Here at the end of the produce season, this is your last chance to stock up on some things before we go on vacation. We’re sitting on a mountain of winter squash we’re selling for a real deal at $5 for 1/2 bushel as well as the last of the onions and peppers.

We also got in a set of small roaster chickens (4 – 4.5 lbs) and still have the range of Organic Valley cheeses and butters available. Order up at our Local Dirt site http://www.localdirt.com/products-a213.html by Saturday evening and we’ll deliver on Sunday afternoon. If you’d rather pick up on the farm on another date, that works too.

Every year I do an end of season re-cap: th winners and losers of the produce season. I figure today is a good day to do that as I reflect on how the season went as I’m out in the machine shed cleaning up indian corn and winter squash.

In the winner category are all the cool season crops, which just loved this cool summer with a fair amount of rain. This includes kohlrabi, cabbage, broccoli, fall peas, leeks, spring greens like lettuce and salad mix and I’d have to throw in onions and beets as well. The grand champion of the year in my mind is celery…now I know this may seem like an odd one to you, but this is the third year trying to grow the stuff and typically it turned into a stalk 6 inches tall with the consistency of dental floss…so I was really excited about how it turned out this year! These crops grew well mainly because of the cool season, but there are some which did well just because I “got my act together”, which is evident in the long corn season this year–I think we got it in the box for 6 weeks, which is the most weeks in a season. This is because I got three plantings done in the spring, each 2 weeks apart, which allowed them to be spaced out. Another thing we did was cultivate onions well with the help of our new tine weeder, so we got good-sized onions because of little weed pressure.

In the loser category we have a list longer than I care to mention, some due to the weird season, but some due to me doing stupid things out in the field. The causualties of bad weather include some hot season crops. First and foremost is the eggplant…it didn’t even get into the box! It needed heat in a big way, but it also was under serious attack by the potato bugs this year…by far, the worst season ever with these guys. Our organic pyrethrin spray didn’t seem to do anything to these bugs…I don’t know if it’s a tolerance issue or I simply had my timing off. Anyway, they also devastated bad crop number 2: potatoes. I even put in these fingerlings for this season, but they didn’t get into the box either because they ended up being the size of small peanuts since the plants died back by the end of july, which is terrible. Still, the crop which just killed me this year was garlic. It was a comedy of errors on my part which destroyed this crop. I didn’t get it planted in time last fall, so I had to treat as a spring transplant; then I pretty much killed it by running it over with our tine weeder cultivator when I never should have…I’m still kicking myself for it. Others I wasn’t crazy about: strawberries, raspberries, spring peas, greens (swiss chard anyone?), edamame, and beans (although I loved the new variety we grew, Grenoble).

All told, it kind of evens out, although this isn’t any consolation to those who love eggplant or garlic and just didn’t get enough.

In the box:

Celeriac: some call celery root. You use whenever a recipe calls for celery…it keeps forever, just leave in crisper in fridge.

Rutebega: another standard root crop, some love it, others hate it. Try mixing in with potatoes and mash, about half and half proportions.

Cippolini onions: I had these for breakfast yesterday, sauteed with peppers and some tomato and put on eggs with some toast.

A sweet onion

Butternut squash: again, keep in a dry, sunny spot. The taste of winter squash actually improves with age…it’ll taste better in a couple weeks.

Buttercup squash: the dark green ugly one with a button on the bottom.

A couple pie pumpkins: can use for decoration or bake for use in pumpkin recipes like pie or anywhere you’d use that canned pumpkin stuff.

A small canteloupe: end of the line, I just throught I’d put in the last of them.

Parsley

Sprig of Rosemary

A mix of peppers

A few heirlooms

It’s a blessing because we didn’t really have a summer and this ended summer actually gets some of those crops across the finish line–I would have been really upset if half the tomatoes never turned red.

It’s a curse because the frost forces me to let go of the summer crops. There’s only so much you can cover a few thousand plants and so the frost typically brings all tomatoes, peppers, beans, corn, and eggplant to an abrupt end. I get really worked up about this, dashing around the night before trying to pull in everything I can. But the day after the frost, I experience a huge sense of relief…I can relax because all those tomatoes coming in at one time really causes some stress. It’s all about picking and hopefully selling them in a really short window.

So, the summer continues and so do we. Peppers are actually turning color and that last set of corn actually ripened. By the way, I must apologize if you did hit some corn which tasted a lot more like field corn than sweet corn–an issue brought to my attention by some people I sold to at the market. The problem is that I planted sweet corn too close to the indian corn and they cross pollinated, making your silver queen take on the flavor of its neighbor…again, my apologies (I still have some more good corn at the farm if you’d like me to set you up to redeem myself).

As mentioned before, our harvest party will be saturday, October 3, starting at 5:30 with dinner at 6 pm. Please let us know if you are coming. We supply the main dish, drinks, and you supply yourself and a side. We look forward to hosting everybody….and we think the saturday evening will work better than sunday afternoon as we’ve done the last couple years.

Order extras at our Local Dirt site here

In the box:

Acorn Squash: dark, acorn shape. This has not been cured, so it will improve it’s taste if you leave in a dry sunny spot in your house (we typically leave in the greenhouse to cure).

Delicata Squash: some call a sweet potato squash…very stringless and tastes sweet potatoy. Again, cure as you would acorn.

Russet potatoes: Small, I know.

Leeks

Cherry Tomato mix

A couple regular red tomatoes

A few Green Zebra tomatoes: yes, they are ripe at this stage. They are naturally zippy in taste.

Roma tomatoes: a good amount for saucing

Edamame: You don’t eat the stalk…just pull the pods off and boil a bit in salted water. Rinse in cold water and eat.

Sage

Colored pepper mix

Cherry Bomb hot peppers: These are supposed to be hotter than jalapenos, but I don’t buy it. They have a sweet flavor for a hot pepper I really like.

Red cabbage

When sauntering around the fair, I started to imagine what it looked like 50 years ago. One thing for sure is that “Machinery Hill” actually had machinery on it instead of pickup trucks and riding lawn mowers. When looking around all I saw were deals on campers, 4-wheelers, and various “toys” for grown-ups and collectors. Call me a grump, but I get the impression that we’re just trying to amuse ourselves to death. It’s no wonder my grandparents’ generation just gets so disgusted with the way things are…there’s an ethic about work and usefulness we seem to have lost. Although I get as sick of work as the next person, there’s a real pride that comes with doing some tangible work like growing produce for yourself instead of just idling away my time.

In the box:

Green stuffing peppers: the really big ones are King Arthur. Most are paired with a smaller one since there just weren’t that many really big ones around. See recipe below.

Italia Pepper: This is a frying pepper which is typically used in recipes where you sautee at a high heat. Really a nice sweet pepper

Couple Jalepenos

Broccoli

Parsley

1 Canary Melon (yellow)

1 Sunshine Watermelon: This is a yellow watermelon. I’m a big fan.

1 Canteloupe: Your standard variety called Athena

A few Red Tomatoes

A couple Heirloom Tomatoes: The really wrinkly one is an Italian Heirloom called Piraform and the dark green/purple one is called Cherokee Purple. You may have one or another or both. they are ugly, but tasty.

Sweet Corn: Again, a yellow variety called Bodacious

A Couple White Onions

Purple Beans: A bit deceiving since they turn green when you boil.