Sunshiney July

Some highlights of our gardening adventures in July

A mid-July harvest of Kale, Collards, Radnips, Carrots, Beans, and Romaine Lettuce.

Happy Smiling Sunflowers.

 

Photo by Andrea Nickerson

Farmer Andrea’s Kales are Trees.

Farmer Andrea’s Companion Planting of Beets and Broccoli is thriving.

The heat of Summer brings on goodies like Tomatoes (variety: Bosche Blue), Eggplant, Summer Squash (Zucchini + Patty Pan), Winter Squash (like this Acorn Squash), and Watermelon.

Farmer Faenin is proud of how large his Onions are, these are early ones.

A Pear Tree planted for baby Lennon 17 years ago has it’s first Red Pear; a lovely Butterfly is sipping sweet juice from rotting fruit.

‘Seal’ Lavender throwing up the largest spears of all our varieties.

First time growing Wild Tobacco, for ceremonial purposes.

View of perennial beds of Sorrel, Onions (for seed), Chamomile, Plantain, Calendula, Horseradish, Chives, Strawberries, Asparagus, and Raspberries, with some Ground Cherries thrown in.

One of only a few successful Cucumbers.

It might be time to stop trying to grow Cucumbers outdoors. Between the insects and the mildew it’s a whole lot of work for nothing most years. We keep on trying because we love the taste of field Cukes in varieties not found in any store.

July is Garlic harvesting, and hanging to dry time. Many thanks to Paul + Andy for getting most of these beauties out of the field.

pretty little garlic all in a row

Farmer Andrea’s mom came to visit and they harvested some monster Kale!

Farmer Andrea also introduced the Veggie-Table. Held outside an art studio she shares with her partner, they are bringing Fresh, Local Veggies + Art to downtown Tilbury.

 

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Week 8 Is Looking Great

Veggie of the Week: Brassicas!

The Brassica family is a large one and includes Red + Green Cabbage, Savoy Cabbage, Kale, Collards, Kohlrabi, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Brussels Sprouts, Chinese (Napa) Cabbage, Turnips, and more!

Photos by Susan Platsko

Savoy Cabbage

Chinese (Napa) Cabbage

Kohlrabi

Q: How does a farmer fix their pants?

A: With a Cabbage patch

This is another odd choice because in previous weeks the Veggie Of The Week was plentiful and there was more than enough for every one. We decided to feature the Brassicas, even though we don’t have enough of any one item for every member, because it’s such a large family and eventually every member will get to enjoy several items from this prolific, and nutritious, family. As what usually happens with Cabbages (especially), they don’t all ripen at the same time and so they get harvested over several weeks.

Please make use of the search function on this website to find all the recipes we’ve posted over the years for all the members of this family! Here are some highlights: Using Chinese Cabbage to make Kimchi, Kohlrabi Bistro Salad, Everything you ever wanted to know about Savoy Cabbage. Red Cabbage adds a wonderful crunch and colour pop to any salad or stir fry and can be used to make raw lacto-fermented or cooked sauerkraut. The leaves can be used to make Cabbage rolls or sliced and added to soups and stir fries. Savoy Cabbage can be substituted for Red Cabbage in any recipe. Napa Cabbage is also a lovely addition to stir fries. Kohlrabi can be eaten like an apple, it’s a crunchy “mini-cabbage”, don’t be scared by it’s alien-like appearance, it’s leaves are also edible. Our Broccoli is finally producing more and we love the long stems and leaves. There are so many ways to enjoy Brassicas!

Can you spot all the items in this pic? Red Cabbage head + bunches of leaves, fresh Garlic, Rainbow Leafies, Summer Squash, Radnips, Eggplant, Purple Peppers, Kohlrabi, fresh Mint, Broccoli

The Chinese Eggplant + Purple Peppers + Summer Squash (this includes Zuchini + Patty Pans) are just starting to come on! We’ll have more (limited quantities) of fresh Garlic available! Salad mix + Scallions are available but not pictured as well as a variety of fresh herbs including Basil, Dill, Thyme, Lemon Balm, and Mint. Mint and Lemon Balm make wonderful fresh teas, they can also be hung to dry and make into nutritious and healing wintertime teas.

New this week – we’ll have fresh flower bouquets available at ShopEco on Wednesdays!

This gal works hard to make beautiful bouquets ….

