CSA Newsletter ~ Week 11

The heat and humidity has returned over the last few days, which has meant running sprinklers for the meat chickens on pasture, filling wallows for our pigs and running the sprinklers on some of our crops. Our heat loving crops however are loving the change in temperature, sweet peppers are going red and the tomatoes are still ripening.

We are still in the middle of a battle in our greenhouse between farmer and animal!! Some thing is still being very insistent on removing seeds from seed trays and replacing with oats!!

This week we have started lifting all our onions to cure.  We are not over joyed with our onion crop this year and we are wondering if it is the change in compost that we used.  We have always used composted horse manure and this year we used a certified organic compost. All our other crops have done really well with the new compost but I think next year we will be heading back to the composted horse manure for onions.

What is in this weeks basket?
Tomatoes - We hope you are enjoying the bounty this year. Looking back over our records this year has been the best year we have ever had on the farm for tomatoes!
Tomatillos - Do remember if you don't want to make salsa these are great roasted, made into chili sauce or you can even freeze them to use at a later date.  This weekend I will be making a tomatillo and pork stew so will post the recipe next week as we still have a few weeks to come of these!
Eggplant - They are still doing really well so we have found nine different ways you can try them this week!
Sweet peppers
Celery
Onions
Watermelons
Lettuce
Beans - We are having an amazing bean seasons so far this year and we still have more to come!!  So we have added two additional recipes this week for beans in case you are running out of ideas!
This is the one I am looking forward to trying this week, it is from Melissa Joulwan's book Well Fed and it is coconut almond green beans
Last week I made a modified Ribollita Soup and have included the recipe for you all!
1lb of fresh beans chopped into 1cm slices
1 onion chopped
4 carrots grated
2 cloves of garlic chopped.
4 stalks of celery sliced
6 tomatoes chopped into chunks
2 litres of stock chicken or vegetable
Then some sort of greens! I used cabbage but you can use kale napa cabbage etc.
salt and peppers
Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a large saucepan, add the onion, garlic and celery and saute for about 10 minutes then add the carrots and chopped tomatoes and a little thyme and saute for another 5 minutes then add your stock simmer gently for 45 minutes, season with salt and peppers then add your shredded cabbage/greens and beans and cook for another 15 minutes.
Michael gave it the thumbs up! "Sooooo Sweet!!"
Beets
Cucumbers
Hot Peppers - Please remember we do not include hot peppers as part of your box.  We don't feel it is fair as not everyone enjoys hot and spicy food.  Hot Peppers are something that we grow and we leave in a basket for you to help your self to.