7-21-11-9

Red Springs Family Farm
July 21, 2011 week 9

Lettuce Onions Cucumber Bell Peppers Garlic Tomatoes Eggplant Fennel
Purple Ruffles Basil Basil Tulsi

We're thankful that we didn't get too much more rain this week and that the garden has dried up enough to get out there again. Our mornings start early so we're out there before the heat really gets going. The heat is oppressive though. It's a good time of year to spend some time in the creek each day.

Some of you may have heard that Paul has been out of commission for a while now due to a back injury. He's starting to get better but still not much of a help. Branden has picked up the bulk of the field work with a bunch of help from Coree and Lulah and other friends too. It's been a trial all around, but it looks like we will make it through.

It's been a hard year for the summer squashes with the stress from the wet spring and now they are getting devoured by the squash vine borers. This is a moth that lays an egg on the stem of the vine which, when it hatches, eats its way into the vine and devours it from the inside out. It's hard to catch them until it's too late. We always lose a few vines to them, but this year it seems that we may lose all of the first planting. We put out a latter planting and working to keep them un-infested.

The eggplant is the best stand that we have ever had. Every plant looks great and big too. They were so big in fact that they tumbled over in that last heavy storm. We reinforced them with bamboo stakes this week and they will be much the happier for it. They have a heavy set of fruit on them and there will be more coming in over the next few week. Summer crops are all starting to roll. We were hoping for water melon this week but they should be perfect next week, and there will likely be cantaloupe too. Tomatillos will be beginning soon, as well as okra. A long row of beautiful cucumbers will be fattening up now also – get ready!

There is an amazing sounding recipe from allrecipes.com involving steamed mussels, fennel, tomatoes, ouzo, and cream. I can imagine making it work with a few substitutes, but I can't imagine substituting the ouzo and I'm not sure how many people will have that in their cupboard. This is a simple one from the same site:

Carrot and fennel
1 teaspoon olive oil 3 carrots, shredded 1 fennel bulb (2 small), trimmed and diced
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander 1/4 teaspoon fennel seeds 1/3 cup heavy cream

Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in the carrots and fennel, and season with coriander and fennel seeds. Cook until lightly browned. Mix in the heavy cream, and reduce heat to low. Simmer about 5 minutes until the cream has been absorbed into the carrots and fennel. Serve hot.

I can also imagine omitting the carrots and using thinly sliced eggplant instead. I'd up the oil some as eggplant absorbs so much. I'd also consider omitting the cream and adding garlic.

You might notice that there is an abundance of tomatoes in your basket this week. The tomato stand looks great this year and it should continue awhile. We looooove tomato salads – with basil and garlic chopped in and a liberal dousing of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and nutritional yeast. Feta or Parmesan or fresh Mozzarella really compliment this well. The salad dressing/tomato juice soup left at the bottom of the bowl is sublime. Here’s another way to use these tomatoes. The recipe called for plum tomatoes, but I feel certain that any fairly firm tomato could be treated in the same fashion with great results.

Roasted Tomatoes
12 plum tomatoes, halved lengthwise, seeds removed 4 tablespoons good olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar 2 large garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons sugar 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
Arrange the tomatoes on a sheet pan, cut sides up, in a single layer. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Sprinkle the garlic, sugar, salt, and pepper over the tomatoes. Roast for 25 to 30 minutes, until the tomatoes are concentrated and beginning to caramelize. Serve warm or at room temperature.

We’re in a basil crazil dazil today – you have three kinds of basil in your herb bag. The smallest fuzzy one is Tulsi – loved in Indian and Thai food. It also makes a lovely iced tea with lemon and honey. Or you can just dry it and use it in sachet or potpourri. The purple basil is highly aromatic and flavorful – excellent addition to pesto – edible garnish – object de art!

Please feel free to refuse what produce you cannot use. But also please do TRY to use this good food. Peel the tomatoes and pop them into freezer bags for the winter. Freeze or dry your basil. Peppers need only be washed and chopped to your size of choice and frozen as is. This is the time to put things by for winter.

Speaking of winter… we’re about to start planting for Fall. It feels strange to be trying to think about Fall when it’s 100 degrees out, but that’s the reality of gardening. We are planning for a beautiful season extension with a huge diversity of greens, roots, and goodies to share.

Please remember to do us the kindness of placing your blueberry orders ahead of time – it helps with the flow of veggie pick ups. Thanks a million.
It’s too hot to think anymore right now – time to pack it up and bring you all this harvest.

