Good morning All! I had over 3,000 steps already by 6:45 this morning, if that shows a little how busy we have been! It's the biggest weekend of the season for the farm stand and for tomato sales too. The biggest weekend of the whole summer and I'm here writing you a blog post on Monday morning. Happy Labor Day!
Our kids start school tomorrow and man we're excited but I'm a little nervous to see what our new morning routine is going to look like. We have everyone here clocked in at 7 am but school doesn't start until almost 8 and since we live so far out we drive them into school instead of having them picked up at 6:15am for an hour+ bus ride. So one of us will have to leave to bring kids into town but we will plan ahead and Ben and I will just start at 6am instead- that way we're already rolling when everyone gets here. We have about 8 employees now that school started.
I'd like to take a quick second to say thank you to everyone who works in the schools and with our kids. We appreciate all of our teachers and assistants who help our schools run smoothly. I know that it can be a thankless job- but please know there are still a lot of us parents who really appreciate your hard work and dedication to these youngsters!
Remember earlier this summer when I was showing off my new shelves? Well I didn't get a chance to build more in the middle of the season so we just took the greenhouse shelves and put them in here for more space. This is just one angle of the shed. If you're on social media I posted a video of circling around in there to show you how many tomatoes there are!
I made 100 jars of salsa this weekend and Ben said my hot salsa wasn't hot enough. It's the same as it always has been! I measure everything like a crazy scientist so it's consistent! So now, I'm considering doing a salsa that's 2x as hot as the last stuff so that we'll have something for those who like the "burn your face off" heat. Not my cup of tea but we all know someone who likes crazy hot stuff- like ghost peppers! We can't even grow them here- it'd be a liability basically lol!
LABOR DAY SCHEDULE
I just sent out emails to everyone separate from this blog post so that you could be reminded that this week's pick up is a day later than normal. So instead of Monday through Wednesday, we're harvesting and delivering Tuesday through Thursday this week.
ONE LAST CHANCE
Since I am tardy with my newsletter here and failed to give you the final heads up for the Add-on Share deadline- I'm going to extend the deadline by a week. September 7th is the FINAL DAY for all the Honey Shares, Apple Shares and Fall Shares to be ordered. The other goodies on our website (tomatoes, peppers, onions etc) will be available all fall and I will update it as things come into and go out of harvest- so it's up to date when you go onto our website.
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT IN YOUR CSA SHARES THIS WEEK:
Jumbo & Family Shares: Sweet corn, spaghetti squash, muskmelons, pickles, banana peppers & tomatoes! Single Shares: Sweet corn, spaghetti squash, zucchini, banana peppers and tomatoes!
Muskmelons!!
This is one of those varieties that you won't be able to find a comparison anywhere else. These are harvested EVERY SINGLE MORNING because we only harvest the ripe melons. And there are more ripe melons every single day. This is how we harvest everything on the farm though, we only harvest peak-of-flavor produce! Melons that are harvested at peak ripeness taste the best, but they don't have a long shelf life.
Melons you'll see in the grocery store are often harvested under ripe and allowed to ripen on semi-trucks as they come north from southern US and Mexico. The flavor simply isn't there when they are harvested under-ripe. They might not be bad melons but they sure as heck don't taste like the ones you'll get this week!!!
If you're new to fresh-from-the-field-melons, the one tip I have for you is to eat it as soon as possible. First thing I would do it pop it in the fridge (cutting warm melons doesn't maintain the texture of the flesh as well). Once it's chilled, I would cut it up into pieces or slices, to have it prepped for whenever you're ready for a tasty treat! I would not store these on your counter for any period of time, they'll go over the hill in just a day or two. Again, that's the trade off for all the flavor though! You'll believe me when you have your melon this week ;)
***We were hoping to give everyone melons this week but I can't put it on the list for all of our CSA Share sizes and then run short. So we're going to add it to the Jumbo & Family Shares this week and then next week we'll add it to the Single Share Members' boxes! If for some reason we have just a ton- we'll fit in muskmelons where we can and document it!
Spaghetti Squash! It's the first winter squash of the season!! If you're not familiar, let's go over it in a bit more detail. Squash comes in two main forms- winter squash and summer squash. The summer squash is zucchini and crook neck summer squash, the thinner skin squash that can go from flower to full size in a couple days (or overnight, as some claim, haha!). Zucchini is known for growing fast!
Winter squash on the other hand, is started in the spring and has been growing for months quietly in the background. They grow larger and larger until they start ripening. Squash ripens as the weather changes and the plants know that the sunlight hours are diminishing. The vines naturally die off and the leaves get yellow and wilty.