We both work hard, and look darn cute, when we do markets 😉

Pictures by cyborg and trixter Naty

We have grown many, many more Garlic than in any previous year and we are working at setting up a larger curing area. For those folks waiting for their Garlic fix, not to worry, it will be ready in large quantities soon enough! In the meantime, we enjoy the fresh, juicy, raw Garlic from injured heads …. (many thanks to our wonderful farm friend, Mr. Humble, who worked tirelessly today with the Garlic harvest) ….

Yes, that’s raw garlic 😉

“Music” Garlic is music for the heart, the body, the soul

And a random fun picture to end the week ….

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week 7

Veggie of the Week: Grape Leaves

Strange choice, we know, but the farm children were adamant that they wanted to pick these for everyone, even after we told them that would mean harvesting over 500 leaves! It might be because they miss the fantastic Lebanese restaurants in Windsor that serve variations on Stuffed Grape Leaves.

Q: Why did the grape stop in the middle of the road?

A: It ran out of juice!

Nutritional Benefits include being a great source of Vitamin A, Vitamin K, and Maganese. For the full  “nutrition facts” check out this full profile from Self.

You can add them to Green Smoothies, use them as wraps, or add them to a salad.

You can make any of these variations on Stuffed Grape/Vine Leaves: Vegetarian Stuffed, with instructions on preparing fresh and raw leaves (Lebanese style), Authentic Greek Dolmades, Dolmadakia by Lerios, the kitchn’s take, On a Budget (numbers laid out), allrecipes has a great selection on variations, Vegetarian Dolma, Vegan Stuffed Grape Leaves.

We’ve also added “Snake Tongue”, taken from the grape vine plant, to the salad mixes. It’s a sorrel-lemon flavoured treat.

Items on offer this week include: Salad Mix, Rainbow Leafies, Scallions, Radnips, a variety of Fresh Herbs including Fennel and Calendula (can be dried or infused in oil or water and used to make a variety of healing salves and more), Dried Herbs. New this week: fresh Garlic, Red Cabbage, whole Cabbage leaves (some of you have already seen some of these!).

Recipe Ideas for Cabbage leaves include: shredding them to make sauerkraut (lacto-fermented and raw, or cooked) and stuffed recipes for classic Cabbage Rolls.

Week 7: Fennel, Salad Mix, Radnips, Beets, fresh Garlic, Scallions, Grape Leaves, Kale, Cabbage Leaves, dried Sage, Red Cabbage, Calendula.

This is fuuuuhresssssh Garlic, just out of the ground, not cleaned, not cured, and super potent and juicy! If it’s too fresh for you simply hang it in a warm dry place to let it cure.

A Garlic that got injured in harvesting. Look at the number of cloves in this beauty!

So far the Garlic this year looks to be at least 3 times bigger than the biggest Garlic we usually get. Something is working right here on this farm!

 

 

After drought and extremely dry conditions we were happy to wake up to over an inch of Rain on Friday morning!

Lastly, we came upon the first Wild Turkey feather ever found on this farm. We’re still confirming but we believe we’ve found some other rare birds on the farm this week as well. So much LIFE here!

Fun With A Feather

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Week Six, Time For Your Veggie Fix

A little bit of housekeeping – Before the season began we intended to have a “swap box” so that folks could swap a veggie they don’t like for one they will enjoy. If you have a pre-packaged bag and you get something you won’t use please feel free free to swap it out for an item of equal value from the market table. If you’re on the “market shares” program please feel free to swap out a fixed veggies from the list for something of equal value from the market table. We want everyone to be happy with the veggies they receive each week *smile*

VEGGIE OF THE WEEK IS ….. ALLIUMS!

From Wikipedia, “Allium is a genus of monocotyledonous flowering plants that includes the cultivated onion, garlic, scallion, shallot and leek as well as chives and hundreds of other wild species.”

Perennial Onions also known as Egyptian Onions and Walking Onions

The Farm Children are comparing their Onion picks.

While not all Alliums are included in this week’s shares we will have plenty of Scallions (purple + white), whole Chives (they’re almost identical to Scallions), and Perennial Onions (the whole plant is edible – bulb, stem, and bulbils on the tops). The Allium family is among the most healthy of all plants, more info on the benefits from The Wonderful World of Alliums.

Scallions, whole Chives, bunch of Chinese Cabbage , Rainbow Leafies, Grape Leaves, Peas, Radnips, Rainbow Radishes, Wild Rainbow Salad Mix, Allium Bulbils.

New this week: we’ll have whole grape leaves that can be used to make traditional dishes like Dolma and other stuffed grape leave tasties. They can also be used as a part of a green smoothie mix. The peas are pretty much petered out for the season but we’ve got new plantings of Radnips and Radishes that are wowing us! There won’t be mushrooms available for the next 2 weeks.

