CONTEST ALERT!
Kathy F. has been chock full of inspiration this season. She brightened our day when she sent us a really sweet message with her excitement about last week's cantaloupe followed by these silly photos:
So, for the next 2 weeks, 13A and 14B, send us your best silly photos made with produce from your share. We'll pick one winner each week to win a prize! Photos can be posted to the Facebook group or sent by email.
And speaking of sweet photos, here's one from Narvan and Mike, shared after they picked up their 25 lb. crate of plum tomatoes.
I can't tell you how much we love these photos and appreciate you all taking the time to send and post. If you tag us, we can share them on our social media, too.
We still have plum tomato crates for sale! $25 for 25 lbs. Siying and Melissa are up this week!
A couple of housekeeping items:
If you signed up for the fall extension through the website, there may have been a problem with pricing. When I updated the inventory and took it out of stock at 6 p.m., it reverted all of the product variants to $48. We appreciate very much those of you who took the time to point it out and ask what to do next. For the meantime, think of it like a deposit. Over the next week or two, I'll be able to invoice you the difference if it applies to you.
Next week, we'll be posting some special news about purchasing Shaggy Coos turkeys for your Thanksgiving dinner! Stay tuned if you're interested in cooking a local turkey.
This week, you're all receiving YELLOW watermelon! It does have seeds (unfortunately), which means it calls for some good old seed spitting. We harvested 340 red watermelons again this week, which should carry us through the next couple of weeks (watermelons don't ripen after they're harvested, which means they store longer than cantaloupes.)
Uncle "Eric" (our brother-in-law) wrote this sweet post on our Instagram last week. We were sad to see him go. To all of our teacher friends starting this week, you got this!
Speaking of, I'm now back at work. If you didn't know, I'm also a third grade teacher. Our PD started this week, so I apologize if I don't respond to emails as quickly. We're in the process of redistributing our work load as we shift crew schedules.
Back in mid-July, I posted a photo of Ethan and Randy seeding new cucurbits where the peas were. They are now up and producing squash and zucchini, with cucumbers not far behind. Succession planting helps to keep our crops fresh. It's temping to harvest squash and zucchini from old plants, but once they get mold and disease on them, handling just further spreads it. It's better to rip out old plants and continuously seed them.
We don't bother with succession planting with eggplant and peppers, which yield the whole season, but we do have another planting of tomatoes which will be ready in September: that's how we keep them coming until it frosts.
Spotlight on "Ground Cherries"
Ground cherries, also known as husk cherries, are a relative of the tomato, and they grow on a plant similar to the tomato plant. The husks start out green, and when they ripen, they turn brown and fall off the plant. Thus the name “ground cherries” – you have to harvest them off the ground! Luckily, they are protected by a husk. Just peel back the husk and enjoy the sweet, tart, tomato-like fruit inside. Some say the mysterious flavor is reminiscent of a combination of a grape, pineapple, and tomato.
A Message from Randy:
The Uncrating:
Contents (In approximate order from shortest shelf life to longest):
Small:
1 lb. of tomatoes
1 yellow watermelon
1 lb. of beets
1 bunch of kale
1 green pepper
1 bunch of oregano
1/2 pint of ground cherries
Large:
1 lb. of tomatoes
1 cantaloupe
1 yellow watermelon
2 lb. of beets
1 bunch of kale
1 green pepper
1 bunch of oregano
1/2 pint of ground cherries
1 pint of lunchbox peppers or shishito peppers
Caring For Your Share:
Store the peppers in the fridge as is. Wash when ready to use.
Keep the melons, ground cherries, and tomatoes out of the fridge and pour the ground cherries and little tomatoes out into a bowl. Store all out of direct sunlight, like on a counter. Wash before using. Cantaloupe will continue to ripen, so if it looks green, keep it on the counter until it's an orange-y color. If it's orange, it's ready to cut.
Remove greens from beets and store them in the fridge in Ziplocs.
Store kale and oregano in plastic bags in the fridge. Place a damp paper towel in with the oregano to keep it moist.
