So here’s the rundown for this week:
There’s a bunch of beet greens (use like swiss chard or spinach – these are thinnings from the last beet planting of the year), a bunch of hakurei salad turnips (remember these from spring? eat raw or cooked, their greens are delicious cooked as well), a bag of salad mix (various mustards, lettuce, and chicory), slicing cucumbers, sweet peppers including jimmy nardello’s (the long thin red ones that look hot but aren’t), a head of garlic, yellow potatoes, and of course the ubiquitous tomatoes. Usually I save the potatoes until later in the fall because there is such an abundance of summery produce right now, but I’d heard a little clamoring for them and it seems we have had a decent harvest this year, so here they are at the beginning of fall. There will be plenty more later as well. The garlic is “Purple Italian Easy Peel,” a hardneck variety I’ve been growing and saving seed from for about 5 years now. I like the big heads and the ease of peeling. The other variety I grew is a softneck called “Mother of Pearl” and this year it produced very small bulbs (you’ve seen them once in the share already), but the flavor is nice. I’ll be saving the largest of the bulbs for next year’s planting stock in order to increase their size in the future. On the beet thinnings, you can eat the tiny beetlets on the root ends if you want – just cook them with the rest of the greens. Or just cut them off. Tomatoes were still pumping Monday but I’m sure they’ll slow down quite a bit with the cooling off and moisture we’re beginning to have this week. Peppers in the field are a fall vegetable this year as usual — the peak pepper harvest seems to be just ahead. The salad mix was fun to make today. Everything is nice and small right now so good for a salad where you don’t have to chop or tear anything into smaller pieces. I’ve been thinking about getting into a lot more salad mix next year, so this fall you may see some more forays this direction as I test it out on you.
In other farm news, we got the winter squash pulled in from the field just before the rains came last night – whew! (Big thanks to my mother-in-law Karin and wife Katy!) They’ve been curing in the warm fields for the past 8 or so days. Ran out of bins so we put the last of them straight into the hand cart. The varieties shown here are Potimarron (orange), Carnival (multicolored acorn), and Blue Kuri. Other varieties this year (not pictured) are Delicata, Long Pie Pumpkin, and Butternut. The winter squash really doesn’t get into the shares much until about mid-October when I need to replace other crops that are finished for the year.
A view of some of the other fall crops at the new “farm annex” plot. Lacinato kale, Champion & Cascade Glaze collards, cabbage, pink swiss chard, purple top turnips, and watermelon radish. The potatoes also grew over here off to the left.
Now for the fun stuff: recipes! (today from: www.noshingconfessions.com/2010/06/roasted-turnips-and-potatoes.html)
Cully Neighborhood Farm 