On Facebook we posted and interesting link to a map that shows where most of our food originates from. If you love food, plants, history, and geography this is a great resource! You can find it at NPR.org.

We also came across this great resource from Epicurious – A Visual Guide to Cooking Greens (we’ve added this to the Veggies! page).

Don’t forget that we’ve got Jackie from Another Way at the farm this Saturday June 2nd doing complimentary Angel Card Readings!

We’ll leave you with pictures from around the farm this week …. enjoy!

This broody hen hatched out several baby chicks!

Coming soon!

Red Cabbage beds

An Heirloom Cherry Tomato called 42 Days, these wonders will be ready in a few short weeks!

Collected the dried up seed pods from a large variety of Kale plants that successfully overwintered. Now we’ve got our own regionally-adapted Kale seeds!

Strange and mysterious “eggs” found on an Onion plant. Anyone know what this is? Friend or Foe?

A Farm Child took these pictures of Mushrooms growing in a Lettuce bed and is curious about what kind they are …. any ideas?

 

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Week Five and We’re Feeling Alive

Happy Summer Solstice ~ a most beautiful time of the year!

A wonderful day was spent last Saturday at our first foraging walk of the year. Many thanks to Wheatley Woods for coming out with fruiting plants for sale, we’re grateful for them and for all the new and familiar faces who came to the walk!

Farm Market on Saturday June 18th

We love when children come along to the farm …

Fun for everyone!

Thank you to Susan Platsko for sharing the pictures she took at the foraging walk …

Wild grapes; Tandem bike with Mugwort; Market Table; Red Mulberry; Pawpaw Tree; Gooseberry; unripe Juniper Berries; Feasting on Serviceberies.

VEGGIE OF THE WEEK …….

PEAS !!!

Hanging out, like an earring.

 

Two sweetie-pies in a pod, snuggling.

And these beauties … because if it comes in purple, we will grow it 😉

Royal Snow from Johnny’s Seeds

There is something about peas that makes for a lot of inappropriate jokes. We call this #lifewithyoungboys and we’ll leave that up to your imagination …. but we did manage to find a few we can share …

Q: What do vegetables wish for, more than anything else in the whole world?

A: Peas (peace) on earth!

Q: Why do vegetables want that so much?

A: Because it will give them peas (piece) of mind!

Q: What do you get when two peas fight?

A: Black-eyed peas

We mostly grow Sugar Snap Peas but also some Snow Peas and the Purple Peas. Peas are available for a short time only so now is the time to get your fill of these super sweet, crunchy, family-favourite snacks!

We’ll be running out of Garlic Scapes soon and wanted to share a member recipe from Facebook for a lovely Scape Pesto, from Stephanie Fisico: Plant Based Wellness Coach ~

“T’is the season for garlic scapes (!!!) and tonight’s Monday Night Recipe Feature is a super quick and super easy garlic scape pesto that pairs well with pasta, crostini, crackers, or anywhere else you would like to use it (sandwich/wrap spread, perhaps?)

I had fun just tossing ingredients into the food processor and taste-testing along the way until I had achieved my desired flavours and consistency. As such, I do not have a perfectly precise recipe for you but here is an approximation – have fun adjusting it to meet your own preferences!

(p.s. my delicious garlic scapes were grown with love by Locally Germinated: a farmer’s cooperative !)

Fresh Garlic Scape Pesto

Ingredients:

1/4 cup of cashews
1/2 cup of nutritional yeast
Pinch of Himalayan pink salt
7-8 garlic scapes, chopped into pieces
2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves
Handful of baby spinach
Fresh ground black pepper, to taste

Directions:

Combine the first 3 ingredients in a food processor until you achieve a crumbled texture. Scoop out 1-2 tbsp and set aside to use as garnish.

Add remaining ingredients and process until relatively smooth.

Serve over pasta (pictured) with leftover cashew Parmesan as garnish or use as a dip or spread.”

Garlic Scapes, Peas, Rainbow Leafies, Cilantro, Scallions, Radnips, Fresh Flower Bouquet, Rainbow Radishes, Salad Mix. Picture by Andrea Nickerson.

Other veggies available this week include: Rainbow Leafies (Kale + Chard), Fresh Herbs (the last of the Cilantro), Scallions, Rainbow Radishes, Radnips (the last for a couple of weeks), Salad Mix, Portabello Mushrooms + Button Mushrooms. We are now offering small amounts of Green Smoothie Mix and will highlight some of the wild edibles in these mixes and how to use them in a future post. If you’re struggling with how to store and eat leafy greens this is a good post from Nutrition Studies.

