Good morning All!
I hope everyone had a good week! I hate to start the newsletter with this but here is a familiar sight this season:
Look at those poor brussel sprouts. This pic was from Tuesday afternoon and since then, I'd guess 90% of that patch has died. So out of hundreds of plants, there are maybe 50 that haven't died. That means no brussel sprouts for us this season.
This season was just starting to turn around... If you read my post last week you must have read that things were looking great and the heat was really pushing some of these varieties to produce. Now we're sitting here in the middle of August and the highs from the last week have been in the 60s, a couple days in the 70s. Plants don't do a whole lot of growing or ripening when it's this cool. This morning picking it felt like a September morning already- we need HEAT! It was 45 degrees when we went outside this morning. That's 13 degrees from freezing, in the middle of August.
Ben is really good at remembering things. That's his strong suit, not mine. He reminded me this week that we have gotten more rain in the last week than we did ALL of last summer. So May- June- July- August and September, we didn't even get 5.5 inches of rain through all those months last summer.
Let that sink in: ALL of last summer we didn't get as much rain as we did in the last week.
We got 5.5 inches total, but I know some of you guys got more! We were narrowly avoided by the 1.5 inch hail that hit St. Cloud (about 20 miles west of us here). I'm so sorry to everyone who is dealing with storm damage from the wind, rain, hail, etc. This season has been rough to everyone. Our farm fields and home gardens; no one is safe from the crap weather so far this summer.
To say we're frustrated is an understatement. There is nothing any of us can do about it and THAT is the most frustrating part. The new kohlrabi patch and the brussel sprouts aren't going to make it- regardless of Ben's many efforts to cultivate and open up the soil to keep them alive.
Enough of the doom and gloom. I just have to be honest because I already promised you I would be. That's part of our relationship and having the "window" into the farm. I don't like sending these updates that aren't fluffy and fun but here we are, some days aren't fun. These are the years that make us consider how to insulate our income a bit more. This is a rough year.
Just food for thought (pun intended lol)...
Plants: If they get too hot they die.
If they get too cold they die. If they got too dry they die.
If they get too wet they die.
Pigs and just livestock in general however, handle the conditions much better and can thrive in unfavorable conditions. I'm not saying that we're not growing produce (we will always grow veggies, I promise!!!!!!); it's just that seasons like this make us appreciate the portion of our income that is more stable. The livestock is much more stable than produce, especially in today's climate.
We've considered adding chickens to our farmstead and I think that 2025 is the year we'll give it a try. Of course we'd start small and see how it goes. And Ya'll would be the first to know anyways because I would announce it here before anywhere else ;)
I did get my shelves done this week!! I have a before and after photo here but I'll make them a little smaller so they don't take up so much of the blog. I'm just happy to have the extra organizational space for sorting tomatoes! This is the tomato lean-to as we affectionately call it. The whole space is devoted to tomatoes and sorting. As soon as these were done Ben came back to see them and said... that's awesome! Can we do them on this other wall over here too?! hahahah! The to-do list is always growing ;)
Those cardboard flats come from Sams club for the most part. I stop by there everyday on my way home from delivering (there are 2 stores that are kinda on my way home). I pick up all the empty ones and then we use them to sort the tomatoes! When this shelf is actually full (the ones on top are empty- just storage space there), we'll have dozens of baskets on tomatoes on these shelves; hundreds of pounds. But that's OK because I framed them like a deck, every 16 inches there are 2x4 supports under the plywood shelves! One challenge to this is that I was building off the side of the barn onto the concrete floor and nothing in this century old barn is level. I'm proud to say my shelves are, though! That took a little extra attention to detail.
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT IN YOUR CSA SHARES THIS WEEK:
Jumbo & Family Shares: Sweet Corn, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Gypsy Peppers, Zucchini or Cucumbers & Tomatoes!
Single Shares: Sweet Corn, Broccoli, Gypsy Peppers, Zucchini or Cucumbers & Tomatoes!
Zucchini OR Cucumbers- This first patch is really winding down and production is down. The super cool temps don't help anything (today, Sunday morning, it was 45 degrees when we went out to start harvesting). So we're going to harvest what we can and we'll send whatever we have home with you guys. That means I can't say exactly what everyone is getting; because we're literally going to use everything we've got. Some of you will get zucchini/summer squash and some of you will get cucumbers/pickles. Of course I'll document all of it and that way we'll keep track for when the next patches start producing in a few weeks. The next patch was damaged and really set back by the heavy rains. Ben said he thinks they're going to pull through though.
FARM STORE
I know I said I would have it open this week, but Ben is concerned that we don't have enough surplus to open up our online ordering system just yet. It would add quite a bit of pressure to what he's already got going on and we don't want to do that. So we're planning for next week Friday!
The way it works is we will update the store and have all sorts of additional produce available for purchase. When you pay online, we will receive the order automatically. We will bring you the tomatoes as soon as possible, unless we hear otherwise. So if you know you won't have time for canning tomatoes next weekend, just put "Not this Wednesday but next Wednesday is fine". Those types of notes will be welcomed as I want to make sure to get you the extra produce when you have time to put it up!
TOMATOES
Since the tomatoes are just starting to come in, we're going to add one kind of tomato to your box again this week and we won't be able to tell you which one it is, sorry! Basically, we don't have enough of any one variety to add to the CSAs this week so we're adding everything we've got! I'll also be recording which varieties everyone gets so we can keep it straight and balance it out in future weeks. If you get romas this week, you'll likely get slicers next week, etc. I'll go over the different kinds we grow and what they're known for.
