In the Box

• Tomatoes
• Walla Walla Onions
• Sweet Basil
• Cucumber
• Hot Peppers
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Garlic
• Red Russian Kale
• Petite Lettuce
• Zucchini & Patty Pan
• Purple Cauliflower (Portage pick up site only)

This box contains many of my favorite foods - heirloom tomatoes, basil, onions, garlic, and hot peppers. I don’t know where to begin. I look forward to the first tomatoes all season. This year I have some heirloom tomatoes in the new greenhouse, so they are a little earlier than the field tomatoes. You have several different tomatoes. Here’s a guide:

• Red: Nepal, Better Boy or First Lady
• Brown: Paul Robeson or Black Prince
• Pink: Eva Purple Ball
• Orange: Persimmon
• Green with yellow stripes: Green Zebra
• Red with yellow speckles: Speckled Roman
• Paste: Roma or Viva Italia

All of the tomatoes have different flavors. The mahogany brown ones are some of my favorites. It can be challenging to tell when they are ripe. Use them when they are starting to soften.

The Walla Walla onions are incredibly sweet and tasty. You can slice them up and grill or sauté them with zucchini and basil. The onions are good raw as well. Chop them up with garlic, basil, and tomatoes.

The first cucumbers are in your box this week. They are rather late. The first planting was pounded rather hard by the June flooding. It has limped along producing a few cukes, but not enough. Now the second planting is beginning to produce. This week is just a taste. There will be more to come.

Bulb garlic makes its first appearance this week. We plant garlic in the fall, mulch it and wait for it to appear in the spring. Finally it is time to take lots of crates to the field and dig it all up. It was a challenge to dig it up in this dry soil, but we got about 2/3 of it harvested this last week.

I sort the garlic into sizes. This week you got the small heads of garlic as they need to be used up. You can use the cloves like normal, but the cloves are small. I recommend roasting the garlic. Cut the bottoms off of each head and coat in olive oil. Bake at 300 degrees until the cloves are soft. You should be able to squeeze the garlic out of its skin through the cut off bottom. Spread it on good sourdough bread.

This Week’s Recipe

Pesto
(Simply in Season)

1 cup packed fresh basil leaves
1-3 cloves garlic
1/3 cup pine nuts, walnuts, or hazelnuts toasted
3-6 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated
½ teaspoon salt or to taste
2 sprigs flat parsley (optional)
1/3-1/2 cup olive oil

Finely chop all ingredients except olive oil in food processor. Gradually add olive oil while food processor runs to make a thick paste. Serve at room temperature with any kind of pasta.

Tricia’s pesto tips: This pesto recipe is a guideline. You don’t need to follow it exactly. Try different kinds of nuts or seeds. I often use sunflower seeds as they are more budget friendly than pine nuts. I’ve also used sesame seeds.

Pesto freezes well. Make it up and put it into small glass jars and freeze it for winter use.

This recipe works well with other herbs as well. I really enjoy cilantro pesto. Last fall, an early frost took out the basil way too early and I had not put any basil pesto into the freezer. I made pesto with parsley and really loved it. Pesto also works well as a sandwich spread. Mix a spoonful with a little mayo and use it in sandwiches.

News from the Farm

This morning I woke to the wonderful sound of rain. Actually the thunder and wind woke me and after getting up to shut all the windows, I was able to lie in bed and listen to the rain. We got about ½ an inch of rain before the crew showed up to harvest the food for your boxes. All the harvesting was finished and then it began to rain again.

The birds are singing away as they take baths in the puddles. The soil is singing as well. This is the first rain we have had since the 12th of July, so everything is happier now. The irrigation helps, but there is nothing like a good rain to wash the dust off the leaves. And it helps wash the stress out of me as well. It’s a little ironic to see drought damage in a season that began with torrential rains. Let’s hope that the rain continues to be timely and sufficient, but not excessive.

Important Date

Remember to save Saturday, September 13th as a day to visit the farm. The annual farm picnic will start at 4pm and go as long as folks stay. We will have a potluck supper, farm tour, and a campfire. There will be fun and games, good food and lots of good conversation. I hope you all can join us.