Cured

 

 

After two weeks n the greenhouse squash arrives this week with our first offerings of both acorn and delicata. The acorn are deep green and the delicata are oblong with green stripes. The delicata have very tender skins and if you oil them prior to roasting you can eat the skins right along with the squash. Both do well in the oven for a fast simple meal. We like  to halve them, scoop out the seeds and cook them cut side down on a baking sheet at 400 degrees. For an added bonus and to further entice reluctant diners, after baking until tender, turn them cut side up and brush with butter and or maple syrup and broil until they start to brown.

Cider is here. Who needs water?

What goes better with squash than a crisp glass of cider?  We now have the world’s best cider from Willow Pond Farm in Sabattus.  Jill and Charlie are like magicians with their apples blending together just the right amount of tart and sweet to deliver a consistent outstanding product.  If you haven’t tried this stuff take home a couple gallons (one for the freezer) and toast the  fall.

Fall Color

You’ll find some great color in your potatoes this week as we bring out the red and blue varieties. Mix and match them equally and roast, fry or coarsely mash them together for a feast fit for the eyes as well as the taste buds. Both varieties keep their color when color when cooked!

Radishes are beautiful this week…they go with everything. Sliced and tossed with rice vinegar is particularly lovely.

What’s Coming…

We start harvesting sweet potatoes this week. This is a crop we been growing for the past four or five years and we have really come to love them. Sweets are from a radically different climate than coastal Maine but a few short season, tasty varieties have made them somewhat common on our local produce scene. Like squash and onions, this fall crop needs curing before they can be eaten. After we get them out of the ground this week we will pack them into our second produce cooler. Instead of cooling them we’ll add a heater and bring the temp up to 80-85 degrees and hold them there for a couple weeks until the skins harden and they start to taste like sweet heaven…start dreaming up your meals now.

Whats in Upic?

Dill

Thyme

Cilantro

Flowers

What’s in the share?

The last tomato

Asian greens

Arugula

Shallots

Acorn/Delicata Squash

Radishes

Red/Blue Potatoes

Kale

Chard

 

 

 

 

crisp

Fall is here. These beautiful days we have been enjoying are some of my favorite of the year. The sun is still warm enough to make us sweat but the nights are cool and the air is dry.  We woke up Monday morning to our first frost of the year. It was light and gone by 9 am but was enough to put a little color on the basil and keep us out of the fields until the sun had warmed everything up. I have yet to see a frost, light or not, this early before.  The farm  crew is beginning to question both my memory and my honesty as many times I as I have said “I’ve never seen this before.”   It’s never boring at the farm.

Russets

Russet spuds arrive in your share this week. This is the all time best baking potato, so fire up the oven to 400 on one of these cold nights, rub the potatoes with butter or oil and let them go for 30-45 minutes. There will be more of these to come so enjoy.

Tomatoes Continue

The cold and dry has slowed the spread of late blight in our houses and we are picking fruit that is just starting to turn and letting them finish ripening in the barn. Enjoy these with the last round of basil this week.

Squash Cures

We hope to start sending out squash next week. We finished harvesting last Friday and will let them cure and sweeten before they arrive in your share.

What’s In Upic…

Flowers

Herbs

Whats in the Share…

Russet Potatoes

Cabbage

Peppers

Chard

Asian Greens

Tomatoes

Basil

Lettuce Mix

 

Blighted

Farmers are are creative people. We take a mish-mash of variables every year (weather, plants, labor, etc.) and fit it together into an odd creation that this time of year we can stand back and look at. Every year is different and parts of the picture that we’re proud of one year may be embarrassing the next. Many of you may remember the great tomato blight of 2009 where almost every tomato plant in the northeast was destroyed by mid-August.  We all survived, but after that year most farmers took evasive action to try and prevent a repeat. For most of us that meant moving tomato production into greenhouses or plastic field tunnels. These structures are closable and allow growers to control the temperature and most importantly the moisture on the leaves of the plants where blight get started.

We’ve been quite lucky up to this point with a summer as warm and humid as it has been to avoid the dreaded tomato late blight. All summer there have been sporadic outbreaks of blight around the region and the state but most of us have avoided infection. This disease is amazing in it’s ability to rapidly take down large numbers of plants and their fruit. It’s a fungus that creates spores, like a mushroom, and these spores travel freely on the wind for miles and miles. The spores that by chance land on tomato plants then wait for a little moisture and germinate, making an ugly green lesions that look like the plant has been spattered with hot grease. These lesions grow, make more spores and in a very short time the infection spreads to every available host around. On Saturday I found five infected plants in two of our three tomato houses. By Monday all three houses had widespread infection. The crew quickly went to work and we picked heavily, harvesting over a ton of tomatoes during the morning. We picked fruit that had color of any kind knowing that the will ripen in the barn and a tomato in hand is worth two in the field. We hope the infection won’t spread to the remaining fruit right away and these tomatoes will get some color on the vine. It’s not all doom and gloom as we have a great tomato share for you this week and hope to have another next week as well. If we had been hit two weeks ago it would have been a sadder story….

