Loving fall is easy to do this year. Warm days, cool nights, regular rain -this is the climate we all want! I’m trying to soak up these days. Our late season crops feel the same way as they are looking great. Cabbage and broccoli, spinach and lettuce, it’s all exploding out there.
While we are loving this fall the crew is also getting ready for what comes next. We start prepping one of the tomato tunnels this week for the greens that will go into the last fall share. This involves pulling out the spent tomato plants and their trellising as well as turning over the ground and fertilizing. We are also trialling a fall transplanted onion variety that winters over and is harvestable in June. These onions spend the winter outside, growing slowly. More on this next spring…
With fall also comes the back to school/back to work busy. A CSA member
forwarded a favorite slow cooker recipe using upic tomatillos for
the heavily scheduled:
Tomatillo Chicken
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 quart of tomatillos
- 1 medium onion, sliced
- 2 1/2 lbs chicken breasts (legs and thighs work too)
- 4 minced garlic cloves
- 1 jalapeno
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon fresh pepper
- chopped cilantro to top
Start slow cooker on low, add olive olive to coat bottom. Remove tomatillo husks, wash and halve. Lay chicken into cooker followed by onion slices then tomatillos, garlic and jalapeño. Pour in broth and finish with salt and pepper before closing the lid and cooking for 8 hours. Remove chicken and blend the contents of the cooker. Shred the chicken and top with blended sauce.
Fennel -it’s not licorice really!
Fennel makes and appearance in the share this week. We always walk on eggshells when we offer this vegetable as it is not universally loved. Like most scorned things, it is misunderstood. Yes it smell like licorice but when cooked it becomes sweet and complements everything from apples to onions. Here’s a great way to get started with fennel for the uninitiated:
Fennel, Kale and Rice Gratin
- 1 hearty handful of stemmed kale
- 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 medium onion, finely chopped
- 1 -2 bulbs fennel, trimmed, quartered, cored and chopped (about 4 cups chopped)
- Freshly ground pepper to taste
- 2 large garlic cloves, minced
- ¼ cup chopped fresh dill
- 3 eggs
- ½ cup milk
- 1 cup cooked rice, preferably short-grain
- 3 ounces Gruyère cheese, grated (3/4 cup) (sub any cheese here)
- ¼ cup breadcrumbs, or a mixture of breadcrumbs and freshly grated Parmesan (optional)
- Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil, add a generous amount of salt and add kale. Blanch for 2 to 3 minutes, remove from the water with a deep fry skimmer or a slotted spoon and transfer to a bowl of cold water. Drain and, taking the greens up by the handful, squeeze hard to expel excess water. Chop medium-fine or cut in thin ribbons.
- Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet and add onion. Cook, stirring often, until tender, about 5 minutes, and add fennel. Cook, stirring often, until the fennel begins to soften. Add salt to taste and continue to cook, stirring often, until the fennel is very tender and fragrant, about 8 minutes. Add garlic and kale, stir together for another minute, then stir in dill. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and remove from the heat.
- Heat oven to 375 degrees. Oil a 2-quart gratin or baking dish. Beat eggs in a large bowl. Whisk in milk and salt to taste (I use about 1/2 teaspoon). Stir in fennel and kale mixture, rice and Gruyère, and combine well. Taste and adjust seasonings. Scrape into baking dish. Sprinkle breadcrumbs over the top if using, and drizzle on the remaining tablespoon of oil. Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until set and the top and sides are beginning to color. Remove from oven and allow to sit for at least 10 minutes before serving. This is good hot, warm, or room temperature.
Late Fall Shares Still Available
Don’t want the fun to end in October? Sign up for our late fall share. Storage vegetables like carrots cabbage and potatoes along with fresh greens out of our tunnel. Sign up online here.
Farm Raised Pork For Your Freezer
We have filled almost all of our orders for pork. If you are considering filling your freezer with some outstanding farm raised bacon (and a few other cuts) don’t delay. Never had farm raised pork? It is like nothing the grocery store has to offer. Raised on pasture and fed organic grain (in addition to gelato) our pork tastes great and you know where the animals came from and how they lived. Ask us for a info/sign-up sheet at pick-up or download one here.
