What’s in the Box:
Cantaloupe, sweet peppers, garlic, torpedo onion, green peppers, english cucumber, leeks, pea shoots, sunflower shoots, jalapeño peppers, baby kale, cayenne peppers.
What’s going on at the farm:
This week brings us into the last quarter of the season. My new greenhouse arrived last Wednesday and I started removing roots and stumps and preparing to burn the branches and level the build site. Old broccoli beds were removed from the build site and i’ve been solarizing weeds out of the area utilizing the heat. Green beans are super close to the first pick but I think It will not be accomplished until later in the week so those will go out starting next week along with the winter squash we harvested this week. Spaghetti was the first of the winter squash this week harvested for curing so that will be coming starting next week. Looks like a good haul of spaghetti, acorn, butternut, and honey nut squash though overall! Work will continue this week on clean up for fall along with the regular harvesting, cleaning, and mowing which is a lot this time of year too. Here is the run down for Week 16.
Cantaloupe is still here! What a great crop this year. This will be our third straight week of melons and these are pretty close to perfect ripeness but yours should have a light yellow color to the skin and a sweet scent out of the stem end but they will not get soft. This variety is very firm with incredible flavor and sweetness. I have a customer at market that like to eat these in chunks wrapped with prosciutto. If we have enough i’m going to double up on cantaloupe for everyone this week so hopefully that will happen. Still some cracking of the skin on these with all the water lately.
Sweet peppers are really coming in with the heat and humidity but that also makes for more peppers that may get a soft spot or mark on them because of all the moisture. We try to avoid any that are worse then a spot but we are also loading you guys up on peppers so if you have to cut out a bad spot it shouldn’t be the end of the world. Plenty to go around!
Green peppers are coming to you again too because the green flavor is great sometimes too. I love them on homeade pizza, in stir fries, or stuffed.
Jalapeno peppers are one of our hot pepper this week and they are good for so much but my favorite is splitting them in half and slow roasting them with cream cheese in them but they spice up any dish nice. Cayenne is the long skinny red hot pepper and those are great dried for red pepper later or in stir fries, pasta dishes, or make your own bit of hot sauce!
Torpedo onions are here one more time but this is likely the last week for these before we get into all storage types for winter.
Leeks are also back and these creamy textured onions hold well even if the outer wrapper gets dry you can simply peel of a layer before cooking them up! They are great with potatoes, in soups, stews, and stir fries.
Pea Shoots and sunflower shoots are such great fresh salad greens and full of vitamins, but also great on burgers, sandwiches, tacos or even lightly sautéed.
English Cucumbers are still coming but much slower so enjoy these while we still have them, not likely much to go around this week and it might be the last week for them
Our kale this week is the baby jagallo nero kale, we had it early in the year once or twice and this week it is our sautéed green, great for stir fry, sautéed salad with sesame seeds, or even a raw salad when its massaged roughly with oil.
I hope everyone enjoys the veggies and stay tuned next week for green beans, winter squash, and possibly radishes and the return of salad mix coming very soon!
Thank you all. -farmer Kyle
