In this week’s box
Green or purple kale
Hakurei salad turnips
Easter egg radishes
Green leaf lettuce
Romaine lettuce
Red onions
Summer squash and zucchini
Chiogga “Candy stripped” beets
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Garlic
Notes from the farm
Over the weekend Ben and I had a chance to leave the farm– only to discuss the farm over breakfast and coffee. This was the first of several discussions we will have as we gear up for next season. When we order next year’s seeds, we will first go through the list of veggies one by one and talk about how they faired: Did fennel sell well at market? Did we have enough early season cabbage for CSA? Was there too much bug pressure on zucchini? Etc, etc. When the season comes to a close and we make our final sale, we will have a financial discussion. Hopefully we will see that the farm didn’t spend more then it made!
The purpose of the talk we had this weekend was just a general discussion of how the season went/is going. We want to discuss things while we are still busy, while things are still fresh in our mind, and before we relax and forget issues we had earlier! We wanted to see if there are major changes we need to think about for next season. One thing we discussed was increasing our mid week flower sales and increasing our storage crop (potatoes, winter squash, onions, etc) production. In order for this to happen we need a new walk in cooler! As our Friday crew can attest, when we have buckets of flowers, freshly harvested market vegetables, and towers of onions and potatoes in the same cooler, we are constantly looking for an inch of free space! I spend too much time on Fridays reorganizing the cooler! So, it is becoming apparent that we need a separate flower cooler. Add “construct another cooler” to the winter work list! I imagine it will be like all improvements we make on the farm: “how did we do this before??”
Instead of leaving you with a picture of me and Ben talking about the farm, I’ll just include some shots from the week– cabbage looking real good, pumpkins harvested and starting their curing process, and some sort of contraption Ben had to rig up in the machine shed while performing regular tractor maintenance!
Recipes
Kale and potato gratin (I used cheddar cheese because that is what I had on hand and whole milk. Also to increase amount of greens to equal 3 bunches of kale, use your turnip greens and add in final minutes of sauté OR the beet greens and add along with the kale)
Baked potato with beet salad ( our potatoes are on the small side so I would serve the beet salad over roasted potatoes)