Newsletter June 6, 2025

We finally have some heat!!  With the heat comes thundershowers.  We have had 1.4" inches of rain since yesterday with thunder and lightening.  Everything is green and verdant.  I left the lawn mowing until later in the week, but that was not a great idea.

We are trying to catch up on planting and are making some headway.  Beets, asparagus, herbs, tomatoes, corn, peppers and greens all got planted this week.  There is plenty still to go in, but I am feeling pretty good about where we are considering the weather of the past month.

The online Plato Dale Farmshop is open for CSA add ons.  If you would like to get a kitchen, meat or other add on, please have your orders in by 8:00 am Monday morning.  I will have final notifications for CSA delivery days out by tonight.  

The fruit farms are having a hard time with Strawberries.  I think we will get them eventually, but we may not be able to get them for this week's delivery.  

Our other issue is that our cold and rainy May will affect our shares for the first few weeks.  The shares will be heavy greens and other early crops.  We will need to add value later because the first shares will be light.  There is just not much we can do about it.  Be a little patient with us while we work through this challenging season.  

Our farm stand is open with some plants available for your garden.  We have tomatoes, peppers and summer squash available.

For markets this week we will have greens, rhubarb, limited asparagus and herbs.  Lettuce is a couple weeks away.  

Pastures are producing great forage, but the mud is an ever present reality.  We hope to not do any long term damage to our pastures, so we will watch and manage the wetter areas to limit the damage.  

We are limiting our beef availability for the summer.  We do not have any bulk options available until we start to process in the fall.  We are limiting bulk sales so that we will have cuts available at market.  Part of our obligations to the farmers markets is to have availability throughout the season.  It is frustrating to some of our customers, but we need to supply our CSA and markets throughout the season.

I hope that we can meet the expectations our customers have come to realize.  We are short of beef, but will meet our obligations to markets and our CSA.  We are a bit slow and short as it comes to the start of our CSA and markets due to very wet and cold temperatures.  I think that we will have lots of opportunities to make it up with the surplus that inevitably comes later.

Thanks for your support of us through thick and thin.