Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm! Welcome to Week 9 of our Main/Summer Season
CSA. Hopefully our CSA members are enjoying
their boxes. Week 9 is an egg week and
Week 9 is the half way point of our Summer CSA.
Next week, Week 10, will be a chicken delivery week.
We have had an unusually wet (and somewhat cooler) summer
here on farm. This is evident by our
need to still mow our grass. Usually by now
the heat of summer combined with a the usual need for rain, leaves our grass
brown and dry. Not so this year! In fact, Farmer Don is mowing right now. Unfortunately, this year of lots of mowing,
our riding lawn mower seems to be in need of a transmission. So, we are now mowing more than half our yard
with the tractor! The tractor makes the
task of mowing go quicker, but it does tear up the lawn a bit. Maybe next year we will finally bring sheep
on farm and allow them to do the mowing for us.
I think we will also have to budget for a new mower!
Tomato harvest is in full swing, with lots of cherries and
heirlooms being picked. Farmer Don asked
me to mention that we harvest our tomatoes, especially the heirlooms, slightly
on the green side. We do this to prevent
the tomatoes from cracking and therefore spoiling in the field. For this reason, the tomatoes you receive in
your boxes may require a day or two the kitchen table to fully ripen. With the varied colors of some of our
heirlooms, it is sometimes tough to determine when they are ripe and ready to
eat. I like to tell people that ripe
tomatoes will feel slightly soft to touch. Speaking of tomatoes, we are getting some
certified organic bulk Roma tomatoes from a neighbor. If you are interested in making sauce, please
contact us.
Continuing on with harvest.
Beans continue to be available, as do summer squash. Cucumbers are almost done and will be
available in very limited numbers going forward. Barring any nasty blight outbreak, we
anticipate tomatoes to be available in good numbers for quite a few weeks. Swiss chard continues to look great and our
next planting of kale will be sizing up shortly. New last week, we saw collard greens become
available. Escarole and dandelion greens will be harvested for several more
weeks. We are still harvesting salad
greens and heads of leaf lettuce should again become available in the next few
weeks. Tomatillos are looking good and a
small planting of ground cherries are starting to mature as well.
The seed house is still a flurry of activity as we finish up seeding for the
season. Lots of lettuces, Asian greens
and cooking greens being seeded and germinating. Fall crops are being planted in our fields,
as well. Last week we direct seeded fall
greens and radishes and today we planted rutabagas. Winter squash and pumpkins are looking good
and with a bit of luck we will have a nice harvest this year.
In years past, I used to feature a crop each week and pass
on recipes. I am thinking of bringing
this tradition back for the next few weeks.
This week I want to talk a bit about tomatillos. Tomatillos or husk tomatoes are a staple in
salsa verde or green salsa. They are
high in vitamin C and fiber and also provide dietary sources of potassium,
magnesium and niacin. Tomatillos have a
papery husk around the fruit. To use,
peel the husk away and rinse the fruit.
On farm, we add tomatillos, raw, to salads. One of Farmer Don's specialties, this time of
the year, is pico de gallo, which he also adds tomatillos to. Tomatillos pair very well with pork. I would suggest getting the slow cooker out
and making a pot of chili verde using a pork shoulder. I can't seem to find a weblink to my recipe,
but here is a fairly straight forward recipe (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/member/views/slow-cooked-pork-chile-verde-53094411). Another farm favorite tomatillo recipe is
Tomatillo Bread Salad. The addition of
black beans to this salad makes it a meal for lunch or dinner. The recipe comes from a CSA farm in
Arizona (http://www.tucsoncsa.org/2009/07/tomatillo-bread-salad/
).
In our kitchen, in addition to using tomatillos, we have starting
to binge eat tomatoes. Our kitchen table
always has a bowl of cherry tomatoes for snacking and several large heirlooms
ripening. As mentioned above Farmer Don
keeps us supplied with fresh pico de gallo. Tonight
for dinner we had a farm favorite -- BLT's.
It is so nice to have our own lettuce, tomato and bacon! And the bread was locally made as well! This weekend, I am planning to make and can
some tomato sauce. Hopefully this year I will also get some
tomatoes canned and some ketchup made.
This past week we said good-bye to another of our summer
interns. Jane will be heading a bit
south to start her freshman year at Gettysburg College. Thanks Jane for all your help this
summer! Good Luck at college, you will
be missed on farm.
So, the hour is getting late. Farmer Don just came in from late night
animal chores. I need to print this
newsletter, allow him to read it and hopefully get it sent out either tonight
or early tomorrow morning.
As always, thank you for your support of our small farm and
sustainable agriculture. "be safe,
be well and enjoy those veggies".
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