Cool Temps

Our cute set up at Chilibrew last night

Cool Temps

This wet, humid week dissolved into fall temperatures, finally! We had a big week of selling fall produce by day and making chili by night. And our efforts paid off with a 3rd place trophy - Best Meat Chili - Judges’ Choice! It was a fun way to spread the word about our awesome produce and to get folks excited about chili peppers. And we’re headed toward more clean up, cover crop seeding, and garlic planting. Plus, we’ll start harvesting sweet potatoes the week, which we’re both excited about! Unfortunately we’ve had a bit of a tough year for sweet potatoes: lots of deer damage and water damage. But the ones who survived are bound to be delicious! We’ll harvest them, then let them cure so that their starches transform into sugars. Yum! Can’t wait. Once they’re ready, we’ll spill the beans on our delicious Sweet n’ Smoky vegetarian chili that got lots of love at Chilibrew last night!

A block of our cover crops looking bright and cheery

What We’re Eating

Butternut Lentil Salad

This salad is simple and delicious! Perfectly captures fall flavors and farm-y goodness.

From the awesome recipe blog The First Mess

dressing:
juice of 1 lemon (about 1/4 cup)
2 tbsp agave nectar
salt and pepper
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

salad:
1 small butternut squash, peeled
1 cup green lentils, picked through and rinsed
5-6 handfuls arugula
1/4-1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
salt and pepper

Cook the lentils: combine the rinsed lentils with 3 cups of water and a pinch of salt in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes or until lentils are just tender and most of the liquid is absorbed. Stir here and there while they’re cooking. Set aside when done.

Steam the squash: fill a large pot with an inch or two of water and bring to a boil. Cut the peeled squash in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds and slice both halves into 1/2 inch slices crosswise. Place slices on a steamer basket and drop into the pot of boiling water. Cover and steam for about 15-20 minutes or until squash is tender, but still has a little toothsome quality.

Make the dressing: combine all dressing ingredients in a blender and blend on high until combined. Set aside. You could whisk them all together too.

Assemble: toss the lentils and arugula with 3/4 of the dressing. Season with salt and pepper.  Place this mixture onto your serving plate. Top with the cooked squash slices. Pour remaining dressing over top. Sprinkle the top with feta and serve.

Bryan with his trophy!

Have a great week everybody - stay cozy!

Joanna & Bryan

Clean Up Clean Up!

Can you spot Rosie?

Clean Up Clean Up!

We’re entering clean up mode here at Good Dog Farm. We’re taking down, pulling up, and bagging up all sorts of remnants from summer and early fall crops so that we can seed cover crops. Cover crops restore nutrients into our soil after we’ve grown crops in them for the year as well as preventing erosion throughout the winter. It’s also an important mental exercise to tie up this tough season with a bow and call it finished. We’re not quite there yet, as much as we’d like to be, but we’re happy to still be harvesting new crops like big bright radishes. We’ve also started planting some of our crops that will stay in the ground all winter, like shallots. Next up, garlic and elephant garlic. So, we’re plowing ahead with the seasonal end in sight, but with excitement in our hearts for a winter full of salad and beyond.

Beautiful purple daikon in the sun!

What We’re Eating

Potato Kale Cakes with Smoky Cashew Cream Sauce

All amazing flavors packed into cute little nuggets! If you’ve never had a cashew cream sauce, make this asap. It’s not just a dairy alternative, it’s rich in flavor and a perfect texture. Another delicious recipe from the fabulous Dishing Up the Dirt blog.

Makes about 10 lil cakes.

Smokey Cashew Cream Sauce

• 1 cup raw cashews-soaked in warm water for at least 30 minutes (optional--but will lend a smoother consistency)

• 2 Tablespoons tomato paste

• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast

• 1-2 teaspoons smoked paprika, more or less depending on preference

• 1/8-1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper + more to taste

• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

• 2 Tablespoons fresh lime juice

• 1 cup water + additional to thin if necessary

Potato Kale Cakes

• 1 1/2 pounds unpeeled russet potatoes, cut into 1 inch cubes

• salt

• 1/4 cup almond flour

• 2 teaspoons garlic powder

• hefty pinch of salt and ground black pepper

• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten

• 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided

• 1/2 bunch of kale (about 2 cups) coarsely chopped

• hefty pinch of salt

• 4 tablespoons cooking fat (bacon grease or a high heat oil such as grapeseed or peanut oil), divided

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 300F.

