Wow, we only have this Friday and next in the summer Farm Fresh Food Club. Hard to realize. You have been great to work with. We have twenty so far in the fall Club.
First email first served – the last two ducklings until mid-November. We had 22 ducklings hatch Saturday and Sunday, and have two more setting on we don’t know how many. I didn’t realize these two were setting on so many. We will also have frozen broilers, fresh slow-cook hens, and eggs for sale tomorrow. We also should have organic Macs and Paula Reds, and I think Victoria will be back. I skipped the Wednesday Lake Placid Market to get caught up for the fall share, so didn’t see her to comfirm.
The chard is slowing down and the kales are coming on strong. We have a little of the black/dinosaur/Toscano kale, and lots of Winterbor and either Blue Scotch or Siberian (those two got mixed up in transplanting, but both are really good). If you are not into cooked greens, I encourage you to try kale chips. Tear the leaves off the stems, and into bite sized pieces. Toss with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Spread on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 until crispy.
I have been roasting zucchini and frying squash blossoms before they are gone for the winter. I am so spoiled with dill and cilantro that I have planted some in the hoophouse to have it fresh through fall. They are both relatively cold hardy, especially the cilantro.
I still have a little of the rooted basil available – feel free to take whatever you will pot up. We also have the regular cut basil, along with dill and cilantro. I have a few dill heads about ready for pickling – u-pick.
The beans are in full swing. We have green, yellow and Royal Burgundy. Please start picking at the white fence post markers and pick each plant clean of mature beans, then leave the fence post marker where you left off. This way you don’t have to pick through beans that have already been picked, and neither do folks who come after you.
The broccoli is beginning to head, but not for this week. The red cabbage is ready to harvest. The cabbage/broccoli/kale family has contracted altenaria fungal disease. I am tearing the collards out because they seem to be the most infected and are large and leafy, overshadowing other plants and keeping things damp – conducive to more disease. Never had this before (well, maybe a plant here and there but not enough I paid attention to it). On cabbage, the tips of the outer leaves become yellow. If I don’t harvest before those leaves get folded into the head, there will be a mushy cabbage leaf on the inside, so I will be harvesting lots of cabbage earlier than I had planned. Fortunately the drop dead gorgeous red savoy does not seem to be affected, but I want to wait until after a good frost to harvest it. Google “cabbage recipes”. A popular fall red cabbage recipe is cabbage, apple, vinegar, sugar, butter, salt and pepper, maybe other goodies like bay leaf. It also makes really crunchy slaw.
Seems like there were things I thought worth mentioning while I was weeding, planting, and harvesting, but of course I can’t remember them now. Twenty-six of you answered our SurveyMonkey questions, thank you. There is overwhelming preference for Thursdays, but of course then also a couple who can’t come on Thursday, so we will put our thinking caps on.
Well, time to go back down the hill and turn the sprinkler off for the night. I seeded lots of salad mix, arugula, spinach, pac choi – oh, that is one thing. There is some pac choi that came up from last year’s seed. It is has been bitten a bit, but if you like pac choi/bok choy, it is there for the picking.
