Greetings
from Dancing Hen Farm.
We hope
everyone is enjoying their Week 12 CSA boxes.
Week 12 was not an egg week. Ordering
is now open for Week 13.
The recent
rains have been welcome on farm. We are
still operating without our farm well and pump and therefore have only limited
irrigation for our crops. Our farm is
hilly and our soils are rocky, which means our fields drain and therefore dry
out surprisingly quick. These well
drained soils are a real blessing when we get flooding rains, but during drier
times, our crops often show signs of water stress. Farmer Don has set up a gravity fed system to
get water to some of our more vulnerable crops, but other plantings are only
being water by rainfall.
Despite this
lack of irrigation, our crops continue to look good. New to the harvest list this week include yellow
snap/wax beans, delicata squash and an assortment of hot and sweet peppers. Delicata is the first of the winter squash
varieties to be available and should continue to be available for several
weeks. Look for other winter squash in
the upcoming weeks. Wax beans should
become available in larger numbers and hopefully we will also have dragon and
purple snap beans available soon. Our
fall cabbage is g sizing up and should be ready for harvest in the coming
weeks. We did not have luck with our
spring radishes, but fall radishes are up and looking good. With any luck we will have radishes in a week
or two. Kale and chard will continue to
be available and fall greens plantings are close to being harvestable. Our tomato plants are, for the most part
looking good. We have a bit of disease,
but we are hoping to continue harvest until a frost kills our plants. We are doing our best to get tomatoes to you
as they ripen. As many of you with home
gardens may already know, this has been a slow year for tomato ripening.
In the
kitchen, I finally got around to making eggplant sandwiches. Originally I was going to roast the eggplant
slices on the grill, but decided on oven roasting them instead. I also added sungold tomatoes and a few
capers to the roasting pan. The
sandwiches were assembled by spreading ciabatta rolls with some pesto, adding a
slice of fresh mozzarella, a slice or two of roasted eggplant topped with some
roasted sungolds and the juice from the roasting pan. The rolls I had were a bit tough, making the
sandwiches hard to eat, but the flavors were really good. Farmer Don and I both decided the sandwiches
needed to make a repeat appearance.
Since I had some mozzarella cheese leftover, the next day I made a
delicious caprese salad using a couple of beautiful heirloom tomatoes. Nothing says the end of summer to me like
thick slices of fresh heirloom tomatoes and basil!
As most of
you know we have two farm dogs, Shady and Rosie. Rosie is a Border Collie and has all the
quirks of that breed. Shady is a mixed
breed and was a stray who decided Dancing Hen Farm would be a good place to
call home. Shady has always been a bit
of a forager. She will pick ripe berries
off plants, even going as far as to test a berry's ripeness before she picks
and eats it. We have to keep harvested
cucumbers and summer squash covered or she will steal and eat them. And don't even get me started on Shady and
eggs! Recently she found another farm
product to forage, sungold tomatoes.
Farmer Don came in from harvest the other night with a big grin on his
face telling me how cute Shady was. It
seems as he harvested the cherry tomatoes into the bucket, Shady picked them
out and ate them. I don't think she has
learned to pick them herself yet, but I am sure it is only a matter of
time. Next year we may need to plant
extra tomatoes for Shady!
So, it is
getting late, I am getting tired and I am already late getting this newsletter
out to everyone. I will end here. Have a great week! Enjoy those veggies. And please keep our neighbors to the south
dealing with the aftermath of Dorian in your thoughts and prayers.
No comments:
Post a Comment