What’s in the Box:
Sweet peppers, garlic, radishes, red onion, sweet yellow onion, eggplant, pea shoots, jalapeño pepper, red curly kale, tomatoes.
What’s going on at the farm:
This is going out a day late because I also have two children as you well may know and been getting them ready for school and the start of soccer season. Work will continue this week on clean up for fall along with the regular harvesting, cleaning, and mowing which is still a lot this time of year. We took down hundreds upon hundreds of ten foot tall tomato vines from two of the three greenhouses and got them cleaned out. The weather seems to be changing rapidly towards fall this year and cooling down quickly which makes things ripen and grow a little slower. This week is the beginning of our last quarter of the season and it feels a bit like we are heading into the finish line here on Labor Day through the marathon that the farming season always is. There are still a few hard months of work left to go though and although shares and markets always taper off a bit this time of year when kids go back to school and summer comes to an end. I think our incredibly strong spring when we couldn’t even close CSA boxes or take a breath at market balances that out and gives us plenty to be proud of. The run down for Week 16 follows.
Sweet peppers are coming in slowly without the heat and humidity. Still plenty to go around and we are saving almost all of them for you our members this year since supply is short. Peppers are one thing we love growing here that has not done quite as well this year without the normal heat we have in August. The red large pointed Italian ones (carmen peppers) are our absolute favorite in the household but I hope you enjoy them all.
Eggplant. August and September are the best months for eggplant. My favorite way to eat these is to fry a thick slice and season it with herbs and olive oil and serve it on toast with mayo and tomato and cheese. Eggplant burgers! Probably not many of these left to go around as the weather has cooled.
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!
Sweet onions. These yellow sweet onions are softer but sweeter then most onions. they don’t keep as long as the storage onions so use these first.
Red storage onions are here. These will store until spring at room temperature if you don’t use them right away. I just keep them in a paper bag somewhere out of direct sunlight or just a bowl on the kitchen table.
Garlic is included in your share again and will be until the end of the year, we have plenty from our big harvest in July stored up and ready for you. No need to refrigerate it it stores at room temp all winter long. Garlic is a great natural antibiotic and good for fighting cholesterol too.
Pea Shoots are such great fresh salad greens and full of vitamins, but also great on burgers, sandwiches, tacos or even lightly sautéed.
Kale this week is the red curly kale although some folks may receive green. 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.
Tomatoes are still coming in but much slower so fewer quantity of these delicious summer fruits are available with the cool weather and no more cherry tomatoes since we cleaned them out of the greenhouse. Enjoy them while you can and I’m glad we got to load everyone up on them for so many weeks prior.
I hope everyone enjoys the veggies this week.
Thank you all. -Farmer Kyle
