In your box:

• Beans
• Beets
• Cherry tomatoes
• Cucumbers
• Garlic, “Georgian Crystal”
• Head Lettuce
• Kale
• Red onions
• Summer squash
• Sweet Pepper
• Tomatoes

Farm News

Over the weekend I was listening to some old folk music from the 1940’s while cleaning garlic. You know, the kind of thing that farmers are always doing. In the song “Leavin’ Blues,” the narrator laments:

I got grasshoppers in my pillow baby

Got crickets all in my meal

Things aren’t quite that bad on the farm this year–we don’t have grasshoppers in our pillow, but we did wake up with a cricket in our bed this morning! We are absolutely surrounded by crickets and grasshoppers this year. We have crickets on every floor of our house. They are in, on, and under our lettuce plants, and just about every other crop growing in the field. And grasshoppers! It’s absolutely dizzying to try to walk through tall grass and watch all the grasshoppers flying in every direction. As long as they stay out of our pillows and meal we can coexist just fine. And as long as they munch on alfalfa and grasses and leave our crops alone, the farm should stand just fine this year.

I’m sure at least one of you has opened a CSA box and found a cricket in there. Possibly still nestled into a head of lettuce. We double-wash all of our lettuce heads, but when I’m driving in a load of veggies I can still hear them in the van, probably hidden deep inside the produce. Probably they’re making up their own blues songs about the cruel farmer kicking them out of their home and sending them on down the road.

This week’s box

This week we finally offer garlic for the first time in our boxes this season. This week’s offering is “Georgian Crystal,” a hardneck Porcelain variety known for its large clove size. This is a great variety for roasting, but it’s got a great buttery flavor that goes well in pasta or on a pizza.

The onions this week are an Italian heirloom called “Red Torpedo.” I accidentally double-seeded these, so they grew too close together and didn’t size up as well as they usually do. Planting them so close together does accentuate the torpedo shape, though.

We’ve still got a great crop of cucumbers coming in, but we definitely have a lot of beetle damage on the fruits. Cucumber beetles can cause a lot of damage to the skin of young cucumbers, and this year they’ve really gone after our late planting of burpless cucumbers. We’ve found that the skin scarring only affects the exterior, so the rest of the cucumber should still be just fine.

If you would like to purchase extra tomatoes, we are offering 10 pound boxes of canning tomatoes for $30. Availability is limited to weeks when we have more tomatoes than we can stuff in the boxes, but we should have a surplus for the next 2-3 weeks. Just email me at foxandfawnfarm@gmail.com if you are interested in purchasing a box or two.

Kale and Beet Salad

Ingredients:

• 2 Bunches of Kale (stems removed sliced thin)
• 2 large or 4 small beets (peeled and sliced paper thin)
• 1/2 cup Almonds (toasted)
• 1/2 cup Crumbled Feta
• 2 tablespoons Fresh Dill (chopped)
• 1 Clove Garlic (minced)
• 1 Red Onion  (sliced paper thin)
• 3 oz Red Wine Vinegar
• 6 oz Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Salt

Directions:

1. Place kale, beets and onion in a large mixing bowl and season liberally with salt.  Mix and top with the vinegar. Set aside. (This can be done up to a couple hours in advance.)
2. Whisk together the oil, garlic and dill. Toss the oil mixture with the kale, beets and onion. Add feta and almonds. Mix and serve.

Coming up

Next week, we are expecting grapes, lettuce, red onions, potatoes, summer squash, cucumbers, parsley, pepper, beans and tomatoes