What’s in the Box: Collard greens, fennel, savoy cabbage, green top torpedo onions (specialty red onion), summer squash, patty pan squash, zucchini, english cucumber, green garlic, serrano chile pepper, basil.
What’s going on at the farm: Nature is finally bringing the heat this week. New crops this week include some beautiful collard greens which are fantastic with any type of pork. They also work well for wraps as a substitute for a tortilla. Our onions are sizing up rapidly with the heat and decreasing day length and we have some fantastic baby red torpedo onions for you this week, my personal favorite onion. Plenty of cukes pouring in this week too with the warm weather so expect a healthy portion of these sweet english cucumbers which have been very popular the last few weeks. They pair great with the red onions for salad or vinegar sugar cukes with red onion. It’s the last of the savoy cabbage coming this week and our first week of basil which of course pairs well with almost anything. I like using it in stir fry along with the green chilies and garlic. I start by frying the garlic and chilies in oil to infuse the oil with chile and garlic and then add cabbage, zucchini, etc. adding basil at the end so as not to overcook it. Serve it over rice and your done. A second fennel crop is in this week and looking fantastic and my favorite way to use it is with some cabbage for a fennel cabbage slaw with a balsamic mayo dressing.
I worked many open spaces of field this week from our extensive clean up over the last few weeks and was able to plant quite a few crops before the impending rain storm this Sunday. Crops that were seeded this week include rutabaga, turnip, dragons tongue beans, filet beans, dill, carrots, romano beans, and beauty heart radish. This week since all empty spaces were filled and weeds were also all cought up on pulling and mowing we will be pulling in the last of our green cabbage crop and preparing that space for fall planting this weekend. It will be a push to get this done because along with that all of our garlic will be coming in from the field this week and that task is no small one. We will be lifting over 5000 bulbs by hand carefully prying them loose with a spade and bundling them in the field before carting them home and curing them for dry storage. This task must be completed this week because our sweet onion harvest will be following right behind the garlic as soon as it is cured it will be their turn to occupy our greenhouse benches and sun cure. Our winter squash crop got weeded this week and is looking great, onions, tomatoes, and sweet peppers are looking very promising right now as well. Our cauliflower, green beans, cherry tomatoes, green peppers and tomatoes are very close but not quite ready this week in the quantities that we need for our CSA families but they are coming in none the less and should all be ready in the next week. Until then enjoy the veggies and we will keep on harvesting, cleaning, planting, and weeding.
