Weekly Abundance, Vol 17-09

This Weeks Produce

Sept. 30, 2009

Yellow Finn Potatoes – A flavor similar to a Golden Yukon and a beautiful yellow color that holds up in cooking.

Burbank Russet Potato – A classic American potato for baking, mashing, or frying.

Sweet Yellow Onions

Rosa d’ Milano Red Onion

Delicata Winter Squash

Beets – Chioggia red and white stripped beets or deep red Kestrals

Brandywine Tomatoes – A beefy heirloom tomato

Taxi Tomatoes – A beautiful golden tomato to add wonderful color to your salad.

Silvery Fir Tree and Oregon Spring red slicing tomatoes.

Marketmore Cucumbers – The classic green cucumber.  It makes a great salad.

Sweet Peppers – Ripe red Jimmy Nordello’s and green bell peppers.

Hot Peppers – Hungarian Wax and Turkish Aci Sivri

Silverado Chard – Deep green leaves with white ribbing.

Butterhead Lettuce

Basil

Upcoming Events

You are invited to an Open Barn at North Valley Farms on October 10 from 10:00 until 3:30. North Valley Farms is operated by my friend, Christianne, who raises wonderful grass fed lamb.  She is hosting the Open Barn so that customers can come out to see the farm and learn more about the health and environmental benefits of grass fed lamb and beef.  In addition to educational material, Juneko Martinson, a local fiber and glass artist, will have a needle felting demonstration booth.  I’ll be there too with information about my farm and Community Supported Agriculture.

North Valley Farm is located just outside of Yamhill at 12775 NW Oak Ridge Rd.  Why not make a day of it and go to the Yamhill County Art Harvest Tour as well?  To learn more about the Art Tour, visit www.artharveststudiotour.org.  If you have questions about the Open Barn, please call Christianne at 503-662-4249

Farm Life

Today was our first rainy harvest of this season.  Fall is clearly here.  In fact, our average first day of frost is only two weeks away.  Of course, I can’t predict when that first frost will actually happen, but when it does, there will be a definite change in what is available for harvest.   One item we will lose right away is Basil.  So be sure you are freezing plenty of Pesto because some day soon, there will be no more..

If you have been a regular reader of this blog, you know that I have been holding off on harvesting any of the Bell Peppers in hopes that they might fully ripen.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that is going to be the case.  I am going to have to harvest them green or risk losing them all to the first frost.  They will be included in next week’s harvest.

This week, we have two kinds of potatoes available.  When you see them, you might ask why they are so dirty.  Potatoes must be absolutely dry when they go in to storage or they will rot.  We do not wash the potatoes after we harvest them for fear that any moisture left on them will cause the whole bag to spoil.

When you get your potatoes home, store them in a dark environment that is cold and humid.  Wash them just before you use them.

Don’t forget that we still have free range chicken available for only $3.75/lb.  For a healthy dinner try the following menu.

Roast Chicken with Garlic

Roasted Yellow Finn Potatoes with Rosemary and Garlic

Baked Delicata Squash with butter and a sprinkle of brown sugar

Sauteed Silverado Chard

Weekly Abundance Vol 15-09

Romaine Lettuce

Silverado Chard

Tomatoes – Beautiful yellow Taxis.  Plump, pink Brandywine Heirlooms.  Russian red Silvery Fir Tree.  Plus more.

Cherry Tomatoes – Golden Nugget and Washington Red

Sweet Peppers – Jimmy Nordello and classic Bell Peppers

Hot Peppers – Hungarian Wax and Aci Sivri from turkey

Melons – Honey Dew and Haoggen

Watermelon – Moon Beam yellow watermelon.

Basil – Lettuce Leaf sweet basil.

Fennel

Beets

Summer Squash

Rosa d’ Milano red onion

Upcoming Events

Don’t forget.  This weekend is our Potato Harvest, followed by our annual Harvest Party.  The potato harvest begins at 3:00.  We will have dug the potatoes using the tractor.  You will be picking them up off the ground and sorting them in to bags.  This activity is especially good for the younger set, it’s almost like an Easter Egg hunt!

The harvest party will begin around 5:00 when we rap up the potato harvest.   Plan to join us as we celebrate the upcoming Fall season.  Please bring a potluck dish to share, your plates, cups and utensils and a bottle of wine if you would like.  If you have musical instruments, bring those as well.  Artisan Organics will provide non-alcoholic beverages.

We will have special guests so please plan to come to the party even if you aren’t able to make it for the potato harvest.    The Harvest Party will happen regardless of the weather.    As of this writing, the forecast is for a lovely evening.  But if that should change,  we will move into the propagation and field houses.

Please do RSVP so that I know how many to plan beverages for.

Farm Life

This week we harvested Lettuce Leaf Basil.  The large leaves make it particularly suited to making pesto.  If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to stock pile pesto in the freezer.  Basil is very, very frost sensitive, even a light frost will kill it.  Our first frost of the season will be here before we know it so plan ahead!  Pesto linguini will be just the thing to conjure up warm thoughts of summer on a cold and dreary winter day.

Our tomatoes are ripening so fast we can’t keep them harvested.  We have tomatoes of every size and color.  But, these too will soon disappear.  In less than a month we will need to till them in in order to plant our winter cover crop.  Meanwhile, see below for a great tomato soup recipe.

