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In the share this week: 2 lbs mixed slicer tomatoes 1 bunch sweet basil 2 sweet red or orange peppers 1 medium head garlic 1 lb roma beans 1 red leaf lettuce Thoughts from Farmer Anna: I'm feeling thankful for the rain here lately. It's been just a tad wetter than ideal, but even though we got an inch and a half of rain on Saturday we were able to do quite a lot of be prep work today - 14 beds worth! I seeded two of the beds into rutabaga, salad turnips and radishes, and the other beds will soon be transplanted and seeded into fall crops. We have so many transplants in the greenhouse that will be going out into the field over the next few weeks. Kale, napa cabbage, purple cabbage, kohlrabi, chard, green onions, beets, fennel, lettuce, and radicchio. We'll also be direct seeding quick greens like arugula and baby kale and herbs like cilantro and dill. These crops will start to make up parts of your shares in September and continuing on to the end of the season in mid-November. While we've been doing little bits of bed prep in the past 6 weeks or so (for weekly lettuces, more beans and zucchini), it feels great to turn over so much of the farm to fresh crops. This time of year many things are dying back, getting overpowered by insect or fungal pressure. You can feel the shift toward fall at the beginning of August. We'll still have plenty of hot weather in the next month or two, but the light is shifting, the noise of the insects in the evening reminds me of cooler nights when we'd open windows to sleep in the weeks leading up to the start of school. You're in for a very classic summery share this week. Double tomatoes, the first of the wonderful sweet peppers, roma (or romano) beans, garlic, basil and lettuce. I don't think you'll have any trouble using this share. If you aren't familiar with the roma beans, they are a long flat pod green bean originally from Italy. I really love the flavor of these beans and I also love that they are easier to pick and prepare because they are a bit larger than standard green beans. Maria's recipe for toasted garlic romano beans sounds absolutely wonderful! There seems to be a bit of an italian theme for the share this week as the long sweet frying peppers also hail from Italy. I really love sweet peppers. We eat them raw with hummus, saute them with onions, add them to soups and sauces, thinly slice them for pizza topping, etc, etc. So tasty! We grew these red italian peppers last year and I decided to add an orange sister variety to the mix this year. The orange variety is not producing quite as much yet, so some of you will receive two red peppers and some will receive one of each. We also have some sweet red and yellow bell peppers that are turning, so some of you might get those this week. I am looking forward to a bit of a break next week so we can recharge for the second half of our CSA season. The nice part is that we've already done much more than half of the work for the season. Once we get past mid-September we will mostly be harvesting and cleaning up for the season - very little planting and weeding to be done at that point :) I hope you all are doing well and have a great couple of weeks! Recipes from Maria: Toasted Garlic Romano Beans Ingredients 1 pound Romano beans 1/2 cup grape tomatoes halved 2 cloves garlic minced 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley 1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano 3 tablespoons extra virgin cold pressed olive oil 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt crushed 1 teaspoon fresh cracked black pepper Instructions Wash beans and tomatoes. Pre- heat oven to 350° F. Toss grape tomatoes with 1 tablespoon olive oil, a pinch of salt and pepper and a whole clove of garlic. Spread on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for about 10 minutes, remove and set aside. While tomatoes are cooking, bring a large pot of water to boil and toss in green beans. Cook for about 2-4 minutes then take beans out and submerge in an ice bath to stop the cooking. In a large skillet put 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil and garlic till toasted a bit. Toss in green beans and tomatoes, rosemary, parsley,and oregano. Mix lightly but evenly coating all the vegetables about 2 minutes. Finish with a dash of cracked coarse sea salt and black pepper. And a finishing touch, drizzle 1/2 tablespoon olive oil. Serve immediately. Simple Ratatouille Ingredients 1 large eggplant (aubergine) 1 large zucchini 3 tomatoes 1 bell pepper 1 onion, finely chopped 3 garlic cloves minced 1 tbsp oil 1/4 cup red wine or vegetable broth 1 tsp paprika 1 tsp brown sugar or any other sweetener 3/4 tsp sea salt (or less/more to taste) 1/2 tsp dried oregano 1/3 tsp smoked paprika 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (or less if you don't like it too spicy) 1/4 tsp ground ginger 1 tbsp tomato paste 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar  Fresh thyme chopped roughly (to taste)  Black pepper to taste Instructions Chop all veggies (eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, bell pepper) into 1-inch (3 cm) pieces. Finely chop onion and garlic. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat, add onion and sauté for about 4-5 minutes or until lightly browned. Add garlic and eggplant and cook for 3-4 minutes, then add the red wine and all spices. Let simmer on low-medium heat for a further 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add all remaining ingredients (except tomato paste and balsamic vinegar) and cook for about 10 minutes or until the veggies are soft (but not mushy). If you prefer more sauce, add more red wine or broth. Finally, add the tomato paste (you can add more than 1 tbsp if you want a thicker sauce) and the balsamic vinegar. Taste and adjust seasoning. Enjoy! This easy Ratatouille recipe can be served with bread or rice.

