Contact us

We practice sustainability at the farm. Crop rotation, use of drip irrigation and re-using the flower water each week are some of the ways we are being kind to the earth.

We have two harvest boxes available for this coming 2019 season as of May 19th. If interested please email Lorrie at shadymaplefarmcsa@gmail.com and leave me a note. I will send you information. 18 weeks of fresh produce, herbs, berries and tree fruits when they are in season along with a weekly bouquet of beautiful flowers for $500.
We do have just flower subscriptions available.
A Full Flower Share is 18 weeks of gorgeous bouquets for $230 or a Half Share, every other week for a total of 9 weeks of flowers for $115.
Please email Lorrie at shadymaplefarmcsa@gmail.com if you are interested.

Pick up would be on Tuesdays between 4:00 - 6:00 pm at Shady Maple Farm, 8005 Portland Rd. N.E. Salem, Oregon. Our season lasts from May 28 to September 24, 2019.


Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Week 15 Melons and bean splendor


We love our mid-day snacks. Triple Crown blackberries, three grape varieties, a white watermelon, snacks on the run.

These are Angie and my favorite tomato variety, Pineapple.

The firmness of the Brooks prunes makes for a great texture.

These are much smaller than the Brooks prunes and have a different taste than most plums. These are Japanese plums.

Several varieties of eggplant. The large ones take a month or longer than the small ones to reach maturity even though they are planted at exactly the same time.

This is a very common type of honeydew. Some of our peeps don't enjoy the texture of these but love the sweetness.

This is our new honeydew this year. An almost crunchy texture, yellow outside rind, sweet taste. Our taste testers who weren't big on the common honeydew liked this texture much better.

We tried this Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon which looks very different with its pale interior. We weren't impressed with its taste. Probably won't try it again. That's what taste testing is all about. We try new things each year, grow a few of them in the fields and then decide if we'll grown them again.

A table full of honeydew, cantaloupe and watermelon.

Anna and Ethan place grapes in their bags and then the boxes.

These are Janet's Jewels tomatoes. Lovely stripes of gold. These have an earthy taste to them. They make really tasty sauce, too.

We grew a variety of "green beans" this year. We tended to go more toward the more slender "fillet" beans this year and not so many of the regular green beans.

A sneak peak INTO today's bag of grapes. Some with seeds, some without.

We taste the apples and when a melon cracks we usually eat it for lunch!

Purple and green tomatillos.

Green and yellow tomatillos.

Lisa picking the dahlias.

Colorful and different shaped summer squash.

The beans that eventually went into the boxes today. A nice mixture.

Anna made corn ice cream today with a berry sauce for our luncheon dessert. Who would have thought! Delicious and rich.

Today's hot pepper selections. Green and reddish jalapeƱos along with Hungarian Wax peppers.

These are the sweet peppers for today. Bell peppers, a large, long Sweet Mammoth pepper as well as an Anaheim (mild) and an orange sweet pepper.

Amaranth, Love Lies Bleeding, is also an edible grain. These are so pretty in Lisa's flower arrangements and can be so stunning.

Everything wouldn't fit in the boxes today (again) so the cart is loaded with bags of grapes and boxes of tomatoes.

Buckets of zinnias, cockscomb and eucalyptus waiting to be put into bouquets. There are even a few small sunflowers hiding out.

Gladiolas, zinnias, red cockscomb, green scented geraniums, ornamental grasses and a scarlet perennial lobelia.

Stunning dahlias, slightly droopy Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate, white garlic chives, rosy zinnias, green scented geranium leaves.

Out on a pepper plant in the garden is a splendid HUGE garden spider. 

These are good guys in the garden and are characterized by their white zigzag in their web that hooks two sides of their large webs together. They also wrap up their extra "catch" for a later snack.

Today's list.

Items that wouldn't fit into the 25 x 15 x 9 inch boxes without damaging other things.

Today's harvest box contents.

See you next time on the blog.
Lorrie