Farm Newsletter August 15, 2023
Farm News Crop Forecast
U-Pick Recipes Nuts and Bolts
Greetings!
What a great time to eat!!
We hope you’ve been enjoying the fruits of summer, and are ready for more! Tomatoes and melons steal the show in the kitchen. And even green peppers, the unripe version of the more sweet and flashy red peppers, add great flavor and variety to dishes.
It’s fun to finally have an abundance of eggplant again. We used to have huge yields and often too much. The last few years the plants just haven’t had as much fruit on them. We think it’s because we’ve had such mellow temps most of the summer, compared to several recent years. With the exception of the last week in July, When we’ve hit 90, we haven’t gone far over 90, and it hasn’t lasted more than a couple days. That makes a huge difference in flower and fruit development. Last week we walked through the pepper field and the ground had thousands of little flowers that had dried up without making fruit, in that last week of July. So we’ll have less peppers for the wholesale side in late fall. Which, this year, may be fine — it’s a crop we’ve wholesaled lots of other years, but we may have overplanted for what we can sell this year. (but there will be lots of peppers for the CSA, no worries there!)
Seems like we’re always talking about pollination in this newsletter!! It is a hot topic, since it affects yields so much. And of course insects play another nig role in pollination — and this year we’re seeing a few bees, wasps and flies that we’ve never seen before. That’s a fun and exciting perk of all the insect habitat maturing, which we’ve planted in the last ten years.
Unlike the fruits, the root veggies are the backbone of the storage share and our winter wholesale, and we like that they aren’t as fussy about temps or rainfall. And insects. Sensitive, but not fussy like fruits! They look wonderful.
And so does the winter squash, the unfussiest of fruits …. but also the driest and not considered by most people to be a fruit!! 🙂 You can see the pumpkins west of the driveway, and the squashes are the rest of that field. It’s a wild sea of vines and yields in there are always a mystery til the vines die back and we can see how many and how big they are. But when we peek in from the edge and see big and several, it usually means it’s gonna be good. When you drive in the driveway the next few weeks, anyone in your car should look to the left, and see how it looks. The colorful orbs will start being visible , then we’ll clip them and put them in windrows, then put them in bins in the greenhouse to feed us all fall and winter.
But now we eat juicy things!! And harvest everything, and repeat. This week we add in onion harvest – hopefully it dries out enough – a 1-2 day project for all of us. The rains recently have been nice, but do mean we have to wait for things to be dry enough for whatever task, instead of just going out and doing what we want when we want. We’re definitely grateful for the rain, and that it’s been gentle enough.
Crop Forecast
This week the harvest looks more like late summer, to match the gentle light and the earlier sunsets. More tomatoes, melons, and green peppers, and lots of eggplant, broccoli, sweet onions, summer squash, zucchini and cucumbers. Good greens and lettuce, and kale.
Tomatoes we’ll have more this week. Red peppers and hot peppers in a couple weeks, as they ripen.
Hopefully you’ve all had great watermelons! We know some looked a little unripe , when you cut them open, but they’ve been tasting so good at that stage we’ve been picking them a little earlier than we sometimes do. This week and next we should have more — or mostly — orange and yellow ones available, and cantaloupes, and they are all wicked good. Sometimes rains will dilute the flavor, but so far the plants are healthy and resisting that. There are probably 3 more weeks of melons out there, both for watermelon and cantaloupe.
Plus carrots, beets, fennel, cabbage and baby leeks.
Also little twists — we’ll have napa cabbage starting next week (for spring rolls and fine shredded salads), and celery, starting this week. Note that celery grown in MN is too stringy for ants on a log or raw snacks — it’s really best cooked for soup or stock or roasting with veggies or meats. It’s very flavorful, so we just break it up into stalks for you to take one or however many you’ll use.
For ONIONS this week and next — we’re out of sweet onions, and haven’t harvested all the storage onions from the field yet. So these will be storage onions BUT they won’t be cured and won’t store long. So put them in the fridge and use soon. In a couple weeks we will b giving out fully cured onions that you can keep on the counter or pantry or wherever you normally keep onions.
Garlic is included in the share for 4 more weeks. We do 1 head per full share , with more available to purchase on the spot for $1.25/head (4 for $5). Split shares should communicate about who gets it which week. Each split share should each get 3 heads in the share over the course of its 6 weeks. It will store for many months; many folks buy a few weeks supply to keep stocked , if they split a share and or use more than a head a week, like us .
What’s for U-Pick?
Cherry Tomatoes! Looking great! We expect a bigger limit this week. It’s gangly in between the rows –once the bottom fruits are mostly picked, we’ll try to take a mower through there to remove some vines and make it easier to walk through.
Beans — still going strong. If you keep them picked they’ll keep flowering and making more new beans, so dig in. There is some edamame ready, in the southern/earlier section (most of which is now mowed, just not the edamame island)
FLOWERS!! They keep smiling, and keep us smiling.
