In Your Box:

  • Beans, “Dragon’s Tongue”
  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Cucumber or summer squash
  • Garlic
  • Kale, “Curly Roja”
  • Lettuce, “Salanova”
  • Scallions
  • Sweet pepper
  • Tat soi
  • Tomatoes

Farm News

Early September is one of the best times of the year for harvesting on the farm. The only limits on what I can provide in our CSA box are time for harvesting and space in the boxes! All of the fruiting crops of summer are winding down, but we’ll enjoy another week or two of them before the cold weather returns and their season draws to a close.

This is also about the most comfortable time of year, which makes life easy for harvesting and farm chores. I love the cool nights and low humidity, and the lack of mosquitoes is truly a blessing after such a long season of them. If it weren’t for the sun going down earlier and earlier every night, it’s easy to forget how close we are to the end of the growing year.

This week’s box

After I finally removed all of the weeds from the onion beds, I realized we still had a whole planting of scallions left. These green onions are still in good shape, although some of them are as big as leeks! This will be their final harvest of the year, but we still have plenty of storage onions and leeks to get us through the last few boxes.

Beans, cherry tomatoes, and cucumbers are all on their last legs after a long season. I’ll aim to give them one more week if they permit, but the end is in sight for their growing year. Our main crop of tomatoes grow in the protection of a high tunnel, so I’ll keep picking them as long as they keep ripening.

This week we welcome back tat soi. Stir fry greens grow best in the cooler seasons, so after taking the summer off we have a fall planting of tat soi and bok choy. The whole leaf and stem of tat soi is edible, and is great with noodles or rice. It’s more versatile than bok choy, and is a great stand-in for spinach.

Tat Soi with Avocado and Egg

From theSweetBeet.com

Ingredients

  • a handful of tat soi, kale, chard, bok choy, or collards
  • one fried egg
  • avocado, sliced
  • bread (preferably rye or another dark bread)
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • hot sauce (if desired)

Directions
1. Saute the greens in olive oil or butter until just wilted.
2. Fry the egg
3. Assemble your sandwich and enjoy!

Buckwheat Noodle Dish

From Fields of Greens, by Annie Somerville

  • ¼ lb. Fresh shiitake mushrooms
  • head of tat soi or bok choy
  • salt to taste
  • 6 oz. dried buckwheat (soba) noodles
  • 2 TB oil
  • 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • 1 TB grated fresh ginger
  • 1 to 2 jalapeno chilies, finely sliced
  • 1 scallion, thinly sliced on a diagonal
  • 1 TB dark sesame oil
  • 2 TB mirin (sweet cooking sake)
  • 2 TB soy sauce
  • 2 TB coarsely chopped parsley or cilantro
  • 1 tsp sesame seed, toasted

Directions:

  1. Bring a large pot of water with a pinch of salt to boil. Cook the noodles according to box instructions.
  2. As the noodles cook, remove mushroom stems and chop the bok choy/tat soi. Heat the oil over medium heat and add the mushrooms. Stir-fry for 3-4 minutes, then add garlic, ginger, chilies, bok choy/tat soi, and saute for 2 minutes.
  3. Drain the pasta in a colander when it is just tender. Reduce the heat under the saute pan and add the scallion, sesame oil, mirin, and soy sauce. Quickly add the noodles, taking care not to overcook the greens. Remove from heat, toss the noodles with the vegetables and cilantro/parsley, and season with salt. Sprinkle with sesame seed.

Coming up

We are expecting basil, bok choy, carrots, onions, celery, head lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, beans and sweet pepper. 

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