Have you ever tried fresh Chutney?
I wanted to let you know a week in advance that next week we will be offering a new healthy and delicious product from one of our CSA members.
We are thrilled to introduce delicious chutneys from King Of Chutney! Through our recent partnership, we plan to offer a monthly option to purchase healthy and flavorful savory dips and spreads made with authentic Indian recipes. These chutneys are a nutritious dip that pairs wonderfully with pita bread, burgers, sandwiches, salads, or as a dip for fresh veggies. For more creative ways to enjoy them, check out their website. Think of these chutneys as a fantastic alternative to hummus (better than hummus in my opinion).
Our family has been enjoying King of Chutney's products as spreads on sandwiches, veggie dips, and with rice and pita bread! It is so fresh and delicious! To be honest, I didn't know what I was missing until I tried this product. I don't think I'd ever had a genuine chutney before, but this is soooo good! You need to give it a try!
King Of Chutney offers two varieties: Roasted Eggplant With Garlic and Fresh Calabash and Tomatoes. Made from all-natural ingredients, each 9 ounce tub contains only 0.05 grams of sugar and 0.05 grams of citric acid as a preservative. The rest of the ingredients are vegetables and spices.
King Of Chutney produces these amazing chutneys at an FDA approved facility in downtown KC and they will produce these fresh based upon the order quantities they receive from us to maximize their shelf life in your fridge. These fresh-made will easily last 3 to 4 weeks in your fridge after you receive them.
Your cost for these chutneys is $7 for a 10 oz container (Sales tax, credit card fees and Harvie fees included. $7 is a flat $7 for you). For those picking up at Brookside you will need to pick up your chutneys from a cooler left there to keep them cold (We will label yours with your name on it to prevent mixups). At all other locations we will either have them in your share or will add it from a cooler at the time of pickup.
Our first week offering these will be next week. We just want to get you thinking about it in advance so you won't miss your first opportunity next week. At this point, we're thinking of offering it once a month. But if you guys show some interest in more frequent offerings, we'll see what we can do.
Tomato Bonanza just around the corner
Slicer tomato production is steadily increasing from our first plantings. We have several stages of plantings in the ground to help spread out the harvest and keep production up for as long as possible. We are anticipating pretty substantial harvests beginning next week and even more the following week. Peak production will probably be early August, so if you are thinking of doing some salsa making and tomato canning or tomato freezing, keep that in mind. If the weather holds out and we are able to keep the plants healthy, we should have fantastic harvests this year all throughout the month of August. So get your canning supplies and freezer bags ready! Once we have enough, we'll probably have more than we know what to do with, so be looking for bulk boxes of tomatoes available as well as imperfect bulk bags available soon.
Green Beans finally beginning
Spring weather made getting the green beans going a chore but they're finally here. The first week of harvest will be limited but they'll increase in the coming weeks. We have several successive plantings of bush beans as well as LOTS of amazing French filet pole beans growing fast with lots of flowers and baby beans. It won't be long until we are spending many man-hours (or teenager hours) on picking these every week. DISCLAIMER: because bean harvesting is so slow (they are 100% hand harvested 1 at a time rather than machine harvested like the ones in the store) and because our beans are so delicious and everybody wants them, we most likely will not have enough for you to do green bean canning and freezing. They're just too sought after and we don't have enough hours in the day to harvest enough for that. We try to plant and harvest enough to keep you in good supply of fresh beans, but honestly, we lose money on beans, that's why we try make sure you have enough but we don't intentionally offer them for sale at the farmers market and we definitely don't offer bulk discounts. The only ones you'll see from us at the market would be the result of underestimating the potential harvest and having to get them off the plants to keep them productive. All that said, I'm sure you won't get enough of these beans especially these first few weeks as demand will be extremely high and production will be just beginning. But be patient and please temper your expectations that you will most likely not all be receiving a bushel of beans every week (unless you want to come help us harvest them:).
What else is just around the corner?
We're watching for okra. Thats another crop that starts slow and then steadily ramps up in the heat of summer. We planted even more than last year, which we may regret when picking gets going because this is another crop that wouldn't make sense to grow financially but we want to give you the best variety and experience we can. It's a labor of love (especially when you consider how itchy we feel after harvesting it. If you've ever harvested a whole bunch, you know what I mean and probably start feeling the creepy crawly's just thinking about it....I know I am). Sweet Italian peppers are becoming more productive. If you don't know what to do with them, treat them like a bell pepper except even tastier. Theses red, yellow and orange sweet peppers are a CSA favorite. We devote a lot of garden and greenhouse space to these incredibly tasty treats. As the weeks progress, the portion sizes (number of peppers per "box") will increase as well as the number of boxes available. Feel free to load up on these if you see them available. We'll try not to eat too many as we walk by the fields and snack on them, but I'll be honest, an awful lot get eaten by us. Each pepper is loaded with way more vitamin C than an orange. We just love these things and hope you make sure to give them a try if you haven't already.
Stock up on...
This week, kale, collards and chard continue to be our go to summer greens. They're doing surprisingly well despite the heat. Try kale salads; they're a great way to eat them cold. Another thing we love to do with kale this time of year is to saute' them with tomatoes. The pairing is fantastic! The acid from the tomatoes helps soften the leaves and cuts the bitterness. It's really good. I'll see if I can get Sheri to post a recipe or someone else who loves kale, please post your ideas on the Facebook page.
Not a member of the private Facebook group (and please answer the membership questions, it makes it easier for Sheri). Request to join here.
Bread and Cheese
Farm to Market Rosemary Artisan Loaf (by the way, we don't recommend the bread for Saturday CSA pickup since the bread is delivered on Thursday and Farm to Market bread company is at the OP Farmer's Market)
Hemme Brothers "Brother's Keeper" block
The Repercussions of Share Skipping
Thanks for your weekly membership. We depend upon your weekly subscription to remain a viable local food producing business. By design 85-90% of our income each week comes from your weekly subscriptions. While we offer the option to skip up to 3 shares each season, please be aware that while each skipped week saves you money, it ends up being less income for the farm to pay our employees, buy seeds and repair our equipment. Lots of skips the past couple weeks are concerning to our budgetary needs and mean we may need to take on more members to make up for it.
We know summers are busy, but if you are going to be out of town, if you can send a friend to pick up your share rather than skipping, it really helps us out. And remember if you can't find someone to pick it up for you, the food goes to a good cause. If you don't skip your share and no one picks it up, the veggies never go to waste. We donate all the leftover shares to the food pantry. This week we were able to deliver 180 pounds of produce (much of it member shares that were not picked up along with some extras we harvested) to the Abundant Life food pantry. As they are each week, the dedicated pantry volunteers were delighted to receive precious fresh produce from us to give out to families in need. They say that many weeks, our produce is the only fresh food they have to give to the 500 families they serve each week. So thanks for helping us be a part of that meaningful work.
Your farmers,
Dave and Sheri