This coming Saturday we’re holding a foraging walk at the farm from 1 – 2:30 and there are deeeeeelicious red mulberries at their peak of sweetness! A green smoothie will be available at the end of the walk. We’re also pleased to welcome Tilbury native Wendy Rose for a “Ask A Nutritionist” booth at the farm from 11 – 1 on Saturday. This is a free event, find out more about the event and about Wendy Rose on the Facebook event page.

Another event we have coming up on July 2nd is Angel Card Readings with Jackie of Another Way. “Angel cards are a fun and positive way to connect with your Angels, Source and Guides. Angel cards offer gentle loving guidance. They are a wonderful way to bridge the gap between what is going on in your life and angelic guidance and assistance. Jackie will bring several decks so you can choose a deck that feels best to you or she will choose a deck intuitively. Ask a question or ask for guidance. She will draw you a card or two to bring you angelic guidance.” Find out more on the Facebook event page.

Around the farm this week we’ve been busy planting more veggies, replacing some dead seedlings, fighting with cucumber beetles (who are voracious fornicators and squash eaters), and watering, watering, watering. It looks like cabbage will be ready soon and we’re excited for that! We’ll leave you with a friend who was watching us work this week.

How do frogs send messages? Morse Toad.

 

 

 

 

 

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Week Four Takes The Floor

VEGETABLE OF THE WEEK IS …. GARLIC SCAPES!

The Farm Children keep a close eye on the Scapes, it’s one of their favourite things to harvest on the farm.

For those familiar with Scapes they wait all year for this limited time item, it’s a high demand luxury! As you can see in the picture the Scape is a curly-cued part of the Garlic plant that would eventually turn into seeds. In order to make our Garlic focus it’s energy on creating large and powerful bulbs we must remove the Scapes. For our efforts we get to enjoy a very versatile but limited time only special treat that we call a Garlic Scape.

Each Scape has a unique curl.

 

Garlic

These are fabulous roasted or grilled, they can pickled, they can be frozen, they can be dried, they can be made into Garlic powder, they can be made into pesto, and they can be used in any way you would use Garlic. Check out these 7 recipes from The Crisper Whisperer. More info on our Veggies page and if you search “garlic scape” in the search index on this blog site or click on the “tag”, along the right-hand side of this blog site. Past posts with amazing recipes include this beauty from 2012 and this one, also from 2012.

Jokes from the farm children:

How did the garlic get out of the garden?

It eSCAPEd!

Why did the garlic book travel tickets online?

It needed an e-scape!

Yuk yuk yuk 😉

Farm baby helping to carry the bin full of Garlic Scapes.

Last week at our Saturday on-farm market we had a visitor ….

 

As you can see from some of our pictures you’ll know that we love babywearing and we came across a lovely post that showcases various every day dad babywearing while cooking or grocery shopping and thought it would be a good share for other babywearing lovers out there ~ http://www.thekitchn.com/10-sweet-photos-of-baby-wearing-dads-in-the-kitchen-232143

Other produce available this week (may vary depending upon location and availability): portabello mushrooms and button mushrooms, Radnips, Rainbow Radishes, Wild Rainbow Salad Mix, Green Smoothie Mix, Cilantro (almost done for the season) and other Fresh Herbs, Rainbow Leafies (various Kale varieties + Chard), Scallions, Broccoli, and new this week – also for a limited time – Snow Peas and Sugar Snap Peas (they melt in your mouth!) We’re also getting larger amounts of Calendula for anyone who wants to order them on their own to make their own healing teas or salves – please let us know if you’re interested.

Mushrooms as big as your head! Or a plate!

Every Pea picked by a hand, our hands.

Our artistic rendering of this week’s veggie offerings ….

Pictured: Cilantro, button Mushrooms, Arugula, Radnips, Wild Rainbow Salad Mix, Scapes, Sugar Snap Peas, Portabello Mushroom, Scallions.

Our event with Wheatley Woods is still on for tomorrow – a foraging walk and plant sale. See the details on Facebook.

Native Service Berries

You can also see the details for a foraging walk next Saturday June 25th (we may be having another special guest that week, check out Facebook for that announcement!). We’re currently taking registrations for Session 2 of the Kids Gardening Club, you can find out more at this link and on Facebook. We post every new event we’re hosting on our farm on this website as well, check back on the Foraging + Market Events page for update.

