Week 7

Hello good people

full share (above)

medium share

small share

Garlic Harvested!

The garlic has been harvested for the season!  We spent an afternoon last week digging up, bundling and hanging 1120 heads of garlic to cure.  A good chunk of those will make it in the boxes this year, but the majority will be used as “seed” for next years garlic.  Garlic does produce a flower and seed (remember the scapes earlier in the year? that was the flowering stalk) but new plants are usually grown from the garlic cloves.  In the fall we will take all the bulbs we saved, separate the individual cloves and plant them.  Each clove will sprout a garlic plant next spring and your one clove investment turns into a bulb with 4-6 new cloves.  Saving the bulk of the garlic will allow us to triple our garlic harvest next year and will eventually mean more garlic in the shares more often. Be looking for garlic to show up soon in your box!

  garlic hanging to cure

Baby Spotting in the Gardens

We’ve been hearing complaints from members that there have not been any cute baby-in-the-field photos the past two weeks–major omission! We’ll do our best to keep them coming. Here is Maybelle helping out with the bean harvest:

In the box this week:

• Scallions (1 bunch, all share sizes)
• Kale (1 bunch, all share sizes)
• Head Lettuce (1 for smalls, 2 for med, 3 for fulls)
• Snap Beans: Green and yellow haricot (3/4 lb small, 1 lb medium, 1.5 lb full)
• Basil (1 bunch, all share sizes)
• Tomatoes!!!!! (Cherry or regular, medium and full shares)
• Zucchini (2 each, medium and full shares)
• Cucumber (1 each, medium and full shares)
• Cabbage: Early Red (full shares)
• Broccoli (1#, full shares)

Tomatoes!

Yes! Here come the tomatoes! Our apologies to small shares who will have to wait another week before their first taste of the tomatoes.  They start with a trickle but soon we will all be inundated with the tomato landslide that is on its way.

There appears to be some damage on the tomatoes from the last big storm we had and a little bit of blight effecting the fruit.  You may have a scar or black spot or two on your tomato from these but don’t let them ruin your tomato time.

Tomatoes are sensitive to cold temps.  Don’t store your tomatoes in the fridge! It will alter their texture and taste.  Keep them on the counter, shoulders down, not piled on top of each other (they bruise super easy) and out of their plastic bag (clamshell pints are okay because they have vents).

Basil

Basil does not like to be kept too cold.  Generally under 45 degrees F is the danger zone.  If you keep it in your fridge wrap it in a plastic bag and store it in a spot that doesn’t get too cold.  Keeping it on your counter in a jar of water like you would flowers works very well too, and makes an attractive display.

Haricot

Today I wrote this poem:

Haricot, Haricot where have you been?

Compared to most beans you are so thin

So tender to eat, I think you are French

Making you with this recipe is delish’ and a cinch!

Haricot is french for bean, and I’m sure every time I say something like “I really like haricot beans” or “lets go pick some haricot beans” some bilingual person somewhere is laughing at me for being ignorantly redundant. But I can’t help it. Calling the bean haricot in this country is done when it is a “french fillet” style bean, which are thinner and more tender than your standard green bean. I’m not sure what the French call a standard green bean–if anybody knows we would be interested in hearing about it.

The eating experience of a haricot bean that has been picked at just the right time is unmatched.  You’ll often find me out in the bean patch this time of year painstakingly surveying and sampling the beans to make sure we are getting them at the right time–full sized but with little to no bean formation inside the pod.

Recipes

Kale makes a glorious return this week. There’s a good reason why it’s the darling of the healthy eating set-it’s a part of the crucifer family which is packed full of glucosinolates and antioxidants. Kale has not had its nutritional value watered down by growers breeding sweeter and sweeter varieties over time (like corn!), but all crucifers are highly susceptible to nutrient loss through the process of picking, shipping and sitting on the store shelf waiting to go home with you. This is one of those veggies that is absolutely essential to buy local, and it doesn’t get more local than from our farm to your plate in 24 hours! There’s so many great ways to enjoy this leafy green, but some of our favorites are: Kale Caesar Salad, Kale, Sausage and Potato Stew (perfect for this rainy day!) and Kale Chips.

We’ve added a nice green bean recipe to the recipe page, Green Beans with Tomatoes, Italian Grandma Style.

One of our members made a beautiful German Cucumber Salad, using up her cucumber and onion (she used red) from last week. If you’ve got a red onion around, try this, if not, try the green onions from this week’s box. Here’s a link to a recipe, and we’ll add Julie’s if we can get ahold of it!

If you got tomatoes and basil in your box this week, we really insist that you make your inaugural bread salad of the year. The only groceries you’d need to pick up if you don’t have them already are a quality loaf of bread and some fresh mozzarella. We ate our first bread salad of the year a few days ago and it will be on our table for the rest of the season.

Sneak Peek at Next Week:

• tomatoes/cherry tomotes
• onions
• haricot beans
• sweet corn!