In Your Box:
- Beans
- Broccolini or summer squash or eggplant
- Carrots
- Cherry tomatoes
- Cucumber
- Garlic, “Chesnok Red”
- Lettuce
- Red onion
- Summer squash
- Tomatoes
Farm News
As luck would have it, this was the year I decided to install a state-of-the-art irrigation system. I took what I had learned and observed over 16 years of farming, invested in the best equipment available, and installed a system with buried water lines and a timer control for precise watering. And as soon as I finished up it started raining, and it basically hasn’t stopped since. Even when it isn’t raining, the air is so humid you could basically wring it out and water the plants just from the atmosphere.
Between the constant rain, high humidity, and mosquitoes, the weather impact this year will certainly be one to remember. Thankfully the flooding hasn’t had a great impact on the crops. We do have a few low areas that have been underwater too long, and some of the carrots I’ve been digging up are rotten at the bottom. The biggest challenge with the weather is that the weeds just won’t stop growing!
As we look ahead, many of you will have changing schedules and routines as school resumes for the fall. If you would prefer to change delivery sites (even to a different day), please reach out and I can certainly accommodate that.
This week’s box
Our onions this week are an heirloom red variety from Italy, “Red Long of Tropea.” I like their distinctive torpedo shape, even if the taste isn’t all that different from regular bulbing red onions.
This week we offer our first taste of garlic for the year. All of our garlic has been fully cured in storage, so it should last through the winter. We grow six different varieties of garlic, so you might notice different coloring, bulb size, and clove formation between the weeks. And unlike the plain white, softneck garlic they grow in California, our garlic has been bred to grow here and has distinctive flavors for different uses.
Our spring planting of broccolini is winding down its production, and may even be done for the year. I do have another planting of the sprouts for the fall as well as regular heading broccoli, so hopefully we’ll resume harvests after a few weeks. In the meantime, some of you will receive summer squash or eggplant instead.
Finally, this week brings our first sweet peppers. I only grow bull-nosed peppers, rather than the bells you usually see in stores. These grow much more easily in our climate and stand out for their unique appearance. We grow both red (Carmen) and orange (Escamillo), and we should have them several times through the late summer and fall.
Green Bean Casserole
from Delish.com
Ingredients:
- 1 pound green beans, trimmed
- 1/2 TB olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 1 cup fresh bread crumbs, made from 5 slices country bread
- 1 tablespoon butter, melted
- salt and ground black pepper to taste
Directions:
- Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Fill a large bowl halfway with ice water, and set aside. Bring a large stockpot with water to a boil. Add the green beans and cook until tender — about 5 minutes. Immediately transfer beans to the ice water to cool. Strain and blot dry. Heat the olive oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic, and cook until soft. Remove from heat, toss in the bread crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, and the blanched beans. Transfer to a 6-cup baking dish.
- Bake until the beans are tender and the bread crumbs are golden — 18 to 20 minutes. Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature.
Coming up
We are expecting beets, basil, scallions, beans, head lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, zucchini, cherry tomatoes and (maybe) broccolini.
Fox & Fawn Farm 