Week 17; Fall is near!

We're seeing the signs everywhere; next Tuesday is forecast to be only 80 degrees; the mimosa trees have set their pods and the dogwood berries are waiting to start turning red; weeds on the farm have officially taken over; grasshoppers are out in droves, mating and eating all kinds of leaves on our plants (I occasionally wield my scissors and chop in half a mating couple, feeling a twang of guilt as their decapitated heads twitch and fall to the ground); the few dahlia plants we have are sending up blooms; we are only seeding things for late fall plantings; and next Tuesday is September 1st!  We now have three more weeks of the CSA after this Wednesday.  How time flies.  The average fall frost date for this area is October 15 so we plan our crops around this date.  That is also why we stop our CSA in early-mid September.  The closer you get to the frost date, the harder it is to have large quantities of produce.  Speaking of fall, it looks like we'll have carrots for you all in a couple weeks.  They were sown in early July and they look great as of now.  We should also have some okra soon!

IN YOUR BOXES THIS WEEK:

half shares

2 pints cherry tomatoes (with new recipes!)

eggplant

edamame

colored sweet peppers

roma tomatoes

full shares

slicing tomatoes

extra peppers

extra eggplant

RECIPES

Cherry Tomato Crostini with Ricotta (recipe from A Platter of Figs by David Tanis, head chef at Chez Panisse---This is an awesome cookbook if anyone is needing a good one!)

1 large shallot

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

salt and peppa

1/2 cup olive oil

2 garlic cloves, smashed to a paste with a little salt, plus another peeled garlic clove or two

2 lbs cherry tomatoes, halved  (you could also use your romas from the CSA box)

1 loaf italian ciabatta

1/2 lb fresh ricotta

1 tsp red pepper flakes

a handful of basil leaves

In a medium bowl, macerate the shallot is the red wine vinegar with a little salt.  After a few minutes, whisk in the olive oil.  Add the pounded garlic and the cherry tomatoes, season well with salt and pepper, and toss gently.  Leave to marinate for a few minutes.  

Cut the ciabatta into 1/2 inch slices.  Spread the slices on a baking sheet and toast on both sides until golden brown.  Swipe the toasts very lightly with a peeled garlic clove.  Don't push too hard on the garlic, you want the toast to have just a hint of garlic flavor.  

Spread a tablespoon of fresh ricotta on each toast, then put them on a platter.  Sprinkle with a little salt and a little red pepper.  Spoon the marinated cherry tomatoes over the toast.  Sliver or tear the basil leaves and strew over the crostini.  

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes (from Martha Stewart's Living) 

1 pint of cherry tomatoes

1/2 tsp dried oregano

fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 500 degrees.  Spread tomatoes on a rimmed baking sheet.  Drizzle with oil.  Sprinkle with oregano, and season with salt and pepper.  Roast until tomatoes are wrinkled and just starting to burst, about 10 minutes.  

Ratatouille (from Southern Food recipe website) you have many of the ingredients for this in your box this week.  You could easily omit the zucchini, use red peppers instead of green, and use romas and cherry tomatoes instead of large slicers.  

Flower Shares

this week you will get some sunflowers with some other assorted cuts.  this might be the last of the sunflowers so enjoy their good cheer!

Thanks everyone and have an excellent week!  As always, please let us know if you have any questions or comments.  Thanks  :)

Week 16

Greetings CSA members!  We've had a great week of wildlife spottings here at Bluebird Meadows.  Harry the Heron is a regular at our pond and every now and then he lets me take a picture of him from a distance; never a good picture, but maybe in the future when we get more comfortable he'll pose for us.  There has also been a couple sightings of a white egret hanging out at the pond which is very irregular.  It is a big egret and it's odd to see one so far from the marshes of the east.  We've loved seeing him though and we hope he found some morsels to eat while at our farm.  I also spotted a little pack of wild turkeys Friday evening as we were leaving the farm.  What a fascinating bird!  Quite as mice and so strange looking.  Oh so close to being our national bird due to its intelligence (Benjamin Franklin was their big advocate), but I guess we went with a much more fierce national bird, the eagle.  Stuart wants me to mention that the wild turkey is also his alma mater's mascot, the fighting gobblers of Virginia Tech, and he thinks they're quite fierce.  We'll leave it at that :)   