Cilantro, Basil and Dill are cruising along. All are now south of where they’ve been, towards the road, (with a white sign as usual).
Also nasturtiums, anise hyssop and sage, parsley, thyme and oregano.
This spot in the newsletter will keep you informed, and always check the U-pick board when you’re here to see what’s available and picking amounts.
Nuts and Bolts
Bulk Produce for You
Check here each newsletter for what we have available for extra purchase.
TOMATO BOXES ARE AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER. Click on the link for the order form, in this newsletter’s email or in the email from August 3.
This week’s selection is : Beets, Broccoli, Carrots, Eggplant (freezes great once cooked), Green Bell Peppers, Lettuce, Summer squash, Zucchini and Cucumbers for $1.25 /lb, Lettuce Mix for $6 / lb . Garlic for $1.25 / head (4 for $5) ( no need to pre order garlic).
To place a bulk order, simply email us a day ahead of the day you’d like to pick it up. Orders can be picked up at the farm during our regular pickup hours, but it doesn’t have to be your share pickup day. Usually we can make an order on the spot, too.
From LuAnn in the Medicinal Herbs Garden
Have y’all noticed the “weed,” Lady’s Thumb, scattered about the farm? There was a lot in the you-pick-peapod area and you can find it now scattered throughout much of the you-pick areas. I also intentionally transplanted a few plants at the southwest corner of the medicinal herbs garden. Why? Because it is a personal favorite of mine, helping me with both my digestive woes of food sensitivity and my joint achiness of Lyme disease. Being part of the much larger smartweed family, Lady’s Thumb’s identifying mark is the obvious “thumbprint” in the middle of each leaf. Like other members of the smartweed family, it has little pink “flower-balls” on the end of the stems. Being mucilaginous, it was used by the Cherokee and other native peoples to soothe the rash of poison ivy. It is also a go to for many people for relieving all sorts of dryness. I’ve made and used a tincture of Lady’s Thumb for years, but thanks to a question from a CSA member last year, I found it also makes a decent tea, with very little taste but a nice mouth feel; nice to add to other tea blends to both improve the mouth feel of the tea and to support digestion. I encourage you to give it try fresh as a tea. I am happy to show you how to make a tincture for yourself. Or I do have it available for purchase as a tincture. Lady’s Thumb is a great little weed indeed!
Share Pickup Hours TUESDAY and THURSDAY 1:30-6:30 pm.
Change Pick-Up Day Form — Click here. Please fill out this form instead of emailing us. Thanks!
Where is the farm? 4151 320th Street West, Northfield.
Please Drive Carefully —Children are everywhere.
If You Send Someone Else to Pick Up Your Share — Please forward them the basic pickup video in this link , which was also sent in an email earlier in June. Then just tell them to introduce themselves to us in the barn, just so we know and we can show them around.
We love having all of you come to the farm! Thank you for making it such a great place to be!
Your farmers,
Erin and Ben, with Allia, Alexandra, Elliott, Emily, Kae and Karin
RECIPES
Refrigerator Pickles
Use up some extra cukes! Full size cucumbers get mushy when canned or kept a long time in brine, but stay crisp for a couple weeks when “quick pickled” like this. You can add onions, cherry tomatoes, carrots sticks etc too.
3 pounds medium pickling cucumbers
5 cups water
1 ¼ cup white or cider vinegar
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup salt
2 dill flower heads
3 or more cloves of garlic
1 chili pepper (optional)
½ teaspoon pickling spices (whole pepper, coriander seed, bay leaf)
Boil water, vinegar, sugar, and salt together for a minute or two, then let cool.
Place the rest of the ingredients in sterilized jars and pour cooled liquid over them.
Put in refrigerator, eat after 2 or 3 days and within 1 to 2 weeks.
Miso-Glazed Grilled Asian Eggplant
One ¼-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 garlic clove, coarsely chopped
¼ cup white miso
½ teaspoon hot red-pepper sauce such as Sriracha
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon mirin
1 tablespoon water
4 Asian eggplants, cut in half lengthwise
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper for sprinkling
Canola oil for brushing
3 green onions, cut on the diagonal into ¼-inch slices
In a blender, combine the ginger, garlic, miso, pepper sauce, vinegar, sugar, mirin and water.
Blend to form a smooth puree.
Sprinkle the eggplant halves lightly with salt and pepper and lightly brush all over with oil.
About 15 minutes before you plan to serve the eggplant, prepare a medium-hot fire in a grill.
Place the eggplant halves, cut side down, on the grill, cover the grill and cook until the flesh just starts to char and soften, 6 to 8 minutes.
Turn the eggplant over and cook, covered, until just tender, 3 to 4 minutes more.
Brush the cut sides of the eggplant with the miso mixture and cook, covered, until the eggplant is tender and the glaze has browned in spots, 3 to 4 minutes.
Transfer the eggplant to a warmed serving platter, sprinkle with the sliced green onions and serve immediately.
Serves 4.
Open Hands Farm 