Enjoy!
With best regards,
Paul, Coree, Lulah, Levon and Branden

Sowing the seed, my hand is one with the earth.
Wanting the seed to grow, my mind is one with the light.
Hoeing the crop, my hands are one with the rain.
Having cared for the plants, my mind is one with the air.
Hungry and trusting, my mind is one with the earth.
Eating the fruit, my body is one with the earth.
-Prayers and Saying of the Mad Farmer, IX
by Wendell Berry

week 8

July 14, 2011 week 8

Lettuce Onion Potatoes
Bell Pepper Patty Pan Garlic
Tomatoes Cucumber
Herb Bag: Sorrel Basil Cutting Celery

We're grateful to not be in a drought so far this year! No end to the interesting weather, though. We've seen soaring heat and torrential down pours. About 3 ½ “ of rain fell on Tuesday which brings our total for the last month to about a foot. This was just a little pop-up thunderstorm that dumped all that rain in about an hour! It washed out our road and took down our phone too. The county road crew did a prompt repair job, but the phone company seems to have a lot going on right now.

We did pretty good catching up with cultivating the garden but will be out there doing it all again after the hard rain. We harvested the potatoes and the rest of the onions too. That was a big day! The tomatoes are doing great now and the peppers are looking good too. The okra has shown it's first blossoms and the corn grew about 2 feet taller with the warmth and abundant moisture. We also had our very first watermelon of the season and the prospects look good for next week on the small ones with yellow flesh.

Summer Squash are on of our favorite early summer treats. They come in a variety of shapes and colors. This week we have the yellow and green patty pans that look like flying saucers, and a few round green zucchinis. The zucchinis got hit hard by the early wet weather and many plants succumbed to fungal disease, which summer squash are prone to. We have also planted a few other varieties that will be coming along in a few weeks. There will be Yellow Crook Neck and Benning's Green Tint – a white patty pan that we especially like the flavor of. They can all be used interchangeably as they have a similar taste and texture. They are great raw out of hand or chopped into a salad or can be lightly stir fried until they are just heated through. They can also be cooked until soft as in a ratatouille.

Try this with your summer squash.
Vegetable Pasta Salad
¼ c. red wine vinegar ¼ c. Olive oil ½ tsp salt 1/8 tsp pepper
1 clove garlic minced 1 tbs Dijon mustard ¼ cup Basil
wisked together and set aside

4 ounces uncooked Pasta cook, drain, and rinse in cold water. Toss in large bowl with 1/3 of dressing

2 c. chopped fresh vegetables: green peppers, summer squash, cucumbers, broccoli, mix and match
3 medium tomatoes cut in thin wedges ½ cup sliced olives
Layer ingredients on top of pasta in above order.
Sprinkle ¼ - ½ cup fresh basil and 2 tbs fresh parsley on top then add ½ cup Parmesan cheese and remainder of dressing. Toss lightly before serving.

And for the tomatoes: Chilled Tomato Soup
1 beefsteak sized tomato (peeled), 1 cup sour cream or plain yogurt, 6 basil leaves, salt and pepper
Puree in a blender until smooth. Oh YUM.
There are many ways to feel about potatoes. For some people they are just another starch, a root (though that isn't botanically accurate), something bland that fits the bill to put with the more important parts of dinner. But this time of year, we beg to differ. This may be due in part to the many hours we spend in the hot field tending the potato plants, then grubbing around in the soil digging them, toting them around in baskets, sorting them out, and tucking them safely into storage, but nevertheless, we contend that fresh potatoes are a different story. You can't ever count on finding really fresh potatoes in a grocery store (sort of like garlic). These potatoes are more crisp – like a fresh apple – and considerably more delicate in flavor (in my opinion) than potatoes that have been in storage. These smaller sized potatoes don't store well, and are best eaten fresh, or NEW, hence the name – new potatoes. You can treat as you would any potato – boil, fry, bake, mash, butter, olive oil, salt and pepper. For a basic good recipe, try this:

Roasted New Potatoes
1 1/2 pounds new potatoes, quartered 2 tablespoons olive oil or vegetable oil
AT LEAST (adjust herbs/spices as needed:) 2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper

Combine all ingredients in a plastic bag; toss to coat. Pour into an ungreased 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking pan. Bake, uncovered, at 450 degrees F for 35 minutes, turning occasionally until potatoes are tender. Remove from the oven and cover with foil to keep warm until serving.

