This past week the crew kept the farm afloat, bringing in the harvest, packing orders, and running the farm store and CSA! With Lise out for her vacation and Melissa out sick the crew knocked it out of the park and not only kept up with the heavy late-July harvest load and wholesale orders, but kept up with the field planting schedule. If you look closely in this picture you can see that the crew is still all smiles planting broccoli in over 90 degree weather at the end of a long week! This week we will be back to full strength (briefly before our college crew members start to head back to school!), so we will make a big push to weed the fall crops while the weeds are relatively small and our crew is relatively big! We will also be trellising tomatoes, mulching the pathways for next year’s strawberries, and keeping up on high tunnel maintenance during the end of the week rain storms.
In the CSA this week:
Colored peppers - These are from our high tunnel. Limited quantities. We put up netting on the sides of the tunnel this year to protect from bug damage, but it may have been too late. We discarded many more peppers than we kept, but hopefully the strategy will pay off longer term and we’ll be enjoying higher marketable yields soon!
Uncured garlic - Because it hasn’t dried out yet from the curing process, the flavor is less concentrated and a little milder.
Watermelon - Blacktail Mountain, an award winning seeded watermelon and a large seedless variety called Cracker Jack.
Slicing tomatoes
Specialty/heirloom tomatoes - Varieties include, Pruden’s Purple, Cherokee Green, Cherokee Purple, Cherokee Carbon, Lemon Boy, Harvest Moon, Ginfiz and Hot Streak. (Tomatoes and watermelon seem to get the best variety names!)
Green and purple peppers
Slicing Cucumbers
Pickling Cucumbers
Zucchini
Summer squash or Celery
Lettuce
Arugula
CSA Pick-Your-Own:
There are a lot of crops in the PYO this week! Thankfully the hot weather seems to be behind us for a little bit, but we’ll see how hard that late week rain is!
Hot peppers
Cherry Tomatoes: varieties include Sungold, Jasper, Cherry Bomb, Yellow Mini, Chocolate Sprinkles, Pink Champagne, Citrine, Black Cherry, Moonbeam, Moonshadow, Nova, Apple Yellow, Clementine, Mountain Magic and more!
Dragon Tongue Beans - These fresh beans have flat pods speckled with purple and can be prepared just as you would regular green beans.
Shishito peppers or Tomatillos - Shishito are mini green peppers that is great for searing and then sprinkling with a little salt - a very tasty snack or appetizer! Please note that while they’re mostly mild, you will come across the occasional spicy one. Tomatillos are most well-known as the main ingredient in salsa verde. It’s early days, so will require some patience to find ones that are ready. But the ready ones are huge - we tried a new variety this year!
Herbs: basil, chives, dill, parsley, mint, oregano, and sage
In the farm store:
In addition to the items listed in the CSA, we will have:
Sweet Corn from Verrill Farm. Not organic.
Beets
Carrots
Flowers
Mushrooms from Fat Moon Farm - Farmer’s Mix and Shiitake. Certified organic.
Baer’s Best Beans - Black Turtle variety is organic, the other varieties are not.
PYO Flower Field
The flower field is in it’s prime! The field is open for picking for both PYO Flower CSA members and the general public. We still have a few PYO Flower CSA memberships available - visit http://www.barrettsmillfarm.com/online-store/pyo-flower-csa if you would like to sign up!
Flowers available for picking this week include: sunflowers, zinnias, snapdragons, gomphrena, ageratum, celosia, ammi, rudbeckia, verbena, amaranth, cosmos, decorative grasses, decorative basil and strawflower.
Roasted Dragon Tongue Beans and Tomatoes
from Share-Life Farm
Ingredients
12 ounces fresh dragon tongue or green beans
6 ounces cherry tomatoes (about 1 cup)
1/3 cup olive oil
6 cloves garlic, peeled
1 teaspoon salt
Instructions
Preheat oven to 425ºF. “String” the beans if necessary: Break off the stem end and take with it any string that wants to tear off. Cut large beans into 1-2″ pieces.
Toss all ingredients together in a medium baking dish (8×11 or so). Roast for 15 minutes. Stir, then roast 15-20 minutes longer, until the beans start to brown in spots and the tomatoes are broken down.
Serve hot or room temperature.
Blistered Shishito Peppers
from Cookie + Kate
Instructions
Rinse and pat the peppers dry on a clean tea towel. Transfer the peppers to a medium bowl, drizzle in olive oil or avocado oil, and toss until the peppers are evenly coated. Set aside.
Preheat a medium skillet over medium heat until it’s hot enough that a drop of water sizzles and evaporates quickly on contact. Add the peppers and let them cook, stirring every minute or so (not too often), until they are tender with charred spots, about 8 to 12 minutes.
Transfer the peppers to a serving plate. Spritz with a lemon wedge, if desired. Sprinkle with salt, to taste (don’t skimp). Serve with a little bowl on the side for the pepper stems.