15th Week of the Summer CSA: September 7-10
This Week’s Availability
This week we will have leeks, celery, spaghetti squash, cantalope*, watermelon, canary melon, purple kohlrabi, red beets, Ailsa Craig sweet onions, shallots, carrot bunches, garlic, red cabbage, red and yellow potatoes, sweet peppers, jalapeno peppers, garlic scapes, green curly kale, lacinato kale, pea shoots, arugula, baby bok choi, brussels crowns**, basil, parsley, heirloom tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, grape tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, roma tomatoes, green tomatoes***, tomatillos, and husk cherries!
*If you received a cantalope that was lacking in flavor, let us know. During harvest we discovered that there seemed to be an off-type seed among the cantalope that we seeded and transplanted out this year, and about 10% of the plants are some variety that just don’t have the taste we expect.
**What are brussels crowns? In the beggining of September we remove the tender growing tip of brussels sprout plants to force the energy of the plant into producing nice, large brussels sprouts instead of continued vertical stalk growth. We find these tops to be a delicious, brussels sprout flavored cooking green that we use the way you would use kale or collards. A favorite in our house is shredded and sauteed into mac and cheese, or just sauteed with garlic and olive oil as a side dish. They will probably only be availble for a couple weeks!
*** Green tomatoes are such a short seasonal treat! There are probably lots of fun ideas on the internet for green toamtoes. My favorites are making a green tomato relish, green tomato salsa, and fried green tomatoes. This week’s recipe below is for fried green toamtoes.
Bulk vegetables available for processing
When we have bulk amounts available with veggies, we like to pass along our wholesale prices to CSA members in case you want to do some processing. Now is the time! Below are the current wholesale prices for certain veggies. If you are interested in getting a bulk amount of anything, send us an email. Thanks! (We aren’t sure how much longer we will have the bulk amount of tomatoes available, as a heads up.)
Roma tomatoes: $28 for 10 pounds, $50 for 20 pounds
Heirloom Tomatoes: $28 for 10 pounds, $50 for 20 pounds
Beefsteak Tomatoes: $28 for 10 pounds, $50 for 20 pounds
Green Tomatoes: $20 for 10 pounds, $33 for 20 pounds
Parsley: $20 for 10 bunches, $36 for 20 bunches
Onions: $20 for 10 pounds, $35 for 20 pounds
Green Curly Kale: $14 for 5 bunches, $24 for 10 bunches
Lacinato Kale: $14 for 5 bunches, $24 for 10 bunches
Garlic: $12 per pound
Jalapenos: $6 per pound, $25 for 5 pounds
Want to know what we do to preserve these items?
For the freezer: Tomato basil soup, chimichurri, kale (chopped up, lightly sauteed with olive oil, to use in omelettes, stews, pastas in the winter), parsley pesto, and garlic scape pesto. (We use garlic scapes in place of garlic in all our pestos… much faster to process than peeling garlic!)
For the pantry: Tomato sauces, salsas, fermented hot sauce (which we put in the fridge after it ferments.)
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Farm News
Busy week: Lots of clipping of cured onions, shallots, and garlic; seeding many, many winter greens to transplant into the tunnels; starting the removal of some tunnel beds from summer crops to get the beds ready for winter crops (already?! wild!); weekly harvesting; direct seeding for outdoor fall greens; vaccum seeling many, many pounds of tomatoes for winter CSA items; and general farm minutea. So for this week’s news, enjoy a photo tour of the farm!
Have a great week!
-ESF Team: Kara, Ryan, Molly, Morgan, Grace, Cindy, Taylor, Katie