Hello CSA Members!
Welcome to week twelve. It’s odd but August is coming in cool after an above average June and July. All the greens I planted a few weeks ago got weeded this week and the cool weather is making for some good looking early growth towards the return of salad greens. Despite the cool down this is the time of year that as a farmer I really start to feel the burn of working hard every day since the first week of March. Im writing the newsletter early this week and going up north to relax and take a weekend off in an effort to rest the body and recoup some energy. This week we have some more great summer tomatoes coming and the watermelon is pretty much ready but we may try to hold off until next week when there is a big week for all the members to get melon as we have limited amount of them. The tomato year we are having is just outstanding and it’s on of the favorite crops around here. If you have some that are to ripe and you can’t get to them a great way to preserve them if you don’t mind some skins in your chile is to just rinse and slice them in half and freeze them in a freezer zip lock for making sauce later in the winter when a good tomato is hard to come by. Im happy to say the old farmhouse is getting painted the last few weeks on the farm. It’s been a long wait and a lot of work over the last 14 years to restore this little old farm but it feels good to see some local folks working hard to restore it back to its original beauty. Here is crop list for this weeks shares.
Sweet Pepper: The first sweet peppers are coming in and i’m thinking we should have enough this week to give everybody at least a pepper or two. We have a variety of peppers growing including yellow bell peppers orange bell peppers, red bell, Red Italian pepper, and yellow Italian peppers. The variety we distribute will be mixed throughout the late summer pepper season.
Heirloom tomato: Hold onto your bacon and make sure the olive oil and sea salt are readily available for these sweet and meaty fruits. This week i’m enjoying them at home with fresh burrata cheese and cucumber.
Cherry Tomatoes: Our blend is full of 7 types of cherries and they have really good sweetness and are holding pretty well for us. I think we hit a peak last week and this cooler weather will slow down tomatoes a little this week.
Garlic: our garlic crop just keeps getting larger every year I think and this year was not disappointing. Enjoy the rich flavor of this organically grown garlic.
Curly Kale: Our kale is still looking gorgeous and ready to grace your kitchens with its nutrient rich leaves… Its great for juicing and kale chips also but also as a cooking or salad green.
Yellow carrots: These golden nugget carrots are nice and dense and brighter yellow in the center. My awesome Sunday worker share crew dug a lot of these the last few weeks and since we hand dig a lot of work goes into them. Carrots are a crop that is challenging to grow consistently and im proud to say we’ve had a great carrot crop again this year so plenty more of these for the week.
Sunflower shoots: Our micro green this week is sunflower. These crunchy and nutty micros are great in the morning with your eggs and toast or in salad but I also use them on tacos and sandwiches often.
Tomatillo: These make a great sauce and a lot of CSA members have been mentioning how good they are roasted prior to making your sauce.
Cucumber: This week I had some awesome taziki salad with a yogurt dressing that was out of this world good. Very refreshing and creamy and great as a side salad.
Jalapeno: Hot pepper to spice up your tomatillo, tomato, stir fry and salsa
That is all for this week folks. Like i mentioned we may make a last minute watermelon addition but likely going to wait until next week to get those out to everyone. I’ll make the call when we get closer to Tuesday but we are seeing full ripeness and even bursting on some so we are starting to lose some in the field which I hate to see after waiting so long and working hard on the crop. fingers crossed on this as melons are very fragile for the size of fruit they are. Thanks again everyone for being CSA members and I hope you are all enjoying the veggies! -Kyle
