Welcome to Week 8 of the Farm Share!
Hi Farm Friends! It's time to customize your share for next week! You have until Sunday at midnight to do so. We've got lots of tomatoes this week and much more including some cauliflower and spinach available to add to your share from Pfenning's Organics!
On The Farm
SO. MUCH. RAIN. We probably got around 7 inches over the course of 2 days. While we got off better than some, some of our crops took a beating, like our newly planted dozen beds of salad mix, lettuce, greens, cilantro, dill, spring onions, and beets. Some of our salad mix beds were actually SUBMERGED in water for at least a couple hours. And water was seeping into our greenhouses too. We were lucky to have Jonathon coming in the early morning and trenching around the field to get the water moving. The crops will continue to grow, but they were set back by the rain
So this is where I drop this bomb: WE HAVE NO SALAD MIX THIS WEEK.
This is the first time in a few seasons where we have had a lull in the salad mix. We have a system for our mix that we have perfected over the years to ensure a continued harvest. So we're not happy with this situation. But as our farmer friend said to us:
"It's not farming if something doesn't go completely wrong."
And - he's right. After 10 years of growing a market garden, I've learned this lesson many many times. I think I'm finally beginning to accept it.
The thing is, so many things are great about this season and so many crops are beautiful. Some are imperfect. And some are mostly or completely disasters. But so many are beautiful, and many problems we had in the past we aren't encountering anymore. For instance, we have the MOST tomatoes we have ever ever had! We harvested over 250lbs last week. I don’t know why the bad outweighs the good so easily in our minds, but the closer I come to balancing that out, the happier I am. Grow a garden to learn some perspective and philosophy!
We were SO lucky to get the garlic out before the torrential rains! Phew, what a relief! We were grateful for the help to get this all done in a matter of hours.
Tip of the Week: Things to Know About Tomatoes
We grow many kinds of heirloom tomatoes, all shapes, sizes and colours. Heirloom means a seed that has been around for a long time and kept through saving the seed from one variety of plant. We grow these because they have been saved over the years because of their flavour.
Many modern hybrids have been developed (not using GMO techniques, by the way, but by crossing two varieties of the same plant through hand pollination techniques) over the years to be uniform and productive. They can have good flavour, but it’s not the thing that stands out about them.
Now, because heirloom tomatoes aren’t grown for their productivity and uniformity, you can get some weird looking ‘maters. They crack easier too. This is something that we believe is WORTH the flavour. So if you see a crack in your tomato or something a bit funky looking, take a breath, slice out the part you don’t like the look of, and enjoy a Really. Tasty. Tomato.
Also, please do not keep your tomatoes in the fridge, they need to be out in the open! Keeping them in the fridge robs them of flavour.
What’s Fresh This Week
We’ve got lots of crops coming along, like beans, and peppers, and tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes. Some of these are trickling in slowly but we hope we’ll have the amounts up soon. We have a lot more zucchini this week too! At least we are hoping so! We also have the first of our garlic bulbs. They aren’t completely cured yet, so you can keep them in the fridge. Once they have the full papery coating they will be considered “shelf stable” in a dry and cool location away from the light.
We are bringing in two crops we don’t grow this week from Pfenning’s Organics: Cauliflower and Bunched Spinach. (well, we do grow spinach but it doesn’t like growing in our field in the summer). We also have more blueberries from Arrowwood Farm.
Recipe Ideas
Have you tried shishito peppers yet? These look like hot peppers but are actually completely mild (except 1 out of 10 might be hot, surprise!) There’s only one way I know how to cook shishito peppers, and it’s so satisfying that I haven’t bothered learning anything else. Consider this a snack or an appetizer.
Pan-Seared Shishitos
- Toss your shishito peppers in oil, salt and pepper.
- Coat the bottom of a pan with oil and heat over high heat.
- Once oil is hot, toss in the shishito peppers. Let them sit for a bit until you hear a sizzling popping sound, then stir-fry them around until both sides are blistered and wilted. This will take about 10 minutes, keep them well-attended.
- You can eat them just like that, or squeeze in some lemon juice and then eat.
- Some people like dipping them in a soy-based sauce!
That's it for this week! We are removing ourselves from the farm for the weekend to go camping at a cabin in the woods with our fam.
Thank you all very very much.
Your farmer,
Kim