Winter squash comes in many forms and you'll get to see a lot of different varieties this season! We've got the classics like acorn squash, buttercup, butternut, etc and we've got some fun ones like the spaghetti squash, delicata, sweet dumpling, for example. One thing I need to make sure you know is that Spaghetti squash is different from every other type of squash out there because of it's texture.
Cut your spaghetti squash in half, scoop out the seeds and soft membranes that hold the seeds. Then use your hand (or a paper towel) and rub olive oil around on the inside of the squash. Place face down on a baking sheet and cook for appx 30 minutes for a medium sized squash. It's done cooking when it's fork tender, meaning you have to be able to stick a fork through it without any tension/ kind of like a potato.
Once you know it's done, flip it over so you can see the flesh and use your fork to run the length of the squash. There really isn't any way to 'mess this up'. By using the fork, you're creating little "spaghetti" noodles out of your squash. Every other type of squash is removed from the skin with a spoon, you just scoop the flesh out of the skin. Spaghetti squash is different because it's the only squash that will result in this texture! You could use a butternut squash and use a fork, and it'd never turn out anything like this.
The picture here is sourced from google- but it shows a great example of the finished product! We generally get the spaghetti squash into our CSAs a couple of times a season. I LOVE these squash because they're special and they can be turned into so many different things. I'm cooking one tonight for supper with some homemade spaghetti sauce.
It sounds fancy to say "home made spaghetti sauce" but it's really just doctoring up something I already stored through the winter! I just use my salsa and then add the herbs and cook it down so it's thicker; voila! (My salsa is just tomatoes, peppers, onions, canning salt and apple cider vinegar so it's easy to make it into spaghetti sauce or chili base, etc).
PICKLES AND ZUCCHINI!
These are out of our NEW patches. This is an exciting time for us! These plants limped along for a long time this summer and after last week's warmer weather it pushed them to start producing. When plants are young, they produce much nicer fruits... you might have noticed towards the end of the last zucchini/pickle patches the zucc was maybe different shapes, pickles are shorter or fatter or just have more vine scraping on the outside so they're not as pretty (though just as tasty). So we're really excited to get into the new patch because they're so nice! We're going to start the flip flop thing again and I keep track of all of that :)
TOMATOES
This goes without saying, I'm sure, but we still have a ton of tomatoes. Like this past few days picking we've gotten over ten thousand pounds in from the field. It's insane how many tomatoes we have and they are still so nice. Some folks wait until the last minute to do their canning but I'd very strongly suggest getting tomatoes soon if you're planning on getting any put up. We're over the hump- meaning we're still getting a lot but not as much as we were in our big picks. As the season goes on we'll harvest less and less each time until all the sudden they're gone until next summer.
WRAPPING IT UP:
We made 100 jars of salsa over the long weekend and 30 jars of jam too. The jam is almost all gone and I never even got the salsa labeled to put out there at the stand, it's been so busy. It's literally sitting on my counter still, longing to be in someone else's kitchen ;) I have a couple of worker bees helping me in the kitchen with prepping tomatoes for my salsa or chopping jalapenos for example. William went out and harvested a whole bushel of jalapenos and then brought it into the kitchen. He washed them diligently and then starting slicing them in half and Kelsi was using the chopper to push them through (this is how I do all the peppers and onions in my salsa- saves lots of time- worth the $20!).
They got 96 CUPS of jalapenos prepped!! That way, they're in the freezer now and I can just take out my pre-measured bags for salsa! Mild gets 1 cup, medium heat gets 2 cups and hot salsa gets 4 cups. I'm strongly considering an extra hot one because there are just too many of those crazy folks out there who like really hot stuff ;) Like I mentioned above. Gotta have something for everyone!
We told William he should put gloves on. Kelsi even has goggles because she touched her eye at one point and figured goggles made this safer haha! So we told him- that's a lot of jalapenos. Well, he made it all the way through chopping jalapenos for THREE HOURS (and this was after he harvested them, too). Then washed with dawn dish soap and took a shower, everything was fine.
Then about an hour later his hands started burning like crazy. He woke me up in tears about a half dozen times asking what we could do to make them stop burning and I tried everything in the book. Nothing helped. Even all day yesterday at the birthday party mid-afternoon, he was rushing in and out of Auntie Anna's house to run his hands under cold water. This morning they're better but still a little swollen and tender.
Remember that one time earlier this year I said- the hardest lessons to learn are the easiest to remember. He won't be doing that again anytime soon and I doubt he'll ever need a reminder to put gloves on, again. Poor kid. I just hate seeing them hurting but I did tell him!
Have a great rest of your long weekend :) Eat Good & Be Well, ~The Farmer's Wife
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