What’s in the Box: Slicing tomato, porcelain garlic, sweet yellow onion, red torpedo onion, leeks, red and yellow Italian frying peppers, green pepper, eggplant, curly kale, summer squash, zucchini, padron peppers, cayenne peppers, and anise hyssop.
What’s going on at the farm: Another busy week here as we enter week #14 with some good rainfall. We are also planning out our annual farm harvest potluck which will be Saturday, September 9th! We will be sending an e-mail out as a reminder with more details for everyone so be on the look out for that. Our first winter squash harvest will be coming in this week but some of our varieties are still sizing up and looking very healthy. We will have to wait a bit longer to harvest some of them and cure them in the greenhouse. We did a lot of weeding and mowing this week and got a good jump on fall clean up by taking all of our tomatoes out of the large greenhouse and taking down our cherry tomato trellising and putting away hundreds of hoops and t posts for winter. This week we are hoping to remove a few dozen mulch beds from the fields in one half day of work with our new mulch lifter. After that we can till and plant cover crops for soil protection and improvement for next years crops. Anise hyssop is our herb this week and it lends itself well to pairing with deserts and has a sweet licorice flavor, it also makes a great tea, you can eat the leave and the flowers can be used as well. Padron peppers are new this week for you members and a new crop for us this year. They are a spanish hot pepper that is fun to eat. Traditionally they are sautéed over medium heat in a little olive oil and sea salt until they lightly blister. The flavor is sometimes mild, and sometimes they are hot (usually the larger ones) so you never know when to expect the spice. Maybe try a little fresh tomato with olive oil on the side with them to cool your mouth if needed. Heat level for these would be considered mild to medium although it does also depend on your tolerance to heat. Our other crops this week you should be familiar with as we have had most of them all ready this summer. A nice pot of ratatouille is always a good way to use a bunch of zucchini, eggplant, and peppers up quickly. We have some new crops coming that are just not quite ready this week but we are excited for them to come in soon including the winter squash which we have 5 types of including spaghetti, acorn, butternut (2 types), and mini honey butternuts. Our radicchio is looking very nice and our fall broccoli, and romanesco cauliflower is also looking very large, just going to be a bit on heads for those three items. We also have edamame, dragons tongue beans, radishes, salad mix, pea shoots, potatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, celeriac, and hopefully some late fall carrots coming in the last quarter of the season. Until next week then, enjoy the veggies!