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.