In Your Box:

• Basil
• Beans
• Beets
• Cherry tomatoes
• Cucumber
• Garlic, “Deerfield Purple”
• Lettuce
• Sweet onion
• Summer squash or broccolini or pepper
• Tomatoes

Farm News

While we usually expect a last gasp of summer heat and humidity during the state fair, I’ve been loving every minute of this cold front and drastic change to fall weather. After a summer of sweating and slogging through puddles, a dry week of low humidity and temps in the 70s is just fine by me!

This week I’ve been busy with the last round of weeding of the summer, trying to remove as many weeds as I can before they set seed and leave their next generation ready for next year. The weeds have been relentless this year, with the constant supply of moisture and the strong growing conditions. So even as I stayed on top of the weed control early in the year, the stragglers have done well and put on some terrifying growth.

In past years we’ve had an opportunity to purchase surplus tomatoes for freezing and canning, but I can’t tell whether we’ll have a late bounty this year or not. The tomatoes have done well, but it’s not clear that we’ll have a late surge of paste and Roma tomatoes available. If you are interested in purchasing extra tomatoes, send me an email and I’ll save your name in case we do have extras for sale in a week or two.

This week’s box

At this point of the year the boxes are all quite similar, dominated by the fruits of summer. My time on the farm is dominated by harvesting, spending long hours picking beans and tomatoes and looking for cucumbers and zucchini under massive plants. We’ll start to get a little more variety in a couple of weeks, once the summer crops stop producing and we have room for the bounty of fall. For now, we’ll enjoy the tomatoes and other summer flavors while they last!

The lettuce this week, as it was last week, is a romaine/summer crisp variety called “Concept.” I tried to experiment with this planting, setting the plants at 8” apart instead of my usual 12.” While it fit more plants into the garden bed, it also made the plants grow extremely tall and narrow. The quality is just fine and the overall mass is about what it would be with the regular plant spacing, but the plants look a little tortured and I’ll stick with the wider spacing in the future.

The beets this week are all “Red Ace,” my usual spring and summer variety. We do have gold beets growing nicely, and I’ll offer those the next time we harvest beets.

Roasted Beet and Garlic Pasta

A rich and healthy pasta that is packed with nutrients. It is delicious served with a big scoop of Ricotta.

Ingredients

• 1 pound whole grain spaghetti
• 1 1/2 pounds beets, trimmed and scrubbed
• 4 whole garlic cloves, peeled
• 1/4 cup olive oil, divided
• 1/2 cup toasted walnuts
• 2 tablespoons sun dried tomatoes, chopped
• freshly ground salt
• red pepper flakes
• 2/3 cup ricotta

Instructions

1. Prepare spaghetti according to package instructions. Reserve 1 cup of pasta water.
2. Preheat oven to 400F. Drizzle beets with olive oil and wrap beets and garlic cloves tightly in foil. Roast until very tender, approximately 1 hour. After removing from oven, remove foil and let cool slightly. Carefully peel beets and coarsely chop.
3. In a food processor, combine roasted beets, garlic, remaining olive oil, walnuts, and tomatoes. Pulse until smooth and creamy, adding reserved pasta water as needed. Season with salt to taste.
4. Toss pasta and beet mixture until well combined. Sprinkle with red pepper flakes and serve with a scoop of ricotta on the side.

Coming up

We are expecting chard, carrots, onions, beans, head lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, zucchini, cherry tomatoes and sweet pepper.