In the Share: Week 11

 

In the Share: 

TROPEA ONIONS: The venerated onion from the ancestral home of Farmer Tom's family.  The Calabrese know how to grow some onions! We use the small ones when a recipe calls for a shallot. These are sweet, not storage onions, so use them up soon! 

TOMATOES: Enjoy these fruits of summer, as their harvest is slowing down. We have been topping our cooked dishes with a healthy garnish of fresh tomatoes. 

SWEET PEPPERS: There will be lots of ripe sweet peppers in your share this week. The Italian bulls horn type we grow are especially great in a fajita. http://www.fairsharefarm.com/archive/info/Newsletter/2005/v2%20I21w%20Oct%205.pdf 

KALE: Greens are back! Chop some thinly into a chiffonade https://themom100.com/2019/02/how-to-chiffonade-basil/ and toss it with some cooked potatoes, which is a great way to get your greens. 

POTATOES: A mix of Kennebec (white flesh) and German Butterball (golden). Cooking with a mix of the two adds a depth of flavor and beautiful color. 

CUCUMBER: A few more of these before they end as summer winds down. 

 ZUCCHINI/ZEPHYR SQUASH: Last week for these.  Our meal for tonight was fried rice with onions, garlic and squash zoodles, a filling dish for hungry farmers.

GARLIC CHIVE FLOWERS: Pull the white flowers and buds off of the top of the stalk and finish off your plating with a crunch. The green buds are full of fresh garlic flavor and are peaking right now. 

Farm report: 

What a nice break from the humid heat of the last few weeks! My favorite month, September, arrived in fine form with some rain and clouds for the thousands of little plants growing for fall. Last week we planted these overwintering onions next to the napa cabbage. 

We’ve always overwintered garlic, but overwintering onions is a more recent addition. Variety selection is key. If they survive the winter, they will size up early before the ones we start in the greenhouse in January have a chance. In the next month we will give them a blanket of hay mulch, but for now they are off to a good start. 

September is the month for monarchs as they fly through our fields of habitat on their way south to Mexico. The family farm has alot of milkweed of many different species:  butterfly, tall green, spider, common and even one rare purple milkweed.  The butterflies are everywhere right now flying by, mating, laying eggs on all the milkweed that they can find, and hatching caterpillars. 

If we pull a milkweed plant out of the field while weeding, honeyvine milkweed is pretty common here, we inspect it for monarch eggs. If it has an egg, we place it in our makeshift caterpillar nursery.  So far the baby monarchs are doing what all babies do best: eat, sleep and poop. But these babies also shed their skin four times, before creating a chrysalis and emerging a butterfly. Pretty cool. 

Our other nursery on the farm is going well. After the first week indoors, the new flock of laying hens  got their first chance to walk on the grass and peck for bugs.

Seems like everywhere we look there is new life, just in time for the end of summer, time to grow big and strong before winter arrives.  The saying goes that "the farmer has to be an optimist, or he wouldn't still be a farmer."  Yep, and same for the farmhers by the way!  Who knows what insanity 2021 has in store for us all, but here on the farm we are nose-down raising next year's egg-layers, planting next year's onions and helping next year's butterflies along besides.  Here's to a better tomorrow for all of the Earth's creatures!