The last couple of weeks have been tough ones for the farm.

Two weeks of extreme heat take a toll—not just on the people working outside, but on the crops as well. Even with plenty of irrigation, plants can only do so much when the days stay brutally hot and the nights don’t cool down much. Tomatoes slow their fruit set, some crops mature too quickly, and others simply stop producing as heavily until conditions improve.

That means you may notice a little less variety in the CSA boxes and at the farmstand for a while.

This is one of those places where farming reminds us that abundance comes in waves. There are weeks when it feels like the harvest will never stop, and then the weather shifts and things tighten up for a bit. What we are harvesting now reflects not just today’s weather, but what the plants experienced a week or two—or sometimes several weeks—ago.

The good news is that the season is changing.

The mornings are beginning to feel different, the days are getting shorter, and the crops we associate with fall are coming along. Spinach, carrots, kale, and other cool-season vegetables aren’t too far off. They tend to be much happier as the temperatures moderate, and we’re looking forward to seeing them begin to take the place of some of the summer crops that have been carrying us through the heat.

That changing of the guard is one of the things we enjoy about growing food through a long season. Tomatoes, squash, peppers, and okra define the height of summer, but they eventually begin to give way to carrots, greens, roots, and all the flavors of fall.

We also want to say thank you for sticking with us through these weeks when the harvest isn’t quite as abundant as we would like it to be.

One of the real strengths of a CSA is the commitment that exists between a farm and the people who eat from it. You share in the abundance when the fields are overflowing, but your commitment also helps carry the farm through the stretches when the weather is difficult and the harvest is leaner. Knowing that there is a community of people who value what we’re doing and are willing to walk through the whole season with us makes it much easier to keep putting one foot in front of the other when farming gets hard.

We don’t take that commitment for granted. It is genuinely part of what makes it possible for us to keep farming through the heat, the droughts, the storms, and all the other things a season can throw our way.

So if the selection feels a little leaner over the next week or two, thank you for bearing with us. The heat has taken its share, but another season is already growing behind it.

The spinach, carrots, kale, and other fall crops are coming. And after the last couple of weeks, both the farmers and the vegetables are pretty ready for some cooler weather.

—Millsap Farm Crew

Flower Crown Workshop

Come out to the farm to create a personalized flower crown with the brightest blooms of the season! We hope you’ll bring your friends and family with you to learn how to craft a crown—a process you’ll be able to replicate confidently by the end of the workshop. We’ll meet in the pizza area and enjoy the morning’s weather (unless it rains, in which case we’ll move indoors), learning together, making memories, and some lemonade and cookies.

Children must be accompanied by a responsible adult.

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Chicken, Pasture-Raised Whole Chicken

The broilers at Nature’s Family Farm are raised in movable pens and are fed certified organic grain. They are moved to fresh pasture twice a day for our family. Access to pasture means these birds have been able to express their natural behaviors of pecking and scratching and foraging under the sun. Never confined and always exposed to natural light, pastured organic chicken makes for the highest quality chicken meat. All this leads to happy healthy birds and nutrient dense food. We’re grateful to offer these for ya’ll this Summer!

These birds will vary by about a pound, the smallest ones are 4 1/2 pounds, the largest one closer to six. They will be noticeably larger than what you are used to from the grocery store.

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