EGGPLANT OR SALSA PACK: If you haven’t been eating your eggplant you are missing a treat. Today member Dani Hurst brought some homemade baba ganoush. Bake or roast your eggplant until soft enough to puree with some olive oil, lemon juice, mayo or tahini, salt and garlic. Yum!
TOMATOES: We are so happy to be able to provide a nice share of tomatoes this year. We have been making a lot of panzanella salad. A great use for some stale bread, soaking up the dressing and tomato juice. And using cheese and bread from the CSA really adds to the flavor.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017518-panzanella-with-mozzarella-and-herbs
SWEET PEPPERS: First ripe peppers of the season! They are starting to ripen and we have a lot of fruit in the patch right now. These peppers are good in a panzanella, fried with onion, or just munched on whole.
CUCUMBERS OR SQUASH: Another week or so of the cucurbits. Enjoy these summer fruits.
GREEN BEANS: How much you get this week will depend on our harvests. They have just now reached the point of needing a picking. We had some fresh beans today at lunch and enjoyed them with some baba ganoush, a nice paring.
DESIREE POTATOES: Freshly dug on Saturday by the CSA. Blushed on the outside, creamy gold on the inside.
SWEET ONIONS: The wet Spring has kept them smaller than usual, but they are still sweet.
HERB: Basil, herb celery, or summer savory/thyme. The basil is essential for panzanella. The latter two herbs go especially great with potatoes.
FARM REPORT
Last week we were able to get away for a few hours and have a date night in the city. We visited the Stonehenge exhibit at Union Station and were especially taken with the role of the first farmers in the construction of the monument.
To bring agriculture to Salisbury, they brought their pigs, stone axes and pebble hammers.
The first job for the first farmers was to clear the fields by cutting down the trees with their beautiful stone adzes. All farm land sits within an ecosystem and often degrades it in the process. One cannot deny the role of agriculture in the demise of our planet’s ecosystems. As the inheritor of this legacy, we have an obligation to find a better way. We don’t have all of the answers by any means, but we start by studying nature.
Meanwhile, the fields are looking good. We have a bumper bean crop, the tomatoes are ripening lusciously and the farm is full of flowers.
Tithonia, or Mexican sunflower, is one of my favorites. All sorts of native bees and butterflies eat its pollen and nectar. It reminds me of the vivid colors of Mexico.
The fall high tunnel is eating its dinner of cowpeas.
After a mow we made the raised beds with our electric Allis Chalmers G, watered it, and then covered it with the silage tarp. Occultation provides a moist dark environment that makes weed seeds sprout and then die in the darkness, but the real benefit is making a perfect environment for the soil organisms to get to work turning the cover crop into a nutrient-dense food for the leafy greens and roots that we will plant in September. Until then, happy eating soil friends!