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Greetings Everyone,
We’re thrilled to be fully booked these past couple of weeks! That means we’re a little behind on crop production since our accommodations are top priority. We’re still seeing groundhog damage even after evicting a couple groundhogs off the farm. The groundhogs have been eating our Mexican Sunflowers, and this flower tends to be a great nectar source, so we wonder if the bees and other pollinators are mad at the groundhogs like us?
We’ve had some super sweet guests say at the farm and we loved that as they drove down the driveway, the butterflies were feeding on salt, sugar and proteins in our mud puddles, yet the guests stopped to clear the butterflies out of the way. So many people run right over them which reminds us that we need to fix our driveway mud puddles. The mud puddles seem to provide good habitat for the butterflies, so the job has been low priority for us, and honestly, it probably won’t make it to the top of our list until fall!!!
You will probably need to white list our email to receive correspondence from us because we have changed our email from farmer@MountainHarvestOrganic.com to Farmer@MountainHarvestOrganics.com (our email is organics plural).
Your Farmers (and cleaning staff),
Carl and Julie
NOTE: Your’re receiving this eNewsletter because you’ve either been a subscriber to MHO in the past OR if you’ve registered for our newsletters from our website. Feel free to unsubscribe if you no longer wish to receive this eNewsletter!
CSA Shareholders: You can access our online store using this link, if using a desktop you will log in by clicking the icon of the person in the top right hand side of the web page, if you are using a phone click on the menu icon and choose the login option. All orders need to be placed by Tuesday at 8 AM so that we will know what to harvest for your share! Please return your boxes because we re-use them. Orders will be ready each Wednesday at 8 AM.
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What is new and abundant this week! |
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| Fresh red long of tropea onions with their tops on!!! These Italian heirloom onions are slightly elongated and thin skinned.Traditionally grown in Mediterranean Italy and France, and are only harvested mid summer for fresh use. They do not cure. We’re providing you with the same recipes that we use for cipollini onions because we couldn’t find links to recipes using the tropea onion. Roast by cutting onions in half in the oven or roasted with a vinegar glaze you are sure to fall in love with these onions. Cooked in a little butter on the stove top, these onions become soft and practically melt in your mouth. Their residual sugars caramelize and concentrate, leaving behind none of the astringent raw onion flavor. After all, our region is know for beer, so consider these beer braised tropea onions. If you want to preserve these onions for winter, this jam will be sure to satisfy your craving.
An easy way to cook these delicious onions: quarter them, toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Bake at 425 until tender. |
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| Those of you who’ve been eating our cucumbers since spring, will notice a little difference in taste and texture!!! We love the variety of cucumber that we grow early spring, it is super sweet, crisp, with extremely thin skins. Since we don’t wax our cucumbers, the spring cucumbers don’t hold very long in your refrigerator. Now with the arrival of our summer cucumbers, while they are still sweet and crisp, their skins aren’t nearly as thin. Above on the left is a new European cucumber that we are trying whose claim to fame is disease resistance. On the right is our normal slicing cucumbers, even if their skins are a little thicker, they are super delicious as well. Weekly when cucumbers and tomatoes are in season, we love a quick Tomato, Lettuce and Cucumber (TLC) sandwich because it is quick and we don’t have to heat the stove. When we find ourselves harvesting cucumbers, tomatoes and sweet peppers, we love this refreshing cucumber salad. This old family recipe is still refreshing and delicious today, and one of our first salads for lunch when cucumbers begin ripening. If it is the middle of summer and hot outside, this cold cucumber soup might hit the spot. Every year, we look forward to a farm lunch of falafel with tzatziki sauce . A tradition in Japan, is to simply slice the cucumbers and and dip into miso which is a “go to†for cucumbers as a snack for many of our farm lunches. |
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This Weeks Farmer’s Choice Veggie Share |
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| Above are red gold potatoes freshly dug with dirt on them!!! Have no worries, we’ll be washing these for your share. Be sure to consider our recipe for roasted fennel and potato soup.
This week’s Farmer’s Choice Share includes: (share contents are subject to change based on our actual harvest.)
We’re offering both a Farmer’s Choice Veggie and Farmers’ Choice Veggie & Meat Share. Items common in both shares are listed first, followed by items specific to the veggie share the finally the veggie/meat share. The Farmer’s Choice Veggie & Meat share normally has smaller portions of vegetables. )
The following are included only in the veggie share:
The following are included only in the meat share
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What’s Happening on the Farm |
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| We are starting to harvest onions, dig potatoes, etc!!!
We’re starting to harvest onions other than scallions, dig potatoes, and are preparing additional field space for our next succession of lettuce, squash and corn. Above you’ll find Bagheera our “Farm Boss” who has been helping us prepare beds for future crops!!
The first onions to mature are the smaller onions such as the cipollini’s and the Red Long of Tropea. We’ve certainly been enjoying them both raw and grilled. They are a great addition to TLC sandwiches in case your’re considering that on your menu. We’re keeping an eye on our bulb onions and expect to harvest them any day now!
This week was the first digging of potatoes and we’re very disappointed with our yield. Potatoes are among the first crops planted early spring, so are normally planted before cover crops have much growth, therefore they require either compost or fertilizer to grow and flourish. We are using a new fertilizer this year, which we don’t think is as good of quality as the one we’ve previously used and think that has impacted our yields. During the month of May, we received a lot of rain here at the farm, and think that caused the fertilizer to leach deep into our sandy soils so it wasn’t available to the plants. In addition, we haven’t prioritized cover cropping like we have in the past, mostly because we’re trying to juggle production along with farm stays so we have prioritized cleaning over crops. The solution is for us to further cut back on our production, so that we can make time for seeding cover crops early like we’ve done in the past so they have a chance to get established before winter sets in. |
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| We have a great recipe that is sure to make the casual kale eater into an obsessive one!
John Hatcher, Maxine’s son, spent the summer last year in Spring Creek and we have fond memories of the most amazing meals that he cooked during his stay. This year he has delved into farming this summer. We wonder if he has gone off the deep end like Carl and Julie? Time will tell….. We happen to follow him on social media, and we must say he posted what looks to be a delicious recipe for kale that he’s permitted us to share!!! It is a kale, peanut butter and sriracha sandwich. Since he is farming up north in Minnesota, his season is a little behind ours, so while he used raw kale leaves on his sandwich, if you plan on using MHO kale you may want to consider either steaming or boiling the leaves for a minute. Once the summer heat arrives, the kale leaves are no longer as tender as they were in spring or during the winter. |
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| Above is John’s creation! First he toasts his bread, then spreads his favorite peanut butter, topping that sandwich with kale and sriracha sauce. He used Red Russian kale, which we used to grow here at MHO, but phased that variety out because it hasn’t grown well in recent years which we are attributing to climate change. |
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| Above is the type of Sriracha sauce that John used for his sandwich. If you think you’ll become addicted to this sandwich and finding yourself wanting to order a few bunches of kale and we are out of inventory, please email us because we always underestimate our harvest so can always adjust your order to include more kale. If you don’t have sriracha in your frig or pantry, you’ll find plenty of hot peppers that could be sliced up for this delicacy. |
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