We're offering Kenny's Cheese again this year. For those of you who haven't heard of it , Kennys cheese is a great little family dairy in Barren County Kentucky. They use only there own fresh raw milk to make their cheese. We think that it is a great tasting high quality cheese. The prices have taken a slight increase – we've done what we can to keep them down, but dairy is a tough business. Here's how it works...

Tell us the cheeses and quantities of cheeses that you would like, as soon as possible and no later than next Thursday. It will take Kenny's a full week to process, cut and wrap our order, and we'll bring your order to market July 28. We'll do this once a month through the season, so order an appropriate amount to see you through. We know that these prices can seem high if you're buying conventional cheese. They are comparable to specialty and organic cheese prices, and having seen the Mattingly farm and how it operates, we are confident offering Kenny's products. He uses no growth hormones, and though he does not certify organic, his practices are sound and he is a fine steward of the land. Kenny's offers a very nice selection of cheese – we're keeping it basic for now. If you see something interesting on their website you can request it. Here's the selection and price list, all prices are for ½ lb blocks:

Cheddar, Mild $4
Cheddar, Aged $5
Monterey Jack $4
Colby $4
Barren County Blue $5
Swiss $5

We would like to know that we have a reasonable amount of interest in the cheese order before we commit to making the drive up to Kenny's. Please express your cheese intentions soon.

Cantaloupes and Eggplants will be ready soon. Enjoy your meals!

With best regards,
Paul, Coree, Lulah, Levon and Branden

“To be sane in a mad time is bad for the brain, worse for the heart.
The world is a holy vision, had we clarity to see it – a clarity that men depend on men to make.
– The Mad Farmer Manifesto; The first Amendment (2) by W. Berry

weeks 5, 6, 7

It's so easy to get behind! It's so nice to get caught up.

July 7, 2011 week 7

Lettuce Carrots Beets
Bell Pepper Patty Pan Garlic
FIRST Tomato Wax Beans
herb bag: Sorrel Basil Cutting Celery

It’s our seventh week of the main season deliveries, and it happens to fall on the seventh day of the seventh month of the year. That feels lucky!

We hope you all had a fun Independence Day. We enjoyed time with family and friends, and Lulah enjoyed the fireworks just as much as Levon DIDN’T enjoy them. The raw blueberry pie was incredible. If you want to learn to make one, ask us for the recipe, or scan through the blog. I’m fairly sure it’s posted in there somewhere.

New item in your herb bag this week is Cutting Celery. This little green herb has all flavor of a celery stick in a small sprig of green. Not so handy for dipping peanut butter, but great in soup stocks, potato salads, and green salads. Our parsley took a hit in the last big rain, so it could be awhile before we have larger quantities of those greens to share. Cutting celery is abundant now.

Tomatoes are on the verge. The gardens on the hill have never looked better. Paul and Branden have worked hard to get the squash, corn, melons, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, potatoes and onions laid out and tucked into mulch. There are loads of fuzzy young cantaloupes, miniature watermelons, and thousands of green tomatoes. This week is a particularly precious time, because even though everything is green and lush and beautiful, it's still small enough to maneuver around the gardens. Soon, the tomato vines will close in and picking tomatoes will be like a trip into the primeval tomato jungle. Walking through the squashes and melons will be a tip toe dance around intertwining vines and blooms, and the sweet potatoes will be a solid carpet of beautiful ropy vines and leaves. Everything is growing strong and it won’t be long before we’ll be in full harvest up there. Corn will be late this year, but here come the peppers…

Peppers have a funny way of setting a great big fruit early in the season, right smack dab in the middle of the plant. That first pepper can grow quite large and actually lodge itself in the plant’s branches, making it difficult to harvest. These peppers you’re receiving today are those first big peppers. We picked them out to make room for the others to grow larger. There’ll be more soon.