In a previous blog entry, I mentioned that we had harvested the last of our melons.  I was wrong.  This week, as we did one last walk through the melon patch before tilling it in, we discovered lots of melons hidden under the big leaves.  So, we did one final harvest before climbing on the tractor.  Some of these melons may be a bit over ripe, others not quite mature.  Still, I couldn’t bring myself to waste them by tilling them in to the soil.

Veggie of the Week

This weeks bounty of tomatoes calls for some new recipes.  Tomatoes are low in Sodium, and very low in Saturated Fat and Cholesterol. They are  a good source of Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol), Thiamin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Magnesium, Phosphorus and Copper, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Potassium and Manganese.  And, they taste good too.

Aside from eating them fresh, tomatoes make great soup.  Try this recipe for Roasted Tomato Soup from the food network.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/roasted-tomato-soup-recipe/index.html

If you want to make this soup and freeze, do not add the cream until it is defrosted and re-heated.  Remember all that snow we had last year.  Wouldn’t it have been wonderful to reach in the freezer for a taste of summer, straight from your farm?  Imagine a meal of Roasted Tomato Soup, Pesto Pasta, and a loaf of crusty bread.  Ummmm.  Heck, why wait for cold weather.  Have some now.

Weekly Abundance, Vol 14-09

Rainbow Chard – Huge, beautiful bunches of brightly colored chard.

Beets – Chioggia, Golden or Kestral

Lettuce – Fireball, a beautiful red butter head type lettuce

Summer Squash and Zucchini

Sweet Basil

Flat Leaf Italian Parsley

Tomatoes – Gold Nugget and Washington Red Cherry tomatoes.  Dry farmed Early Girls, yellow Taxis.  Heirloom Silvery Fir Tree, plus Oregon Spring and Bellstar red slicing tomatoes.

Peppers – Jimmy Nordello sweet peppers.   Hungarian Wax and Aci Sivri hot peppers.

Broccoli – both heads and sprouts

Farm Life

The fall equinox is fast approaching, which seems like a good time to take stock of the summer season before looking forward to Autumn.

Dry farmed Early Girl tomatoes on the vine

Overall, it has been a good year.  In July, we had a spell of uncharacteristically hot weather.  As a result we lost a few of the cool season crops, like cauliflower and lettuce.  But, we more than made up for it in the jump start the warm season crops received.  We have had wonderful tomatoes as a result.  And, our experiment with dry farming Early Girl tomatoes has been a huge success.

The year has not been without its “opportunities for problem solving”.  Those of you that have been reading this blog for some time will recall our recurring problem with the tractor’s cooling system.  I have struggled with this issue ever since I purchased the tractor 18 months ago.  It would run for awhile then begin overheating again.

Fortunately, I bought it from a reputable company that has worked hard to correct the problem.   But, it has meant that the tractor has not been running properly during the times I needed it the most.  Consequently, bed preparation was either done poorly, resulting in lots of weeds, or completed well but several weeks behind schedule.

The pole beans fell in to the latter category.  They were not planted until several weeks after the ideal planting time.  Because the weather was so good, they grew quickly and looked like they might even catch up.  But, much to my dismay, the deer breeched the fence and ate the plants down to just a few inches tall.

Since the growing tip of a bean plant is at the very top, this brought their development to a screeching halt.   Now, more than a month after having been grazed, they are still less than a foot tall.  It is clear that they are not going to produce this year.  Last week, we took the trellis down so that we could use it for the fall peas.

Golden Sunburst and Cozelle Zucchini

Last year, my underperforming vegetables were both in the cucurbit family, summer squash and zucchini. There were several weeks when I didn’t harvest any at all.  You certainly couldn’t tell that by looking at this year’s harvest!  It is not unusual for use to harvest 50 pounds one day, and come back the next and find almost that much again.

But the end of the summer squash and zucchini is in sight.  It now has Powdery Mildew.  This fungus is typical of fall when the cooler night time temperatures bring moisture in the form of dew.  The rain this past weekend will spread the mildew even further.  Unless we have a hot spell with both warm day and night time temperatures, the summer squash and zucchini plants will soon succumb.  When they do, the winter squash will be ready to replace them.  Already, they are hardening off in the fields.  You may look forward to Delicata, Butternut, Dumpling, and Acorn squash, plus pie pumpkins.

Other members of the cucurbit family are also disappearing from our harvest.  The weekend rains caused the remaining watermelons, cantaloupes, honey dew, etc. to burst.  I had disconnected the irrigation on the melons/watermelons several weeks ago in order to improve the brix score, making them sweeter.  The sudden influx of water from the rain was more than they could absorb.   We will soon turn them under and use the space to plant crops for the winter season.

Broccoli Floret

While the cooler temperatures and rain is not good for the cucurbit family, it is great for the brassicas.  The broccoli that we harvested in the early summer has begun to re-sprout.  Some of the cabbage that we gave up on months ago is now starting to fill out.

There is much to look forward to as the season shifts to fall.  There are two successions of leeks in the ground.  We have broccoli and cauliflower that are ready to transplant as soon as the melons are turned under.   We sowed sugar snap peas last week.  The kale is starting to sprout, as is the fall succession of beets.  In the next few weeks we will be planting kohlrabi, broccoli raab, and celeriac.  Soon, we will begin preparing special beds for winter carrots and salad turnips.

Just as summer has been a good season, we can look forward to the bounty of fall.