Good Afternoon All,
Just back here from delivering our van full of fresh, delicious veggies to your pick-up points. This week is looking bright, with some much needed sun and warmth after our chilly start to the month of September. We are almost done pulling onions this week and have many already curing in our greenhouse. The weather gives us a perfect opportunity to harvest these and other storage crops while they are relatively dry in order to begin curing them to store for the winter. We pulled out most of our delicata squash yesterday, and everyone will be picking one up in their boxes today.
Delicata Squash is sometimes called sweet potato squash because of it’s sweet flavour and texture reminiscent, some say, to the sweet potato. It is a nice size as an addition to one meal, and is one of the earliest squash to ripen each season. Speaking of sweet potatoes, this is yet another crop we look forward to harvesting in the next few weeks which we will also cure for winter storage, and hope to have in the boxes very soon.
Our Fennel are also looking beautiful, and our full sized sweet peppers are finally beginning to ripen! Seems like a nice mix this week to inspire a trio(or more) of roasted vegetables. I may try something like this myself: http://olives-n-okra.
Our beautiful Rainbow Chard stalks this week inspired a discussion in the field on how often folks do not use the stalks of this plant. It reminded me of a delicious pickle I once tried made from the stocks of rainbow chard. This recipe I found is for a quick pickled, lower sugar version, which can be refrigerated and does not need to be canned for long term storage: https://www.
This week I was thinking about our lack of Broccoli this season. This has not been for lack of trying. It seems a combination of issues with our brassicas has prevented us from success at Broccoli growing this season thus far. We have planted at least 2 timelines of broccoli, but to no avail. Often times we have had more success in our fall broccoli succession, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that our last attempt will soon be bringing in some decent broccoli heads. Stay tuned for the progress on this yummy crop, that we’ve all been sorely missing.
More honey available for next week’s deliveries!: Please let us know if you would like to order a jar or two of Peter’s honey. We have stocked up our supply again, so please let us know by Tuesday if you would like some for next week and we will add it to your box for Wednesday delivery as per usual.
This Week All Share Contain:
-carrots
-peppers
-delicata squash
-summer crisp lettuce
-swiss chard
-fennel
-red onion
-garlic
Medium Shares Also Contain:
-Magenta lettuce
-extra peppers
-extra garlic
-red cabbage
We hope you all enjoy this week’s share, and will be catching up with you this time next week!
-Waratah Downs Organic Farm Team(written up by Coral)