren't the only ones enjoying the garden. Our resident deer have become increasingly bold, recently flattening nearly an entire row of sweet corn and helping themselves to almost all of our red sweet corn in our far garden section affectionately known as "Jurassic Park." It's a heartbreaking reminder that growing food means sharing the landscape with wildlife.

Growing food means constantly adapting to challenges, and this season has made it clear that protecting our crops needs to evolve alongside the garden. Over the coming months we'll be building new gates and expanding our tall perimeter fencing to better protect our most vulnerable plantings.

Watching months of work disappear overnight is never easy, but farming has a way of turning setbacks into better decisions for next season. We're already making plans that will help us grow an even stronger and more resilient garden next year.


Your Farmers
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CSA Box #4 - July 2026