Hi farm friends!
Finally, tomatoes are here an abundance! They're here for a good time, not a long time, so enjoy them while they last. Tomato and cheese on toast has become a favourite around here for breakfast.
This is such a beautiful time of year for cooking. Yesterday I made an eggplant gratin with tomatoes, eggplant, garlic, onion, mozeralla and parmesan. It had very little in it other than those ingredients and the flavours were so rich.
On The Farm
We harvested the first of our onions last week. We had trouble keeping on top of the weeds with them this year. We wanted to grow so many onions, that we ended up biting off more than we could chew in terms of the labour required to weed them. We'll likely plant them in landscape fabric next year instead. So, the onion crop is a bit lacking and a bit small. But as our farm share members you'll be the ones to get them first!
The priority on the farm now is weeding all our fall crops. Beets, carrots, radish, turnip, leeks, parsnips, cabbage, kohlrabi, bok choy, and cauliflower are all growing out there now. With luck, we'll be harvesting late into November this year!
Yikes, we better weed these carrots
Veggie Highlights
We have lots of tomatoes and cherry tomatoes to enjoy this week. Many of our tomatoes are heirloom varieties, or varieties that we pick because of their flavour. Over the years, as food production became more commercialized, tomatoes began to be bred for production value (yield, firmness, crack resistance) over flavour. As a result, you get your relatively flavourless and watery grocery store variety tomato that was picked well before it ripened. On the other hand, our tomatoes are dense and juicy with complex flavours. They are picked when they are ripe and ready to eat. And they have funky colours and shapes and, yes, cracks and some scabbing. This is the nature of these tomatoes and it is WORTH it because they are tomato bliss.
My favourite this year is the gin fizz tomato. To me, it looks like a sunset.
Garlic Braids
Garlic braids are back! This year we grew a softneck variety that braids a bit differently so we have two options for braids this year. You can purchase them as extras. Hang them in your kitchen (or anywhere cool and dry) and just snap off a bulb as you need it. They make a unique gift that is both beautiful and practical.
$20 or $40
Flowers
If you haven't checked out The Green Bee's floral bouquets recently - they are now featuring sunflowers! You can also buy them weekly at our store.
Happy eating!
Your farmer,
Kim
