Summertime down on the Farm

Hello from the farm,


A thunderstorm a day keeps the weeds yelling hooray as we work around the daily rainfall and storms.  This week we haven been working on planting two thousand strawberry plants for next year's harvest--this will about double the strawberry planting that we have. We have also been weeding and thinning the carrot crop, tying tomatoes, mowing the grass aisles between long term crops and getting ready to plant the fall broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and relatives as well as the squash family's pumpkins, acorns, butternuts and Long Island cheese squash. 

Beatiful scallions, a mild onion

Your Farm on Facebook: watch our zany antics, serious farming fun, flops and fancy, droll quips about weeds and critters and more. 
https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Goodwill-at-Homefields-Farm/121147947971207


Field Forecast:

As I mentioned, the daily rain has been a boon to the weeds, but also to the crops. This seems to be the best broccoli crop we've ever had, the cucumbers and summer squash are just beginning to bear, and the scallions are beautiful.  We will begin the much-anticipated garlic harvest next week! Your farmers are bearing up under the mud very well.  Great job trainees and Elizabeth and Law Reh. 

The broccoli is outstanding this year

Serving Suggestions for the Harvest:
Broccoli:  an awesome broccoli crop this year--this is super good broccoli!
Turnip: cut into sticks and serve chilled with a veggie dip. 
Beets:  great roasted with olive oil, grilled with oil and balsamic vinegar, or grated in salads.
Napa cabbage:   this lettucey cabbage is great in the cabbage slaw recipe below
Snow peas:   soon over.  these flat-podded peas are eaten "hull and all" except for the stem. They are wonderful lightly steamed, boiled or in stir fry, even good raw.
Chard:  remove the lower portion of the stalk as it is usually tough.  Sautee leaves in butter, olive or coconut oil, add salt, and red pepper, top with Paresan cheese.
 Kale/Collards:  we like to fry these in a skillet with butter or coconut oil until crisp, add some onions and sautee them as well--a superb topping for rice, fried eggs or stand alone too.
Bok choi:  the joy of choi, this Asian vegetable seems to have been invented for the stir fry and peanut butter based sauce. Like it's cousin, the Napa cabbage, it is a mainstay when making spicy Korean kimchee.
Garlic scapes:   these are the would-be flowering stems of garlic--soft, tender, easy to use for stir fries, diced for salad, really anywhere a mild garlic flavor is desired. We like to use it for pesto here at the farm. 
Cilantro  This planting of cilantro is finished--going to seed.  There will be a new planting. this increasingly hankered for herb is central to salsa and a variety of world culinary dishes. It's great on a sandwich or what have you.


Thank you

Thank you this week to a wonderful group of trainees for their hard work and dedication, skilled staff Elizabeth, Law Reh and Kim who care deeply, to Butch for keeping the open spaces mowed, to Bob for great work on the weeder project and plumbing troubleshooting, and Tom for property and land concerns.  Thank you for being a part of the farm, enjoying this very local food, and encouraging us in our work!


Farmer Scott