Farm Share Recipes by Chef Katy Aker
"Front Porch Sipper"
Next Week
We will have pickles in the shares again! After this week they will be an add-on until we sell out. I will know by Wednesday if we will have any peaches for this week. Finger's crossed that the rain has made them all a bit more juicy! I checked the pears yesterday, and we need at least another week until the next variety is ripe. Looks like arugula will be back in the shares as well! We might start harvesting radishes too. It also seems we will have enough salad greens to start some mesclun mixes too. Sorry folks, still gonna be a while on lettuce. It's been rough the past few months for that crop. Stowe Creek Farm let us know that they are selling their chickens. Alex's grandfather has been having some health problems, and they are going to just focus on honey. We will find a another supplier and let you know next week which local farm's eggs we will carry as soon as possible.
Farm Update
We got busy in the kitchen for the weekend making some inventory for our value added products. I think we have some incredible flavors of jam that you just won't find anywhere else. We take a lot of pride in growing the fruit, and sourcing from other local farms. I put a lot of flavors up for swaps and extras. You have to try the blackberry paw paw jam, elderflower apple jelly, and the persimmon jam. Those are my favorites right now, and we have a pretty limited supply.
If you add up all of the time we have in growing the fruit and tending the orchard, harvesting, processing, freezing, cooking, packaging, and transporting, we have almost thirty minutes of our time invested in each jar. Preserving food from season to season is a human tradition that we are proud to continue. There's something amazing about enjoying local, seasonal flavors nearly anytime of the year.
I'm always so grateful to have this much rain in August. It really is the start of the transition to the Fall season. Since I started growing food in 2015, August has always been a wild month. We have had Augusts when it doesn't rain a drop, and the pond is the lowest I've ever seen. Augusts sometimes bring hurricanes. Augusts that somehow seem hotter than July, but are actually cooler--it's just you're so tired of it being hot. It's also a time for some of my favorite wild plants to have their brief moment in the spotlight. Elderberry season is winding down, muscadines are ripening and falling, goldenrod is blooming, and the trifecta of sour acids form all around the clumps of wild sumac berries. It's a time of year I enjoy driving slow on the backroads, staring out into the green echoes of the hollers the farm, squinting, trying to spot where the wild things grow.