 

Sauce Recipe to Try

This recipe calls for golden tomatoes but the ones you are receiving in your share will work great.  This comes highly recommended by CSA member Liz Pierson from the website 101 Cookbooks  http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/golden-tomato-sauce-recipe.html

Golden Tomato Sauce Recipe

I don’t bother peeling the tomatoes here, but you certainly could. You can also do a double or triple batch. The sauce will keep refrigerated for about a week. Also, the color of your tomatoes will dramatically impact the color of your sauce. I like to choose tomatoes that are bright yellow in color, like you see here. Alternatively, yellow tomatoes with a hint of orange make a striking sauce as well.

1 1/2 pounds / 24 oz / 680g ripe yellow tomatoes, cored and halved

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 medium cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Run your finger along the inside of each tomato to remove and discard the seeds. Chop the tomatoes into 1/4-inch chunks, reserve any juice, and set aside.

Combine the olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper flakes in a cold medium sauce pan. Now, heat the ingredients, stirring occasionally, until the garlic begins to sizzle and take on a bit of color. Stir in the tomatoes and reserved juices, and bring to a simmer. Cook for just a couple minutes, long enough for the tomatoes to start breaking down a bit. Remove from heat, taste, and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

Makes 2 cups / 475 ml.

Prep time: 10 min – Cook time: 5 min

Potatoes Arrive in Force

Here’s the first share of potatoes. These are our ugly but tasty rose golds and they are amazing. Our favorite was to prepare them is to preheat the oven to 425, have the potatoes and pre-boil them until they just begin to soften. Drain the spuds toss them in butter/oil and add salt (a little more than you think you should) and bake them in a single layer in a cooking sheet until the begin to crisp around the edges.

Shallots are the Best

Shallots arrive this week as well and they do well anywhere you would use garlic or onions…

Willow Pond Farm Apples

Paula Reds are for sale by the 5 lb bag -this is a great early fall apple -crisp and sweet.

What’s in Upic…

Flowers

Herbs

What’s in the share this week….

Tomatoes

Basil

Shallots

Carrots

Asian Greens

Chard/Kale

Chickories

Eggplant

Peppers

Potatoes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September Sunshine

Thank you to all of you that came to help with the potato harvest!  It was a great event and we will have a good crop of potatoes to share with you over the next couple of months. We have five varieties this year that range from red waxy to old fashioned grainy russet and after a week of curing in the barn you should start seeing them in your share.  2011 was the benchmark year for us in potato production with just over 14,000 pounds harvested. This year, while more challenging in moisture, weed pressure, and temperatures, still looks to be a good one as we expect somewhere between 12 and 13,000 pounds when we finish the harvest and tally.  The Maine potato harvest made the news this week  with harvests expected to be markedly down for the state, especially for commercial chip and french fry producers up in the county.  Here’s a link to the Portland Press Herald article and video doc.

In addition to potatoes we hope to get our winter squash crop in this week.  This crop looks great and if we can beat the deer this year we should have plenty of butternut, acorn, and sugar dumplings to fill your homes with that lovely fall smell.  Like potatoes, this crop has to cure for a week or two but instead of going in the barn we set them out in the now empty green house to gather warmth and sweeten up.

As we move into new crops we say goodbye to some of summers standbys.  Eggplant and cucumbers will make their last appearance of the season this week.  The last round of these crops, along with zucchini and summer squash in the recent weeks brings one of the hottest summers in living memory to a close.  It has been beautiful and a marked change to the abnormally cold and wet of the last few years.  Our hope as farmers is that we can adapt to the swings in temperature and rainfall that seem to be the new normal as opposed to “extremes.”

Red peppers arrive this week and while they look great it will be a short-lived season for this crop. We’ll enjoy them roasted and raw while we can as they did not fair well in the humid days of August.  The bells are sweet and wonderful but also try the pointed frying peppers -these are even sweeter!  We have another appearance of fennel this week and hope that you will be inspired to explore this great italian vegetable again. Here’s a simple carrot fennel soup recipe from the NY Times that would go great with sliced tomatoes and basil!

Happy First Day of School to all of our eager students and teachers!

What’s in Upic

Beans -this is the last week – the leaves may look weak, but keep your eyes open for the beans underneath!

Cherry tomatos – waning

Flowers

Herbs

What’s in the share

Basil

Lettuce

Chickories

Asian Greens

Arugula

Fennel

Eggplant

Tomatoes

Carrots

Cucumbers

Peppers

Community Shares

This program is in cooperation with Midcoast Hunger Prevention Program who connect the CSA program with local families that may not be able to afford a CSA share. Your donations are matched by us to offer shares at the farm in Brunswick. Last year we had three families who participated and hope to expand the program to include more families in 2013.