Traditional large slicing tomatoes can be used to top a burger, as wedges to garnish a salad, or diced on top of tacos for example. They're larger and round with good flavor and a larger seed cavity. These will be the classic BLT tomatoes; they are full of flavor.
Roma tomatoes are also great for the purposes listed above, but they’re known for their value in making sauces or canning. They are smaller and elongated, they’re oval shaped not round. They have a much lower water content (smaller seed cavity) than those traditional slicing tomatoes, so if you’re making salsa for example the process of cooking it down is twice as fast than the traditional slicing tomatoes. Making fresh salsa or pico de gallo, I usually use Romas if I have them on hand.
*We have only harvested a couple baskets of the san marzanos. They're a smaller tomato and we were actually quite surprised that none of them got bigger; we thought last year they were small because of the drought and not getting enough water when this year we're realizing that's really just how big they are. Not huge, but man are they sweet!!!!
Grape tomatoes are always fun! They’re such a treat and never last long around our house. They are one of my favorite quick snacks, but they’re also fun to add to shishcabobs on the grill, blackened in a stir fry, sliced up thin and added to salads, or cut in half and used in the classic summertime pasta dishes with Italian dressing.
Note: avoid cooking tomatoes in aluminum or iron pots because tomatoes react with those substances, giving the dish a metallic taste. This is a big tip. I wrecked a lot of canned goods back in the day because I didn't know better. No one taught me to can/hot water bath. A lot of folks learn how to can because they do it with their family, but no one in my family ever canned anything. I canned with a friend early on- and neither of us knew anything lol! We made a lot of mistakes and eventually figured it out! This is something I wish I would have known right away.
Canning is something that anyone can do. Literally. I know we're ALL trying to eat healthy and knowing where our food comes from and who is growing it is very important. I think everyone is moving towards whole foods- meaning less processed stuff. More and more people are buying tomatoes to make pasta sauce for supper instead of buying a can of the stuff for $4 at the store... sure it's more expensive to make our own and that is a consideration of course, but the overall satisfaction knowing what is in your food is worth it. And the flavors are unmatched; there is nothing like homemade salsa and sauces. Jams, too!
Hot water bath canning is going to be the easiest place to start if you're new to it. Essentially you're just cooking down your salsa in a pot until it gets to the right consistency and texture; letting some of the water cook off by letting it boil without a top on. The hot water bath canner is set on a different burner (mine is big enough to cover 2 burners on our stove) filled halfway with water and you literally fill your jars with salsa and put them into the boiling water bath. It's a lot more complicated than that of course, but I just wanted to explain the basics. When you boil the jars, lids and all, it increases pressure inside the jars and pushes the air out. That's how it seals the jars and keeps bacteria out.
Gypsy peppers
Are coming this week for the Jumbo & Family Shares. The skin is a little thinner than a bell pepper but it's slightly sweeter too. It's a good pepper for a veggie tray or for eating raw on top of salads because it has such a nice sweetness to it! Later on in the season when they start ripening, they'll be all sorts of shades of yellows, oranges and reds. Right now, we're relatively early in pepper season and a lot of them are more yellow colored.
Fun fact: All peppers will turn red if left on the plant long enough. Even jalapenos! Though we don't usually leave them on the plant long enough for jalapenos to turn colors (it takes longer with hot peppers), we do try to grow enough of the sweet peppers that we can pick off some and still leave other full-sized peppers out there because we know they'll turn red and be so pretty. The only thing is that when they are red, they also generally get a little softer because that's part of the natural progression. These nice yellow peppers turn red because they're ripening; getting sweeter; because the more sugar in the pepper the more efficient it is at breaking down and germinating the seeds. Again coming back to the function of every organism: reproduction is the goal.
WRAPPING IT UP
When things get tough we have to focus on what really matters. We just have to mentally let go because there is nothing else we can do anyways, so don't let it wreck the rest of your day or week... even though it's hard sometimes. Just let it go. Everything else falls into place when you focus on your faith & family.
Kids spent a whole night jumping around from tractor rut to tractor rut; all these pools of water have allowed the frogs to lay eggs everywhere. We've never seen so many frogs! They filled a minnow trap with frogs because it's harder for them to escape lol. Kelsi and William took turns hosing each other off with ice cold water after I explained that they couldn't go into the house until they got cleaned up a bit. I've never seen so much mud on these kids before, I couldn't barely see their eyes when they were done messing around back by the pack shed while I was working in there lol. They were both giggling and shaking from being so cold from the hose. I'm not a total monster- don't worry, when we got inside everybody took showers and got warmed up in jammys ;)
Side note: We still have the tadpoles in our living room and my son put a 2x4 in the tank with them because they're turning into little frogs and they needed a lilly pad he said lol. I'm so thankful it wasn't green-treat wood! He didn't tell me he was doing that, I just walked into the living room and questioned why there was a chunk of wood in the tank but it does float so it makes sense lol. These kids, I tell yah.
Yesterday I went to the farm stand and took Ben's spot there for the afternoon! It was Grandpa Marv's 80th birthday party so I insisted that Ben let me take over the stand for a few hours. It was fun getting to sit there and talk with customers- most of them started with "who are you?" hahahaha because Ben is the only one who sits up there. I think some of them were thinking "oh, you do exist" haha!
The Serenity Prayer has been changed many times throughout the years but it originated back in the 1930's and still holds very true today. Something to keep in mind as I mosy through my chores this morning on the farm.
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
Eat Good & Be Well! ~The Farmer's Wife
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