Mid-Summer Update
Dear Members,
We hope you are enjoying your weekly pickups! Thank you for joining our Community Supported Agriculture program; it has been great to meet you all.
As a reminder, our hours are: Tuesday 4-8 pm Due to abundance in the garden, we've extended beyond 6pm for the time being to accommodate the Bike Buchanan riders.Thursday 2-4pm Saturday 2-8pm Again, we've extended the hours to try to sell more of our produce on site. If we ever do away with these extended hours we will announce that by email.
In addition, we have recently started attending the Niles Homegrown Market and the Buchanan Farmer's Market. If you happen to see us at these locations, feel free to stop by and use your CSA credits at these events. As hop harvest nears, we may drop these events if we don't have enough help, but for the time being we are attending.
The gardens have been progressing nicely, with still much work to be done. We've installed deer fence, put in irrigation, built 5 greenhouses, and planted thousands of transplants. Last week we planted 2000 strawberries which should be in production for next year's CSA (photo below). Our hope is to keep adding new products as time goes on.
Here's some storage and cooking information on a few of the available vegetables:
Tomatoes - Lots of different heirloom varieties, some Big Beef as well. If they are not quite ripe, leave them out on the counter for a day or two and they should be perfect. They'll also taste best if kept out of the fridge until ready to eat as that takes the flavor out.
Carrots - Did you know that carrots come in a variety of colors, not just orange? We planted red, white, yellow, purple, and orange!
Squash - We have green zucchini, yellow crookneck, and zephyr squash (light green and yellow). Zucchini bread is always a great option, or ratatouille.
Kohlrabi - While they are unusual looking, they’re actually quite delicious - like a crisp broccoli stem (they actually are in the broccoli family). Remove the outer layer before eating. Great raw after thinly slicing and adding a squeeze of lime juice and salt, or eating with hummus!
New items in the coming week will likely include green beans, hot peppers, herb bunches, and cut flowers. Summer squash, zucchini, green beans, and tomatoes are in greatest abundance at this time, so please consider this when preparing meals this week!
We have our annual hop harvest coming up from mid-August to mid-September. If anyone is interested in helping with the hop harvest, or if you are wanting to help in the gardens, please let us know!
Thank you for your support. Your CSA membership helps us to grow (in more ways than one)!
Sincerely, Fran, Marc and the entire Flatwater Farms team