This is the end of carrots for awhile. We're sad to see them go. It's been a lovely harvest. We'll have more later in the season. Beets are here, and we know they're not everyone's favorite vegetable, so we'd like to give you some information about why and how to love them. Unique pigment antioxidants present in beets have been found to offer protection against coronary artery disease and stroke, lower cholesterol levels in the body and have anti-aging effects. Beets are a great source of B vitamins, have more iron than spinach (step back Pop-eye!), and are also an excellent source of calcium, phosphorous, magnesium, copper, and natural sodium. A quick online search, also yielded this, um, interesting tidbit:

“Dandruff: Mix a little vinegar to a small cup of beets juice. Massage it into the scalp with your fingertips and leave on for about an hour, then rinse. Do this daily till dandruff clears up. Warning: you will smell awful during this hour! “

Nutritional information is motivational, but recipes are probably more useful:

Beet Roesti with Rosemary (from Mark Bittman)
Makes 4 servings Time: 20 minutes
An almost unbelievably sweet and wonderful side dish. The sugar in the beets caramelizes, and the flavors of the rosemary, beets, and butter meld beautifully.
· 1 to 1 1/2 pounds beets · 1 teaspoon coarsely chopped fresh rosemary
· 1 teaspoon salt · 1/4 cup flour
· 2 tablespoons butter
1. Trim the beets and peel them as you would potatoes; grate them in a food processor or by hand. Begin preheating a medium to large non-stick or well-seasoned skillet over medium heat.
2. Toss the grated beets in a bowl with the rosemary and salt, then add about half the flour; toss well, add the rest of the flour, then toss again.
3. Place the butter in the skillet and heat until it begins to turn nut-brown. Scrape the beet mixture into the skillet, shape it into a nice circle, and press it down with a spatula. Turn the heat to medium-high and cook, shaking the pan occasionally, until the bottom of the beet cake is nicely crisp, 6 to 8 minutes. Slide the cake out onto a plate, top with another plate, invert the two plates, and slide the cake back into the pan. Continue to cook, adjusting the heat if necessary, until the second side is browned. Cut into wedges and serve immediately.

Roasted Beets, Italian style
Trim off the tops must 1/4 inch or so above the root. Rinse. Wrap all the beets together in a double-thickness of aluminum foil, crimping the edges together to seal tightly. Roast in a 400ºF oven until tender, 1-2 hours. Remove from the oven. When cool enough to handle, peel the beets (the skin will pull away) and slice into thin rounds or half rounds. Just before serving, dress with good-quality red wine vinegar, olive oil and salt and pepper. Serve warm or room temperature. Especially nice after lamb dishes.
Roasted Beets can also be used in fancier salads. Try combining them with orange sections and watercress or lamb's lettuce -- or with walnuts and goat cheese – or with sliced red onions and fresh herbs – in a sherry vinegar dressing.

Quick and Easy Beans
Cook beans in a 4-quart pot of boiling salted water until just tender, 6 to 8 minutes. Drain in a colander, then immediately toss in a large bowl with either:

1 Tbsp. honey, ¾ tsp. Grated lemon zest, and ¼ tsp. salt
OR
3 Tbsp. Extra virgin olive oil, juice of one lemon, 2 minced cloves of garlic, and salt and pepper.

This week, we hope to pull onions and dig potatoes. Cucumbers will be fattening up, and the tomatoes will pink up. Summer crops are upon us.

Have a great week, and please remember to send us your blueberry orders.
Thank you for your good eating.

Paul, Coree, Lulah, Levon and Branden

“The old agriculture of the 19th and 20th century is dying, and consumers can hasten that death, and they should. They are, after all, the walking wounded, offended by the chemical amateur. The consumer cannot hide in an organic garden or sleep in a subway or ignorance. Consumers will get lean agriculture when they demand it, casting their demands in knowledgeable terms and nailing those terms to the market door.” ~ Charles Walters, A Voice Eco- Agriculture, 1975


June 30, 2011 week 6

Lettuce Lacinato Kale Carrots Beets
Red Onion Garlic Chard Wax Beans
herb bag: Sorrel Basil Green Onions

Is it my imagination or was June SO fast? We are happy to see the sun shine again these days. By our estimations, we've had at least 7 ½ inches of rain in the past ten days. Monday night's finale thunderstorm was a light show to put most firework displays to shame. There was no sleeping through it, and Branden was tempted to bail out of his tent house. The gardens are still too wet to cultivate and we can't mulch or plant until after we cultivate. The to-do list has gotten pretty darn long! We'll hit the ground running on Friday morning.

Food ripens and grows, no matter what the weather. The first picking of green, (actually, yellow) beans was a little thin. We're aiming for more next week. Summer squashes have not enjoyed the rain, but persist in blooming, as do the cucumbers. There are spiny baby cucumbers all over the vines. Lulah has eaten about three not-quite-ripe tomatoes in the garden now. Soon, so soon, those best loved garden fruits will be rolling in. This week's sunshine will bring big growth.