The farm is doing great.  It's getting desperate for a good mowing and some weed-eating, but on the plus side our vegetables are looking fantastic.  We have picked some of the nicest red and yellow peppers we've ever grown.  We hope everyone is enjoying the sweet peppers; they are loaded with vitamins and can easily be eaten by themselves as a healthy snack.  As for the tomatoes, this is sadly the last week for our big slicing tomatoes.  Next season we plan to have some big slicers in our last planting, so hopefully we'll have them for a few weeks longer next year.  
In your boxes this week:

Half shares

green beans

lettuce mix

slicing tomatoes

sweet peppers

mole peppers

cherry tomatoes

Full shares (this may vary, we're not 100% sure yet of these items)

extra green beans

extra peppers

RECIPES (please let us know if you'd like some recipes for certain items so we can provide these for you!)

Martha Stewart's Roasted Peppers with Garlic and Basil

Martha's Baked Stuffed Peppers with Cherry Tomatoes, Feta, and Thyme

FLOWER SHARES

This will be the last week of oriental lilies for everyone.  Enjoy!  

thanks everyone and have a great week.

Week 15

Whew it is HOT outside.  We started work at 6:30 and we were outta there by 1:30.  It was 99 in the shade.  We're glad to see this is only going to last two days.  Hearing about the earthquakes in the east, the 6 feet of rain in China.....we can easily deal with two days of soaring heat when we put this in perspective.  This has actually been an extremely mild season.  Last year we had a week of the temp being around 100 in early June, and this is our first day in Hurdle Mills of the temperature being above 95.  We feel lucky right now.  And we had a great excuse to cut out early!

This first picture is of our beautiful crop of sudan grass, a sorghum that will get 5-6 ft tall and will add lots of precious organic matter to our soil.  This is where our spring section was, our strawberries, overwintered flowers like batchelor buttons, tulips, dianthus, and larkspur, our peas and other goodies that we all had earlier this year.  And now we're only a month away from planting once again many of these same crops....strawberries, overwintered flowers, etc.  We are adjusting ourselves to this melody of cyclical growth that is becoming more familiar with each season, that is always fresh and unique as it is accompanied by a different rhythm each year---the differences in weather, in our planning, in new things we try to grow, in things we let fall away.  In other words, we are thoroughly enjoying getting to know how to farm, and in many ways, we have you our community, our family and friends to thank for this incredible opportunity.   
In your boxes this week:

HALF SHARES

roma tomatoes

red peppers (finally!)

pint of cherry tomatoes

red big beef tomatoes, pink girl tomatoes

edamame (looks really good this week)

green beans

FULL SHARES

extra red peppers

extra romas

either extra green beans or extra edamame

RECIPES

Green Beans Provencale- (from Best of Cooking Light, pg 291, edited)

1 lb green beans

24 small cherry tomatoes, halved

1/4  cup chopped red onion

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

1/8 cup water

1/8 cup white wine vinegar

1 tbsp grated parmesan cheese

1 tbsp olive oil

1/4 tsp dried thyme

1/4 tsp black pepper

1 garlic clove, minced

1) Steam beans, covered, 8 minutes or until crisp tender.  Drain beans; plunge into cold water, and drain.  Combine beans, tomatoes, and onion in a medium bowl.

2)Combine the parsley and remaining ingredients in a bowl and stir well.  Pour parsley mixture over the vegetables, tossing gently to coat.  Serve at room temperature.  

Broiled Roma Tomatoes (from Epicurious's website---quick and easy!)

Roasted Tomato Soup Recipe (from 101 Cookbooks blog by Heidi Swanson )

Pickled Garlicky Red Peppers (from Smitten Kitchen blog---you aren't getting the quantity for this recipe, but maybe if you want to be brave and try to mess with the recipe, they look DELICIOUS!)

