Greetings All,
I hope everyone had a great week!
I think this is the busiest time of year for us. We're running in every which direction trying to get everything done and the jobs just keep stacking! It feels like I never get caught up. I bet I have 200 emails right now (sorry if you're waiting on me!), a baseball tournament this weekend starting tomorrow morning and we just opened the farm stand today for the first time the whole season!!
There just aren't enough hours in a day or days in a week right now. I'd pay good money to get extra time to get caught up. Ben will got home at 7 tonight from the farm stand, my Mom & Dad are coming up (but I already told them I'm working until midnight lol, half-jokingly) then we leave at the buttcrack of dawn for the tournament after caring for all the pigs here and the greenhouse full of plants. Too much to do. Sometimes it just feels better to keep my body and my hands busy, so my mind isn't as busy! Life is good, but man I would love to get caught up a bit. We have a lot to be thankful for- this is just a fruitful, busy time of the year! Here is a picture from the stand today- this is Karli (our middle child) and she does so good up at the stand. She does all the adding herself and all the change, carrying her own money pouch because we trust her 100% with it. She's so good with the customers too- she's a talker (but I'm not sure where she got that from.....)
We have a handful of varieties up there today but not as much as we will, coming up soon. We still haven't gotten into any peppers or tomatoes, melons, etc. or you'd know first ;) So we still have a lot to look forward to!
*I have to add another tidbit here because the burlap sacks on the table says "Four Rivers Produce" and I had a Gal ask me about it earlier today (we're using them as table cloths because they're clean and cute lol). When we lived in Big Lake, Ben worked for them in the off season. As soon as the farm season was over, he would go over there and work all winter into the spring until we started up our greenhouse again. Gotta make ends meet! Farmer Ben would go there and stack potatoes, all. day. long. for months on end. For years, every winter. Well, they gave us a whole pallet of brand-new burlap sacks this past winter (that's worth a lot of $$$) because they don't use burlap anymore, they only use paper boxes! So we happily use these free burlap sacks!
We have an old ice cream freezer that we got from a friend. Our friends Brittani & Averi helped us get our freezer pretty for the farm stand ;)
She wrapped the freezer for us and used her cricket for a cut-out decal for the front, it looks so good!!! I am so thankful to have her help- it looks awesome!!
The freezer is now out in front of Hudson's Hardware Hank in Zimmerman, and it will live there all summer now! Farmer Ben will be up there Fridays 9-6, Saturdays 9-6 and Sundays 9-5 through the end of September (weather permitting).
*I've never shared that here before this season- I felt like everyone who was getting veggies in our CSAs didn't really want to know/care about the stand but now that we added pork, I'm telling you all about it because this could be a great way to try out some different products that we have there! Last year we had a few hogs processed for the Fall Sale but that's the only other time we had anything USDA (which means we can sell by the cut). I'll be posting again hopefully this week sometime with more info about the halves/whole pork and how you guys can get in on it.
We dropped off a GALLON of maple syrup at the butcher shop a couple weeks ago, and now we have our own Maple Blueberry Pork Snack Sticks available at the farm stand! Ben makes this maple syrup with a friend of his, so that's a nice touch for these snack sticks from the farm ;)
SO MANY THINGS TO FILL YOU IN ON. I will never have enough time to share everything I want to talk about. One thing that was super cool this week was seeing the article in the newspaper!! To give you an idea of how busy we've been, my Dad picked up a paper at the SA in town and left it on top of our toaster oven for us but didn't say anything about it. When I saw it 3 days later, I didn't even have time to read it lol. I did finally have time to read it last night and I thought it was a great article! Shout out to Hanz for taking such good notes and writing such a well composed piece!!!
The full article is online but it's a paid subscription so it's not available unless you want to pay for it, sorry guys.. I got a pic here but not sure how clear it'll be once it's uploaded to the blog.
OK enough of the fun stuff, let's get down to business.
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT IN YOUR CSA SHARES THIS WEEK:
Jumbo & Family Shares: Sweet corn!! Broccoli, Zucchini, Pickles, Beets (gold & red), and Kohlrabi! Single Shares: Sweet corn!! Cauliflower, Summer Squash, Slicing Cucumbers & Beets (gold & red)!
Let's start with the corn!
It's finally that time of year and we're so happy to be able to share the flavors of the season with all of you! As you can imagine, corn means something special to us because it's one of the most riveted varieties, right next to the tomatoes. When people ask us about how the season is going, no one ever says "I wonder how your eggplant is coming along?" for example. Everyone who reaches out to me is only in my inbox to ask about the CORN!