In the share this week: 1 lb mixed slicer tomatoes 1 pint saladette or cherry tomatoes 1 lb red onions 1 lb green beans 1 head summer crisp or red leaf lettuce 4 pickling cucumbers or 2 slicer cucumbers 1 bag rainbow carrots Thoughts from Farmer Anna: My thoughts have been distracted away from farm concerns lately as we ponder over school decisions for our kids this fall. This is such a difficult situation for so many families and there are really no 'good' options. Our kids attend the local public school and this was to be the only year that all three of them would be at the same elementary school together. We haven't made our final decision on schooling, but are leaning toward keeping them all home and doing the virtual at-your-own pace option that is being offered by the Kenton County School District. Even thought I work from home here on the farm and am somewhat flexible, I worry about trying to balance my farm responsibilities with supporting the kids' schooling and social needs (not to mention the mental health needs of the entire family!). It is going to be a unique year for sure, and we will what we can to make the best of it. If you have school-aged kids and are struggling with these issues, I wanted to let you know that I created a facebook group for families that are looking to find other families with similar aged children to share some childcare and schooling responsibilites. It's called 'NKY School Pandemic Pods' and you can find it via this link here: ( www.facebook.com/groups/218489272707470/) . Please feel free to share the group among others who may be interested. We are hoping to get critical mass so that we can help families find some workable solutions! Alrighty, on to some veggie things. We are deep into harvesting lots of summer crops. I can hardly believe it's the end of July already! We have more rainbow carrots this week, although they are unbunched since the tops are starting to get weak and diseased. Late July is definitely the time when we see the pest and disease pressure really start to creep up on the farm. We have figured out some ways to keep certain pests at bay (early scouting and squishing along with row cover on some crops to exclude pests), but the fungal diseases of late summer can be harder to control. In some ways, this are looking really good since we've had a fairly dry summer so far. The humidity never really seems to drop though, and that creates nice conditions for fungal spores. Anyway, I've come to terms with the seasonal disease pressure now that I know what and when to expect it. The nice thing about growing a diverse array of crops is that something will always be growing and doing well despite the weather conditions!

