CSA Newsletter ~ Week 7

In the early hours of Sunday morning we were woken by one huge almighty thunder, lightning and rain storm.  We had two fork lighting strikes hit the ground one near the barn and the other at the end of the road but the biggest thing was the rain! The weather man forecast 5mm, we got over 2" in the early hours of Sunday morning followed by another dump on Monday morning.  We are rather fussy as farmers as we do like a nice steady rain rather than the torrents that fell from the sky over the last few days! We are hoping that the 1000ft of carrot seed that we had seeded about 10 days earlier has not been washed out of the ground!

Good news! All our garlic is now out!  Tibetan, Red Russian and Music but it was slightly longer process than normal as we have a bumble bee nest in the middle of the patch and they have been getting a little mad when we get a little close which meant, on a few occasions, downing tools and exciting the patch rather quickly!

This weeks basket:

Cabbage - Found this amazing cabbage recipe today by Melissa Joulwan the author of Well Fed 1 & 2

Ethiopian Cabbage
4 teaspoons olive oil
4 carrots, shredded or very thinly sliced
1 onion, thinly sliced
2 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 head cabbage, shredded

Directions:
1. In a medium skillet heat the olive oil over a medium heat; add the carrots and onion and cook in the hot oil about 5 minutes.

2. Lower the heat. Add the salt, pepper, cumin, turmeric, ginger, and cabbage; mix well. Cover and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until cabbage is tender.

Beans - This will be the last week of beans but don't worry we have more to come.  We do lots of succession planting of beans so we have a few different varieties that are flowering well and starting to set little beans
Salad Onions
Tomatoes - We have a mixture of field and hoop house tomatoes this week.  The field ones do have a few cracks in them so eat these first.
Zucchini 
Celery - We are thinning out the patch so we will be bunching two heads together.  If you are not a celery fan you can chop it up and freeze without blanching to use for soups and stews during winter.
Carrots - With all the rain we have had these babies are so sweet.  Please remember at this size they do not need peeling.
Eggplant - All shapes, sizes and colours are coming along really well. Why not try a baked eggplant f'armesan this week!
Sweet Peppers - Sweet peppers are slow to ripen but we have managed to find a few purple beauty which are looking stunning.
Beets - These babies just seem to keep on coming this year! Michael has finally caught one of the voles in the beet patch, but we can imagine we still have many more!
Garlic - This weeks garlic is Music.
Kale
Cucumbers - Our cucumbers have been so slow this year! We have loads of flowers and our honey bees are all over them! We are only now getting fruit.  You will have either green or a yellow cucumbers to choose from.  The yellow ones are meant to be yellow they are not old cucumbers! We just like to grow something different!