Welcome to Week 7 of the Farm Share!
Time to customize your share for next week! You have until Sunday at midnight to do so.
On The Farm
Another busy week on the farm! We spent a lot of time prepping beds and tarping unused beds and planting before the rain came. We got beets, salad mix, spring onions, dill, cilantro, cucumbers and beans in the ground. It was a relief to get it all done! Alex and Jonathon did some trenching too before the rain, to stop it all from coming into the packhouse! Luckily we were able to get most of our harvesting done before it started raining too hard. We also caught up on seeding fall crops in the greenhouse. Pretty successful week all in all!
Current projects on the farm are catching up on trellising all our peppers and finishing setting up exhaust fans in our cucumber and pepper greenhouse. The doors have to stay shut in that greenhouse because we have to protect the cucumbers from the cucumber beetle, so it needs more air flow!
We've been doing an "hour of power" of weeding most days on the farm, which is helping quite a bit!
Our zucchini has been giving us trouble this year - and we don't know why! This seems to be the nature of farming; never does every single crop work out. Maybe it's soil fertility, or drainage, or..... who knows! So we are being cautious with the zucchini estimate this week since we ran out last week.
As for the potato debacle of last week, I've learned my lesson and hoping to have potatoes on the list next week!
Oh, one of my favourite things on the farm is the critters we see, frogs and toads are a treat to find!
Tip of the Week
Got something wilty in the fridge? For example, carrots that aren't in a bag. Let it soak in cold water until it perks up and looks like new!
What’s Fresh This Week
We have our first tomatoes of the season this week! We are being cautious with estimations since it's the first week they're available, we'll have a better understanding of how many we'll get each week after this week and then we'll have more available! Heirloom tomatoes can have cracks, or brown scabs, or weird shapes. It's the perfection that is sacrificed for the sake of flavour. We think it's COMPLETELY worth it.
Our hot peppers are starting to yield (cayenne chili peppers and jalapenos) and our herb patch is also growing with a new variety available this week - lemon balm! Did you know that lemon balm is widely considered to have calming properties, and is prized for its ability to reduce stress and anxiety, promote better sleep, and ease indigestion and bloating, according to Mount Sinai. Health studies have shown that lemon balm can increase individuals' sense of well-being, happiness, and alertness. Add it to salads, try it in a tea, infuse it in your water. Let me know if you like it!
We have a tiny sprinkling of beans available and a small amount of green peppers. There are so many peppers on the plants so we are hoping to see ripe ones soon!
We also have lots of fennel available again this week!
From other local farmers this week we have:
Blueberries (Arrowwood Farm, Melbourne)
Bunched Spinach, Fresh Onions, Shelling Peas (Pfenning's Organics, New Hamburg)
Recipes and Cooking Ideas
Orange Chicken Roast with Fennel
I noticed a lot of fennel getting swapped out last week, and I get it; it's not a familiar veggie! So I found this recipe for those out there who would like to give fennel a try. It's an easy roast chicken recipe using fennel and oranges. It calls for shallots but you can use onions just as well.
https://carolinagelen.substack.com/p/orange-chicken-roast-with-fennel
I also found two other recipes you can try:
https://boroughchef.com/2024/03/19/fennel-spaghetti/
https://boroughchef.com/2024/03/18/fennel-lentils-lemon/ ---> here's a video that shows this one in action! https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyTHFtGJLcZ/
That's all for now! Happy eating!
- Farmer Kim