LGF Cooking Club:
Oatmeal with Beet Berry Sauce (click the green recipe button under the photo on the following webpage for the sauce recipe): https://thefeedfeed.com/shercastellano/oatmeal-with-beet-berry-sauce
Roasted Beet and Watermelon Salad:
Ground Cherry Margarita: https://cocktaildudes.com/recipe/ground-cherry-margarita/
Slow Cooker Philly Cheesesteaks with Green Pepper: https://www.momontimeout.com/slow-cooker-philly-cheesesteaks/
Roasted Lemon Oregano Shrimp: https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-roasted-lemon-oregano-shrimp-243280
Fresh Oregano Dressing: https://www.sunset.com/recipe/fresh-oregano-dressing
Roasted Beet Salad with Crispy Kale and Almonds: https://www.themediterraneandish.com/roasted-beet-salad-kale/
Sukuma Wiki (African Braised Kale with Tomatoes)
https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-sukuma-wiki-braised-kale-with-tomatoes-recipes-from-the-kitchn-176045
Cooking Tip(s) of the Week:
Not a cooking tip, but a silly one! How to Spit Watermelon Seeds:
How to Preserve Herbs in Oil: https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/food-cooking/cooking-tips-tutorials/a79425/how-to-preserve-herbs-in-oil/
Biweekly Catch-Up Time
Hello from the Monday morning crew: Amanda, Ethan, Vic, Randy & Peter, Jesse, Adi, Ciocci Lorraine, and Ella!
Before I launch too far into the newsletter, I wanted to tell you to SAVE THE DATE for this Saturday, August 22nd at 6:00 p.m. We're offering a mini harvest time subscription for those of you who are not enrolled in our fall subscription program. It will run for 3 weeks beginning right after the completion of our summer program (October 20th to November 7th: friends who are in the fall program, it'll be exactly the same program and dates, though yours will run for 8 total weeks into mid-December. No need to sign up for this extension.)
This is the perfect mix of late summer favorites like peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, and potatoes, in addition to greens, butternut, acorn, and spaghetti squashes, and root crops. We can only accommodate about 60-70 members in our regular fall subscription, which sold out back in the spring. This is a great alternative if you didn't sign up. Based on interest, we are predicting that this will sell out extremely quickly, as we can only include about 30 members for the extension. After this opportunity, we will unfortunately have no other subscription memberships available for the season. The sign up will be posted on the website this Saturday at 6:00.
If you need to double check in advance if you are signed up for the fall subscription, please email me prior to Saturday.
(Sample share below!)
Now, back to summer! This week, you literally get to enjoy the "fruits" of our labor. Cantaloupe will be in all of the shares, and large share recipients will receive a pint of ground cherries, too. Read the description later in the newsletter to find out what in the world ground cherries are.
Members Jenn and Emily offered to donate some surplus produce that we had to some organizations in need. We also had two other volunteers take some boxes to the organizations of their choice. We are so grateful that they volunteered to do this - past arrangements fell through for this year. If anyone else is interested in this, please email me. We'll most likely have many more opportunities to do so, and we would appreciate the help in getting these veggies off the farm.
Roseland Apizza in Derby is now using our tomatoes and zucchini in their dishes! We're so excited about this partnership because they have some of the highest-rated pizza around, so it feels like an honor that they chose us.
For about 2 weeks now it has felt a lot like we're practicing "dryland farming," which is when farmers don't irrigate their crops and instead depend on natural rainfall and the crop life cycle to cultivate. We try to irrigate as little as possible (our water bill has been much higher than we've ever seen it before, leading us to wonder if we might even have a leak somewhere!), but before this past Sunday, it was starting to scare us how dry it was. We have a lot of catching up to do with rainfall. Unfortunately because of the lack of rain, our crops aren't growing as fast as we would like them to. For example, new growth on eggplant plants and pepper plants has been very slow. This week, you're receiving either Asian or Italian eggplant, just because we couldn't guarantee enough supply to make it uniform across the shares.
Some more photos from the week include onions on our drying racks getting ready for fall, my aunt "Ciocci Lorraine" packing shares and doing quality control, Randy and Ethan harvesting carrots, member Kathy's haul of tomatoes and wax beans from her garden starter seedling kit she purchased from us back in the spring, Anne's gorgeous photo of sauce she made with our plum tomatoes, and our son Peter helping daddy harvest carrots in the field.
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