In the share this week:
1.33 lb tomatoes
2 green zucchini
1 bag rainbow carrots
1 lb yellow onions
1 bunch cilantro
1 head lettuce
2 bell or sweet peppers
Thoughts from Farmer Anna:
We were able to get quite a bit of bed prep and fall planting done during our CSA break last week. So far we've planted carrots, sugar snap peas, napa cabbage, beets, swiss chard, radicchio, and green onions. This week we'll continue with kohlrabi, rutabaga, fennel, watermelon radishes, and some of the fall greens like spicy salad and red russian kale. The fall planting window is not as forgiving as springtime. Since the day length is slowly diminishing, we have to make sure to get all of our plantings in before it's too late and they won't have enough time to mature before it gets too cold and dark. This nice part is that we'll be able to continue harvesting from some of our long term plantings (like peppers and tomatoes) as well as give storage items like onions and garlic in our fall shares. We'll finish up with most of our plantings for the year by mid-September, with just a few things like overwintered hoophouse greens and onions to plant after that.
Our family also took time for a weekend trip to lake cumberland, which we all really enjoyed. It's always hard to leave the farm even for a day in the summer because it feels like the work starts to pile up in your absence. It is always worth taking a step away though, to force ourselves to relax just a bit and not feel like we need to be constantly productive. The early part of this week has been a bit hectic, getting back to more harvesting along with back to school preparations for the kids (they go back on Wednesday). Hopefully we have mostly gotten what we need together and all three of them will have a great day tomorrow! It's hard to believe, but we have an 8th, 4th and 3rd grader this year. They've had a full and fun summer and at least 2 out of 3 are excited to be headed back to school :)
I'm excited because we have the elusive pairing of cilantro and tomatoes in this week's share! We were able to get cilantro started about 5 weeks ago during a few cooler days and it's looking absolutely perfect this week. I think you should make up some fresh salsa with your tomatoes, onions and cilantro. You could also add in some sweet or bell pepper too. This fresh salsa is delicious without any hot pepper, but you could grab some jalapenos or poblano from the online store if you want the extra heat:
Well we had a really good rainbow carrot year in 2022, but it's looking like 2023 is a bit disappointing. I'm thinking that the dry weather in May and June didn't help these carrots to be their best. Colored carrots are never quite as uniform and nice as the orange ones- they are just a bit more wild. The yellow and purple carrots faired best, so you'll see at least some of those in your bag this week. Since they are less than perfectly beautiful, I was thinking that they'd be great for shredding along with some zucchini and cooking into fritters like this recipe:
https://www.reneeskitchenadventures.com/2020/08/carrot-zucchini-fritters.html
We are happy to be able to give a head of lettuce to everyone this week. Lettuce is tough to have at this time of year. We plant a lot of it every week in order to have it right now, but a lot of what we plant (30-50%) doesn't end up being harvestable due to leaf burn, or bolting just a bit too soon, or other weird things happening with their leaves. The summer crisp lettuce is always the most resistant to bolting so that's one reason we love it so much. It's an awesome lettuce for sandwiches - so maybe this is the week for a classic BLT!
Hope you all have a great week!