Welcome to Mediterranean week at Fresh Earth Farms!! Why is it Mediterranean week? Well, it seems a lot of this week’s produce has its roots in Mediterranean cooking. We have basil and eggplants and garlic scapes and cucumbers and fennel – all vegetables found in dishes from the Mediterranean. So get out the Mediterranean cookbooks and start looking up recipes.
As we all know, this past week or so has been hot and wet. This is great weather for certain types of plants to grow. These types of plants are known as weeds. However, there are other types of plants that grow well in these conditions. These types we call warm season plants. In particular I noticed how dramatically the winter squash have grown in the last few days. To give you an idea I have two pictures taken a week apart.
Winter squash field before
Winter squash field one week later
Pretty dramatic huh? And just to give you a little better perspective I decided to wander into the field to take a better shot. While I was in there I captured the following struggle:
It might be hard to see what is going on in that pictures so I climbed a nearby hill to get a better shot:
From this picture you can see the epic struggle as the squash tendril slowly strangles the brontosaurus to death. Unfortunately there is no organic pesticide that works on brontosauruses but most of the time the squash — as we see here — can fend for themselves.
Speaking of pests, there is one pest we have on the farm that we do not kill. In fact, we do our best to save it every time we find it. Here is a picture:
This is a caterpillar of the swallowtail butterfly — most likely a black swallowtail butterfly. Butterfly larva have a hankering for specific types of plants. As everyone knows the monarch butterfly larva eat milkweed. White cabbage butterfly larva eat plants in the brassica family (cabbage, broccoli, etc). Swallowtail butterfly larva eat plants in the Umbelliferae family. This family consists of fennel, dill, carrots and parsley. All these plants have clusters of flowers that look like umbrellas. That is how you can remember what family they are in.
Anyway, since we find swallowtail butterflies to be quite beautiful we don’t want to kill them. In addition, the caterpillars don’t eat THAT much of the plant. So, whenever we find them we “harvest” them along with some of the plant they are eating and raise them in an aquarium or similar container. After a few weeks of eatin’ and the opposite of eatin’ they form their cocoons and morph into butterflies. If we are lucky we watch them emerge from their cocoons. If we are unlucky, we find them flying around the living room.
But enough about pests, what can we expect this week? Well, there are a lot of things available this week. As mentioned above we have fennel, eggplants, basil, garlic scapes and cucumbers. In addition there is summer squash, onions, broccoli, cabbage, swiss chard, kale, beets, kohlrabi, a few snow peas and snap peas and some leftover lettuce.
Recipe Recommendation
With the basil and garlic scapes available this week I would highly recommend making pesto. The great thing about pesto is your don’t cook it. The even better thing about pesto is it tastes great. There are a lot of variations to making pesto but they basically include the following things: some type of leafy thing (frequently basil), some type of nut (traditionally pine nuts but walnuts, pecans, macadamia nuts or almost any other nut works), cheese (usually shredded Parmesan), a flavoring agent (garlic or garlic scapes!) and oil (usually olive oil).
To make pesto take out the food processor and put the garlic (or garlic scapes) in first. Grind it up a bit. Then add the leafy stuff and grind it up as well. Then add the nuts and do some more grinding. Then as the food processor is grinding add oil until it becomes kinda runny — not too runny, just kinda runny. Finally add the cheese and mix it up a little bit more. Then presto you have Pesto!
FruitShare
Contrary to our previous newsletter we will not be getting eight pounds of cherries this week. They just started harvesting them on Monday so there was no way to get them to us in time. So instead we will be getting a mixed box of Ranier cherries, blueberries, white peaches and valencia oranges. Sounds like another delicious box of fruit! On the bright side, we now have two more weeks to order more cherries. Let me know if you would like some.
CheeseShare
We have CheeseShare coming this week. And this is an extra special CheeseShare. For the first time in the history of the known universe we will have cream cheese made with Fresh Earth Farms garlic scapes. We will also have cheese curds and sharp cheddar. Sounds like a delicious CheeseShare this week!
We ordered extra garlic scape cream cheese. For drop site members who would like to order a tub or two please send me an email and we can include it in your next delivery. Price is $5.00 for 8 oz. On-farm members can purchase it when you pick up your produce. Castle Rock Dairy was so delighted by the taste of the cream cheese that they made extra to sell at their farmers’ market stand.
CoffeeShare
We have CoffeShare this week. Pick up your coffee at your usual pick-up time/place.
As always, if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, jokes, trivia, brain puzzlers or other interesting things to say please send them our way. And thank you to those who responded to my previous questions.