Sweet corn is best when enjoyed the first couple days after it's harvested. The sugars convert to starches as it ages, but it's still sweet even 5 days after it's harvested. For now, I won't add recipes for corn because I would imagine everyone is going to be eating corn on the cob. No need to complicate anything when we're just getting into it for the season ;) It's a novelty right now! In the coming weeks with more corn, we'll get some fun recipes up here to try something new if you'd like! For now- I'll just say that everyone cooks their corn differently and swears by it. Some folks add sugar to the water, some folks add salt to the water, some folks add corn to the pot when the water is still cold and then bring it to a boil and remove the cobs. It's surprisingly easy to complicate.
I'd say the easiest way is to boil it for appx 5 minutes, or until the color changes and gets brighter. I don't pay attention to the small details when it comes to fresh corn, it doesn't take any 'doctoring' to make it tasty! As you can imagine, corn that is harvested the same day that it's prepared doesn't need as much attention. Just cook it, roll it in a little butter and hit it with a salt shaker!!
Cauliflower and broccoli are coming this week again!
I'm sure you're wondering why we keep flip flopping these from being in the bigger shares to the smaller shares....
The reason is because we're only harvesting the biggest heads. It's advantageous for everyone in our CSA. If we were to say, we're going to harvest 500 heads of cauliflower this week, later in the week it would get smaller and smaller.... So we don't do that. We say we're harvesting the cauliflower for the Single Shares this week, and that way, all week long, we have consistent heads because we're not picking down so far. The broccoli is the same way. We're only harvesting the biggest heads, which does vary of course, but this alternating of broccoli/cauliflower means we're harvesting 250 heads of every week, instead of clearing a whole patch.
Remember that you can eat the whole stalk on broccoli too- the stem is actually very tasty! It is often called for in a lot of Asian cuisines, the broccoli stems add a good crunch if they're added when the dish is mostly done cooking. Add the broccoli stems at the last minute for a nice crunch! We love making broccoli alfredo around here, though 2 out of 3 of the kids don't eat it so they opt for plain noodles (insert eye roll here). They do eat broccoli- but they prefer it raw.
We're sending kohlrabi with our Jumbo & Family Shares this week! They're getting a little bigger but they're not woody. When they get "tall" they can get woody sometimes, the bulb grows straight up like a cylinder. Even those are just fine to eat but I would suggest fritters or some kind of grated dish. Just like the zucchini we talked about last week; we use them at every size for something different. Waste not, want not.
The leaves are starting to get a little weathered, meaning they're showing their age. There are sun spots and some bug damage. If they are usable, we will send them intact. If they're not usable, we'll cut the greens off so you just have the bulb.
GOLDEN BEETS
Farmer Ben grew golden beets this season for us!!! He's tried them in the past but never had great bulbs. This season he's trying something new and watering the beets every handful of days. It's because the soil needs to be wet for the beets to grow and expand. When the ground is hard and dry they can't grow without exerting a lot of pressure. So in an effort to get nice sized healthy beets, he's watering them more often and it's seemingly working great! The ground isn't super dry, but it's dry enough to cause compaction; hence watering them quite a bit more this season. Some folks say golden beets are sweeter. We're going to mix the golden beets and red beets this week! We have a lot less of the golden beets and we're only going to harvest the good sized ones. So if you end up not getting them this week, know that in the coming weeks you'll get the golden ones. I keep track of everything, down to a science... I know for example, that last week on Wednesday, our Family Shares got 1 green and 1 yellow zucchini in each box because we harvested the summer squash down too far and weren't able to get those in the boxes. So this week, Wednesday's Family Shares, will get summer squash instead of zucchini!
WRAPPING IT UP
Just really quick wanted to add that we had an awesome time in the mine pits last weekend. The water was clear just like I remember it. Kelsi and I were floating through the edge of the lake and you can see every single little weed, fish, stick, everything. She said that it looked like this is where mermaids live so then we took turns swimming like mermaids. Every once in a while, I need to be reminded that I'm the adult because it really did feel magical. It's really, really deep. Some of these mine pits are over 400 feet deep which is kinda creepy!
There are so many roads it's easy to get lost. If you're going for the first time, look up Ironton, MN and go to the beaches that are all marked. We didn't go to those beaches but that's because we knew which random turns to take and which one-way-roads to go down. Which did get really sketchy when we got back in there a ways into the Cuyuna Rec area.
I wish I had more time to chat but it's almost midnight and I've got to be up early to get everything ready to take the kids to the tournament and help Ben pack for the stand, make lunches, take care of critters, the list goes on. The nice thing about this time of year is that I am never worried whether or not I'll get my steps in, haha!
I love baseball and watching our son is the best part. Sports help kids in so many ways. We're looking forward to tomorrow and we've got some family road-tripping to join us, too! Hoping things go well but if they don't, it got me thinking...
It's hard to lose but the hardest lessons are learned in losses, not wins.
Eat Good & Be Well,
~The Farmer's Wife
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