Farm Happenings at Broadfork Farm
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Farm Happenings for August 21, 2024

Posted on August 18th, 2024 by Janet Aardema

PLEASE REMEMBER that your TOMATOES are always kept separate from the rest of your vegetables. Gather up those bags with your name on them.

Ohhh this is the slump in our harvest that tends to happen during years in which the weather is less than ideal for the plants we grow. (2024 has definitely had sub-par weather. 2023 was great!) However, our Cherry Tomato plants are cranking out hundreds of pints of tomatoes each week! Please plan to load up with tomatoes this week. 

Fall crops have started in the greenhouse, and we're working on some new farm projects (more about that SOON!), so we keep cranking. :) 

Here are some harvest updates and new recipe suggestions below:

Our Cherry Tomatoes are still ROLLING! Hundreds and hundreds of pints of Cherry Tomatoes! Eat them as a snack alllll day long, or slice and enjoy as or on top of a salad, or roast with oil and salt for a caramelized treat that is like gold for the taste buds. Serve alongside anything or on top of pasta with some cheese sauce. 

And the beautiful, delicious, slightly mysterious eggplant:

Remember that Eggplant is best when treated as a SPONGE. Douse it with delicious sauce and it will soak it up and taste so so good. Or roast it and blend with garlic and salt and lemon juice and serve with falafel and a cucumber salsa topping. The options go on and on....

Need to check on or make changes to your pick up dates? Log in here

More recipe suggestions: 

- Roast Cherry Tomatoes as in this recipe and put them on anything! Pasta, sure, but also...anything. 

- Stuff Jalapenos with cheese and top with breadcrumbs and roast. Serve with a cold beverage. 

- Toss whole Okra with oil, salt, and curry powder. Roast (whole!) on a baking sheet until almost crispy. Deeelicious!

- Pan fry WHOLE Shishito peppers in oil until they blister, then sprinkle with sea salt and eat by holding the stem and biting just up to the stem. 

- Roast big chunks of Tomato, Eggplant, Pepper, and Squash. Serve on pasta with a roasted-vegetable sauce of your choice. 

- Roast Eggplant and make Roasted Eggplant Dip a la Cava and make at-home Cava bowls. Apparently folks on TikTok show you how to do that here

- Stuff our Bullhorn Peppers with tofu salad/chicken salad/tuna salad. 

- We're harvesting our figs! Eat them raw and alone as an incredible serving of fruit, or make Fig Cake. Our favorite is to use a Pineapple Upside Cake recipe and sub our Figs for pineapple. It's a huge treat. 

 

Bread Share members: You get a SEPARATE email to customize your bread share.  

To Customize Your Share: 
Each time you are scheduled to have a share, you'll receive an email from us 2 days prior. It should have subject line "Time to Customize Your Share." The software will create a default share for you (based on your indicated preferences and what we have available to harvest) and list those default contents in the email. The email also contains a link saying "Want to make changes to your share or add extras?" Click on that link to customize your share! Customization usually ends at 6am on the day before your pick up day, and sometimes at 5am when our harvest days need to start extra early. 

For Pick Up:

- Please remember to bring your own bags each week. 
- At Self Serve locations: Our vegetables are in plastic boxes at the pick up location, labelled with members' names. Find the box with your name on it. - Empty the vegetables into your bag and leave the empty box for us to collect.  
- Loaves of bread and bags of Tomatoes during Tomato season, for those who have ordered them, will be near the green boxes, labeled with your name. Pick up your bag(s) if you are due one or more. (Some people have purchased a Bread Share for a loaf each week of the season. Some people order a loaf when they please.)
- Same for cooler(s) at pick up locations with any cold items that aren't vegetables (eggs, fermented vegetables, etc...See below for more info.)
- At Staffed locations: One of us will be there to quickly gather your items for you to bag up and bring home.
- Preparation ideas and recipe suggestions are in your email. Also check out our Pinterest Page for lots of recipe ideas, organized by vegetable. 

EGGS: Ring-a-Bell Farm in Pamplin offers their eggs for sale through us. Their chickens live on pasture and are fed supplemental non-gmo feed from Sunrise Farms. Their eggs are fabulous and we trust their farming practices completely. You can purchase their eggs in our self-serve FarmStand at our farm and you can order them through the Harvie system "Extras" when they are available. 

Our FarmStand is at our farm and open every day of the week, 9am-dusk (or 7pm, whichever is earlier). Visit us to see where your vegetables grow and pick up some extras for yourself or a friend. We have vegetable and herb plants for your garden available in the Spring, in addition to a host of our vegetables, and we have flower bouquets most weeks of the summer. Driving directions here.  
 
You are also invited to shop for our goods at the farmers' market where we vend on Saturdays: Farmers' Market @ St. Stephens
 
Finally, we have a Facebook group for our members to share recipes ideas, etc. 
 
 
We so deeply appreciate the opportunity to farm for you. Thank you for being the most important part of our farm! We love you! 

With blessings on your meals ~
Janet, Dan, and the whole Broadfork crew (Julie, Alisa, Jen, Clara, Tabea, Christina, Jackson, and the farm kids)
Want to follow along during the week, including Farm Stand updates? Visit us on Facebook or Instagram