In the share this week:
1 lb green beans
1 bunch carrots
1 lb mixed slicer tomatoes
1 lb mixed eggplant
Sweet italian peppers
1 lb yellow onions
1 medium garlic
1 banana pepper
Thoughts from Farmer Anna:
We got the kids out into the field briefly this morning to help pick some green beans before it got too hot. It's can be a lot of work to get them out there on a regular day, but luckily today we had some friends come to help, and monotonous work is always lots more fun with friends to chat with! That is really one of my favorite aspects of farm work - having the time to chat while we work with our hands. Today was a little longer harvest day with carrots and green beans back on the CSA menu, but I was lucky to be working with two awesome volunteers and we had a nice time while getting it all done. I'm just a little light on farm help for the next couple of weeks, since we lost our summer college student helper to his first 'real' job and my fall helper will start when her kids go back to school. The break from CSA shares next week will help because we'll be able to devote a lot of time to the bed prep and planting that needs to be done for our fall crops. This week we'll be seeding fall beets and a first round of radishes, and transplanting lettuce, salad mix and rutabaga. Next week we'll plant napa cabbage, green cabbage and maybe kale and turnips. We seeded fall carrots 12 days ago and they have popped up nicely with all that rain last week. The weeds have also popped up there and in lots of other places on the farm, so we'll definitely be spending some time weeding this week.
We are pumped about the awesome carrots we have for you this week! These are from our very nice third planting that came up so well we actually had to thin the seedlings out a bit to give them room to grow. For that reason, some of these are smaller carrots, but they are mostly very good quality and there weren't too many 'crazy' carrots with many legs, twists, etc. I think you'll be pleased and will probably be happy to eat these raw this week.
I know we've been giving a lot of eggplant lately, but dang the planting has produced so well this year! If you are feeling a little overwhelmed with it at the moment, maybe give freezing it a try. It's best to cook the eggplant before freezing and the instructions in this link give you all the details:
https://www.thekitchn.com/this-is-the-best-way-to-freeze-eggplant-233591
Or if you are ready to try something new, one of our volunteers this year has Greek heritage and absolutely loves eggplant. One of her favorite things to do is batter and fry it in rounds. The trick is to make sure and salt the eggplant first and allow some of the water to leach out. This improves the texture of the final product, which should be crispy on the outside and silky smooth on the inside.
Green beans are back this week and we have lots of them! The plants are much healthier than our first planting that got attacked by bean beetles too early. This next planting was under row cover until flower and it made a huge difference. The beetles are now starting to proliferate on the plants, but we'll be able to get our harvest in before they totally destroy them. We have two different types of beans - a standard round bush bean called Provider, and a flatter bean called Kentucky Wonder. Both are delicious! You could cook them up with your italian sweet peppers (so, so much more delicious than grocery bell peppers), something like this recipe:
Have a great week everyone!