What’s in the Box: Heirloom tomato, slicing tomatoes, green cabbage, garlic, summer squash and zucchini (assorted types), cucumber, sweet banana pepper, mustard greens, sweet yellow onions, filet beans, eggplant, cilantro, and leeks.
What’s going on at the farm: Wow! Thats a very simple way to describe the bounty this month on the farm. On top of all the harvesting and management for weed control and preparing to plant more fall crops this week we had our annual organic inspection this last Friday. It went great and our inspector gave us good reviews with no issues to handle. I even got some new ideas on plans for next season that we will be setting in motion soon. The strawberry field will be plowed in this year leaving only a few newer rows and we will replant it next spring. This means less berries next year but it is necessary for a good crop the next three years after! I plan on converting our berry field to a raspberry patch next spring too and rotating the berries to a new area! Lots of work for sure without much production of fruit for a year but hopefully lots of strawberries and raspberries in future years. We mowed down the green bean crop this week for plow in later in the week and plowed in some areas for planting later this week. Our summer onions are all cured now and we topped them all this week. The result is a nice dry onion that stores without refrigeration for a couple months or so at least. They are sweeter summer onions including the jumbo sweet yellow (similar to valdalia), and torpedo onions which are a medeteranian variety. hopefully you enjoyed them green the last few weeks and they are even better cured in my opinion. Tomatoes are abundant so enjoy theses summer favorites, we always grow plenty of them, one of my favorite crops besides onions. Greens are back in this week and we have some spicy frilly mustard greens mix for you. They can be chopped for salad or lightly wilted as a braising mix. I highly recommend using them with some fried egg on top in the morning for breakfast. Leeks are in, and we have some fresh cilantro for you too! Cilantro is great with the eggplant fried up for a curry or try it with tomatoes and garlic for salsa! We have had some questions on the cucumbers at pick up sites on why they have some brown stuff on the skins and just to let you know this is caused by cucumber beetles. We are doing our best to control them but as you know being organic there are no strong unnatural pesticides used and they are a voracious feeding pest which are very frustrating for us too. The cukes are firm and tasty when peeled as the damage is only skin deep so I figured better to get you cucumbers then none at all and we are tossing the worst ones out to our chickens so as not to waste they seem to be improving this week too. All around we have some great peak season shares for you this week and all month for sure! many more delicious items coming soon including cherry tomatoes, cantaloupe, celery, fresh dill, red peppers, red cabbage, watermelon, and dragon romano beans all in the near future. It is very possible that cantaloupe and/or watermelon could even make the share this week but we’ll see tomorrow upon harvest day. If not they should be over the next two weeks! Cherry tomatoes are also a maybe for this week so basically you may find some sweet extras this week. We will be having our annual farm dinner soon too just before or after labor day. More info to come on that and until then, enjoy the fruits of our labor and summers bounty!