Still taking orders for 2027! We doubled the previous orders so if we keep doubling every week we’ll be sold out by the end of the year. How great would that be? So send in your orders and let see how long we can keep this trend going. Order online or send in money via Zelle, PayPal or check.
We have a lot of hot peppers. If any delivery folks want a bunch of hot peppers let me know and I can add them to your share (probably next week for Tuesday deliveries since you might not get this in time for this week’s box). Just let me know how many you want (like 1/2 bushel or a peck, or whatever). A 1/2 bushel is a LOT of peppers by the way. On-farm folks can grab them when they pick-up.
We have two weeks left in the season including this week!
What will we have this week?
We have a LOT of stuff. We have onions, garlic, shallots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash (we’ll be adding butternut squash to our winter squash selection this week), a few tomatoes (could be the latest we have ever had fresh tomatoes), small peppers, leeks, kale tops (since it is the end of the season we just chop off the tops of the kale plants and give them out instead of plucking the leaves and bunching them. Much more efficient), lettuce, arugula, mesclun (spicy salad mix), daikon radishes, lots of hot peppers, and of course those items I am forgetting.
There are also a lot of extra shares this week! We have eggs, fruit, ‘shrooms, coffee and cheese this week. Flowers are done for the season.
Farm News
We’ve arrived at the time of year when everything one could write about farming has been written. We’ve talked about weather. We’ve talked about pests. We’ve talked about weeds. We’ve talked about diseases. We’ve talked about irrigation. Washing. Harvesting. There just isn’t anything else left to talk about. So time to open up the question file and answer a question or two from our reader — I think we still have one reader.
Hey Farmer Chris. What is your favorite crop to grow and why?
That is a great question. Like parents and their children, I don’t have any favorites. They are all special in their own way.
Ok, seriously, we all have our favorite child and we all have our favorite veggie to grow. In the case of my children they are both my favorites. And in the case of veggies my favorite is garlic.
Why garlic? Where do I start? First, it was the very first crop we planted. Back in the fall of 2002 we put in our first garlic cloves. The garlic we’ve been giving out ever since are descendants of this first planting. How cool is that?
Which brings me to reason number two: we don’t have to buy new seeds every year. It is a perpetual seed producing crop. I suppose all the other crops could work this way but in reality most of the crops we grow are hybrids so we can’t save the seeds from one year to the next and expect the same performance. And producing hybrid seeds is in itself a substantial amount of work so it just isn’t cost effective. Plus no seed producer is going to give you their secret formula for hybridizing their seeds. But back to garlic, we just plant the biggest cloves from one year to the next to create each year’s crop. Sweet!
Reason number three: unlike most other vegetables, garlic stores really well. Tomatoes last maybe a week in storage. Cabbage can last a few weeks in the fridge. There are a few other veggies like onions and potatoes that last a while but they lack the other reasons garlic is my favorite.
Reason four: We plant garlic counter-cyclical to the rest of the farm’s veggies. Most plants we grow we start in the greenhouse or plant out in the field in the spring/early summer. Garlic we plant in the fall. So in the spring we get overwhelmed with the amount of planting work necessary to get all the plants in. By fall we are at a more leisurely pace and planting something is a nice respite from all the harvesting.
Reason five: It is the first crop to emerge from the ground in the spring. Gives us hope for the future!
Reason six: Fresh garlic taste better then old, store bought garlic. I suppose this is true of most veggies so isn’t necessarily a reason to love garlic more.
Reason seven: If you want, you can preserve garlic in multiple ways to make it last even longer. We like to take a whole bunch of bulbs, peel them, grind them up in the food processor, dump them into a jar with a bit of olive oil and put the jar in the fridge. Then when we need garlic we can simply scoop out the desired amount from the jar! It lasts like this in the fridge until either you run out or the next season’s garlic scapes are available. We have garlic 24/7/365! You can also freeze it. Many people grind up the garlic and freeze it in ice cube trays.
Which brings us to reason number eight: Garlic scapes! Not many plants give you two different crops. I suppose beets and beet greens could be an example, but they are harvested at the same times, whereas garlic scapes and garlic bulbs have two different harvest windows. Plus garlic scapes are different enough yet similar enough to garlic to make them useful in many different ways!
And finally, reason number nine: It is relatively easy to grow. We don’t have a lot of garlic pests. The diseases tend to be less invasive and catastrophic — the diseases tend to be localized to a few plants and don’t spread across the whole garlic field. So if we get a disease we don’t lose the whole crop.
The downside of garlic is when it needs to be planted it all needs to be planted and when it needs to be harvested it all needs to be harvested. It is more like corn and soybeans in this regard. So planting and harvesting can be challenging. Plus once it is harvested it has some unique post harvest handling requirements that other crops don’t have — like curing and processing — which can be quite time consuming. But those pale in comparison to the joy that garlic brings to our lives.
Recipe of the Week
Check out last week’s newsletter for butternut squash recipes.
Here is one of my favorite ways to use kale. You can also use this recipe for arugula but I recommend not adding the dressing until you are ready to consume it and then consume it all. The arugula doesn’t stand up to the dressing quite like the kale.
Kale Feta Cranberry Salad
Ingredients
- 1 bunch kale chopped/shredded
- 8 oz feta cheese crumbled
- ½ c dried cranberries
- ½ c sliced almonds
- 1 medium apple sliced into bite-size pieces
Dressing
- ½ c olive oil
- ¼ c lemon juice
- 1 clove garlic minced or crushed
- 2 tsp dijon mustard
- ⅛ tsp black pepper
- ½ tsp kosher salt
Instructions
- Wash, stem and chop kale leaves into bite-sized pieces. Add to large bowl.
- Add feta, cranberries, sliced almonds and apple slices to kale.
- Whisk together olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, mustard, salt and pepper.
- Pour dressing over salad and toss to combine.
Notes
Au Gratin Potatoes
Ingredients
- 2 T butter
- 1 leek chopped
- 1 T flour
- ½ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp pepper
- 2 c milk
- 2 c shredded cheddar cheese
- 6 medium potatoes sliced
- ¼ c dried bread crumbs
Instructions
- Heat oven to 375 F.
- Grease 1 1/2 quart casserole with shortening or spray with cooking spray.
- In 2-quart saucepan melt butter over medium heat.
- Add chopped leeks and cook about two minutes, stirring occasionally until tender.
- Stir in flour, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally until bubbly. Remove from heat.
- Stir in milk.
- Heat to boiling, stirring frequently.
- Boil 1 minute. Remove from heat.
- Stir in 1 1/2 c of the shredded cheese until melted.
- Spread sliced potatoes in casserole. Pout cheese sauce over potatoes.
- Bake uncovered 1 hour.
- In small bowl, mix remaining 1/2 c cheese and bread crumbs.
- Sprinkle over potatoes and bake uncovered for another 15 to 20 minutes until top is bubbly and potatoes are tender.
Notes
Joke of the Week
Why did the potato cross the road?
It saw a fork up ahead.
As always, send in your questions, comments, suggestion, ideas, share orders, jokes or anything else you think would be helpful or insightful!