FLOWER SHARES

This week we will have zinnias again as the main delight, with some additional flowers for accent.  Hope you enjoy them.  

Thanks everyone and have a great week!  

Week 14; it's gettin' hot around here!

The forecast this week is looking pretty sweaty.  We have places in our minds where we go when it gets this hot; we rewind the clock back to March, when we got four inches of snow and our farm was a winter wonderland; or we take ourselves back to one of our trips to the beach, where at any given moment there was an ocean to dip into to cool off; or we can always imagine a pool so cold it takes your breath away when you first get in, and you have to swim for awhile to take the chill off.  So when we're weeding this week (lots of weeding to do when it gets this hot!) and it is 95 degrees, we'll actually be elsewhere, whiling the time away.  Actually, it isn't so bad when it gets this hot.  It's more the thought of the heat that is unbearable.  We'll probably go through a gallon of 
water each every day this week so we stay hydrated.  With all this heat and rain, the garden is growing at a rapid rate with some weeds vying hard for an equal position with our vegetables.  Despite the weeds, our late plantings of green beans, okra, and edamame look great, and the last plantings of peppers and tomatoes are by far the best looking late planting we've had to date.  We picked a box of red peppers today, so that means they will hopefully make an appearance in your boxes next week as there aren't quite enough yet for all of you.  But soon!  Next week we should have green beans again as well.  
In your boxes this week:

half shares

tomatoes, big beef and pink girls

pint of cherry tomatoes

salad mix

a few mole peppers

garlic (elephant or regular)

edamame (fresh soybeans)

Full-shares

same as half with:

2 green peppers

extra slicing tomatoes

extra edamame

Recipes

For the edamame---we both love fresh edamame and it is so easy to prepare.  Take the bean pods off the stalk and rinse them off in a colander.  Boil a pot of water with 2-3 tsp of salt.  Put in rinsed edamame and lower heat so the water is simmering and cook for 10-15 minutes; you want the beans to slip right out of the pod and to be soft.  Drain water, sprinkle some more salt on top, and enjoy hot!  We like to put the whole pod in our mouth and use our teeth to get the beans out so we can get some of the salt that way.  This is a delicious and nutritious snack that has a lot of protein and fiber.  We hope you all like it.  

Tomato Recipes--You all have probably figured out your favorite way of preparing these by now, but just in case you're looking for alternatives, here are a couple for you.

Baked Stuffed Tomatoes--from Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food, pg 321

Make a stuffing of fresh breadcrumbs (using country style bread), chopped garlic, and lots of fresh basil.  Core the tomatoes, cut them in half horizontally, and remove the seeds.  Season the inside with salt and pepper, and fill the cavity with the breadcrumb mixture, pressing it in well and mounding it on top.  Fit the tomatoes snugly in a shallow earthenware dish and drizzle each one with olive oil.  Bake at 375 for 30 minutes or so, until nicely browned.  
Tomates A La Creme--in Gourmet magazine, taken from 365 menus, 365 Recettes by Edouard de Pomiane (my mouth waters every time I look at this recipe; we're going to try it tonight)

Take six tomatoes (or however many in your box!).  Cut them in halves.  In your frying pan melt a lump of butter.  Put in the tomatoes, cut side downward, with a sharply pointed knife puncturing here and there the rounded sides of the tomatoes.  Let them heat for five minutes.  Turn them over.  Sprinkle them with salt.  Cook them again for another 10 minutes.  Turn them again.  The juices run out and spread in the pan.  Once more turn the tomatoes cut side upward.  Around them put 80 grams (3 ounces near enough) of creme fraiche or heavy cream.  Mix it with the juices.  As soon as it bubbles, slip the tomatoes and all their sauces onto a hot dish.  Serve instantly, very hot.  

Flower shares

This week we will have an arrangement of zinnias for everyone.  Originating mainly from Mexico, this flower loves the heat.  hope you enjoy it!  

thanks everyone and talk to you soon.  Let us know if you have any questions or comments.