In the share this week:
1 bunch carrots
1.5 lbs mixed tomatoes
1 lb green beans
1 lb yellow onions
1 small garlic
1 bunch sweet basil
1 lb cucumber
1 red bell pepper
1 poblano pepper
Thoughts from Farmer Anna:
The sweet peppers are starting to come on this week! The red bells look as good as they ever have and these first ones off the plants are quite large! I love the sweet peppers. We mostly saute them with onions and eat them on all manner of tacos, but they are also excellent in many soups, or just great raw with hummus or ranch. I was thinking about telling you to make some tacos this week and wondered if anyone had ever thought about using carrot as taco filling. Well turns out that plenty of people have thought about it and there were a number of recipes out there. Here's one that looked particularly interesting if you'd like to give it a try!
We are picking two different types of green beans this week - a standard round bean, and a flatter longer roma-style bean. I really love both of these beans. We make a comfort food meal of green beans, potatoes and ham that is a family favorite we can break out this time of year. If you want to have the beans as a side dish, you could fancy them up just a bit by adding some of your tomatoes and garlic too!
We put in a second planting of sweet basil this year and it's been so beautiful these past couple of weeks. I can't remember if I've already said this in newsletters, but to keep your basil fresh, it's best to trim the stems and keep it in water on your countertop. I also process basil with olive oil to freeze for adding to soups or making pesto.
On the farm, we are starting to turn beds over in earnest for our many fall plantings. This week we are planting beets, rutabaga, cabbage, kale, radicchio and green onions. The fall seedings and plantings have to be much more timely than our spring plantings. If you don't get something planted by a certain date, it may not have enough day length left in the season to fully ripen up. We seeded four beds of fall carrots last Wednesday and I just saw the first few sprouts coming up this afternoon. Cross your fingers that they come up nicely for us! If they do, we'll be busy weeding them later next week.
Have a good week all!