In the meantime – here's to beets and carrots. Make your holiday weekend colorful by using these bright veggies. We like to grate beets on a salad. (You might have noticed already, but we'll put almost anything on a salad. We hope you will try too.) They turn whatever they come into contact with a delightful bright pink (it's especially delightful if you have a young daughter :)). They are great baked in foil, just like a white potato, and if you're doing some grilling this weekend – check out these tips for Grilled Beets, a great addition to a grilled veggie platter:
Heat the grill to medium-hot – you should be able to hold your hand about an inch over the cooking grate for about 2 seconds.
Peel and slice beets.
Brush beets with olive or vegetable oil. Sprinkle lightly with salt.
Place beets on grill. If using a gas grill, cover. Cook 8 to 10 minutes, turn, and cook until beets are tender and grill-marked, another 8 to 10 minutes.
Serve beets hot, warm, or at room temperature. Drizzle with additional olive oil for serving, if you like. This is also a great time to use any nut oils - toasted walnut oil or hazelnut oil in particular - since they are delicious on grilled beets.

Reminder - any oil you use can be easily infused with garlic and/or basil or any other herb you choose, simply by crushing the herb or spice and mixing it with the oil. The longer it soaks in the oil the better, and if you're infusing for more than a few hours, please move the container to the fridge.

Another good thing to do with beets:
Beet Raita
3 cups raw beets, grated 1 bay leaf 1 Tbsp sunflower oil
½ tsp mustard seeds 1 tsp sea salt 1 Tbsp honey or maple syrup
2 cups yogurt
Steam beets over 1 inch of water in a saucepan for 2 to 3 minutes. Heat oil in a small skillet; add mustard seeds and crumled bay leaf. When mustard seeds pop, take skillet off heat. Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl. Chill if desired. Enjoy as a garnish with bread, soup rice or vegetables.

These pretty little kale tops are the end of the brassica family in the garden until Fall. Some will mourn their loss and others rejoice. Here at home we do a little of both. Leaving a good space between the Spring and Fall cabbage family plantings helps reduce the caterpillar population, and leaves us with better garden rotation options.

Here's a nice soup, from Laurel's Kitchen, to use your kale. You could probably use chard in this as well. I probably would not use them both together.

Potato Kale Soup
1 onion 1 tbsp oil/fat
1 clove garlic 2 large potatoes
1 large bunch kale 5 cups hot water or stock
1/2 tsp salt or to taste black pepper

Sautee onion in fat until slightly golden. Add potatoes and 2 cups water. Simmer, covered, until potaotes start to soften at the edges. Meantime wash kale(soak in a sink or bowl of water. Remove stems...chop fine and steam. (don't cook with the potatoes...the flavor will be too strong.)
When the potatoes are well done, puree half of them with remaining water and salt an pepper (consider using miso instead of salt here). Combine all and heat gently (do not boil). Correcting consistency by adding hot water or milk. Makes about 6 cups.

In coming weeks, we hope to grub some white potatoes, pick more beans, and ripe tomatoes, and bring some cucumbers to town.

We hope you have a wonderful Fourth of July weekend, and look forward to seeing you next week!

Your Gardeners
at Red Springs Family Farm

PS – There are still shares available – pass the word along to your friends. Also, basket up for grabs next week – if someone wants a sample.


June 23, 2011 week 5

Lettuce Chinese Cabbage Carrots Broccoli Red Onion Fresh Garlic
herb bag: Sorrel Basil Shiso
Green Coriander Anise Hyssop Echinacea flowers

Amazing how fast we can oscillate between praying for rain and begging for it to stop! Oh well. All seeds planted are sprouting well now. So are the millions of weeds we will be pulling and hoeing when the garden soil dries enough to walk upon again. We prefer to not even walk in the garden when the soil is this wet. Good garden soil teems with microscopic life, and when the soil is wet, that life is all the more fragile. Our heavy steps have a heavy price.

These lovely red onions came from Lulah's hands to your kitchen. We were up on the hill making the most of a few sunny hours on Tuesday. The garlic harvest needed to happen before the next rain, which seemed emenent. Lulah looked at the onion bed and noticed that the red onions' tops were laying down. We confirmed her suspicion that they were ready to come out of the ground, and she harvested all the bent onions, laid them in piles, and carried them to the tractor all by herself. Purple is one of her favorite colors, which made the job a real joy for her.

