Wednesday, September 25

Week 17!!!!

 If you're a fan of the water buffalo yogurt we stock at the farm stand, here's what these happy creatures look like, up there in the Fingerlakes...

 

And here are the turkeys, happily pastured in farming paradise.  If you'd like one, let me know...$4.50 a pound, need to order soon!!!

This week's share:

Beets!
Noodle beans (red or green this week)
Salad mix
chard!!!! or kale: Chard is one of the world's healthiest foods!  So don't tell me you are tired of it!!!

Radishes! or Napa cabbage or peppers (sweet and hot) or zucchini (coming up on the end of it)
Microgreens--radish, kale, cress mix
Apples!!! Fuji, Empire, Macoun, Manintosh, Gala to choose from.

At the stand: some fennel, delicata squash, those wonderful mushrooms...

Enjoy this beautiful autumn weather.

Eat well!!!

Oh, the firewood is going fast!  $250/cord, $150/half cord--delivered and dumped.  Let me know.


Wednesday, September 18

Week 16!!!

I have some if it still,
We gathered on the hill,
In an empty glass, the bunch of wild thyme,

Faded now, and dried,
But in which yet abide
Some purple, a smell of summer in its prime,

When we stopped the car
Bought honey in a jar
At a roadside stand. It makes me think about

The theft of bloom, the sting,
A swiftness on the wing,
Things that sweetness cannot be without.

A.E. Stallings



36 degrees last night, one month from our average first frost date!  Too soon, too soon, of course, but what else might be expected in the never-ending whacky weather parade.  That cool air will sweeten the greens, however, so for that we are thankful.

In this week's share:

Tomatoes...getting near the end...
peppers
chard or arugula
noodle beans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
microgreens--pea shoots, radish, kale, cress!!!
salad mix-various baby greens and some baby spinach
parsley
peaches or apples or pears

At the stand: more of those awesome mushrooms!
Red Jacket strawberry jam!!!
More concord grapes!
Last of my broccoli
Ground cherries!!!

Eat well!

Wednesday, September 11

Week 15!


“We go admiring the pure and delicate tints of fungi on the surface of the damp swamp there, following up along the north side of the brook. There are many, very beautiful lemon-yellow ones of various forms, some shaped like buttons, some becomingly scalloped on the edges, some club-shaped and hollow, of the most delicate and rare but decided tints, contrasting well with the decaying leaves around them. There are others, also, pure white, others a wholesome red, others brown, and some even a light indigo-blue above, and beneath and throughout. When colors come to be taught in the schools, as they should be, both the prism (or the rainbow) and these fungi should be used by way of illustration and if the pupil does not learn colors, he may learn fungi which is perhaps better. You almost envy the wood frogs and toads that hop amid such gems, -- some pure and bright enough for a breast pin. Out of every crevice between the dead leaves oozes some vehicle of color, the unspent wealth of the year which Nature is now casting forth as if it were to empty herself.”

Thoreau, Sept. 1, 1856

We have some shiitake mushrooms, grown by a local couple,  at the farmstand.  Wonderful, wonderful food, to be used in anything you might make.  Like all local, fresh food, the difference is remarkable.  If they can ever produce enough, I'll add some to a share some time.

In this week's share:

Tomatoes--probably 1.5 pounds;
Chard--(I've been eating a saute of chard, tomatoes, mushrooms for breakfast, lunch and dinner all week!)
Small onions (while we wait for the bigger ones to cure properly)
Peppers or collards!!!! Finally, a good crop of collards!  Braised Collards with tomatoes
Flat yellow beans or chinese red noodle beans
Salad mix--mesclun, spinach, pea shoots!!!
Garlic chives--makes an awesome, thick, smooth pesto!!!!! Use on everything!!!!!
Plums or pears or apples

At the farm stand: Concord grapes from Red Jacket Orchards!  Peaches! Butter! Our first celery root and acorn squash is coming in!  Maple Syrup!  Creamed Honey!  Buckwheat Honey!!!

Enjoy!  Eat well!  Soak up the last (?!) heat wave of the year!!!

Wednesday, September 4

Week 14


"I suppose none of us recognise the great part that is played in life by eating and drinking. The appetite is so imperious that we can stomach the least interesting viands, and pass off a dinner hour thankfully enough on bread and water; just as there are men who must read something, if it were only Bradshaw's Guide. But there is a romance about the matter after all. Probably the table has more devotees than love; and I am sure that food is much more generally entertaining than scenery. Do you give in, as Walt Whitman would say, that you are any the less immortal for that? The true materialism is to be ashamed of what we are. To detect the flavour of an olive is no less a piece of human perfection than to find beauty in the colours of the sunset."

Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

     So the tomatoes were growing so robustly earlier this summer they threatened to tear holes through the plastic on the greenhouses, and so I removed the plastic.  And lo, they continued to grow and set fruit.  And then a terrible stretch of late summer weather blew through, perfect for blight, and so blight came unbidden, and stayed.  We done seen the peak of tomatoes for the year folks--hope you liked them!  One block is unaffected so far, and a few heirlooms have not succumbed, so all is not lost.  Still 2.5 pounds each for the week.  And in the fall, we will haul the taller greenhouses down the road so they will stay covered next year.

This week's share:

2.5 lbs tomatoes
2 cucumbers--getting near the end
Head of lettuce
Pea shoot/microgreen mix--fantastic!
Beans!--very nice pale yellow flat bean
3 peppers or 3 eggplant or 1 giant zucchini or 2 smaller zucchini
3 ears of Lou D'allasandro's corn--just had some for dinner--great!
4 apples or 4 pears

At the stand, first tomatillos coming in, some Woodland peaches, Seckel Pears, Red Jacket Apricot Jam!!!!, duck eggs, mesclun mix, baby spinach...

Eat well!