If April showers bring May flowers, then August heat brings vine-ripe tomatoes

The warmer weather expected this week is a boon for our 2nd succession of tomatoes. We started seeing a jump in ripening over weekend and with the 80 degree days and nights in the 60s, we're excited for our first real harvest of tomatoes this week. This planting of tomatoes has a mix of regular red slicing tomatoes, plus several varieties of heirlooms, so there's something for everybody. This 2nd succession, which is growing vigorously down in the field below the Yellow House, has never seen any deer damage (knock on wood!!), as that field is too exposed and offers poor conditions for grazing. We're hoping for a good run of tomato harvests from the over 800 plants we have growing here, which is almost double the number of plants that the deer destroyed up in the top field.

This past week saw a lot of our livestock vacationing off the farm at the Marshfield Fair with our many 4Hers. Weir River pigs, lambs, goats, and chickens were all represented in numerous competitions and the ribbon count is climbing every day. Everybody will be back home in the barnyard by the end of the week, returning to their daily chores of pecking bugs, munching grass, bathing in mud puddles, and making friends with farm visitors.

As a reminder, if you need to switch your pickup day this week (or any week), please email me by Monday at 6pm so that we can make sure to harvest for you on the right day. In your share this week: tomatoes! an eggplant, bunching onions, squash and cuke, a melon from Freedom Food Farm in Raynham, lots of PYO cherry tomatoes and a big bunch of PYO flowers. Enjoy!

Recipe of the Week
This seems like a great week to make fresh salsa--a favorite in my family. We don't really have a set recipe, just some guidelines to start with and then LOTS of tasting and adjusting. It's a messy, loud, yummy process. Here's some guidelines to start with.

3 cups chopped tomatoes
1 cup onion, diced
1/3 c. minced fresh cilantro
4 Tbsp lime juice
2-5 tsp very finely minced jalapeno or other hot pepper (adjust your amount to how hot your pepper is and how hot you like your salsa)
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp salt
several twists of freshly ground black pepper

Chop, combine, taste, adjust, taste, adjust, taste, adjust, enjoy!

Midnight snackers on the farm

First, the important news: the farm family has a new addition this week. Park and Conservation Tech (and Yellow House cohabitant) Steve Vieira adopted this guy over the weekend. Woody is a black lab/German shepherd mix who is delighted with all the attention he's been getting from the farm crew. He'll be hanging around during CSA pickup this week enjoying the social scene if you'd like to meet him.

Last week's deluge provided some much needed water for our crops in the field. And if you can believe it, just two days later, we already had to start irrigating again. On Wednesday we used the rainy weather as a window to get caught up on all our fall crop seeding in the greenhouse. Casey, Sophie, and Joe seeded an epic number of trays of lettuce, spinach, and salad mix while the falling rain made a racket on the plastic roof of the greenhouse. We also transplanted out into the field lots of broccoli, kale, and beet seedlings and then seeded rows of fall radishes, mustard greens and the last green beans of the summer. 

One of our major challenges this season, like last season, has been crop loss due to pests. One of our big investments this spring was the 8 ft high fencing around our largest field. The fence was designed to limit access to our tasty veggies from the local (abundant!) deer population. Last year the deer ate through several thousand dollars of produce and showed a special fondness for our fall lettuce crop. While the new fence has been doing a great job keeping the deer out of our Main Field, our three other fields remain unprotected. We have seen losses of spring greens, cabbages, squash, and lettuce, among other things. Even more surprising and disappointing, the deer decimated our first succession planting of tomatoes and our entire pepper crop this season. This is particularly odd because deer are not known to go after peppers or tomatoes. Last year we had large plantings of both those crops in the same field and both remained almost untouched. 

In addition to the deer, we've also been combating groundhog damage again this year. While our trapping has been very successful this year (19 and counting!), the groundhogs have still managed to do damage to a variety of crops (spring lettuce, fennel, green beans, cabbage, as well as almost a third of our fall brussels sprouts). To top it off, these furry varmints like to taunt us by hanging out at the field edges and watching us make their dinner. If anyone could put me in touch with the head groundskeeper at Bushwood Country Club, please let me know!!

As a result of these particularly challenging pests, we're supplementing some of your shares with produce grown by local farms. We'll be bringing in green peppers and slicing tomatoes this week from Langwater Farm in North Easton, which is certified organic, not to mention award-winning. While this takes a bite out of the CSA budget, we don't want to completely deprive you of these tasty summer classics. This may mean we won't have the funds to buy in seed garlic next month, thereby having to reserve more of our own crop this year for seed stock--we'll see how the numbers shake out this month.

In your share this week: squash and cucumbers, fresh onions and bunching onions, squash blossoms (!! see the awesome recipe below), tomatoes and green peppers, Pick Your Own cherry tomatoes and flowers.  

Enjoy your veggies and flowers this week!

Recipe of the Week
The first time I ate squash blossoms I thought they were just the fancy foodie way of eating fried cheese without having to admit you were eating fried cheese. I later found out that they've been traditionally used in Mexican and Central American cuisine in many ways, not just stuffed with cheese and fried. I've never made the tomato sauce that's included in this recipe originally, but you can follow the link if you'd like to have dipping sauce for your blossoms. A note about keeping your blossoms--they have a notoriously short shelf life, so it's best to use them within a day or two. When you get them home, wrap them in a slightly damp paper towel and put them in a sealed tupperware and keep them in the coldest part of your fridge (but don't let them freeze). 