These red salad onions are not cured. They should be stored in a plastic bag in your refrigerator and eaten within a week or two. Here's a basic Greek Salad to use a red onion in:

1 large head Lettuce 1/2 half red onion, sliced
1 English Cucumber, sliced 1 cup Kalamata olives
1 cup Greek Feta, crumbled

Dressing: 1/2 cup olive oil
3 tbsp red wine vinegar 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp dried oregano 1/2 tsp salt
freshly ground pepper

1. Place lettuce in a large bowl.
2. Mix dressing ingredients in a bottle and give it a good shake.
3. Toss lettuce with about 1/2 the dressing.
4. Place remaining salad ingredients on top of lettuce, and drizzle with some more dressing.
(Recommendation from the farm kitchen – use thinly sliced tender broccoli stalks and small florets instead of cucumbers, which won't be ready for another couple weeks.)

It's such splendid work to grow garlic. In the midst of the garlic harvest, I remembered that Paul went up to plant the garlic 8 months ago, last October, when I was just getting the feeling of going into labor with Levon. Tuesday, Levon fell asleep in the stroller, giving his Momma a rare and wonderful opportunity to work unencumbered in the garden. The garlic is beautiful. Fresh garlic is something you can't ordinarily buy in a grocery store. The clove skins are not dry - the bulb is on the whole juicier than most garlic. Enjoy. You'll be getting a bulb each week, but this new fresh garlic is special.

Shiso, or Perilla, is a new one in your herb bag this week. Looking on wikipedia, I find this:
“ Perilla is traditionally used in Chinese medicine and has been shown to stimulate interferon activity and thus, the body's immune system. It is used to ease the symptoms of the common cold. It is fried in oil with garlic or ginger in the wok, and eaten as a dish with meals. “

We like to slice it thin on salads. Shiso grows as a weed in our garden, a very beautiful and tasty weed. You may have seen it used as a garnish in Japanese restaraunts. We can get a chuckle by asking the sushi chef what s/he pays for that garnish. What kind of farm income could we generate by selling our weeds?!

This will be the last of the broccoli until Fall. The cold snap did the broccoli good. We think you'll find this week's selection slightly superior to last week. We experimented with an open pollinated variety this spring, and we have been pleased. Broccoli, in general, has been highly hybridized to perform under particular conditions in a very specific time frame. The hybrid broccolis sometimes don't go all the way to flower! They turn yellow but dont' bloom, which seems strange, at least. The open pollinated variety behaves more like a natural broccoli, seems to keep more tender stalks, and we hope you find the flavor agreeable as well.

Chinese Cabbages are not our usual spring garden fare. They enjoy one great advantage over their western relatives (broccoli, head cabbages, kale, etc.) in that the cabbage lopers aren't attracted to them. Unfortunately, the flea beetles do enjoy them, and the recent soggy conditions have made life all the better for those bugs. The damage is primarily aesthetic. These cabbages are tender enough to cut fine in salads. If you want to stir fry them, they need only a short time in a hot pan.

Carrots are beginning to be damaged by the excessive rain. The root bottoms suffer in our low hollow – high water table. We'll hope that things dry out this week and give them a chance to recover. Here's our favorite carrot salad recipe:

12 medium carrots, grated 1 cup fresh pineapple, drained and chopped
½ cup raisins ½ cup roasted pecans
1 Tbsp parsley (optional) ¾ cup basic dressing (below)
Mix well and chill.

Basic Dressing:
1 tsp Dijon type mustard 2 Tbsp. Plus a bit wine vinegar
½ cup extra virgin olive oil 1 Tbsp flax oil

Dip a fork into the ja of mustard and transfer about 1 tsp to a small bowl. Add vinegar and mix around. Add olive oil in a thi stream, stirring all the while with the fork, until oil is well mixed or emulsified Add flax oil and use immediately.

COMING SOON – new potatoes, beets, green beans. We don't know when the first tomatoes will ripen but we sure look forward to that day!

FARM BUSINESS – if you are paying on the quarterly payment plan, this is your last week paid for. Please bring a check next week, if you didn't already this week. Thank you!

Thank you for your good eating. Happy Summer!

VIII When I rise up, let me rise up joyful, like a bird.
When I fall, let me fall without regret, like a leaf.
~ Wendell Berry, Prayers and Saying of the Mad Farmer