August Seventeenth
Harvesting all of this bounty feels like a gift. It is not entirely a gift because we have to work very hard and put in countless hours on tractors and on our hands and knees doing field work to extract this volume of food from the dark, mysterious soil. But it is a gift in that there are mysterious and magical forces at work that are cooperating with us to make all of these flavorful orbs ripen into colorful and fragrant shapes of enzyme-rich food. Magical things like seeds and thunderstorms and soil chemistry and seasons and communities. Farmers are probably more like magicians than just equipment operators and field crew managers.
It is really a wonderful feeling to be surrounded by so much bounty and excess and abundance. Why shouldn’t I be whistling while I work and hopping around as happy as a leprechaun? Well, the truth is that I am very happy, but I struggle at times when we are all so very tired and even exhausted, to remember everything that we have to be thankful for and to remember all of the reasons why we are so lucky and blessed.
Our family has built in a small ritual to help us remember to vocalize and become conscious of our gratitude. Before we share a meal, we sit together at the table and hold hands and take turns saying something that we’re thankful for. On an average day we are thankful for the food on our plates, our health, our family, our friends. Sometimes we are thankful for the rain or the sweet corn or the breeze or for friends joining us for a meal. We’re not a particularly religious family, but we do consider ourselves spiritual. And this little custom is a practice that grooms the spirit.
I recently heard a saying, “We are not thankful because we are happy, we are happy because we are thankful”. When gratitude aught to be woven into our speech, actions and words, if we forget or are having an off day, having a built-in time of your day to offer a few words of gratitude seems like a healthy reparation. When better of a time than when our families are sitting together at the table for a few minutes amidst our hectic lives? Why not speak it aloud before your meal that you invested your valuable time and love into while chopping and dicing and sautéing and stirring your daily meditation into.
I am hopeful that these little packages of vegetables are as meaningful to you as they are to me. I am hopeful that you feel a connection to something larger than yourself when handling these pieces of transformed mineral and matter. I assure you that we are investing love, sweat and tears into them. There is community and laughter and adoration inside them. They have been handled by people who appreciate a connection to food and earth and kinship.
So when you sit down for your meal tonight, raise your glass to the farm. Bow your head to your family. Reserve a moment of silence for the magic and mystery that lives inside every carrot and tomato and green bean. Begin a habit of offering thanks for your food, your house, your family, your health. Gratitude is contagious and it has a way of growing upon itself like it’s own living thing. Cheers!
Here is a link to an inspiration piece by Michael Perry I stumbled across a few weeks ago on Gratitude if you have a few extra minutes to sit at your computer and read more: http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/columnists/michael-perry/michael-perry-gratitude-is-renewable-energy/article_acee74f3-5949-5005-9620-1027f7997eef.html
Sooo…What’s in the Box???
Honeydew Melon- Dewlightful is the name of this melon and we found it to be just that. These are delicious and juicy and everything you would want out of a honeydew melon. They were harvested on a wet morning, so they were a touch on the dirty side. Give your melong a little rinse before cutting it up. We didn’t have the time to wash these with all of the other harvesting and washing on our plates this week. 
Broccoli– Very nice broccoli heads for everyone this week! This is some of the nicest summer broccoli we have ever grown!
Summer Squash and Zucchini– We’re down to harvesting the very last of the Summer Squash and Zucchini this week. Probably this will be our final squash giving of the year. Summer squash and zucchini also prefer 50 degree storage.
White Onions– Another week of whole onions. The onions are all harvested and layed out and looking beautiful on the curing tables in the greenhouse.
Hungarian Hot Wax Pepper- These peppers are also known as ‘Banana peppers’. They are most commonly seen lime green or a yellow-ish color. When they are ‘ripe’ they turn orange or red which sometimes makes them a little sweeter. Hungarian Hot Wax, despite their intimidating name are amidst one of the most mild of all hot peppers out there. For a Woose like me, they’re perfect!
Jalapeno Pepper- One of these little guys per box. Jalapenos pack a little more heat than the Hungarian Hot Wax peppers. We recommend wearing gloves if you go to cut these up!
