Sorry for not having a newsletter last week. Things have been a little Helter Skelter. So this week I’ll give you a double album worth of farms news. But first a few announcements.
It is never too early to send out the announcement for our Gigantic Annual Garlic Gala! GAGG is our fall get together where we plant next season’s garlic. As always, this year’s GAGG is the first Saturday of October — the 3rd. If the weather or soil moisture doesn’t allow us to plant on the 3rd, we can change it to the 4th or the 10th or the 11th or the 17th or the 18th or the 24th or the 25th of October. But we hope we can hold it on the 3rd. So mark your calendar and come GAGG with us. Start time is 1:00. All ages are welcome. Plenty of room for social distancing! I’m not sure if we will do the pot luck dinner and bonfire this year due to the COVID situation. I’m open to hear other people views on how to do it safely.
We are still looking for one to many people to work on the farm for the rest of the season. We lost one of our student workers last week and will probably lose a few more after this week. Contact me if you’d like to farm with us!
I’m looking into getting canning tomatoes from our Amish farm partners. We don’t grow enough tomatoes to sell some for canning. If you are interested please let me know. I don’t have any other information yet but will soon hopefully. They would be delivered to the farm on Tuesday.
This Week’s Challenges
Since we received two bouts of rain two weeks ago — one nice gentle 1.5″ on Wednesday afternoon and another less gentle 1″ on Friday evening we didn’t have as much to complain about last week. So my biggest challenge was finding the time, the energy and the inspiration to write last week’s newsletter. As you probably realized, the newsletter never happened. I suspect there is a lot of grumbling out there from members saying, “I paid good money for a weekly newsletter and by gosh I expect it!” I here ya. I’d feel the same way, except this time of year all I’m feeling are the aching muscles from the ever more heavy produce. Who knew corn and potatoes could be so heavy? But at the same time I agree. You paid for a weekly newsletter and a weekly newsletter you will receive, which is what you are reading right now. So on to the news!
Which reminds me, this past week in the pick-up tent we (a few members and I) were discussing how much work farming is. I’m not sure where they got that idea. It might have to do with me saying something sarcastic like, “Huh, really? I didn’t notice”, when they brought up how heavy last week’s share was. But then we moved on to an idea that has been percolating here on the farm for quite some time. With all the bending and crawling and kneeling and stooping and lifting and all the other physical movements we do each and every day we’ve thought of opening up the membership to include a daily exercise program here on the farm. So instead of spending some of your hard earned dollars on a gym membership you would instead spend some of your hard earned dollars on a farm membership where you would come out and exercise for an hour every day! We would have different activities to cross train different muscle groups and of course there would be some aerobic exercise. And the best part is you’re paying me to work on the farm! What’s not to love?
What I’ve noticed over the last 18 years is that Nature provides the perfect flow for a seasonal workout. Early in the season we have a lot of light stuff like chard and lettuce. The light stuff gets your muscles waking up from the long winter’s nap, say, a few kale curls. Then as our muscles get stronger Nature comes on a bit heavier with summer squash squats. Now we are in the late summer season which is pretty close to as heavy as it gets. Now we are doing things like the potato press. By the end of the season we’ll have bins full of winter squash and you’ll have the physique of Mother Nature’s son!
Big muscles aren’t the only goal when exercising. We also want coordination and balance. Therefore we bring in a bit of yoga! There is a lot of opportunity for yoga, especially downward dog. Harvesting onions is a lot of downward dog. Harvesting carrots? Downward dog. Potatoes? Again, downward dog. We can incorporate other yoga poses as necessary, as long as the produce gets harvested!
Of course for us to be successful we need the right name. So one of our intrepid fellow on-farm pick-up members coined the term Agricize. Doing a quick google finds we are not the first to come up with this name and idea. Well, maybe we were the first with the idea but we never spread the word when we first formulated 15 plus years ago.
On another topic, as follow-up to the corn situation, last week we decided to walk through the corn and harvest the most mature ears. This is what we gave out last week. This week we are harvesting the rest of the ears and by rest I mean the ones the raccoons left behind. These later ears are not as filled as the ears last week but hopefully the corn tastes just as good. I don’t know why the corn acted this way — the last planting of corn doesn’t seem to have the same issue — but it gives me something to research over the winter.
Finally, we are now halfway through the harvest season. It seems like we’ve been at it a lot longer mostly because some of us have. Our season started at the beginning of March when we planting the first seeds in the greenhouse so we are in the sixth month of the season. Of course we’ve only been harvesting for 10 weeks so for you it seems like a lot less.
What will we have last week?
I think you all should know by now but I figure there are a few comments to be made regarding last week’s produce. First and foremost is garlic. After last year’s garlic disaster it is great to be back in the garlic growing business. The garlic did well this year and we will be giving out quite a few bulbs over the rest of the season. There is no need to eat it all the week you get it. Garlic stores well just sitting on the counter. We don’t clean the garlic mostly because it takes a minute or two for each bulb. Cleaning 350 bulbs — the number we gave out last week — would take 350 to 700 minutes, or between five and ten hours. So we leave it as an exercise for the end user. If plan to use it soon you can clean it using water and it shouldn’t take more than a few seconds. We don’t want to use water because it could degrade the bulb resulting in shorter storage life. So feel free to wash them in water when you are ready to use them. Or you can peel off a layer or two of the skins until you get to a clean skin layer, but allot a few minutes to accomplish this.
Also last week we gave out tomatillos in the delivery totes. We’ll keep them for on-farm members this week. For those unfamiliar with tomatillos these are the tomato shaped items that come prewrapped by mother nature. They are used in Mexican cooking, in particular salsa verde. They store very well in the fridge so if you were afraid to use them last week because you didn’t know what they were they should still be good this week.
What will we have this week?
This week we will have lots of green beans, lots of cherry tomatoes, lots of sweet corn, lots of cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes (last week were mostly an all-purpose white potato called Kennebec. This week we will be giving out mostly russets), onions (red not glass), tomatillos, a few eggplants (they haven’t flowered lately so they may be winding down), a few summer squash/zucchini (winding down), okra, and a few other things I can’t recall. Oh, and garlic chive flowers. These are edible flowers from the garlic chives. They are sweet, a little garlicky and a little chivey. Put them in a salad or anywhere else you want some sweet/garlic/chives. I’m not sure how well they would hold up if cooked. Their subtle taste may be diminished to nothing. But you can try it if you like!
We have FlowerShare this week. No other shares (fruit, egg or coffee).
Recipes
One of my favorite recipes is garlic green beans. It is easy and tasty — the two most important recipe factors in my opinion. All it takes is green beans, garlic and butter.
Wash and trim green beans. Place them in a skillet with a small amount of water (like a quarter to a third cup). Cover and heat the beans and water steaming the beans until most of the water has evaporated or the beans are crisp tender. Drain the rest of the water. Put a glob of butter (no more, no less) in the pan then using a garlic crusher, crush a few cloves of garlic onto the beans. Mix it up then heat the beans and garlic for a minute or two — don’t burn the garlic. Remove from heat and serve.
Somewhat related but not really, one thing I’ve noticed is that when cooking garlic in an acid it sometimes turns blue, green or blue-green. No need to be concerned about this. It is due to a reaction of the sulfur containing compounds found in garlic. For you organic chemists in the readership the reaction creates polypyrroles that throw off this interesting color. So enjoy the garlic and enjoy the cool colors!
I think that meets the obligations of my contract for a double album this week. If you feel I’m still a bit short let me finish by saying, “Number 9, number 9, number 9…” (For those under 50, ask you parents). As always, feel free to send in questions, comments, suggestions, song requests or other flotsam or jetsam.