Here are your share contents for this weekend:
New Potatoes- The versatile and delicious potatoes are back for this season! They would be bigger if we got a bit more rain but this is my favorite time of year for potatoes. The skin on these will rub off easily so they will not store well. Put them in a potato salad!
Broccoli- This is the end of what was a great broccoli crop this season. Broccoli will make a return appearance in the fall…if it rains.
Hakurei Turnips- This will be the last week for these as well until the fall. we are still eating ours without peeling them but you could peel the rougher ones in the bunch if you like.
Radicchio- for a salad or for braising. I find the Radicchio to have a bit of a bite when raw, but lightly braised or steamed it is amazing, just make sure you leave it with a bit of crispiness when you cook it.
Summer Squash- One of our favorite summer squash meals is a honey ginger squash and greens. Saute onions and minced ginger in butter or oil. Add thinly sliced squash after onions have yellowed. Once the squash is almost cooked to your preference add in the greens, a tablespoon or so of honey, a splash of tamari, crushed coriander seed and pepper. Cook until your greens have wilted.
Cabbage- COLESLAW for the heat! You can also quarter these and roast them on a baking sheet with olive oil and salt and pepper if you are cooking during the cooler evenings.
Parsley- for your potato salad or your coleslaw.
Cucumbers Tasty Jade- a crispy Japanese cucumber variety.
Swiss Chard- The swiss chard plants have been providing amazing bounty this year. Our fall planting in the greenhouse is also looking good.
Garlic- Fresh
Kale – Winterbor variety this week.
Farm Activities:
July is quite the month to be an annual vegetable farmer. The greenhouse is alive and full with baby plants for fall crops that need water, food and maintenance. The weeds are in full force fighting to take over every last carrot. Harvesting has become some kind of three day a week marathon sport that involves lots of heavy lifting. Seeding and planting continue almost at the same rate as June and every last cucumber and tomato plant on the farm begs to be trellised and pruned. Also, if it doesn’t rain you can lose it all. By August things settle down as the final plantings are put into the ground and the weeds let up a bit.
Our farm is at an interesting scale, Alex and I have one helper, Tyler, and two small children who find destroying plants hilarious. We continue to try to fine tune our relationship with commercial agriculture each year. July is the month we find ourselves fantasizing about cover cropping the entire farm for a season and hiding somewhere cool for the summer in a tent.
Why are we doing this to ourselves you ask? Well, a big part of it is our children. There is a large amount of processed products sold as “foods” that have rocked our country and the world with a global epidemic of self inflicted diseases. Even some vegetables are grown with pesticides and fertilizers that not only damage the ground that they were grown in but have untold and insufficiently researched long term effects on our bodies. As organic, bio-dynamic growers we feel obligated to make sure untainted food is available to people in our community, especially our children. Last night we ate marinara sauce that was processed and stored last summer from our tomatoes. I have no idea when we last purchased tomato sauce at the store. Sometimes we forget to go shopping for over a month and don’t notice, we like that. I think our bodies thank us for choosing to grow and eat amazing food that is ALIVE and has never seen the inside of a store. We live in an amazing area full of similarly minded people like you who are aware of these things. We happen to be crazy enough to want to grow amazing, healthy food for you.
Thank you, if you made it to the end of my rant and EAT YOUR KALE.:)