Happy August! One more month of oppressive heat to get through before things cool down—at least that’s what we keep telling ourselves. We’ve been busy this week getting fall crops planted. Soooo many carrots, beets, broccolini, lettuce, daikons and beans are in the ground and we’re watering like crazy to get them sprouted and established. We’ve deployed a lot of shade cloth to try to cool things down as much as possible.
The forecast shows some rain and a bit of a cool down. We’ll make a gamble and plant some spinach hoping we can get the soil temperature down enough to germinate the seed. Spinach is a tricky one that really prefers cool soil temperatures, but if we want some spinach before winter we have to tempt fate a bit and get it started before it really wants to. Spinach naturally germinates in cold spring soils or in late fall but sowing in summer is very difficult to make it work. We’ll give it our best effort and retry a little later on if we fail this time.
Bulk Tomatoes Still Available
The tomatoes are still hanging on. We keep thinking production is about to fall off, but then we keep finding huge numbers of ripe red fruits…so we keep picking them for you! Please take advantage of the opportunity to stock up the freezer or the canner. I know I keep saying it, but eventually we won’t have this kind of quantity available. Be on the lookout for Sheri’s amazing smoked pepper salsa recipe. I’ll try to get her to post the secret recipe on the private Facebook page. She’s been too busy canning to post it for you.
Fresh, local, organic flour
We’re really excited to offer freshly stone-ground flour from local farmers raising heirloom grains organically and milled by our new friends at Marion Milling in the West Bottoms. This is an amazing opportunity to close the loop between commodity mono-crops shipped in from across the world and support local organic farmers making an effort to grow nutrient-dense heirloom grains. We’re starting out with their all-purpose wheat flour blend milled specially for you from their hard red winter wheat. They also offer rye and spelt and soon will be able to mill corn and durum soon. Give it a try and let us know what other ground organic grains you’d like to try. Sheri tested it out on some banana bread that the family declared to be the “best ever” so we think you’ll love it!
Aronia Berrries are Back.
We’re beginning the arena berry harvest. They look like blueberries, but, unfortunately, they don’t taste anything like them. They are actually far healthier than blueberries and I don’t think they deserve their common moniker “black chokeberry” but they can be on the tart and astringent side. They work great in smoothies to boost your antioxidants and we love to make aronia syrup for pancakes. They’re just starting to ripen so we’ll have limited quantities this week while we wait for more to get ready.
Bread and Cheese
Farm to Market 8- Grain Sliced
Hemme Brothers Original Curds
We don’t get tired of saying it and we hope you don’t get tired of hearing it but, THANKS for letting us be your farmers! We’re so proud to grow great food for you and we hope you are blessed as much as you bless us.
Your farmers,
Dave and Sheri and the whole Redfearn Farm Crew.
