What’s in the Box: Porcelain garlic, red storage onions, yellow storage onions, red radish, mustard greens, acorn squash, dragons tongue beans, green pepper, aji rico hot pepper (small red), radicchio, sweet peppers, flat Italian parsley, leeks, and broccoli.
What’s going on at the farm: This week brings us into the last quarter of the season. We harvested the rest of our winter squashes this week bringing in butternut, mini butternuts, and acorn squash for curing. Our dragons tongue beans are setting well and they are heavy with beans so plenty of these coming this week. When cooked the purple color will fade out and reveal a lovely yellow bean and you eat the whole pod on these beauties either raw or cooked. Garlic and onions are coming again this week for preparing your favorite dishes and of course they are a staple of cooking for most everything so we like to include these weekly for everyone. This week will be the last of the summer sweet yellow onions. Acorn squash is coming to you this week and are easily baked at 350 for about 45 minutes in the oven, I cook them face down on a cookie sheet or glass pan. Our popular sweet peppers will be distributed in a mixed fashion and we are hoping for some more ripening this week with warmer air coming our way. Our mustard greens this week are ready for fresh salads and they have a sweet and spicy taste that is more mild with some salad dressing or vinegar and oil on it. Our red radishes pair well with it or perhaps some of the peppers and onions for a salad. Sweet and hot peppers are also included again and we like them in our eggs in the morning, or in stir fry or pasta dishes or as toppings on homeade pizza. The Aji Rico pepper is a new spicy pepper this week and it has a very fruity taste and medium spiciness. Fall broccoli is in this week and it is so good and sweet when its fresh and the wether is as cool as its been, don’t wait long to cook up this tasty fall crop. Radicchio is a new crop for you this week and for us in general. In fact it is our first ever crop of radicchio and it is a beautiful tall travisio type with thick crunchy ribs like a romaine. A very nice way to cook these is to leave the tap root on after removing the outer leaves and split them into halves or quarters. You can brush them with olive oil and balsamic vinegar/herbs or use it in salads. It is a bitter green so depending on your taste you may want to add some honey or sugar to your vinegar/oil mix before you roast or grill them. Here is a recipe for roasted radicchio to guide you on this journey.
Our small greenhouse will also be cleaned up of a heavy load of tomato vines soon too as they have been reduced to just a smattering of small fruit here and there. It was a great tomato year but sadly the cycle does end for us in the Midwest this time of year. Frost is only a few short weeks away now and the window is closing on our day length and plant growth rate as the temps dip and daylight slowly shortens and becomes less direct. Our large greenhouse was planted into arugula and salad turnips this week and fields which were harvested of squash last week will be cleaned up and plowed sow we can seed them into cover crops of vetch, and white/red clover this week. Our harvesting, sorting, washing, and packing will continue as we put together these last week of summer boxes before fall equinox next week on September 22nd. Fall is my favorite time of year, and a time to celebrate our hard work and efforts from the harsh daily grind of non-stop long days of hard farm labor for 6 months straight. We really appreciate all the great folks that came out to help us celebrate this harvest season over the weekend. We had a great group of people out and we hope those that could not make it this year will be out to see the farm and celebrate with us next year! Thanks and enjoy the harvest! -Kyle and Alli