2. Make the smokey cashew sauce by draining the cashews (if you pre-soaked them) and placing them in a high speed blender along with the rest of the ingredients and blending on high until completely smooth and creamy. About 2 minutes. Taste for seasonings, adjust if necessary and then set aside.

3. Place the potatoes in a medium pot and cover with cold salted water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium and simmer for 15-20 minutes or until tender. Drain the potatoes well and then return to the pot. Heat the potatoes over medium heat for about 1 minute to dry out (this will help hold them together when frying). Mash the potatoes with a potato masher and set aside.

4. In a large bowl mix together the almond flour, garlic powder, salt, pepper, lightly beaten eggs and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Keep to the side.

5. Heat the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the kale and a hefty pinch of salt. Cook, tossing often, until slightly wilted, about 2 minutes. Remove the kale from the heat and stir into the wet mixture. Add the potatoes and mix until everything is well combined.

6. Shape the potato/kale mixture by 1/4 cupfuls into 1/2 inch thick patties and place on a rimmed baking sheet.

7. Heat the same skillet that you sautéed the kale in over medium high heat and add 2 tablespoons of your cooking fat of choice. Add the cakes and cook for about 3-4 minutes (or until crispy) carefully flip (the cakes can be delicate so be careful here) and then cook for about 2-3 minutes on the second side.

8. Place cooked patties on the rimmed baking sheet and keep warm in the oven. Repeat with the remaining batter and cooking fat.

9. Serve the cakes with the smokey cashew sauce and enjoy!

Sign Up for your Winter CSA Share

Claim your share in our winter season CSA! Our CSA runs year-round using the same format, except when we take off most of the month of May, while we are frantically planting and waiting for our Spring crops to come in. We do our best to offer salad greens, lettuce, onions, garlic, carrots, sweet potatoes, apples, and eggs all winter, and we will have winter squash, potatoes, radishes, and kohlrabi along as they keep—usually into February. The official start of our new season is November 28, the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. Your existing funds will roll over into the new season, and as always, you can add additional funds at any time.

However, we do ask that if you are planning to continue enjoying our vegetables throughout the winter, that you let us know by putting down a $25 deposit (or purchasing any size winter share) before November 1st. This is very important because (a) it lets us know if we need to recruit additional members for the winter season, (b) it helps us gauge interest at our various pickup locations, and (c) it’s important for operating online ordering on the Small Farm Central platform. Instructions for signing up for the winter season are below. Thanks!

Thanks everyone, have a great week!

Joanna and Bryan

personal daze

The upside of the extra wet weather is that we’ve got our hoop houses in excellent shape.

On an outcropping under the “King and Queen’s Seat.”

Hello, friends. We hope all is well with you. It’s actually been so wet on the farm lately that we’ve run out of things to do. Or, at least after weeding our forthcoming salad greens again, we’ve run out of things we can do until it dries out some more. So yesterday we decided to pack up the dogs and go for a nice hike at nearby Rocks State Park in Harford County. Deer Creek was higher than it’s been since at least Hurricane Floyd. Baloo looked old climbing the rocks. Joanna is still scared of heights. And Rosie looked entirely too confident for her own good. The views were spectacular as ever though. Add to that a clear forecast likely to start drying out the fields, and we’re doing out best to beat the late season blues.

what we’re eating

We eat a lot of chili, especially this time of year. In fact, we’ll even be entering Baltimore Chilibrew XII in a couple of weeks. Everyone seems to have an opinion on chili. For the record, in our household, chili is made with beans or meat, but never both; we do include tomatoes, specifically roasted tomatoes; and while Wendy’s chili may be served with cheese, we prefer ours with sour cream. That said, what all chili needs is chiles. The more varieties, the better for achieving a deeper and more complex flavor. Our “mole” pepper mix is perfect for this, especially when first roasted for 4-6 hours at 225F. You then either blend them together with garlic and onions (or shallots) and water until smooth, or freeze them just as they are for use later.

On a different but equally autumnal note, we’ll be trying out something totally new this week: a raw butternut squash salad. While this might sound like some next level Mr. Autumn Man masochism, we have it on good authority that it’s shockingly good, especially if dressed up with ginger, dried fruit, and nuts. The key, as with any off-beat salads is to make sure you get the squash as thin and delicate as possible. Mark Bittman marinates his in acid to tenderize, while Joshua McFadden prefers to just toss in brown butter and go. Here’s the recipe we’ll be following:

Ingredients

not just for soup and pie any more

• ½ C yellow raisins

• 1 T fresh ginger, grated or minced

• ¼ C white wine vinegar

• 1 lb hard squash, peeled, and shredded into thin slices with peeler

• 1 shallot, thinly sliced

• 1/2 tsp chile pepper, minced

• salt and pepper

• ¼ cup brown butter

• 3 T olive oil

• 1 T dried mint (or 1/4 C fresh)

• 1 C toasted walnuts

• 2-3 leaves sage (optional)

Soak raisins in vinegar while you shave the squash into slices. Mix the squash, vinegar, shallots, chile, salt and black pepper in a large bowl. Separately, brown butter in a pan with sage (optional).

Pour warm brown butter over bowl. Add olive oil, mint, and pecans, toss, and serve immediately.

Let us know what you think and happy eating!

Eating at the Equinox

Happy fall, everyone! We’ve been enjoying some truly beautiful days to be outside of late. We hope you too have found opportunities to enjoy the weather. There’s still plenty of harvesting to do around here, and there are still new crops popping up in your choices. There’s still 2 weeks until we dig sweet potatoes, and you should also be seeing Napa cabbage, rainbow carrots, fennel, and watermelon radishes grace your plate before season’s end.

We’ve also added a “mole” mix of 6 Mexican chile peppers to make a mole sauce or to roast for a homemade chili paste.

I love the flavors of fall, but I especially enjoy the way the flavors and textures deepen and become richer as the weather cools. Our cool and tender French breakfast radishes have finished, but we have just added our stubby purple daikons, whose hearty flavor and spicy zing really adds something in cooler months, especially when roasted. You might also notice that our salad mix grows a bit more robust and diverse each week as new mustards, Asian cabbages, and lettuces become available, adding new flavors and textures to the mix. One of the best moments of fall, though, is harvesting young ginger, as we did this week. Ginger is a tropical perennial that grows and propagates itself via large starchy rhizomes, not unlike bamboo or sweet potatoes. The hardy, thick-skinned stuff we get at the store is older growth, which if planted will sprout new eyes that make fresh, tender offshoots with tall palm-like leaves. Our climate is not suitable to growing ginger perennially. However, high tunnels give us just enough time to produce these fresh, uncured “hands” of young ginger. Even while harvesting, its aroma is intoxicating, and it adds a wonderfully unique touch to basically anything you might cook this time of year. It pairs especially well with the rich flavors of winter squash or baked apples, or is great as the star of the show in pickles or a very quick lo-mein. Young ginger is much less fibrous than storage ginger, so cook for as little time as possible to best enjoy it. It only lasts one week to 10 days, but it can be quick-pickled with the “Six Seasons” recipe we shared in the spring.

What we’re eating

Other than putting ginger in everything, we’re in salad and winter squash bliss around here. Last night, Joanna made a squash risotto recipe to die for. Follow a standard recipe like this, with a couple tweaks:

• Add in half a teaspoon of red pepper flakes with the onion and oil for a touch of heat.

• Grating the squash instead of cubing adds an incredibly rich, buttery consistency to the whole finished dish.

• Instead of discarding them, add the scooped out guts of the squash, plus an extra cup of grated squash, to your simmering stock for added flavor (don’t add this squash back into the risotto, though).

• Stir in a half teaspoon of grated young ginger with the Parmesan for an extra zip.

• Make enough for leftovers, and then turn them into arancini!

Another revelation was this caper-raisin-anchovy salad dressing shown below. It’s certainly not an intuitive blend, but the mix of sweetness and umami is a perfect companion to the hearty, ragged greens we’re getting while day-time temps are still in the 70s and 80s. Try it with a kale salad, mesclun, or kohlrabi.

Again, from Joshua McFadden’s excellent “Six Seasons.”

Winter season

We mentioned last week that we are now opening up winter season CSA sign-ups. Our CSA runs year-round using the same format, except when we take off most of the month of May, while we are frantically planting and waiting for our Spring crops to come in. We do our best to offer salad greens, lettuce, onions, garlic, carrots, sweet potatoes, apples, and eggs all winter, and we will have winter squash, potatoes, radishes, and kohlrabi along as they keep—usually into February. The official start of our new season is November 28, the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. Your existing funds will roll over into the new season, and as always, you can add additional funds at any time.

However, we do ask that if you are planning to continue enjoying our vegetables throughout the winter, that you let us know by putting down a $25 deposit (or purchasing any size winter share) before November 1st. This is very important because (a) it lets us know if we need to recruit additional members for the winter season, (b) it helps us gauge interest at our various pickup locations, and (c) it’s important for operating online ordering on the Small Farm Central platform. Instructions for signing up for the winter season are below. Thanks!

Sign Up

From the Member Login screen, select the “Sign up for 2018 Winter” option. If you don’t see that option, click “Sign Up Now!” on the left-hand side of the screen.

Select a size

If you are low on funds and want to add more, select on of the normal sizes listed. If you have plenty of funds or plan to purchase more later, just select the “Deposit” size at the bottom.

Pickup

Select your pickup location here.

Users

If everything has worked properly, you should see your name(s) listed here. If you do, click through the rest of the sign up process and pay. If you do not see your name, please contact us.

#harvestday

How lucky are we for this day of sun? We’ve been getting pretty darn autumnal around here lately. The last sunny days of summer are special for farmers as we wind down with the work and can admire our literal fruits. We pulled in well over two tons of winter squash this week, pictured above. We lay it out on black tarps for a couple weeks after harvest to let it “cure,” converting their remaining starches to sugars for longer storage and sweeter flavor. The hotter the better. Our hearts go out to farmers and friends down south who aren’t getting to bask in the warmth with us and our squash. In this wettest of years, we can especially empathize with the crop losses many will experience from wind and flood.

Delicata

North Georgia Candy Roaster

Seminole Pumpkin

Waltham Butternut

color, flavor, and variety

Pictured above are four of the hard squash varieties we grew this year. Overall, it was not an ideal year to grow squash, which are highly susceptible to mildew diseases that travel on storm-system winds and proliferate in wet conditions. In fact, some of the new varieties we trialed this year didn’t yield a single squash. However, the bulk of our plantings in the four varieties pictured above were largely unaffected. Organic growers often talk about resilience. Hard squash, much like our beloved potatoes, are a crop for which heirloom varieties can actually add to our resilience in an unpredictable climate, and all have interesting stories as well.

Two of the varieties above—candy roaster and Seminole pumpkins—are very old “landraces,” a German term for cultivars saved for their survivability in a given place. As a farmer or community of farmers saves seed over generations, selecting the seeds each year of the strongest plants, they build a very broad genetic bank within each seed. This super-diverse reserve creates plantings in which many plants will be more or less resistant to a wide variety of challenges they might face. You’ll rarely see 100% success, but most years will see very solid performances across a field. (Contrast this with other crops that have very specific and common diseases best addressed with single-gene resistances, like zucchini with powdery mildew or bell peppers with anthracnose). We can borrow from this broad resistance when we adapt old landraces to new areas that share climatic challenges. The southern Appalachian candy roaster is resistant to powdery mildew and black rot. Meanwhile, the Seminole pumpkin comes from the Seminole Indian nation, which formed as various tribes from across the South moved into swampy central Florida to resist further displacement by colonial whites in the 18th century. It is one of the only squash naturally resistant to downy mildew, and it can keep up to a year at room temp.

Butternut and delicata are both much newer to the scene. Surprisingly the ubiquitous butternut is only from 1944, when a Charles Leggett of Stow, Mass. hybridized more conveniently-sized neck pumpkins with gigantic and delicious Hubbard squash. The stabilized result from his nearest USDA field station is therefore a distinctly post-war squash, selected for (small) size and superb flavor for an increasingly nuclear, urban family consumer.

Delicata squash, on the other hand, was once a widespread Native landrace with unclear origins, but it fell out of favor as powdery mildew became more widespread in the 20th century. It wasn’t until 2002 that Cornell University successfully bred mildew resistance into this ancient and unique variety and turned it into a household name.

Wherever they’re from, try one today in a squash soup like this curried variant! (But our favorite is candy roaster.)

winter season

Have you been wondering how much time you have left to experiment with our myriad variety of salad greens, squash, and potatoes? Well, great news, our CSA (now and for a long time coming, featuring apples!) is still year-round! Our winter season will officially begin the week after Thanksgiving. Your existing credits will roll over to the new season, but starting next week we will ask you to put a small additional deposit in your account if you plant o continue on so that we can gauge interest at our various locations. If you need to add credit to your account, you will be able to do that at that time. More details coming, for now,

Happy eating,

Bryan and Jo

A Quick Hello

Bryan's bringing in the radishes!

A Quick Hello

Hi folks! Just a quick abbreviated newsletter this weekend because we're in New York City for a wedding. Everything's coming along - still in the heat, but enjoying the sight of cooler weather crops like winter squash and radishes. If you've been planning on canning or freezing tomatoes, now is your chance because this will probably be the last week of tomatoes!  

Have a great week!

- Joanna and Bryan

Falling for Fall

A small portion of our total harvest in our even smaller packshed.

Hi, there. We're nearing the finish line! That last little heat wave was brutal, but today at least, I'm taking it as a gentle reminder to enjoy the cooler temps and appreciate what Fall has to offer. (Or maybe that it'd be pretty nice to move to Nova Scotia).

We didn't let the heat slow us down though, harvesting over 2500 lbs of potatoes (with a little more still to go), keeping up on the last summer harvests, planting 1000 strawberry plants, and seeding an acre of cover crops for next summer's squash, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. In space previously occupied by potatoes, carrots, and greens we seeded a blend of oats, winter peas, daikon radish, and crimson clover.

Crimson clover flowers in bloom.

The oats and peas will help smother weeds, while building organic matter, and the peas will fix nitrogen from the air into the soil. The daikon radishes will punch holes down through compacted soil and soak up some of the available nutrients over winter. All three will die in the winter cold and begin to break down and release their nutrients in early spring, at which point the crimson clover will add about 150 lbs of nitrogen into the soil and explode with flowers for our insects before we till the ground and plant our veggies. All told, the four species will add five to ten thousand pounds of dry "straw" to feed the soil through next season. It's actually a little crazy to think we're preparing for tomatoes before we're even quite finished with this year's crop, but I guess a farmer's work is never done. And with a little assistance from us, the possibilities of our farm ecosystems are never exhausted either.

In the spirit of that inter-season cooperation, this is also a special time of year to relish the new tastes of fall, while the last fruits of summer still linger. You may have already seen and enjoyed our kale, kohlrabi, delicata squash and chard, and this week we add to that round and French radishes and a few new varieties of potatoes. Next week we should have arugula and salad greens, bok choi, and a more full assortment of winter squash (as soon as we can pull them out of the field!). On the other hand, this will be the last week for watermelon, beans, and cucumbers. Peaches and tomatoes will not be farm behind. It's a special but short-lived time of year, so savor it and eat up!

Peruvian landrace potatoes very widely in shape and color, but possess excellent disease and pest resistance thanks to their broad genetic diversity.

What we're eating

Chicken and potatoes... OK, so this isn't a specific recipe, but have you ever cooked potatoes in chicken drippings? It's pretty simple, but is a great way to step up your potato game. Simply follow your favorite roast chicken recipe (sure it's a bit on the nose, but a Peruivan inspired like this would be perfect), preferably one with a higher roasting temp around 375-425. Toss your potatoes in olive oil, salt, pepper, and a bit of whatever you rubbed the chicken with. Then roast the chicken elevated on a rack above your potato pan. Simple as that. Creamy fingerling potatoes like these Peruvian heirlooms are particularly suited to the method.

Shaved Kohlrabi Salad Question number two: have you ever shaved a kohlrabi? I highly recommend it. There are basically two sorts of kohlrabi. If you're familiar with kohlrabi at all, it's probably the 4-6 inch bulbs meant to store the winter through (more on those this winter). Like dense white cabbages, they are best enjoyed with a heavier treatment. Fresh kohlrabi like the baseball-sized white ones we have now are much sweeter and are actually quite a treat raw. This Bon App recipe is a great example of how it's done. And if you don't love the kohlrabi, hey, at least there's lots of mint, tahini and nuts!

Happy eating,

Bryan and Joanna

Cooling Off?

Can you spot Paco in the tall grass? He's excited about potatoes.

Cooling Off?

The evening temperatures sure are dropping! We've been sleeping with a comforter and enjoying it thoroughly! That might just be because we're so tired though...we're still hustling really hard every day to get all of our summer crops harvested and to keep our fall crops happy! It's all good though, because we're at peak delicious food season with the bounty of summer crops plus the return of some of our cooler weather faves like Swiss chard. Soon it will be my favorite time of year - spaghetti squash + tomato season!! We're also gearing up for next year, planting double the amount of strawberries we had last year and soon getting our garlic in the ground. We're thinking ahead and getting excited! 

Speaking of thinking ahead, stay tuned for announcements about our 2018-2019 winter CSA shares. We should have more details and sign ups ready to go next week!

We spent most of this week looking at potatoes. These are all off to a good home now, with plenty left to last through the winter!

What We're Eating

Pasta with Swiss Chard and White Beans

It's simple, it's delicious, and we love it. Hooray for the return of bitter flavors to compliment the sweet and sour of tomatoes!

Adapted from Love and Lemons

• 6 oz pasta, of a long and skinny shape ideally
• 1T olive oil
• 1 bunch Swiss chard, stems diced, leaves coarsely chopped
• 1t balsamic vinegar
• 1 large tomato or 1 pint cherry tomatoes, chopped into bite sized pieces
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• ½ cup cooked white beans, drained and rinsed
• shaved pecorino cheese
• ¼ cup pine nuts, optional
• salt & pepper

Instructions

1. In a large pot of salted boiling water, cook pasta until al dente.
2. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, heat oil over medium heat. Add chard stems and a pinch of salt. Give them a stir, then add the chard leaves and gently toss until they begin to wilt. Add the balsamic, tomatoes, garlic, white beans, freshly ground pepper, and toss. Once the chard is cooked down, add pasta and remove from heat. Serve with shaved pecorino cheese and pine nuts on top

Grilled Pepper and Torn Mozzarella Panzanella

From smitten kitchen

• 4 1-inch slices bread, country-style
• 3 large red bell peppers, halved, seeds removed. Throw in a in a hot pepper if you're a fan of spice!
• 1 medium red onion, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch wedges
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoons capers, drained (rinsed if salted)
• 4 ounces mozzarella, torn into bite-sized pieces, or 4 ounces bocconcini
• Fresh herbs — snipped chives, basil, or parsley or a mix thereof — to finish (optional)

Prepare vegetables: Place bread, pepper halves, and onion wedges in a large bowl and drizzle with 3 tablespoons olive oil, then sprinkle 1 teaspoon kosher salt and many grinds (or about 1/4 teaspoon) black pepper. Use your hands to toss everything together until oil coats everything.

To grill: Heat your grill to medium-high, or if yours is small and dinky like mine, high heat. Spread peppers and onions across grill grates and grill, lid down, flipping as needed, until onions are charred in spots (they’ll be done first) and peppers are blistered and blackened in many spots and beginning to soften. Transfer onions to a plate as they’re done; transfer peppers to a bowl. Use bread in bowl to swipe up any excess salt, pepper, and/or oil in it and place slices on grill. Grill until toasted on both sides. Transfer to plate with onions.

No grill? You can do all of the above under your broiler, or in your oven at 450 degrees F. Broilers vary wildly in how robust their heat is, so keep an eye on it. Vegetables tend to take longer in the oven, up to 40 minutes, but check in at 20 to be safe. In both cases, turn vegetables and bread as needed to get an even color.

Marinate peppers: Place foil or a lid over peppers in bowl to trap heat. Once they’re cool enough to handle, remove as much of the skin as you can. This is unquestionably the most annoying part so do only as much as would bother you to have to eat. (For me, this is almost every speck but you’re probably less crazy.) Cut peppers into 1/2- to 1-inch wide strips.

In the bottom of a large bowl, whisk together sherry vinegar, remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil, sugar, about 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt (and more to taste), and garlic. Add capers. Add peppers to bowl and let them marinate for as little as 5 minutes or up to a day, even. The longer they souse, the more pickled they’ll taste. After 5 minutes, however, they still have plenty of flavor.

To assemble and serve: Shortly before you’re ready to eat the salad, add onions to the bowl with the peppers. Tear bread into chunks and add to bowl, along with mozzarella. Mix gently, making sure the dressing coats the bread. Taste and add more seasoning if needed. Finish with herbs and serve in big heaps.

Bring us your boxes!

Please remember to return your box from the previous week when you pick up your share! Many thanks!

Have a great week!

Joanna and Bryan

Turning Over One More Leaf

Sunflowers between our fields and the road

Turning Over One More Leaf

We're doing lots of out with the old, in with the new this week. This is a crucial time of year to get our fall, and soon to be winter, plants in the ground so that we continue to have food to sell deep into the winter. At the same time, we have to keep harvesting tomatoes and other crops until we're blue in the face! Some of the things we did this week we're doing for the last time of 2018, like building beds for baby salad greens. It's nice thinking about finishing something at a time that still feels so busy. There's also still so much yummy stuff to eat right now though, so we're enjoying the bounty, resting where we can, and having fun farming in between.

Organic farming in action! A tomato horn worm (nasty pest) about to be eaten by these parasitic wasp larvae once they hatch ON IT! 

What We're Eating

RFF's Spicy Tomato Soup

This is a recipe I liked to showcase when I worked at Red Fire Farm in Massachusetts. I was the on-farm cook and I got to travel to all of our CSA pick up locations and do cooking demos. It was so fun! Here's a recipe I remembered this week because a CSA member put it on her blog. It's delicious and perfect for hot weather.

Serves 4, makes about 3 quarts of soup

• 4-6 lb Heirloom tomatoes (pretty with orange tomatoes like Sungolds, but works with any heirloom)
• 1 onion, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 jalapeno peppers, minced
• 1 large sweet pepper, chopped
• 2T soy sauce
• 3T lime juice
• 2T olive oil
• 1 cup chopped cilantro
• 1/4 cup chopped basil
• 1 can coconut milk
• 2T curry powder
• dash of cumin, salt and pepper

Combine everything in your food processor until you get it to the consistency that suits your fancy. Serve slightly chilled. Enjoy!

Sea Scallop Ceviche

We treated ourselves to scallops last night - it was scrumptious! Here's a recipe close to what we did from the New York Times. 

Thanks everyone, have a great week!

- Joanna and Bryan

Sweat and Joy

Rosie gets wet each morning in the tall grass

Sweat and Joy

We are feeling the humidity this week! After each day it looks like we went swimming. Rosie looks similarly, although that's due to dew. We're in peak tomato time, which we alternately refer to as Tomato Heaven and Tomato Hell, depending on the day. Since Bryan is primarily a one man show here at the farm (I work off farm 4 days/week,) it's tough for him to split his time between harvesting and everything else. These tomatoes wait for no man, and thankfully we had an awesome extra helper to bring them in on Friday. We have bulk specials on tomatoes this week, so get yours and put them up for winter! Besides harvesting, we're mowing down old crops and seeding lots of yummy things for fall like carrots, radishes, and beets. We're happy that it's still summer, and we're happy that the remaining things we have to do this season have an end in sight.

My favorite sunflower, Teddy Bear. All of my favorite flowers have a dense petal pack.

What We're Eating

Roma Beans with Miso Butter

A delish recipe shared by a lovely CSA member! We love all of these flavors!

Adapted from Bon Appetit

• ¼ cup (½ stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

• 2 Tbsp. white miso

• ½ jalapeno pepper, finely grated

• 1 ½" piece ginger, peeled, finely grated

• 12 oz. Roma beans

• 2 tsp. extra-virgin olive oil

• Lime wedges and toasted sesame seeds (for serving)

Stir butter, miso, chile, and ginger in a small bowl until smooth.

Heat a large skillet, preferably cast iron, over medium-high. Toss beans with oil in a medium bowl, then add to skillet. Cook, tossing occasionally, until charred in spots and crisp-tender, about 4 minutes.

Spread miso butter on a platter. Arrange beans over. Top with sesame seeds, then squeeze lime wedges over.

Blistered Shishito Peppers

Another delicious summer treat! Great as an appetizer or as a side dish. Here's a great recipe for this simple delight. 

P.S. We have watermelon this week check it out!!

Have a wonderful week! 

- Joanna and Bryan