One last announcement …. a new CSA member has started a twitch live feed that will feature foods they will be making with their CSA veggies each week. You can find it at twitch.tv/margaret_haddad . This is a new live feed, they’re only in their second week, and comes with a warning that the language might not be appropriate for all ages 😉 The schedule is Mondays at 3 pm for art, Wednesdays at 8 for Community Sourced Cuisine (featuring veggies from Locally Germinated and eventually their own garden), and Friday at 9 for Food with Friends. Looking forward to seeing how this progresses!

Harvest day pick list; new beds for perennials

 

Funny accident, panoramic picture

 

 

 

 

 

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Week 3, Tasty and Lovely

As we’re going into Week 3 we’re amazed at the variety of veggies we have so early in the season! Considering that every year we’ve been in operation we didn’t start until mid-June it’s so lovely to see the fruits of our labours from last year paying off.

Week 3 – Rainbow Chard, Parsley, Garlic Scapes, baby Garlic, Broccoli, Radnips, Cilantro, Wild Rainbow Salad Mix, Rainbow Kale, fresh Mint, Chives, Rainbow Radishes.

The Vegetable of the Week is ……Salad Mix!

Otherwise known as Wild Rainbow Salad Mix, each bag is unique and pops with flavour! We love a salad with flavour and colour and so unique you can’t find it anywhere but our farm. We use a combination of salad greens such as Gourmet Salad Mix, Red Planet, Sulu, Vulcan, Lovelock, a large variety of Romaines (to come later), Salanova, and some other secret varieties 😉 We also include baby spinach, fennel, dill, purlsane, wild spinach, arugula, mustard greens, spicy Asian greens, vivid choi, parsley, baby bok choy, edible flowers (arugula, chives, nasturtiums, calendula, clover, and more), and other seasonal surprises. In our opinion our salads are best enjoyed with a light vinaigrette dressing and on sandwiches, wraps, and burgers (veggie or meat). Farm child Faenin’s favourite dressing is olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, garlic powder (made with garlic scapes), and nutritional yeast. We also enjoy eating the salads straight out of the bag. Salads can be made more delicious using more fresh parsley, fresh cilantro, fresh dill, rainbow radishes, radnips (the tops are also a salad green), broccoli, kale, chard, garlic, scallions, or grilled mushrooms.

Couldn’t decide which picture I liked best!

Make sure you wash the salad mix again – we try our best to get out the grass, woody bits, bad parts, and dirt, but we mainly wash the greens “to take off the heat of the field” so that the greens stay fresh. If your salad greens seem too wet in their bag you can try spinning them again or removing the moisture with a towel and then returning them to their bag so that they stay fresh for as long as possible. Our salad mixes will stay fresh for up to 2 weeks as they’re picked within 24 hours of market + pickup and we do our best to chill them as quickly as possible. Salad is available almost every week of the CSA (it’s sometimes too hot during Summer to get the seeds to germinate or to grow).

We have been tossing around the idea of creating Green Smoothie mixes again – is there any interest in this? Please let us know if this is something we should offer again. This would be a mix of wild, foraged greens and flowers to be used in green smoothies.

Broccoli, Calendula, baby Garlic, Cilantro, fresh Nettles, Horseradish, Leeks.

Courtesy of the farm children …. Jokes for the week!

Q: Why did the Kale blush?

A: Because it saw the Salad dressing.

Knock, Knock
Who’s there? Lettuce
Lettuce who?
Lettuce in and you’ll find out.

and the classic …

This week marks the return of bunched Rainbow Kale and Rainbow Chard. Garlic Scapes and Broccoli are just starting to come on. It will be the last of the Rainbow Radishes and Radnips for a week or two. This is the last week for “gallions” / “scarlic” / baby garlic. Fresh herbs available this week: sage, oregano, dill, chives, mint, parsley, arugula, cilantro, and thyme. We’ll have portabello mushrooms available this week for those that enjoyed them on special last week.

A reminder that fresh flowers can be used with member credits when picking up at the farm.

Join us at the farm Saturday June 18th for a Foraging Walk and Plant sale with Wheatley Woods. Details at Market Events and on Facebook.

We had some lovely rains this past week and with the rain came some “aliens” ….

Cedar Rust

After an unfortunate start and troubles with a supplier we finally managed to get our Tomato + Watermelon seedlings to size and planted! The farm children were falling over themselves at the chance to plant their favourites, Watermelons! Better late than never.

Thanks to ShopEco for these lovely pictures of our market day ….

And thank you to Andrea for these lovely farm pics to end things off for this week …

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