Squash Blossoms Stuffed with Ricotta
from epicurious.com

1 cup whole-milk ricotta (preferably fresh)
1 large egg yolk
1/4 cup finely chopped mint
2/3 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, divided
12 to 16 large zucchini squash blossoms
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
3/4 cup chilled seltzer or club soda
About 3 cups vegetable oil for frying

Equipment: a deep-fat thermometer

Stir together ricotta, yolk, mint, 1/3 cup parmesan, and 1/8 teaspoon each of salt and pepper.Carefully open each blossom and fill with about 2 rounded teaspoon ricotta filling, gently twisting end of blossom to enclose filling. (You may have filling left over.) Whisk together flour, remaining 1/3 cup parmesan, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and seltzer in a small bowl. Heat 1/2 inch oil to 375°F in a 10-inch heavy skillet. Meanwhile, dip half of blossoms in batter to thinly coat. Fry coated blossoms, turning once, until golden, 1 to 2 minutes total. Transfer with tongs to paper towels to drain. Coat and fry remaining blossoms. (Return oil to 375°F between batches.) Season with salt.

Rainbow explosion of cherry tomatoes!

Cherry tomatoes are finally here!! The ultimate summer veggie--sweet, juicy, colorful, and snackable just as they are--everyone waits for cherry tomato season. Here at the farm they've been ripening slowly over the last few weeks. We've been pacing up and down the rows watching as the first ones started turn red, or orange, or yellow and or a stripey mix of two colors. When picked and tumbled together they look like Nature's impression of a confetti shower and taste as sweet as a fat slice of birthday cake. Now they're finally here and they taste like summer.


In other farm news, the current total of new Oreo cookie calves is 8! All the babies and mamas are doing well and enjoying life on the hillside pasture. Now that the calves have recovered from birth, they've very playful and are lots of fun to watch explore the world. Two more calves are expected in the next few weeks.

In your share this week: the last of the summer new potatoes from Moraine Farm, bunching onions, eggplant, squash
and cucumbers, and more PYO sunflowers!

Enjoy your veggies this week!


Recipe of the Week
If eggplant parm and eggplant rollatini weren't so damn good, baba ghanouj would be my favorite eggplant recipe. It only comes in 3rd because it's up against such epicly delicious competition.

Baba Ghanouj (also spelled Baba gannoush)
from simplyrecipes.com, one of my favorite food & cooking blogs

1-2 eggplants (~2 lbs)
3 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
2-3 Tbs roasted tahini
1-2 cloves garlic (adjust according to your taste for garlic), finely chopped
1 tsp ground cumin
Juice of one lemon, about 2.5 Tbs
Salt and cayenne pepper to taste
1 Tbs chopped parsley (can substitute basil or cilantro)

1a Oven method
Preheat oven to 400F. Poke the eggplants in several places with the tines of a fork. Cut the eggplants in half lengthwise and brush the cut sides lightly with olive oil (about 1 Tbs). Place on a baking sheet, cut side down, and roast until very tender, about 35-40 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cook for 15 minutes. Skip to step 2.

1b Grilling method
Preheat grill. Poke the eggplants in several places with the tines of a fork. Cut the eggplants in half lengthwise and brush the cut sides lightly with olive oil (about 1 Tbs). Grill over high heat, turning as each side blackens. Put the charred eggplants in a paper bag, close the bag and let the eggplants steam in their skins for 15-20 minutes.

Step 2
Scoop the eggplant flesh into a large bowl and mash well with a fork. Combine the eggplant, minced garlic, remaining olive oil (about 2 Tbs), tahini, cumin, 2 Tbs of the lemon juice, the salt, and a pinch of cayenne. Mash well. You want the mixture to be somewhat smooth but still retain some of the eggplant's texture.

Step 3
Allow the baba ghanouj to cool to room temperature, then season to taste with additional lemon juice, salt, and cayenne. If you want, swirl a little olive oil on the top. Sprinkle with fresh chopped parsley. Serve with pita bread, crackers, toast, sliced baguette, celery, or cucumber slices.

Farm yoga on Monday!

Quick reminder--we're having farm yoga again on Monday, 8/11, at 5:30pm. Meet at the Yellow House with your mat, bug spray/sunscreen, and maybe an old bed sheet to protect your mat from grass.

See you there!

Peek-a-boo eggplant and funny looking onions

Two new crops are ready this week, both eagerly awaited by us on the farm crew. The fat, glossy eggplants we're picking for you on Tuesday and Thursday have been sizing up sloooowly over the last several weeks, seeming to take forever. The broad, fuzzy leaves of the plant hide the developing fruit from the strong summer sun, and from us, but we've been peaking in on them every few days to check progress. We're happy to report that it's time!

Across the field from the robust rows of eggplant, our bunching onions are also ready to be enjoyed. These red, oblong onions are an early variety that's best eaten fresh--they need to be refrigerated and eaten within

2 weeks. Storage onions that have been cured and are happy to be left on the counter for months will come later in the season. Bunching onions are just as versatile as regular onions and can be used in any recipe that calls for onions. However, grilling them with olive oil and salt until slightly charred remains my all-time favorite way to eat them. Halve or quarter them lengthwise, leaving the tops on, and the roots on too--that'll help hold the layers together while you're flipping them with the grill tongs. Brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and grill until very soft and slightly charred--YUM!

Despite being in full summer mode, we're still thinking ahead to fall and to fall crops. Last week our main crops of fall carrots and fall beets germinated, pushing through damp, heavily-irrigated soil to send their tap roots down deep, searching for the trace minerals they need for healthy growth. Fall broccoli and kale crops have been growing in their cells on tables outside the greenhouse and are ready to go out into the field and soak up the summer sunshine now, ahead of the shorter days of September and October. Over the coming weeks we'll seed more and more fall root crops and plant out our other greens and brassica crops, piecing together the fall shares a little bit at a time.

In your share this week: more new potatoes, squash and cuke, eggplant, red bunching onions, and more PYO sunflowers. Enjoy your veggies this week--I hope they contribute to some memorable dishes!