Boy, you’d think we were in the middle of July, not the last day of August! Even though we started harvesting as soon as it was light this morning, we didn’t manage to finish until noon, and by then we were cooking. Nearing the end we almost gave up on harvesting the summer squash, but decided it was worth sweating a little more to get one last (?) bit into the bins!

Today was our first basket day without help from our two interns — Scott and Danny finished their two-month stay at the farm last week. So it took a long time to get through washing the vegetables and packing the bins, but we managed. Robert and Erin, friends of Joël’s, and Jean-Pierre had helped out with what could be done on Monday afternoon, and June and Lloyd lent a hand packaging the sunflower spouts.

It’s a good thing we had that help too, because I think that today’s baskets were the biggest ever: it took some strategic placing to get everything in!

Amidst batches of tomato sauce, tomato salsa, blackberry jam, apple butter, apple sauce and delicious apple ginger marmalade, I write this little note to thank the yummy edibles and the soil and the rain and the sunshine for making my belly (and pantry) so very happy and full. Colourful freezer coldslaw and diced tomatoes are on my radar, just not in my kitchen…yet! Stephanie has a few tasty looking jars on her counter too – beany mustards and bread and butters and some funky squash creations.

Even if canning can seem intimidating at first, just making a small batch of jam to devour right away can be mighty satisfying. And salsa verde, oh my! I cannot wait for the tomatillos to be ready! Be forwarned, canning can be a bit of an addictive hobby. My current resolution is to do what I (well, we) will definitely use and appreciate. There are many recipes that intrigue me (like pickled water melon rinds) but since time is limited in the summer months, we’re focussing on our main canning consumptions – tomato based yumminess, dilly pickles, and lots of sweet stuff. Joel is a ravenous jam eater (at least one jar a week) and if only we grew and roasted and ground the peanuts to make all the peanut butter our two households consume, we’d be all set!

If you have any canning recipes to share, I’d love to hear about it! My favourite book du jour is The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest by Carol W. Costenbader. All recipes tried have been super delicious. Back to the boiling water bath I go!

I promised myself that this would be THE harvest day that I would document with photos: of beautiful veggies, of sweaty people harvesting, of us enjoying our coffee break (which for me was 1 minute sitting down, and for Joël didn’t happen at all), of bins filling up… Alas, my intentions were thrown overboard (the cart) very early in the day. There is so much to do!!! So we have a picture of a misty sunrise, and another of the first harvested swiss chard. Voilà!

Ah, the vegetables of summer! Today’s baskets include lettuces, summer squash, cucumbers, yellow beans, tomatoes, swiss chard, garlic, red onions, radishes, sunflower sprouts, and the first of the potatoes.

It was a last-minute decision to include the potatoes (a little to make up for the lack of beets which were judged still too small for harvest). The variety is Norland, and they will be lovely simply boiled. They don’t need peeling — the skin is tender and quite delicious, even in mashed potatoes.

The Rocdor yellow beans were seeded this year in the lower part of the garden, and with the recent rains their beds are very mucky. This explains why many of them have earth clinging to them. We harvested the beans barefoot, sunk to our angles in the mud between the beds!

What a wet one! Or as I like to say, the weather this morning was great for harvesting greens that would otherwise wilt in the sun… like the Rhubarb Red swiss chard and the Magenta lettuce in the baskets.

The Sierra Blanca onions. They are technically a hard storage onion, although this early batch has not been cured. Consider it fresh.

The tomatoes are still just getting close to maturity – there’s a boatload of green tomatoes, coming along nicely. Don’t laugh too much at the small quantities you’ve had so far – there will be plenty more!

The garlic at this point is mostly cured. If you’re getting too much, it can be stored a while (likely a few months, although you should probably consume it faster than that… it’s good for you).

It looks like the summer squash is on the decline. There is still enough vigor in those plants for another harvest, I think, but probably not more than that. The cucumbers are still going strong – in fact, the ones in the hoop house are just reaching maturity. And if we can actually reach the cucumbers with all that lush jungle-esque growth, we will add those to the baskets as well.

Those sprouts are another mix of mine – I had fun with that one. It contains: alfalfa, red clover, fenugreek (the larger, thicker sprouts), cress and arugula (small quantities!), and canola. I’m still aiming for an all-purpose blend, but with enough taste to make it worth the crunchiness. I also overestimated the quantities required for the baskets, so we have about a bucket full of sprouts left for us. Bonus!

In other news, I promised a form to order some whole/half/quarter pigs. I’m almost done! Look for it on the blog here in a day or two.

It’s getting a bit dark when we finish the deliveries – a bit before 21:00. We will try to start 30 mins or so earlier, to finish by 20:30. It is a 5 hour circuit, so we can’t start too early either – but we’ll give that a try for now.

Also, small note to some of our members who haven’t yet scheduled their half-day of work on the farm – don’t despair, there is still much to do! Catherine is keeping the calendar. She can be reached at 613-488-3920.

That’s it for now. Thanks everyone for joining us this summer!

In a bit of a rush, but JP snapped several pictures of the farm a few days ago. Here they are in bulk – I’ll annotate them when I get the chance.

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This week’s baskets must seem reassuringly ordinary for some folks, but to be honest I was a little disappointed that there was no new and exciting vegetable in them! The swiss chard is gloriously colorful; the summer squash and cucumbers in abundance.