In the share this week: 1 bunch rainbow carrots 1 bunch badger flame beets 1 lb sweet onions 1 lb slicer tomatoes 1 head summer crisp lettuce 1 lb green beans 1 pint peppers (banana, jalapeno, poblano or padron) Thoughts from Farmer Anna: We are in the heart of summer and it certainly feels like it as we sweat through our days here. We are continuing to seed our fall transplants and water all the crops a few times each week. It's looking hopeful for a bit of rain this week - fingers crossed we'll get a decent amount soon. Our primary soil working machine, the two-wheeled tractor, is in the shop this week getting some repairs to the PTO engaging system. We love that we are able to run our farm without big equipment and we are incredibly lucky that we have the best two-wheeled tractor dealer in the country just over an hour away in Owenton. The folks at Earth Tools are always so helpful whenever we need to troubleshoot a tractor problem and they have most of the parts for these machines in stock so that we can typically get back to work pretty quickly. While mechanics aren't my strong suit, I've learned quite a lot over the years of taking care of this little tractor. I'm also really lucky that our apprentice Cole does have mechanical experience and he's really been invaluable in keeping the equipment running smoothly. We have some new and fun items in your share this week: the rainbow carrots pictured above and a new variety of golden beet called badger flame. The carrots bunches include orange, yellow, red and purple with orange core carrots. They are really fun to eat raw with dip or in a salad such as the one Maria has for us below. You can definitely cook them too, but the colors tend to fade a bit with cooking, especially the purple. The badger flame beets were developed by a plant breeder at the University of Wisconsin in the department that Steve got his Masters degree. These beets are lower in the geosmin compound that makes beets taste really earthy (interesting side note: geosmin is the same compound that is released by certain bacteria when it first starts to rain, giving off that special rain smell). We just started harvesting them today, so I haven't tasted them yet - we'll have to be guinea pigs together :) I will say that these beets are somewhat crazy shaped. They are supposed to be cylindrical beets, but because we grew them from transplants and it's been really dry, they aren't all perfect cylinders. If you are a beet lover, let me know what you think of this variety. Also, if you don't typically like beets because of their earthiness, give these a try and see what you think. This will be the last of the sweet onions this week, but we'll have some more awesome red onions coming your way next week, and we're about to pull and dry our yellow storage onions so those will be up after that. Oh and shallots too! Lots of onion love. We have some really solid green beans for everyone this week and it looks like our roma beans might be on the following week. I'm excited about the peppers for this week too. We have a number of different specialty peppers growing this year, so each share day is getting a different type - sweet banana, jalapeno and poblano are peppers that most of you will have heard of previously. The padron peppers might be new for some - they are a spanish pepper that is often grilled or broiled to blister them ( https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/blistered-padron-peppers-51149050 ) and served as an appetizer. They are very similar to the Japanese shishito peppers that we've grown in past years. Most aren't so hot, but a small percentage are quite spicy. So it's a bit of russian roulette when you eat them. Poblano peppers have a reliably mild heat and jalapenos are decently spicy. We don't grow anything hotter than a jalapeno, because in our experience, those are hot enough for most people :) Recipes from Maria: Kale, Carrot and Beet Salad Ingredients 2 beets julienned (food processor or spiralizer) 2 carrots julienne (food processor or spiralizer) 1 cup kale shredded (food processor) Vinaigrette 2 tbsps apple cider vinegar 2 tbsps dijon mustard 1 tbsp olive oil 2 tsps raw honey sea salt and pepper to taste Optional 1/2 cup slivered almonds Instructions Add the vinaigrette ingredients into a mason jar, shake until mixed. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Mix until evenly coated. Notes The longer this recipe “marinates” the better.  Cover the bowl and refrigerate for a few hours before serving, if possible. If you wish the vinaigrette to be a little sweeter add extra honey. Easy Stuffed Poblanos Ingredients 4 poblano peppers 2 c chicken shredded 1 can diced tomatoes 14.5 oz. 1 can black beans 15 oz. 1/3 c cilantro chopped (plus more for topping) 1 c corn kernels 2 c rice (already cooked) 1 tsp garlic powder 1 tsp chili powder 1 tsp cumin 1/2 tsp pepper 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper salt to taste 1 jalapeno or padron pepper (small diced and seeds removed) 1 c shredded monterey jack cheese Instructions Preheat oven to 400°F. In a medium bowl, combine chicken, rice, beans, corn, tomatoes, jalapeno or padron, cilantro, and spices. Stir to combine. (I drain the tomatoes almost all the way but leave a small amount of liquid in them which helps keep this mixture the right consistency.) Cut each poblano pepper in half and remove seeds and membrane. Line them on a parchment lined baking sheet. Spoon equal amounts of the chicken mixture into each pepper. Bake for 15 minutes. Top each pepper with cheese and bake for an other 5 minutes or until cheese is melted. I like to broil mine for a couple minutes as well after the cheese melts for a touch of crispiness but this is not necessary. Allow to cool for several minutes and then sprinkle with more cilantro and serve