What the heck is going on this week? Find out below the three important messages.
A quick plug to mark your calendar for this year’s GAGG! What is GAGG? It is our annual Gigantic Annual Garlic Gala. We have it every year! This year it is on October 3rd from 1:00 until done. Or the 4th if the 3rd doesn’t work. Or maybe the 10th or 11th. What the heck, mark all your weekends in October as being busy that way you won’t miss the fun. What fun am I talking about? The fun of planting garlic! All people of all ages are welcome. More hands make light work as they say! There are tasks for people who can’t bend/kneel. There are tasks for people who love to bend over or kneel. There are tasks for people who love to play in the dirt. And tasks for people who prefer to not play in the dirt. We have plenty of room for social distancing. So come join the fun!
I never thought it would be hard to find help with 10%+ unemployment but here we are. We are still looking for help. If you know someone who is looking for work and can help us farm send them our way!
I’m not sure if I mentioned this in the recent past so I will mention it now. We don’t wash green beans. Why? Because wet green beans have a tendency to get moldy in the cooler and who wants moldy beans? I mention it this week because the beans in general stay fairly clean in the field, unless it rains, then mud splashes onto the beans and once they dry the beans can be pretty dusty. We got rain on Monday. So be sure to wash your green beans.
This Week’s Challenges
I’ve mentioned before how I get songs stuck in my head with substituted lyrics that conform to farming. Who could forget the Moves Like Cabbage season? Well this time of year I switch to musical theater, and in particular “Fiddler on the Roof”. What song do I hear? “Tradition”. But instead of the usual words Tevye sings, e.g “The papa, the papa, Tradition” he sings “The pepper, the pepper. Transition!” And that is where we are this week, in transition.
The main challenge this week is in how to divide up this transitional produce. With the farm going from summer to fall crops there isn’t a lot of any specific item except for peppers and beans. The summer crops are winding down and the fall crops are just starting. So we have bits of this and bits of that to figure out how to divide among the on-farm and drop-site members.
This is the last week of sweet corn and there isn’t a lot left. Last week was the last week for summer squash, though there are a few I harvested before tilling under the plants. The cucumbers are slowing down but we are still getting a reasonable amount, though no longer one per share. Tomatoes are slowing down even more. I looked at last year’s harvest and the tomatoes were far more productive at this time last year than this year. I didn’t look back over the whole season last year but I suspect that we had fewer earlier in the summer and more later in the summer. With this summer being so hot compared to last year I think we flattened the curve on the tomato harvest.
Looking forward, our fall broccoli and Napa cabbage are doing well as are the fall beets, though I am a bit nervous about the beets. When walking the field to check them out I sunk into the ground a bit more than expected. Doing a bit of investigation I found a series of what appeared to be mole holes. On the positive side moles are insectivores and not, I assume, beetavors. I’m hoping we don’t have some teenage mole asserting its independence claiming that eating insects is brutal and savage and that they will no longer participate in the inhumane (what is the equivalent word for insects, ininsecte [see I added the “in” to the front and an “e” at the back just like we do to change human to inhumane] doesn’t work for me?) consumption of insects and therefore declare they are now vegan! I’m sure it has happened in the mole past somewhere. We will start harvesting the Napa cabbages either this week or next though the quantities will be limited until we are further along the upward slope of the yield curve. Broccoli is a few weeks out still, which is good. The cooler it is when it heads up the better the broccoli. Finally, I planted some radishes and salad mix for the fall. Hopefully these are ready to harvest in October.
What Will We Have This Week?
We have plenty of peppers. We will also have some beans, some tomatoes, some tomatillos, some cherries, garlic, various onions, some cucumbers, some sweet corn, a few eggplants, a few summer squash, some okra, and maybe some other items. We were going to dig carrots but with yesterday’s rain it became to wet to dig so carrots next week hopefully.
This is a Fruit, Egg, Flower and Canning Tomato week. The flowers are slowing down as well. This is most likely the last week for sunflowers. We still have 300 gladiolas growing but the second planting is just about to flower. So if we can keep the f away (that’s frost) we should at least have some nice glads. But for this week it might be a little sparse.
Recipes of the week
With the peppers we are giving out this week I thought a good pepper recipe would be a good idea. I found this recipe for Asian style roasted peppers and onions. I put in a cayenne pepper for the red chili pepper. I found it delicious. Susan thought it was too hot.
With the green beans we are giving out this week I thought a good green bean recipe would be a good idea. I found this recipe for Asian-Style Green Beans. I didn’t put any hot pepper in this one since I put some in the other one. Also, I’m not sure why they add the garlic to the hot oil first then the beans. It seems like the garlic could burn. I just mixed the crushed garlic into the sauce. Worked great! I found it delicious. Susan though so was as well.
Well that is enough jibber-jabber for now. As always, feel free to contact me with questions, comments, suggestions, jokes, or other musical theater memories!