As I was saying to some members who were at the farm last weekend, we haven’t managed to get into the beat for squash harvesting. This is in part because we have been so busy with other things, and in part because we can’t rely on our extra fridge to keep the vegetables until delivery day. We used to have a big old fridge that we could fill with what needed to be harvested over several days, but it has konked out and was replaced with a smaller used fridge that frustratingly and indiscriminately freezes things. Which is a pretty long excuse for oversize summer squash! If you cut open a summer squash that has large seeds (as the patty pans will), go ahead and scoop them into the compost so that you use only the firmer flesh in your recipe.

The garden this year is truly amazing. We have had such tremendous help from members, WWOOFers, and of course our two interns Scott and Danny. If you haven’t seen it recently, you really should come out for a look! We will also try and get some photos up on the site — it’s on the ToDo list…

Horray for edible weeds! Purslane is lovely. Spinachy, succulent, simultaneously sweet and sour. It’s nice as is in salads or in soups or stews – I like it piled on a cool creamed soup ala vichyssoise. If you need additional convincing, it is high in Omega-3 fatty acids and potent antioxidants. Wikipedia says so.

And there is radicchio and fennel too! You can braise, soup or eat them raw in salad. One of my favourite ways to eat fennel is sliced thinly with oranges (or grapefruit) and topped with a honey, orange juice, olive oil, poppy seed vinaigrette. If you have an Italian cookbook lying around, there may be a yummy fennel pasta dish recipe to be found. This one (http://www.globalgourmet.com/food/egg/egg0498/tomato.html) is on my to try list. Although many recipes call for the white bulb part only (like leeks) you can use it all – especially in soups. I like to add the dill looking greenery to salad dressings and freeze some to garnish soups in winter. You will undoubtedly spot the first of the carrots and will recognize the different summer squashes and cucumbers. In addition to the bunching onions, there are cute little Purplette onions and some more fresh garlic. Aren’t those sunflower sprouts beautiful!? We sold out of them at market last week and we need to sprout lots more – the kids and I never tire of them!

What a difference 4 extra pairs of hands make! Thanks to Danny and Scott (from the Otesha Ferocious Farm Tour) who have been with us for a few weeks already and the newly arrived Claudia and Solveig (passing through wwoofers from Germany), the basket harvesting-bundling-washing-packing was super quick! All the garlic is now harvested, cleaned and hung to dry in the drive shed. The mostly suckerless tomatoes are well on their way to being secured to their respective ropes – Scott’s blackened fingers are visible proof. The continual block making and seeding is moving along nicely. A few more rows are transplanted and watered. Stephanie’s highly structured, and motivating, task-on-cue-card system is keeping everyone organized. Such is this buzzing farm on this warm July afternoon.

PS – Joel is going to pick up our 10 Berkshire piglets tomorrow. Still waiting to hear when our Tamworths can leave their mama. Let us know asap if you are interested in 1/2 or 1/4 pig come late Fall/early Winter. They make delicious pulled pork!

You may notice a bit more water than usual in the bins today – the sky was sharing lots and lots of it with us! The very first of the fresh garlic is in there too. It is best kept in the fridge and used up asap. Many of the veggies will be familiarish by now. There is a big bunch of spicy greens that would be yummy diluted in a green (or cabbage) salad or added to a snow pea-ginger-sesame stir-fry. Since we had a lettuce surplus, you do too.  If you are getting a touch tired of salads, spicy lettuce loaf is a hit around here (see recipe below). And horray for broccoli! Don’t forget to soak it in a bowl of salty water before eating/cooking it – unless you need extra protein in your diet.

The summer squash plants LOVED the heat wave and are booming. The pattypans are nice additions to salads, but can also be roasted/bbqed/fried like their cousins the costata romanesco and zéphyr (my personal favourite – for appearance and texture). I was perusing a vegetarian cookbook this week and stumbled on a tasty looking zucchini soup recipe (also below).

On a sad note, you almost got another container or red or black raspberries, but mold got most of them. We don’t know if it’s because of our flaky fridge or the berries being damp when picked or maybe crushed when closing the containers, either which way, they didn’t make it. *sigh* However, we are quite grateful for the birds helping plant these beautiful black raspberry bushes all over the place – mostly under trees and along the cedar hedge. We are happily under slow invasion….

Hope you all have a fabulous week!

SPICY LETTUCE LOAF

Just went through my recipe box to no avail. So here is a fairly similar cake recipe http://bakingbites.com/2009/05/spiced-lettuce-cake-bars/

In the loaf I make, the cardamom and ginger are the dominant flavours. And if you shred the lettuce finely (very very finely for kiddies who inspect food for signs of greens) you’d never guess you had lettuce in there. I’ve made it with all kinds of different lettuce varieties, even kale (not just iceberg as mentioned in that cake recipe).

CREAM OF ZUCCHINI SOUP

(adapted – serves 4 to 6)

3 Tablespoons olive oil or butter

a bunch of green onions, roughly chopped

2 lbs zucchini, sliced

1 tsp dried oregano

2-3 cups vegetable stock

1 cup light cream

4 oz dolcelatte or gorgonzola cheese (or old cheddar)

Salt and pepper

Heat oil/butter and sauté onions a few minutes. Add zucchini, oregano and salt. Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes. Pour in stock and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for about 25 minutes. Stir in cheese. Process soup in a blender. Add cream and stir over low heat until hot, but not boiling. Season with salt and pepper and garnish with extra oregano and cheese.