Thyme– Beautiful bunches of Thyme for everyone this week. We don’t expect that you’ll be able to use all of this thyme in one week, so lay the bunch out on a tray and dehydrate what is left over after using what you can fresh. Once the thyme has been dried in your dehydrator or your oven on very low heat, strip the stems and store the dried herb in an air-tight mason jar with a tight lid. Enjoy dried thyme from the farm this winter and think of us in January!
Sweet Corn– 4 Ears of sweet corn per member this week! Those nasty raccoons are getting into our sweet corn rows even though we are so very faithfully keeping an electric fense around the corn every night and keeping the fence line trimmed down so it doesn’t short out from the weeds growing into it. We were able to salvage 4 ears per member this week. Even the birds were landing on the tips of the corn trying to get their share, we even had to snip off the tips of a few of the corns here and there. Sweet corn needs to stay very cold in order to keep it’s sweetness. Sweet corn does not keep well outside of the refrigerator, despite the fact that you see it being sold by truck farmers in parking lots outside of refrigeration. Eat it up ASAP for the best flavor! The sugars turn the starches very quickly once it has been picked! One more week of sweet corn yet to come if we can keep the coons away!
Sweet Bell Peppers– One or two sweet peppers per member this week. You may have receveived either red, orange and/or yellow peppers this week. Most of them were red peppers.
Lunchbox Sweet Peppers– Everyone received two little, small sweet peppers that could be mistaken for a hot pepper, but they are not hot. They usually come in red, yellow and orange colors. We grew these little guys last year for the first time and totally fell in love with them! Our 4 year old thinks we grow them just for her, but she wasn’t around when we picked all of these to share with you. Eat these for a snack raw, or cook with them like you would any other sweet bell pepper.
Celery– Okay, so local celery is no comparison to California Celery. I don’t know what they do to that stuff to make it so crunchy and light green and contain so little leaf. But I’m here to tell ya folks, this is what local celery looks like! It’s even a pretty good year for it with all of the rain that we’ve had. The stalks are juicy and sweet! Local celery has a stronger celery flavor when compared to our usual California Celery. Don’t forget to use the greens in your cooking, salads and soups!DSC 0136
Green Lettuce– Small heads of green leaf lettuce for everyone this week. We had to harvest them small because they were starting to bolt on us. Lettuce does not grow well in the heat of the summer and will quickly bolt in hot summer heat. So we took them small at the first signs of bolting. I love lettuce during tomato season for BLT’s!
Tomatoes– The beginning of the tomatoes! We were able to give everyone 4.5lbs of tomatoes this week. We pick any tomato with a ‘blush’ or any shade of red, yellow or orange. We grow many different kinds of tomatoes and some are romas, some are heirlooms and some are standard slicing tomatoes. We grow many different colored tomatoes as well. Don’t wait for your tomatoes to all turn a bright red color, some of them ripen pink or yellow or orange. You will know when they are ripe if you give them a very gentle squeeze and they are soft and not firm anymore. Do not put your tomatoes in the fridge as their flavor with diminish. We recommend leaving your tomatoes on your countertop to ripen if they are slightly under ripe. Only if they are very ripe and you are in danger of loosing them should you put them in the fridge if you can’t eat them up promptly.
Green Beans mixed with Dragon Tongue Beans- One pound of beans per member this week! We planted a row of green beans right next to a row of Dragon Tongue Beans. The Dragon Tongues are a larger, more flat type bean that is yellow with purple streaking. The purple color will go away once the bean is cooked. We tried to give everyone a mix of both types of beans.
Carrots– One pound of carrots this week per member. We snapped the tops off of the carrots this week because the tops of the carrots are starting to dye back and it made it a little easier for us to wash and bag them rather than sit in the fields and bunch them with their tops on. Still very fresh carrots harvested on Monday morning by loving hands.
Next Weeks Best Guess:
Sweet Peppers, tomatoes, onion, carrots, watermelon, sweet corn, eggplant, hungarian hot wax pepper, jalapeno pepper, garlic, green beans, romanesco?, lunchbox peppers, oregano?, romanesco?
Recipes
Panzanella (Thank you, Danielle, for all of your awesome recipe suggestions!)
Green Beans with Tomatoes (Spanish Style Green Beans)
Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole with Gruyere (feturing Carrots and Celery)
