In the kitchen!

August 3, 2021 In the Kitchen, Market newsletters, Other recipes, Weekly Updates

With the peak of tomato season upon us, the tomato harvest has been crazy! This week, we brought in nearly 40 pounds of cherry tomatoes and over 300 pounds of slicing tomatoes and that was just in the first harvest of the week. We will likely at least double those numbers by the week’s end! Unsurprisingly, we’ve gotten creative over the years and found out-of-the-box ways to make use of tomatoes. One of our favorite finds was a way for short-term preserving cherry tomatoes by “sun-drying” them in the oven at a low heat for several hours. The result is bit-sized morsels of sweetness that can be added to sandwiches,...

Thanksgiving recipes

November 21, 2019 In the Kitchen, Market newsletters, Other recipes, Weekly Updates

It’s the market before Thanksgiving and we hope you’ll take the opportunity to pick up some organic veggies for your Thanksgiving dinner! With potatoes, cabbage, and turnips still aplenty, we’ve been searching through recipes to find some good options to incorporate these ingredients into our Thanksgiving dinner and wanted to share some of our finds with you! Mike is a serious cabbage lover and, as a result, we decided to increase our cabbage production this year. We eat cabbage in tons of different ways, from traditional cole slaws, to topping for tacos, to stir-fries. We’re always looking for new methods of incorporating it into meals, so are really looking forward...

First frost

October 24, 2019 In the Kitchen, Market newsletters, Other recipes, Weekly Updates

We did indeed get our first frost last Saturday morning and, funny enough, it happened on the exact same day as last year’s first frost! Of course, in line with mid-Atlantic autumns, the weather has subsequently bounced right back up into cool, but not freezing, conditions. However, with the frost comes the end of the some of the summer crops we’ve been harvesting for the last several months. We may have a handful of red tomatoes, but for the most part we’ll be bringing green tomatoes to market this week. I always get excited for green tomatoes, both because they act as a signifier for the winding down of the...

Cabbage & cover crops

October 17, 2019 In the Kitchen, Market newsletters, Other recipes, Weekly Updates

The cooler weather seems to be sticking with us at last and, with some more decent rain this week, it’s starting to actually feel seasonally normal! With the first frost looming on the horizon, we’re starting to move out of the types of work that make up most of the season and into preparations for winter. We’ve finished planting crops in the fields and all but one of the beds in the hoop house are sprouting seedlings of various types. As we reach the end of these plantings, we are instead moving into a new type- the seeding of cover crops that will help protect the soil structure over winter...

Happy Thanksgiving & a tasty recipe!

November 22, 2018 In the Kitchen, Market newsletters, Other recipes, Weekly Updates

Happy Thanksgiving! We hope you all have a wonderful holiday and that, if you’re in our area, you manage to keep warm! We’ve spent much of the early part of this week preparing in various ways for the extreme cold front we have coming through. Temperatures are predicted to drop into the low 20s Wednesday night, not rise above freezing on Thursday, and then drop to a shocking 18 degrees on Thursday night! I’m double- and triple-covering beds in the hoop house and we’ve also taken various measures to try to keep the outside walk-in refrigerator where we store all of our crops post-harvest from dipping below freezing and causing...

Finally fall? And arugula salad

October 11, 2018 In the Kitchen, Market newsletters, Other recipes, Weekly Updates

The heat we have been experiencing the past two weeks has provided both benefits and challenges. We’ve definitely gotten larger harvests off of the kale, collards, and eggplant than we would have if temperatures had been more typical of this time of year. Both the peppers and the tomatoes in the hoop house have been loving the heat and coloring up accordingly, making it a shame that the outdoor tomatoes were done in by the wet summer as they would have been loving this late heat wave! More problematically, this is the very time in the fall when we are putting in the plantings that are supposed to see us...

Cole slaw and other greens

September 27, 2018 In the Kitchen, Market newsletters, Other recipes, Weekly Updates

Fall is definitely in the air around the farm. Last week, we tilled in a huge chunk of the spring beds and put down a winter cover crop of rye and vetch, which the very rainy weather over the last few days has already helped to germinate. The fall spinach in the hoop house is putting on it’s first true leaves and the last bed of outdoor salad mix is beginning to grow in the field. As the weather cools and the days grow shorter, more and more fall crops are appearing on our market table. Last week marked the first harvest from both our broccoli and cabbage plants. Cabbage...

Garlic scapes & summer crops!

June 22, 2018 In the Kitchen, Market newsletters, Other recipes, Weekly Updates

It wouldn’t be another week without another crazy rain storm. On Wednesday, we had one of the most intense thunderstorms I’ve ever experienced. Fortunately, the period of heavy rain was relatively short and it was more the wind that was damaging. We had a few rows of peas get blown entirely over, although it wasn’t too hard to right them, and basically everything on the farm looked pretty windblown this morning. On a more exciting note, the summer harvest is getting bigger and bigger. On Thursday, we brought in a huge harvest of cucumber and zucchini and the first tomatoes in the hoop house are coloring up, although we’re still...

Pickled radishes & more rain

June 1, 2018 Canning, In the Kitchen, Market newsletters, Other recipes, Weekly Updates

The rain keeps on falling and at this point I’m mainly just amazed each week that we have anything to harvest. Apart from the in-the-moment damage from heavy rain and flooding, we’re starting to see the more delayed effects, with the onset of rotting in some crops and of diseases like powdery mildew that thrive in hot, humid conditions like these. At times like this, it’s nice to be able to fall back on simple comforts like eating good food. This past week, I’ve made a few tasty recipes, including a quite authentic-tasting pad thai that also called for these amazing pickled radishes as a garnish. While the pad thai...

It’s scape time!

June 6, 2017 In the Kitchen, Other recipes, Weekly Updates

It continues to be a funky spring. After a few blazing hot days a couple weeks ago, we’ve settled into a pretty steady stream of cool, cloudy, drizzly weather. With lows tonight forecast to go below 50 degrees, it feels more like my June in Michigan rather than our typical hot, sunny Junes in Philadelphia. However, this winter was warm enough that even with a cool spring, things are still ahead of schedule. This includes the garlic, which started producing scapes over a week ago. Garlic comes in two general varieties- hard-neck and soft-neck. You’ll notice the difference as soon as you break a head of garlic open. Hard-neck is composed of...