Week 9

When I think about the past week I am incredibly thankful for our crew.   The hot weather can be exhausting and they all worked hard without any moping or complaining.  Staying on top of the irrigation was a full time job and we are looking forward to a break in the weather pattern this week.  Ian, who has worked for the past few years, worked his last day on Friday.  He was only working Fridays and Wednesday mornings this year, but we will really miss him.  He is off to LSU for grad school.  It is great to see crew members head off on new adventures, but it also feels a little bit like an end of an era.  Ian made our farm a better place to work, both for us and for the crew.  I am hoping he might want to come back and work next summer, but I also get sometimes it can just be time to move on.

I assume it was the hot weather that had a lot of people asking about melons on Saturday at the farm stand.  I love having people inquire about specific varieties.  A melon so good that people remember it from last summer - that makes me smile.  I haven't looked at the melon patch this week.  The tell tale sign is the Korean melon that we always give the CSA.  It is our first melon and it turns bright yellow when it is ripe.  We always plant it at the the front of the first bed.  When it starts to blush yellow we know melon season is about to kick off.

We started picking Japanese style cucumbers this week and they should be in your boxes next week.  They are my favorite and although they are fussy and labor intensive, they are worth it.

Lettuce
Carrot
Cabbage
Zucchini
Celery
Cherry Tomato/Slicing Tomato - Large shares will have both.  Small shares will have one or the other.
Beet Greens - Large Share Only - In order to get nice round beets that size up quickly we thin the plants to a three to four fingers between each one.   In the spring we will take the time to bunch the thinnings, but in the summer we usually just pull them and drop them in the path as we hand weed because it is much faster.  We didn't bunch many this spring because we didn't have fantastic germination and a lot of the greens never looked that good.  This is our first planting of beets this year over on Southbay and they look so good we decided to try bunching some.  Because they are young, they are incredibly tender and delicious.

I made this this delicious burst cherry tomatoes with pancetta on grilled bread  last week.  It was so good we are having it again tonight with some grilled vegetables.  I love summer food. 

Week 8

 Sometimes  putting up food for the winter becomes as all consuming as farming.  We got started early this year in hopes that spreading it out makes it a little easier.  We boiled down our first round of crushed tomatoes over the weekend.  We will put it in jars and process it tonight.  Ruth Matson sums it up well in her August entry in the Cooking by the Garden Calendar.

It sounds wickedly ungrateful to Nature and I hate to confess it, but bountiful August is far from my favorite months in the garden.  The kitchen I don't mind so much; it's airy and the house is cool.  But the garden!  Relentless sun, whirring, biting insects, back and disposition stranded from endless stooping and squatting for interminable picking!  I keep wishing so many things wouldn't reach fruition at the same time.  April, May, June, July, they're hard work too, but there's always the rich promise of harvest to egg us on.  And here it is, the harvest, its thrill beclouded by the urgency of what to do with it all.  

She sums it up well although we are fortunate not to have the biting insect problem!

The cauliflower planting is small with several different varieties.  As a result there is not gong to be a large single harvest.  Everyone will get cauliflower but some of you will get it this week and some of you will get it next week.

Lettuce
Carrots
Potatoes
Cucumbers
Cauliflower - Everyone over the next two weeks
Slicing Tomatoes - Small Only
Green Cabbage - Small Only
Basil - Large Only
Green Beans - Large Only
Cherry Tomatoes - Large Only

The following recipe is adapted from the cookbook Jerusalem by Sami Tamini and Yotam Ottolenghi and is simple and delicious.  I am going to skip the measurements and just give you a general idea.

Fried Tomatoes with Garlic

Chop some parsley and garlic up.  Slice your tomato/tomatoes up into thick slices.  Heat olive oil in a pan.  Add your tomatoes, season with salt and pepper.  Cook for about a minute then flip over.  Sprinkle with garlic and parsley (I used a lot, the recipe also calls for chopped chile pepper but I didn't have any) and cook for a minute.  Flip one more time, cook for just a few seconds and then transfer to a plate and poor juices over the top.  You want the tomatoes to be warm and soft but not mushy.  They suggest serving it with bread.  The pan juices are great.

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

I love roasted cherry tomatoes.  If I have the time, I cut them in half and place them cut side up on a cookie sheet and roast at a lower temperature for a long time so they dehydrate a little.  Roasting them whole at a higher temperature is easier.  I love to throw these in pasta or toss with grilled veggies.  There are many ways to go about roasting cherry tomatoes.  Here is one way from the Barefoot Contessa

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes