In Your Share This Week

Crop Notes

Carrot Mix: We were getting towards the end of our inventory from our earlier harvest and our next planting isn’t quite ready, so we thought we would just blend them all together to create a fun carrot mix. The mix is predominately yellow and white carrots with a little bit of orange. The yellow carrot is a variety called ‘Jaune de Doubs’ (we call them JDD for short) that I think really shines at its best when cooked. I find them to be pretty firm and less sweet when raw- but when you cook them the color intensifies to a deeper golden/orange with a great texture that holds up to slow-cooking. I’ve always hated mushy carrots in my soup, but the JDD’s hold their texture and don’t turn to mush…wooohooo! As for the white carrots, I think they are consistently the sweetest carrots we grow and I would definitely recommend enjoying those raw!

Corn: Its the peak of corn season at SIO! We have just finished up harvesting everything from our last planting, and the next planting is hot on its heels- so expect a helping of corn in the share next week as well. So far we haven’t seen tons of corn borers, but don’t be alarmed if you find a green caterpillar-looking creature hangin’ around at the tip of the ear when you shuck your corn. Also its late summer, which means…CORN BORERS!!! Now we know that peeling back the husk to find a caterpillar munching on your corn isn’t the most sought-after thrill, but its an unavoidable fact of late summer Organic corn. This pest was much of the impetus for biotech companies to genetically modify corn- the result was Bt Corn. Bt (aka Bacillus thuringiensis) is a bacteria that occurs naturally in soil and is an Organically acceptable insecticide product that is available for Organic farmers to use against insects like corn borers. Monsanto found away to engineer Bt directly into the corn, so the plants produce their own Bt that destroy corn borer larva. Long story short, if you find corn borers in your corn…you know its not genetically modified! And as always, we grow all of our crops without insecticidal, fungicidal, or herbicidal sprays (we do however enlist armies of mail-order ladybugs to help us out from time to time).

Eggplant: This week some folks will get Japanese eggplant, and other will see Italian bell types.

Kohlrabi or Sweet Peppers: We have just enough of each of these crops to patch together the week for everybody- so folks who pick up on Tuesday will get Kohlrabi and Thursday folks will get Sweet Peppers. The hope is that next week we will flip-flop it and do Peppers for Tuesday/Kohlrabi for Thursday. More about peppers next week, but we like to grow a few varieties that are conical in shape rather than bell-shaped. These red and gold varieties are real winners!

Onions, Tropea: Its the end of Tropea season, we’ve pretty much used them up! Say farewell to the lovely little Tropea onions, next we will begin featuring our red and yellow storage onions in the CSA…

Tomatoes: By the looks of the plants as well as the weather forecast, my prediction is this will probably be the last valiant push from the tomato field before it starts to sputter out. I would imagine we can do some red slicers in the share for another week or two…then the fast and furious tomato season of 2016 will be over already. It seems like we just started!

In Your Share This Week

• Beets
• Cilantro
• Fennel
• Jalapeno Peppers
• Kale
• Lettuce
• Onions
• Potatoes
• Tomatoes

Crop Notes

Every summer we try and do a salsa week, and here it is! We time a cilantro seeding with when the jalapenos and tomatoes generally peak so you can have a right proper pico de gallo, just add some lime and salt. We also try and feature corn together with the salsa week, but alas, it isn’t quite ready yet…its still needs several more days before its truly at its peak- so you can look forward to a helping of corn next week.

Beets, Chioggia: These pretty pink Italian heirloom beets are even more amazing when you slice them open! The inner rings alternate between a vibrant pink and white. I also think the Chioggia beets have a slightly more mild and light flavor than regular red beets. Its thought that this variety dates back to at least the early 1800’s, and arrived in America by the end of the century.

Cilantro: We like to harvest and distribute our cilantro with the roots still attached. Normally you find the roots have been removed in the grocery store, which is a bummer because 1) they are edible 2) they are delicious and 3) they help the cilantro plant store for longer in your refrigerator. You can do one of two things here- you can either wrap the cilantro in a bag and keep it in the fridge, or place it in a jar of water on the counter top like a bouquet. If it goes into the fridge, make sure its damp but not wet. If you put wet cilantro in a bag, it magically turns into blackened slime in no time.

Potatoes, RedGold: We had a roller coaster of reactions as we harvested the last of our RedGold potatoes. We thought they looked great as new potatoes, but then when we dug up more of the tubers a few weeks ago, they were in very, very poor condition- scab, early blight, late blight, and just about every other malady out there. We were really bummed and thought the rest of the RedGold crop was going to be a total loss (we still have to dig the tubers out of the ground one way or another, otherwise they become a nasty, nasty weed- pretty much rendering a field unusable), but when we dug the remnants we were delighted to see that they were in pretty decent shape! This is likely the last time you will see RedGold for the season, next we will move on to Yukon Golds. Note: these RedGolds have some amount of scab (it looks like little specs of black/brown soil, and doesn’t seem to want to come off). Its OK to eat, but if you prefer, you can either peel the potato, or scrub it under a little running water with a brush.

Around the Farm

This week (today, in fact) marked the very last greenhouse seeding for the season! Its hard to believe that we’re already thinking about this, but the days are getting shorter and the sunlight less intense. This obviously slows the growth rate of the plants and puts on a more extended timeline than earlier in the season. The general rule of thumb is that most growth stops by October 31. By that point in time, there is too few hours of light to promote plant growth…add in our cool maritime temperatures and notorious overcast grey skies and you have a recipe for plant growth to come to a grinding halt. Its a very tricky game to time the seeding of various crops correctly for overwintering production- you don’t want the plants going into winter too large or too small, and you can also expect higher culls and losses as well. But we think winter production and storage crops are a critical part of helping to sustain our local food system and keep us all eating local, all year long!

In Your Share This Week

• Basil
• Carrots
• Celery
• Cucumbers
• Eggplant, Japanese
• Lettuce
• Summer Squash
• Tomatoes

Crop Notes

Celery: Aside from very seasonal crops like cucumbers, eggplant, tomatoes, or summer squash, we generally don’t put the same item in the share back-to-back. We decided to go ahead and do celery twice in a row for a few very practical reasons (in addition to the fact that celery just tastes really great!)- one is that we were noticing a blight starting to show up in the celery field. Once we see the onset of blight, its a mad-dash to harvest the good stuff as quickly as possible because it spreads like wildfire and very quickly renders the celery unusable. In addition, the celery was smack-dab in the center of a field that we are presently turning over into winter greens…so it needed to go soon anyhow, the blight just sped up our harvest timeline. I have also noticed in the past that when I have done storage trials on celery with various levels of blight, it does not hold as well and the leaves begin to yellow and the outer stems become pithy over a timeline of about two weeks. We harvested the most prime looking celery, but its possible that the above storage issues may still arise so make sure to eat it up before then!

Eggplant: We grow primarily two types of eggplant- the long, slender Japanese type that you’ve seen in the shares, and Italian bell-type (what you commonly find in the grocery store). The bell-types always take a few more weeks to reach maturity than the Japanese eggplant- but they are just now starting to ripen, so some folks might start to see the bell eggplants in the share. Enjoy!

Summer Squash: Its the end of the line for squash…the plants are old, tired, and done producing fruit for the season. So long, and thanks for all the squash!

Tomatoes, Heirloom: We proudly grow 17 different heirloom varieties! I generally group them by color…we have an exciting rainbow that includes green, red, yellow, orange, white, pink, purple, and striped. Some are rather experimental and grown in smaller quantities, and other tried-and-true favorites like Brandywine and Cherokee Purple take up more real estate. It seems to be an endless debate on whether or not you should refrigerate your tomatoes…but I say NEVER! Keep them on your counter top and check periodically for excessive softening, cracks, or other blemishes. In this heat they won’t keep as long on the counter top, but I still prefer that over the fridge. Heirlooms go from prime to overdone rather quickly in comparison to the red slicing varieties…which will sit and wait for you rather patiently without any loss in flavor or texture. The slicers don’t care as much, but do store the heirlooms upside down on the counter. The reason being that the underside (bottom) of the fruit tends to be the most delicate part- and it isn’t designed to support its own weight whilst sitting on a flat surface. As such, the bottom will essentially implode under its own weight and you are left with a tomato that appears to be sinking into the counter top. And then the fruit flies show up…no fun. So set them upside down, and the slightly tougher top and shoulders will support the weight. We also pick our tomatoes ever so slightly before they hit their prime moment- that way they will peak once they get to you. If we pick them at the exact peak of ripeness, its only a matter of a few days (we’re talking like 48 hours here) before they are cracked, soft, or otherwise sad. So…we hope we nailed the timing on the tomatoes, we want them to be the very best shortly after you take them home.

Around the farm

Row covers: We use a product widely known as remay pretty extensively around the farm. Its a spun polyester fabric that’s super lightweight and lets around 70% of sunlight through. Since we don’t use any sprays of any type here at SIO, we have to try and keep pests away by other means- which can be done with crop rotations, encouraging beneficial insects that will help ward off the ones you don’t want with things like insectary plantings, hedgerows, and companion planting, and also by physically excluding them with row covers. Whenever we transplant or direct seed a brassica crop on the farm, it immediately gets covered with remay in order to keep flea beetles away- a particularly voracious and annoying pest in the hot summer months. We also use it to cover squash and cucumbers when they’re young to keep cucumber beetles out, which devour young tender plants very rapidly, but do less harm once the plants are more established. Carrots also benefit from row covering to keep rust fly out.

In addition to keeping pests out, the Reemay also helps keep moisture and warmth in- making it a great tool for season extension. In the cooler parts of the growing season the Reemay is also used like a giant blanket that helps to insulate the crops and protect them from cold nights.

Once we pull the Reemay over the beds, we pin the edges down with old potting soil bags filled with a few scoops of dirt to weigh it down. Here on the island we seem to always have at least a light breeze (more wind in general than in the city), so we have to make sure we really have it secured well otherwise it all blows off and all our efforts were for naught.

We are really excited this year to have been a part of a large special order of a similar product thats made out of metallic netting rather than polyester…its like a really, really big sheet of screen door mesh..like 360’x25′ large! The advantages of this product are that unlike Reemay which traps in the heat (NOT what you want in the heat of summer when its already plenty hot), it lets air flow much more freely and doesn’t bake the crops. We used it to cover our kales that we are growing for overwintering production, and when we peeled it back the kales looked great!

1. Future Joi Choi heads! Look for these in the share sometime around Week 17…
2. Reemay over our salad mix beds. In order to keep the small tender greens looking as pretty as possible for salad mix, we keep them under cover until harvest. We peel back the Reemay, harvest what’s needed, and then re-cover the field in order to keep the flea beetles out. Without this, the salad greens would be perforated and mangled in no time!
3. several successions of fall carrots underneath Reemay to help keep the carrot fly away. These will end up in the CSA shares later this season as well as the Winter Share. We have orange, purple, white, and yellow carrots.
4. Insect netting over the top of little tiny radish seedlings. These are ‘storage’ radishes like Black Spanish and Watermelon that are meant to thrive for long periods of time in storage and provide a fresh juicy crunch all winter long.
5. The fabulous insect netting supported by galvanized hoops, which hold the netting up so the Joi Choi below doesn’t have to support it’s full weight. Many crops like squash, kale, and carrots don’t mind the weight of row covers, but Joi Choi is very picky about it and becomes misshapen and weird if the row cover is draped directly on it.
6.  Older carrots under the Reemay. The Reemay is lightweight and bubbles up as the crop grows. We can irrigate right over the top of the Reemay and the water will pass through.

In Your Share This Week

• Celery
• Corn
• Cucumbers
• Eggplant, Japanese
• Lettuce
• Onions
• Summer Squash
• Tomatoes

Crop Notes

Corn, Spring Treat: We have adopted a variety that has been bred specifically to thrive in cooler spring temperatures (which corn does not like). I know it seems odd to be talking about spring temperatures in reference to your August corn…but this was seeded in our greenhouse the first week of May, and went out into the fields about a week and a half later. Yes, talk of transplanting corn is quite the faux pas depending who you ask- but we find that it gives us a more even and healthy stand of corn, which most importantly allows us to run our cultivation equipment through it aggressively and often. Keepin’ that corn weed-free as possible is the key. This variety produces smaller sized ears that are a soft yellow, but the flavor is amazing. We pick our corn first thing in the morning to keep it cool and make sure all the sugars stay intact. We also strive to pick the corn at its peak- we go through each planting every few days and pick only the winners, which also ensures you get a sugary sweet, juicy ear of corn rather than a starchy, chewy bummer. Even if you like corn on the cob or boiled corn…try at least a few bites of this corn RAW before you cook it! I love raw sweetcorn so much that I always feel like its a bit of a shame to cook it…and this is one of those farm-fresh crops that you can really taste the difference from what you will find at the grocery store. Keep your corn in the fridge until you’re ready to enjoy it.

Onions, Tropea: You all have seen Tropea onions in the share several times so far, but starting this week they are being harvested and treated as a ‘storage’ or ‘cured’ onion rather than a fresh onion- which means they can live on your counter or in the pantry rather than in the refrigerator. Although Tropeas are not bred with the intention of storing for long periods of time (a yellow onion can do 6-9 months under proper storage conditions), they will store for a few months (2-3) once cured. Now that the onions have matured in the fields, the outer skins are becoming papery and the tops are dying and falling down. When we see this happening we begin to pull the entire plants out of the ground (roots, bulbs, tops, and all) and bring them into our greenhouse to cure. The tops continue to dry, the outer skins tighten, and the necks dry up and seal shut. We can then trim the tops off and continue to store and distribute them unrefrigerated. I always look forward to the point in the season when what was once the bustling greenhouse full of transplants transitions into a curing house for the summer. In addition to pulling tarps over the greenhouse to create cool, shady conditions for the onions to cure, we clean and blow out all the overhead irrigation lines, remove the emitters and stash them away until next year, and shut down the water for the season. Although onion harvest is always a huge project, the transition of the greenhouse is a simple yet symbolic change that signals the goodbye to spring and summer transplanting and the onset of late summer. Its a lot like cresting the peak of a huge rollercoaster…so much slow uphill climbing and anticipation, and now we’re slowly rolling over the top and getting ready for the big exciting downhill!

Squash: Whew our squash field has been smashing yield projections these past few weeks! We do thank you for supporting local farms and eating whats ripe and abundant- which has meant plenty of squash. Thats part of the joy of eating local- generally about the time you run out of ideas and inspiration on how to prepare a certain crop, its done for the season. We predict that squash will start to slow down, and want to say thank you for giving lots of our squash a home! We grew a new golden variety of zucchini this year, and while we like the way it looks, tastes, and yields…we have noticed that it has been struggling in storage whilst it’s green and striped counterparts look great. Apologies if you have watched your golden zucchini go bad quickly- its not you, its the squash!

Tomatoes: Another farm-fresh crop thats so delectable when its at its peak. We intentionally planted our tomato crop late this season, knowing that the long-term forecast was for a cool and wet spring. Tomatoes do not thrive with too much moisture or low night temperatures- they definitely prefer t-shirt weather. Although we have been fortunate and are keeping our fingers crossed for a blight-free year, all the wild temperature swings and random rains don’t typically add up to happy tomatoes. At any rate, we have the very first wave of fruit ripening in our tomato field, and the plants are looking healthy and happy. I am going to be totally real with you…tomatoes taste the best later in the summer, long after we have cut the plants off from water and plenty of good, sustained heat spurs the plants to produce fully ripened, sweet and complex tasting fruit. The first tomatoes of the year are certainly the most exciting (because, hey…tomatoes!!!) but they generally don’t have the fullness of flavor that late summer tomatoes do. And whats up with the constant temperature swings from 70’s/80’s up to 90-something and then back down again???

Around the Farm in Photos

1. Our eggplant and peppers with Tithonia flowers as beneficial companion plants. In the background we have several different types of drying corn that we will feature at our winter market and in the winter CSA.
2. Future head lettuce for the CSA share and restaurants
3. Empty beds which will be sown with winter radishes. Another cover crop of Sudan Grass in the background.
4. A very happy winter squash field interspersed with beneficial flowers. The vines are beginning to yellow as the fruit ripens…it will be ready for harvest not very long from now!
5. Remember getting dill in your share? We let the rest that we didn’t use go to flower as an insectary bed.
6. Tropea onions curing in the greenhouse.
7. Future sweet peppers!
8. Empty beds awaiting fall crops with some joi choi in the background under cover (more about what the covering is and does for us next week)
9. Our tomato field has a grown a lot since the last time we photographed it! The plants are laden with green fruit…
10. This is where your corn came from!
11. What will be part of our overwintering kales in front of some cucumbers that are approaching their golden years. Two very different seasons right next door to each other. 
12. Our high tunnels have thick, healthy stands of summer buckwheat cover crops to help provide organic matter for the soil and to suppress summer weeds before being tilled in to make way for winter salad greens.
13. A very lush stand of Sudan Grass as a cover crop. It will get over 6′ tall!

Recipes from the Archives

Katherine is taking a week off and we are bringing back some of our favorite recipes from seasons past. We thought we would focus on Summer Squash and Cucumbers just in case you were running out of ideas! Celery and corn inspiration also included.

Summer Squash Recipes:

Zucchini and Corn Fritters (panfried)
Raw Summer Squash Salad with Toasted Almonds and or Basil
Summer Squash “Butter” with Herbs
Rigatoni with Pesto and Browned Zucchini
Summer Squash with Lentils, Parsley and Bacon

Cucumber Recipes:

Cucumber, Watermelon, Tropea Onion Salad with Feta and Black Olives
Cucumber Salad with Peanuts and Sesame
Schmorgurken (German Braised Cucumbers)
Spiced Red Lentils with Cucumber Yogurt
Cucumber Salad with Smashed Garlic and Ginger

Celery Recipes: Celery and Chickpea Salad

Corn Recipe: Caramelized Corn with Fresh Mint

Zucchini and Corn Fritters (panfried)

Addictive!

Yields about 14 – 16 4-inch fritters

1&1/2 lbs zucchini or any summer squash
2-3 ears of corn
3 tablespoons finely diced Torpedo onions
2 eggs
1/3 cup cold water
1/3 cup flour (of any kind)
Salt and Pepper
¼ teaspoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons oregano, parsley or basil, chopped (optional)
Olive oil for frying

Grate the zucchini/squash on the large holes of a grater onto a clean kitchen towel.  Sprinkle with some salt and let it rest while you gather and prep the remaining ingredients.

Wrap the zucchini in the towel and wring as much liquid out of it as possible, discarding the liquid.

Cook the ears of corn in boiling water for just a minute or two. Cut the kernels off the cob. If you do this in a large bowl the kernels will be pretty much contained and not fly all over the kitchen.

In a medium bowl whisk the eggs with the water and flour and then add the drained zucchini, onion, corn, cumin and freshly ground pepper. Add herbs if you’re using any. Mix well and taste and adjust seasoning.

Add a scant tablespoon of oil to a large skillet.  Place the pan over medium-high heat.  Spoon about 2 tablespoons (about a ¼ cup) of batter into the pan. Depending on the size of your pan you should be able to fry about 3-5 at once.  Flatten them a bit with the back of a spatula and cook until the fritters are golden brown on each side, 4 to 6 minutes.

Raw Summer Squash Salad with Toasted Almonds and or Basil

I am not generally a fan of raw zucchini or summer squash but this salad I like. The toasted almonds are key to the success, offering a nice crunchy contrast to the soft vegetables.

3 small or 2 medium zucchini or other summer squash (use the smallest, densest ones you have)
2 tablespoons, finely chopped Tropea onion
1/3 cup chopped toasted almonds
2 tablespoons chopped basil
Juice of 1 lemon (might need a little less so start with ½ a lemon)
Good olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Trim the squash and depending on what shape/kind they are, you have various options of cutting them. You can use a vegetable peeler which takes some time but gives you lovely, thin ribbons. Or if you have a box grater with a single slicing blade on one side you can use that or you can just use a sharp knife and cut them as thinly as you can by hand.

Put the thinly sliced squash in a colander and toss with a little salt. Let sit for 15 minutes. Gently squeeze out any liquid you can but don’t try too hard or you’ll break down the pieces. Put the squash in a bowl and loosen it up a bit. Add all the remaining ingredients and toss well and taste and adjust seasoning with more lemon juice, salt and/or olive oil.

Summer Squash “Butter” with Herbs

Whenever you have a lot of squash this is the prefect thing to do. Grated, it cooks down quickly, turning into a sweet and savory side dish or spread. Spread it on toast in place of actual butter or add a thick layer in a sandwich with  tomatoes and/or soft cheese. You can use it as a pizza topping or a pasta sauce too.

Serves 4 as a side, 2 as more of main with an egg or a hearty salad, etc.

About 4-5 medium zucchini or any kind of summer squash (feel free to use less or add extra — cooking times will vary)
1/4 cup olive oil or butter (I prefer butter in this one)
½ a medium onion, minced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano, mint, basil or parsley
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Squeeze of lemon juice or drizzle of vinegar

Coarsely grate the squash on the large holes of a box grater. Squash is really the easiest thing to grate so it won’t take much time at all. If you feel like it you can sprinkle the pile of grated squash with a little salt and let it sit while you sauté the onions. Even in just a couple of minutes it will release a bit of liquid. Before adding the grated squash to the pan you can then squeeze handfuls of the squash over a sink to release some extra liquid which will speed up the cooking a bit. But don’t worry if you don’t–it will be just fine.

In a deep skillet, heat the olive oil/butter. Sauté the onion for about 3 minutes on medium heat. Add the squash and a few generous pinches of salt and toss and cook and stir over medium to medium-high heat until the squash is nice and soft and almost spreadable, about 15 minutes. If you scorch the bottom, turn the burner down a bit but don’t worry about the browned areas. They will add flavor and be sure to scrape them up and reincorporate. Just before the end of the cooking time add the herbs and incorporate well. Cook another minute or two, taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper and a little lemon juice—you don’t need much but just a little brightens it up nicely.

Rigatoni with Pesto and Browned Zucchini

I like a high vegetable to pasta ratio so use about 3/4 lb of pasta here but by all means make the full pound and cook more squash or vary the ratio. You could also toss use rice or another grain instead of pasta or just dress the browned zucchini with the pesto for a rich side dish.

3/4 lb rigatoni or penne or fusilli pasta
4 medium zucchini or other summers squash, halved lengthwise and sliced into thin half moons
Olive oil
Sea salt
1/2 cup pesto (see below)
Grated Parmesan

Saute squash in some olive oil in a heavy skillet until browned and tender.

Cook pasta in salted boiling water until al dente. Scoop out and reserve 1/3 cup, or more, hot cooking water right before you drain the pasta.

Put the pesto in a serving dish and thin with about 2-3 tablespoons pasta cooking water. Toss in the pasta and sautéed squash. Mix well, taste and adjust seasoning and serve with grated Parmesan.

Pesto

I used to be a purist about pesto and I’m not anymore. I use almonds, walnuts or hazelnuts since I rarely have pine nuts. I use aged, Asiago Stella (an aged Asiago available at Pastaworks and City Market) because it’s much cheaper than Parmesan and still very good. I also use the food processor. And you can scale this up or down very easily. It keeps well in the fridge, topped off with a thin layer of good olive oil, for about a week.

And you can put it on so many things—use it as a sandwich spread; stir it into deviled eggs or a frittata thin it out for a salad dressing . . . . A classic Genovese dish is pasta, boiled potatoes (diced small and cooked right with the pasta) and sauced with pesto. Remember to save a little bit of hot, starchy pasta cooking water to thin the pesto just a bit before tossing with the pasta. You can easily thin too much so start with just a couple of tablespoons of cooking water.

3-4 cups basil leaves, loosely packed
2 smallish cloves of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
1/4 cup almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts or pine nuts
About 2 ounces of Parmesan or aged Asiago (Asiago Stella available at Pastaworks/City Market)
1/3 cup of good-tasting extra virgin olive oil (or more)
Salt and freshly ground pepper

If you have a mortar and pestle, a strong arm and some time, by all means make the pesto by hand. I almost always now make it in a food processor and it’s very good that way too.

Put the nuts and cheese in the processor and pulse until finely ground. Add the basil, garlic and salt and process until well chopped. Then slowly add the oil. Don’t over process. Adjust for salt and oil. Then store in the fridge until ready to use.

Summer Squash with Lentils, Parsley and Bacon

This is so good! Lentils get overlooked a bit in the summer but I especially love salads with small green lentils in the summer. You can make them ahead of time and then have a robust, room temperature dish for whenever you need it.

1 cup small French green lentils or other small lentils that keep their shape when cooked
Splash of olive oil
1 Onion, diced
4 cups summer squash, cut into small chunks –for zucchini I quarter them lengthwise and then cut them into 1/3-inch chunks (more or less depending on how much you need/want to use)
4 slices bacon, diced
2 ½ tablespoons sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar or a combination (or more to taste)
2 small-ish garlic cloves, crushed and then minced
3 (or more) tablespoons good olive oil
Sea salt and pepper (to taste)
¼ cup chopped parsley

Cook the lentils until tender, about 15-20 minutes (this will vary depending on the kind of lentil you have). You want them to be tender but keep their shape so check frequently.

Drain them and immediately toss them with the vinegar, garlic and olive oil. Set aside.

In the largest skillet you have, heat a splash of olive oil over high heat and add the bacon and onion and sauté for 5-7 minutes, stirring frequently. You want the onion softened and bacon rendered but not crisp. Remove the onions and bacon from skillet and add to lentils.

Add another splash of olive oil and the summer squash and a few generous pinches of salt. Cook the squash over high heat for about 7-8 minutes until browned and beginning to soften.

Add the warm squash to the lentils along with the chopped parsley and the additional olive oil. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and/or vinegar.

Cucumber, Watermelon, Tropea Onion Salad with Feta and Black Olives
–Slightly adapted from Racheleats.com

Sweet, salty, cool, crunchy and full of herbs. This is just a powerfully fun combination.

Serves 4-6

1/3 cup thinly sliced mild red Tropea onion
2-3 tablespoons just barely chopped parsley leaves
About 12 mint leaves, torn a bit
1/4 cup black olives, pitted and cut in half
1 lb watermelon, peeled, deseeded and cut into bite-sized cubes
1 medium cucumber, peeled if skin is tough/chewy, and diced (if the cucumber is quite seedy remove the seeds–this will also prevent the salad from getting too watery)
4 ounces feta, cut in medium cubes or crumbled
3 tablespoons good olive oil
Lime or lemon juice to taste
Freshly ground black pepper
Sea salt (go easy with the salt because of the olive and feta)

Put the watermelon, cucumber, feta, parsley, mint, onion and black olives into a shallow bowl or on a platter. Drizzle with the olive oil, lime juice and some pepper and just a touch of salt. Toss the salad gently so that the feta and melon don’t lose their shape. Taste, and add more lemon or lime juice, olive oil or pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

Cucumber Salad with Peanuts and Sesame

This slightly unusual combination of ingredients and flavors is crunchy, cool, sweet/tart and rather addictive.

Serves 2-3

1 large cucumber, halved, seeds removed and thinly sliced or diced
1 jalapeno pepper, minced (Remove the seeds for a milder salad.)
1 clove garlic, finely minced
½ teaspoon fresh ginger, grated or finely minced
1 lime, zest and juice
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
½ teaspoon fish sauce
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon toasted black sesame seeds (regular are just fine—the black ones look great but the flavor is very similar)
2 tablespoons salted and roasted peanuts, roughly chopped
1/3 cup roasted, flaked coconut (optional)
Fresh basil, chopped

Place the cucumber slices or dice and hot pepper in a large bowl and toss to mix. In a small bowl whisk together the garlic, ginger, lime zest and juice, rice vinegar, fish sauce, sesame oil, and honey. Drizzle the vinaigrette over the cucumbers and toss until thoroughly mixed. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to allow the flavors to deepen. Before serving add the sesame seeds, toasted coconut (if using) peanuts, and herbs and toss again. Taste and adjust seasoning and serve.

Schmorgurken (German Braised Cucumbers)

I include this favorite of mine again this year, unusual as it is to cook cucumbers here in the US. There are many variations of this dish in Germany and I grew up with this simple, sweet and sour vegetarian one. Often ground beef or small meat balls are added to the mix and sometimes also tomato. The quantities are squishy for this recipe, confirmed by my mother when I called her about the recipe. Just scale up or down to taste and depending on what you have.

Serves 4

Olive oil
2 large or 3 medium cucumbers, peeled and cut in half lengthwise and seeds removed with a teaspoon
½ cup sour cream
1 tablespoon white wine or cider vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
Salt and lots of freshly ground pepper
2-3 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
Cooked rice for serving

Put your rice on to cook—we grew up eating this over long grain white rice but you could by all means use brown as well.

Cut the halved cucumbers into ½-inch half-rounds. In a large, heavy skillet sauté the cucumber slices in a bit of olive oil over medium to medium-high heat, stirring frequently. They will release quite a bit of liquid, which is great. It will add to the sauce. When they are translucent and softening (about 10 minutes) add the sour cream, vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper. Simmer for about 5 minutes more until the cucumbers are completely tender and the sauce has thickened a little. Add the dill, taste and adjust for salt and pepper and serve hot over rice.

Spiced Red Lentils with Cucumber Yogurt

–adapted from Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi

Yes, two lentil recipes this week. This may seem like a cool-weather dish but I made a red lentil curry last week with the rest of my homemade green curry paste (from last week’s recipe packet) and loved it in this heat. We ate it barely warm with a generous dollop of cool cucumber yogurt topping and it was delish.

1 cup red lentils
1 small bunch cilantro (stems and roots and all if possible)
½ or ¼ (if it’s a huge one) Walla Walla, roughly chopped
2 1/2 inches ginger
3 cloves garlic
1 mild-ish green chili (like serrano or jalapeno), seeds removed
1½ tsp black mustard seeds
4 tbsp sunflower oil
1½ tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp ground turmeric
1 ¾ cups tomatoes, peeled and chopped
Salt

¾ cup Greek yogurt
1 cup finely diced cucumber
1½ tbsp olive oil

3 tablespoons butter
1½ tbsp lime juice
Reserved chopped cilantro leaves

Cut the cilantro bunch somewhere around the center to get a leafy top half and a stem/root bottom half. If you don’t have a bunch with roots just use all the stems for this part. Roughly chop the leaves. Put the stem half in the bowl of a food processor (reserve the leafy half), add the onion, ginger, garlic and chilli – all roughly broken – and pulse a few times to chop up without turning into a paste.

Put the mustard seeds in a heavy-based pot and place over medium heat. When they begin to pop, add the onion/cilantro mix and sunflower oil, stir and cook on low heat for 10 minutes. Add the spices and continue cooking and stirring for five minutes longer. Now add the lentils and 1 ½ cups water, the tomatoes and a couple of pinches of salt. Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes, until the lentils are fully cooked.

Before serving, whisk together the yogurt, cucumber, oil and some salt. Stir into the lentils the butter, lime juice and chopped cilantro, taste and season generously with salt. Divide into bowls, spoon yogurt on top. You can serve this over rice if you’d like or enjoy as is.

Cucumber Salad with Smashed Garlic and Ginger

Another salad inspired by Yotam Ottlenghi and his wonderful book Plenty.

This salad is fresh, nutty and delicious and good with most anything this time of year. It needs a little marinating time so start the dressing right away if you have other things to prepare.

If you don’t have a mortar and pestle chop the garlic and ginger as finely as you can and then mash it a bit with some salt on your cutting board with the side of a chef’s knife.

3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons olive oil or sunflower oil
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
½ cup of onion, very thinly sliced
1 ½ inches fresh ginger, peeled and chopped (see headnote)
2 large garlic cloves, peeled, and chopped
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 large or 3 medium cucumbers, washed
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
3 tablespoons chopped cilantro

In a medium bowl, whisk together the rice vinegar and sugar until the sugar is mostly dissolved. Whisk in the oils. Add the sliced onion, and toss to coat. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and for as long as 4 hours.

Now either mash the ginger with some salt in a mortar and pestle until it breaks down a bit and then add the garlic and mash a bit more until it’s a rough paste or put the ginger, salt and garlic on a cutting board and smash with the side of a chef’s knife until well-smashed. Scrape the contents from the board or mortar into the bowl with the onion and dressing. Stir to combine.

Slice the cucumbers in half lengthwise, place them cut-side down on the cutting board, and slice at an angle into ¼ inch slices. Add the cucumber, sesame seeds, and cilantro to the bowl and stir to combine. Let sit ten minutes, then pour off some of the liquid that has accumulated. Stir, season again with salt if desired, and serve.

Celery and Chickpea Salad

Heidi Swanson, the author of the incomparable 101cookbooks blog, comes up with the loveliest combinations. I love her cooking philosophy and her intuition around flavors and textures.  This is, in true Heidi style, simple, a bit surprising and delicious–not to mention a nutritious dish. You can skip the Parmesan and add a few more nuts and raisins to make it vegan.

Serves 4-6

8 celery stalks, any strings removed (I just made this with the celery from the share and didn’t remove any strings), cut into thin slices (1/4-inch or so)
1 jalapeno, minced (seeds and membranes removed if you don’t want much heat)
3 tablespoons good olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice, more to taste
4 tablespoons grated Parmesan (see headnote for alternative)
1 1/2 cups cooked garbanzo beans, heated (home-cooked is best if you have them)
3 tablespoons golden raisins
1/2 cup chopped almonds, toasted until nice and dark
Salt
½ cup chopped cilantro or parsley or a combination
1/2 cup celery leaves, chopped

Mix together the olive oil, lemon juice, and Parmesan in a small bowl. In a large bowl toss the heated beans with the olive-Parmesan mixture. When well combined, add the celery, raisins, herbs and almonds. Mix again and taste and adjust seasoning, if needed. This salad does not hold very well. It loses its crunch and brightness. You can prep everything ahead of time but dress and toss it right before serving.

Caramelized Corn with Fresh Mint

-inspired by Julia Moskin

This theoretically serves 2 but of course scale up as you like. I eat this whole dish by myself with ease.

Kernels from 3 or 4 ears of corn (or more—this is so good you’ll eat as much as you make I guarantee)
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons minced fresh mint
Salt

Melt the butter in a large skillet over high heat. Add the corn and cook, stirring often, until golden and browned. This will take about 10 minutes. Stir in the mint and sprinkle with salt. Serve immediately.

In Your Share This Week

• Basil
• Cabbage, red
• Carrots
• Chard
• Cucumbers
• Fennel
• Summer Squash

• Green Bell Peppers
• Japanese Eggplant
• Red Slicer Tomatoes

The flavors in the share this week finally taste like true summer! We have lots of hot weather crops that are just beginning to ripen around the farm- various types of eggplant, corn successions, our red slicing tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes not too far behind, and nice looking pepper plants with sweet and hot varieties.

Crop Rotations: Sometimes we offer certain items ‘on rotation’. What this means is that not every pick up site will receive the item this week, and that some folks might get it the following week instead. In the end, we ensure that all members will have received the same grand total of each item. This week is a great example: we have Japanese Eggplant, Tomatoes, and Green Bell Peppers ready…but all in insufficient quantities to give everybody. As such, you will see one of the three in your share this week, with more to come next week. We do our best to try and offer a very similar share across the entire week, and match it up well with Katherine’s recipes…but plants are just flat out hard to predict sometimes. I was very excited for a robust eggplant harvest this week, but the weather took a tun for cooler temps and the plants all came to a grinding halt…c’est la vie!

Crop Notes

Basil: Bigger and better than ever! We decided to try a new trick…rather than the painful hours spent pinching little tips off basil plants (trust me, this adds up fast when you’re trying to get a decent amount for several hundred CSA members), we thought hey- why don’t we just cut the whole plant down and put it in the share? WIN! The pack house smelled amazing today as we packed out all the shares with those big ol’ basil plants in every box. You could either keep these in a vase of water on your countertop (the best), make pesto right away (second best), or store in a bag in the fridge after patting dry (least awesome). Basil will *tolerate* your home refrigerator, but not very well. It likes to be stored at around 50 degrees, not the near-freezing temps of a refrigerator. Over the course of a few days you will see the basil turn from a vibrant green to black and slimy. Its not because its not fresh, its because its too cold!

Cucumbers: This week we will start rotating some specialty cucumbers through the share! Folks will see Suyo Long, which is an absolute favorite of mine, as well as some lemon cucumbers. With both types, the skin has more spines than one might be familiar with on regular cucumbers. No worries, just wipe it down under some cool running water before you use them. I would also say that both have thinner skins than a standard green cucumber, so will be more prone to wilting in your refrigerator. Store in a plastic bag (dry, not washed) to prevent them from becoming wilted and rubbery.

Fennel: The fennel was growing faster than we could harvest this past two weeks! We valiantly tried to harvest the vast mountain of fennel that was all clamoring to be harvested at the same time…but some of it slipped a little past the moment when we would normally cut it. What you’ll see is that the bulb might have a more elongated and pointy shape- but it still tastes great! Just make sure you cut the core out when you prepare it. This might actually be a great thing if you want to try my very favorite way to have fennel- which is seared nice and good on the BBQ. Cut the bulb into quarters (the long core up the center will help hold the whole thing together on the grill) and rub with a pretty fearless amount of olive oil and salt. Sometimes I add lemon juice and minced garlic to the rub, or dress it with that at the end. Either way, grill it over a hot flame on all sides, letting it turn a nice caramelized brown all over. It’ll be super tender and savory at the end…yum!

Around the Farm

We’ve talked about some of the practices and techniques that we think make SIO special and also result in great tasting food bursting with vitality and homegrown goodness- things like our special soils, field management, fertility and cover cropping, etc. One of the other reasons we are so proud of our food has to do with the varieties we grow. Selecting crop varieties is something akin to curating a gallery collection; a living, evolving, edible gallery! We are always searching for new and exciting varieties…looking for all sorts of traits; disease resistance, color, texture, cold or heat tolerance, storage capabilities, and of course…flavor! We have our tried-and-true favorites that we rely on, but always love to tinker and dabble around with fun new things.

Our local seed companies are true heroes- working hard to preserve and improve the genetic banks that we rely upon. We love buying locally adapted seed whenever possible for a couple of reasons; we like to keep our money local and support our friends, and also we can really tell the difference between crops that have been hand selected and stewarded for success in our bioregion and with similar production techniques over other stock. Some of our favorite Cascadian seed growers that we love include Adaptive Seeds, Wild Garden Seed, and Uprising Seeds. All the care and love that went into breeding the varieties they offer shines through in our fields and all the way to the table. Biodiversity is so important to the health of the farm- small rotating plantings of a wide array of crops and plant families helps us to combat pests and disease naturally while protecting the health of the soil, but it goes one step further. We do our very best to set the stage for successful planting with field prep, timing, care, and cultivation, but within each planting we also rely upon a strong and diverse gene pool to provide us with robust plants that are able to thrive amidst all the craziness that mother nature throws their way. Definitely check out these seed companies- they offer unique items that you’ll never find anywhere else in addition to some good ol’ favorites.

All this talk of varieties piqued my curiosity…how many crops do we grow? Over 60 individual crop types. If you count each variety, we are up to around 250, and that doesn’t count blends/mixes that we plant for things like salad mix! A gross estimate of the number of plants on the farm (which is impossible to count exactly due to things that are direct seeded rather than transplanted) puts us at about 3 million!!! I have a personal affinity for nerding-out on tomato, winter squash, kale, and melon varieties…so we have unusually high concentrations of varietal diversity in those categories- with almost 30 types of winter squash (I could write a lengthy novel about each one), 24 types of tomatoes, and 13 types of kale. Some things like the kale and squash are heavily tilted towards winter production…so if you want a peek into the amazing and wondrous world of kale and winter squash diversity you should definitely consider signing up for a Winter CSA Share with us!!!

Next week we’ll take a tour of the greenhouse (its getting to be the last chance, since most of it is being converted for the season into our onion-curing facility) and look at odds and ends that are going on in the fields- its an exciting mixture of high summer production, cover crop stands, and baby plants that will become our overwintering crops…

DO YOU LIKE ICE CREAM?!?!?!?!?!

What could be better than ice cream that features the best-of in local vegetables? We’re excited to be partnering with Salt and Straw to help them create CARROT CAKE BATTER AND PRALINED HAZELNUTS summer ice cream. So go get in that infamous line before its too late, and have your carrots fresh from SIO in your share this week and in some amazing ice cream too!!! Last year we partnered with them on the green fennel and maple flavor…which is back again this summer and also not to be missed!

In Your Share This Week

• Beets
• Cucumbers
• Kale
• Lettuce
• Onions
• Potatoes
• Summer Squash

Crop Notes

Onions, Tropea: These red onions are torpedo shaped and considered a fresh eating onion because they have not been cured yet. They originally hail from the ‘boot tip’ of Southern Italy along the Eastern coast. Their unique shape allows us to plant twice as many plants in the same square footage as the traditionally round shaped onions you will see in the future. They are only slightly peeled to protect the shiny inner layers from bruising.

Potatoes: These are teetering on the brink between what we would traditionally consider a ‘new potato’ and a regular potato. The skins are just under the usual toughness for a regular storage potato, so expect a minor amount of peeling and scraping that occurred during harvest. We felt like the skins were set enough to withstand a washing, so we ran them through our root washer for you this week. We love the rosy skins and yellow-ish tasty flesh of this early-season variety that was bred in Canada.

Summer Squash: We grow yellow, green, and striped varieties of summer squash and we try to mix it up so you’ll see a selection of colors over the squash season. They all cook up very similarly- but watch out with summer squash…the cold temperatures of a home refrigerator are far too low for them and can really do a number on the fruits. The tell-tale signs are sunken pock marks on the skins, larger depressions, and dull skin rather than a glossy smooth appearance. If you see these signs, the squash is still edible but it means the clock is ticking! Squash are more of a tropical plant that prefer warmer storage temperatures around 50 degrees.

Around the Farm

We are excited to have our partnership with Grand Central Bakery featured in a new video they made about sourcing ingredients from local farms. It’s a great video the represents the best of eating in season and working with local restaurants, have a watch! There’s lots of beautiful SIO footage 🙂

And speaking of videos, we are also happy to be hosting the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) for a tour and photo/video shoot for some informational materials that are being created. Our very own Field and Equipment Manager Brian Wood has been spending the afternoon speaking with them about our cover cropping, field management strategies, greenhouses, hedgerows, and more! The NRCS has been a great resource for SIO and we greatly appreciate the relationship we have with them.

We are finally seeing the harbingers of summer begin to ripen- red slicer tomatoes, sweet corn, and eggplant, oh my!!! Look for these crops to begin showing up in the share over the next week or two. Things are definitely in full-swing with plenty of weekly harvest projects for CSA along with large block plantings of beets, carrots, potatoes, and onions are clamoring to come in from the field…PLUS the onset of eggplant and tomatoes PLUS greenhouse seeding and transplanting to keep the harvest coming into the future PLUS never-ending irrigation circuits and weeding!!! WHEW!!! Well, back to it….enjoy the share and see you next week!

In Your Share This Week

• Beans
• Carrots
• Celery
• Cucumbers
• Kale
• Onions
• Parsley
• Summer Squash

Crop Highlights

Celery: Get ready for some amazingly intense and delicious celery flavor like you’ve never tasted before! Although celery is oftentimes one of the most inexpensive vegetables in the store, is takes a lot of work and time to grow- we seeded this celery back in April. Its well worth the wait though, and Katherine has some amazing recipes to match. Make sure to use all of the celery- save the base and any excess leaves you don’t use for soups, stocks, bouillon, or toss some leaves on the bottom of a roasting pan before roasting chicken.

Cucumbers: Whew, our cucumber plants aren’t messing around, we can barely pick ’em fast enough. There is always an extra-large bounty at the beginning, then the plants tend to level off a bit. Until then, viva gazpacho and cucumber salads. If you still haven’t tried juicing cucumbers, make sure you do.

Kale, Red Ursa: You’ll notice that the leaves and stems are extra large and also extra tender this week. Thats because we are making our first harvest sweep through a new field of kale. We plant several successions throughout the season to make sure that we always have a continuous supply at the volumes we want, and as extra insurance against unexpected failures due to pests or diseases. I really enjoy the leaves from new kale because they’re so tender and need barely any cooking at all.

Onions, Wallas: The world-famous Walla Wallas are in! This variety is prized for its large size, juiciness, and sweet flavor. Its also best when eaten fresh (as opposed to cured onions with dry, paper skins like what you would purchase in the grocery store). If you’re feeling ambitious, this is definitely the week to treat yourself to some onion rings!

In Your Share This Week

• Carrots
• Chard
• Cucumbers
• Dill
• Fennel
• Lettuce
• Potatoes
• Summer Squash

This week’s share has SUMMER written all over it. Think fresh grilled veggies, cool crisp salads…maybe it’s time for a good ole fashioned BBQ! Cucumbers and squash are two of our summer mainstays here on the farm, so look out for both on a weekly basis for the next couple of months. Cucumbers and squash along with other summer crops like eggplants and tomatoes, are the farm gift that keep giving! These crops have an indeterminate growth pattern, meaning they continue to produce flowers and fruit throughout the season, so as they come on get ready to receive the bounty for weeks to come!

Crop Highlights

Cucumbers: Over the last few seasons we have transitioned to growing more and more Silver Slicer cucumbers as they have become a real farm favorite. Unlike more traditional varieties, these cucumbers have a dreamy pale white (and extra thin) skin and are praised for their more mild flavor and extra juicy texture. Cucumber salad is an obvious winner here, but they make an incredibly refreshing agua fresca. Agua fresca literally means “fresh water” in Spanish and is quite refreshing in the heat of a summer day–try juicing your cucumbers with some limes, fresh mint, and a touch of sugar over ice for a real treat.

Dill: Fresh dill, much like the parsley you received a couple of weeks ago, also makes an amazing companion to the new potatoes in this week’s share. We love adding dill to any potato salad recipe and we’re sure you will too! We harvest our dill by cutting it at the base of the plant, making nice clean bunches that need minimum washing. Wash just before you use. Store your dill bunch wrapped in a damp paper towel inside of a plastic bag to help keep it looking fresh and lovely.

New Potatoes: Just a quick note here…this week we decided to bag and send out new potatoes unwashed to make sure their delicate skins are best preserved for your enjoyment. Wash carefully at home and enjoy!

Summer Squash: This year we decided to focus our summer squash production on a few different zucchini varieties. We are growing green, striped and yellow varieties. We have found over the seasons that the zucchini varieties of summer squash are the best producers all around, and are tastier and easier to prepare than other varieties. Zucchini harvest happens twice a week to ensure that we get the fruit when it has reached absolute summer squash perfection!

Around the Farm

This week we are taking some time to tackle a few ongoing projects in the field. Our crew has swelled in numbers and we are taking advantage of the extra hands to make a large dent in our weeding list. In organic farming weeding is a fact of life–a necessary investment in order to ensure the crops we are growing are optimal in quality and production. We do create and implement a weed management plan in order to manage our weed load as efficiently as possible and reduce our overall time spent hand and hoe weeding. Some of our weed reducing tactics include knowing where our weeds are (sounds simple, but is crucial in crop planning for seasons to come), crop rotation (many weeds are adapted to growing in particular environments, rotations help keep those environments always changing), cover cropping (one of our favorite tactics for weed suppression!), stale seed beds (we let our weeds germinate and then burn them with our flame weeder), and a few others.  But “farming” happens and weeds grow, and we are passionate about getting out there and getting those pesky plants out of the ground so that we can get you the best crops possible!

Also, I wanted to talk about carrots! Those of you who have been members for multiple seasons know that we love carrots here at SIO and we are confident that you will love our carrots too!! Last season we grew over 15,000 pounds of carrots and we’re hoping to grow even more this year. Today alone our crew harvested about 1,000 pounds of carrots, both for CSA and restaurant sales. We are very excited to let you in on a little secret…the last weekend of July, Salt and Straw is releasing a special seasonal ice cream flavor featuring SIO carrots–YUMMMY!!

We like to bulk harvest carrots directly into large wooden boxes. This allows us to move around hundreds of pounds of crops at once!

Tabitha, one of our veteran farmers, uses our Wilsi (short for Wilson) or root washing machine to clean up those carrots. She can wash about 200 pounds of carrots an hour with the Wilsi!!

In Your Share This Week

• Beets
• Carrots
• Cilantro
• Kale
• Lettuce
• Onions
• Turnips

We took a break this week from recipes and blogging. We will be back to our regular schedule next week. Hope you enjoy all the veggies & let us know if you have any recipes you would like to share with the CSA community.

Broccoli: We’ve been waiting for our second wave of broccoli to ripen, and I think the more closely we watch it the more it decides to stall out. We have also noticed that the plants appear a little unhappy due to weeds and pests (we made the decision to forego one final weeding, with the thought that the broad leaves of the broccoli plants would smother out any potential weed competition that popped up, but some very vigorous weeds are proving us wrong) Nonetheless, we did find some broccoli for this week- you may or may not see it in the share next week depending on how the crowns mature over the rest of this week. Its always an adventure with farming!

Carrots: This week we have continued harvesting our first crop of carrots for the season out of our greenhouse- but now without the greens. When harvested this way, carrots can store for a very long time…not that you’d need to- these are some of the best tasting carrots I think I’ve ever tasted. Store your carrots in a plastic bag or a tupperware in the fridge to help them retain their fresh, juicy crunch. 

Joi Choi: This is farewell to Joi Choi for the season. It loves the cooler weather in the spring and beginning of summer but struggles greatly in the heat of summer, so we enjoy it while it lasts at the beginning of the season and then say farewell ’till the Fall. We generally do another round of Joi Choi in September, so look for it again then!

Scallions, Shimonita: As promised, here are the Shimonita scallions. These amazing scallions are well-known in Japan, but less common in America. They can grow to the size of a leek and have a nice, long harvest window (unlike regular scallions, which reach that peak of perfection and then sail past it in the seeming blink of an eye). Its also fascinating that the green tops are inflated tubes…when you squeeze the tops there’s definitely air in there! Read on below for some interesting information about soil life and an amazing product that we have been trialing on the farm- with fantastic results on the Shimonitas!

Around the Farm

The last few weeks have been action-packed as is typical for this time of year, but we are now sliding into the little pre-summer lull that’s a little like the eye of the storm. We made it through the hustle and bustle of early June, and now we just have maintenance work to do until the summer crops and summer activities really pick up…harvesting summer squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, and LOTS more along with weeding and larger bulk harvests of crops like beets and carrots. So now is a great moment to back up and start at the beginning of how your food arrives on your table…   

Organic farming is largely about feeding the soil rather than feeding the plants- if you have healthy soil, the healthy (and delicious) plants will follow. Well what is ‘healthy’ soil? Its a combination of good soil composition, texture, moisture, fertility, and soil life. You may have heard of good quality soils referred to as ‘loam’; that’s the sweet spot of soil composition where you have roughly 40% sand, 40% silt, and 20% clay. We certainly have some lovely silty loams that we farm, and its very important to us that we protect the wonderful treasure that is our soil. We do that by selecting implements for tiling our fields that don’t excessively compact OR entirely break apart the texture of the soil. As such, we are the proud owners of two Italian-made spading implements that we use to do the vast majority of our ’tilling’ with. Its a piece of machinery that emulates the same action and effect as ‘double-digging’ (which is the gold standard for highly motivated gardeners). The spader is in most cases a much preferable implement for tillage than the rototiller. With its circular digging motion moving at a slower rate, it preserves more structure of the soil and allows for microbial organisms to recover faster. A rototiller spins at such a high rate with blades that literally pulverize the soil. Not only does this method make the recovery time for our little soil buddies (the microbes) much longer, but if done on a breezy day, you will see your precious topsoil blow away. The rototiller does have significant strengths of its own. It is a little faster than spading, and it can break down big clods of clay in your soil. However, the “stabbing” that the spader does as it enters the earth breaks up any sort of hard pan that would prevent deep root growth and water penetration. Whereas a rotating tine of the rototiller will compact the deeper soil and create a hard pan. Here at SIO we use our spader as much as possible to steward the land as best we can, but we keep our tiller around for a secondary tillage in our fields with higher clay content.

Since we don’t rely on sprays and quick-release fertilizers to feed our crops, we are counting on the soil itself to feed the plants as well as protect them from pests and diseases. This is also a large motivation for our specialized tilling equipment- in healthy soils, the microbes and fungi actually help to feed the plants with their extended networks. A plant’s roots only reach so far, so they strike up a symbiotic relationship with the soil microbes and fungi where the plant provides space to live in and around its roots plus sugars to eat in exchange for a little help obtaining water and nutrients that are beyond its reach. Since the little microbes and fungi have an awesome food and housing arrangement with the plant, they are also invested in protecting the plant- so they help to fend off pests and diseases! This wonderful set of relationships is also why we farm Organically- to protect and nurture this process now and into the future. We try and drive our equipment over the soil as little as possible and till as little as possible to preserve the delicate and intricate structure within the soil- its a living thing! We’ll go into other techniques that play a role in this process next week, like cover cropping and crop rotations.

Lastly, we have been excited to be working with the folks from HB-101- a Japanese company that has created a liquid extract from cedar, pine, cypress, and plantain to help vitalize plants. They have been coming out to the farm each week since the beginning of the season to apply HB-101 to a selected section of Shimonitas and our storage onions. We could see a very pronounced difference in the vigor and health of the transplants that were enjoying weekly applications of the HB-101 over those that were getting none. We are also excited to try more of this product into the future- especially in the greenhouse.