What’s In The Share
- Tomatoes
- Fennel
- Arugula
- Tatsoi
- Peppers
- Onions
- Melon
- Garlic
What’s In Upic
- Cherry Toms
- Tomatillos
- Flowers
- Herbs
Cold nights and some rain (finally) tells me that we are in a new season. To make this transition even clearer we are sending you home with both tomatoes and winter squash! Here’s a great rainy day recipe that puts both together into a dish that will keep you warm.
Crisp air and clear skies…fall must be here. We have had several nights below 50 in the last week which is the true tipping point for our long-term summer crops. Once the nights drop below this magic number squash, tomatoes, peppers melons and the like stop growing until the sun warms them up each morning. If effect these heat loving crops go from a 24 hour growing period to one that is closer to 12 or less. As you can imagine this means the days for these summer favorites are numbered but as luck would have it the hearty fall crops like carrots, cabbage, spinach and broccoli are going full steam, unfazed by the cool evenings.
Collective sign of relief on the farm with our first rainfall of more than a quarter-inch since early June. Farmers and produce alike brightened up and stood taller after almost two inches fell on Friday. Look for fall crops to start coming in abundance soon. First of our storage onions are this week, no longer the sweet summer varieties, these are more pungent and cook down into sweet savory flavor better. Greens are also coming back with lettuce and chard coming back onto the scene.
We have been teased with these little rain events over the past week. While these spritzes have helped in the short term we are still in dire need of a soaking, multi-inch precipitation event. We will have a lapse in our supply of salad greens due to this dryness as we had trouble getting lettuce to germinate. Luckily we will have lots of good summer produce to distant you with in the meantime.
Flowers
August is here and it is hot. We have been running our irrigation well without stop for the last 11 days (literally). Rain dance, spells, cloud seeding; its all welcome — please! On the vegetable side we are just starting to pick tomatoes (yippee!) look for them to be in abundance soon. Along with other summer faves like eggplants peppers and more of these lovely summer onions.
As July comes to a close and we have our first rain in almost a month (last one was but .22 inches) it’s time for the onion family to shine. Alliums are one of the first crops we start in the greenhouse (last week of February) and once they germinate their leaves start measuring the light they gather. Unlike leafy crops (lettuce or kale) or even most fruit crops (zucchini) that are ready for harvest after they gather a set number of light and heat hours, alliums will continue to grow until the hours of daylight stops lengthening at summer solstice. Once the days start shortening the plants take notice and put all of their energy into making a bulb. This bulb is the onion’s attempt to store energy for the coming winter and kickstart the production of flowers and seeds next spring. Of course we don’t let this happen because we enjoy the eating these bulb so much.
short time as they don’t store well. This is the onion to chop raw into a salad or cut thickly to top your best grilled burger. Of course you can cook them but they really shine raw.
We also harvested garlic this week which is currently drying and curing in the barn. If you are on the way out to the Upic field you can check out out fan assisted drying contraption! We should start seeing garlic in the share in about a month.
Been adding irrigation to our todo list this week. Unfortunately this is not a small task and has been eating up a large chunk of everyday as we move our water delivery from plot to plot and field to field. Most of our watering is done with the help of 30 foot aluminum pipes we connect together in crazy configurations going up hills, around corners and under roads. We lay this pipe out each spring and in between those April days and now the mice move in. They stuff the ends with their favorite grasses and seeds, hoping these shiny metal houses will become the rodent equivalent of modern dream homes come winter. As we move the pipes and place them about the mice vacate, leaving behind all of their hard work. This means we have to flush these clogs from each 30 foot section as we link them so that their winter stores won’t clog the sprinkler heads or drip lines. Watching the matted lumps of golden hay pour forth like the drain clearing in that old Drain-o commercial with the see through kitchen sink. I think a lot about these mice and all of their hard work as I am waiting for clean the water every 30 feet. I’m glad I am not a field mouse, but I respect their labors.
