Week 8 newsletter: Dog days, cicadas and cucumbers

In their shares this week, members will receive the following vegetables:

Sweet onion, fennel, cilantro, tomato, cherry tomatoes, head lettuce, sweet pepper, hot pepper (Hungarian Hot Wax), cucumbers and carrots. Each box will also include one of the following: summer squash, eggplant, broccoli or cauliflower.  

This newsletter includes a roundup of news from the farm as well as information and recipes. Feel free to jump to the bottom of the newsletter to find the section titled, “This week’s veggies and recipes.”

Here is this week’s video check in where we talk about flowers and bouquets in anticipation of our August Floral Arranging workshop.

News from the farm

This week our Farm Queen, Kristina agreed to share her reflection as part of the newsletter. Kristina took care of the farm this week while we took a short vacation. 

I heard my first-of-the-year Dog Day Cicada singing on my way back home from the farm on Thursday. The buzz was clear and sweet and it cut through all the noise around me. I smiled and exclaimed “Hello, friend!” out my open car window. It felt right to be hearing that familiar summer sound while being covered in a fine layer of farm dirt & sweat with the hot wind swirling around me. I would have missed it if I hadn’t opted to roll down the windows instead of turning on the A/C.

We are all experiencing the dog days of summer, even that little cicada singing its heart out. It’s a small thing, but I couldn’t help but feel grateful for the connection I felt in that moment. I get to have a lot of those moments of gratitude and connection working on the farm with my dear friends, Heather-Marie & John. More recently, I’ve been entrusted to “fly solo” on the farm and I found that the feelings of gratitude and connection are still there when I’m alone, too. I was excited to help make it possible for our farmers to go on a much-needed adventure off of the farm this week.

There is a lot of noise in the world, and my mind can get very busy. Maybe you can relate. By welcome contrast, working on the farm keeps my hands busy and my mind is allowed some peace. As I harvested fruit from the vines, I thought about the plants themselves and how miraculous it is that they are able to produce and provide such beautiful food for us. I thought about the people who would get to enjoy these cucumbers and the ways they would be prepared. This one would make a great pickle. This one would be perfect sliced up for a sandwich or slipped into a glass of ice water. I also thought about the people who have made this all possible. The farmers who planned, planted, pruned, and picked the cucumbers in my hands. So much gratitude. Then, it hit me: I am one of those people. I might be a greenhorn with a lot to learn, but I am a farmer.

I’m still blown away by the fact that I get to help grow food for people. Hopefully, to even help people feel more connected to their food. As I worked in the hot, tomato-leaf scented high-tunnel with a stream of sweat trickling down my back, searching for cucumbers to harvest for folks in our community, I felt like I was in the right place. Complete with gratitude and connection. It’s easy to miss these moments, but I hope these dog days of summer bring you the opportunity to slow down and notice the good things. No matter how small.

Images from the farm

This week’s veggies and recipes

Sweet onion tips and info

• A sweet onion is not a storage onion. It is best used fresh
• Its higher sugar content makes it less pungent with a sweet flavor
• It is great in sauteing and caramelizing but can also be used raw in salad and dressings.

Sweet Onion Salad Dressing

based loosely on a recipe from The Spruce Eats

Heather-Marie made this dressing this weekend with the first of the sweet onions.  The ratio of vinegar, oil and sugar wasn’t to her tastes, so she came up with this instead.  

• ½ cup sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• Freshly ground pepper
• 1 tsp mustard
• ½ medium sweet onion, minced
• ¼-½ cup olive oil
• ¼ vinegar (Heather-Marie used red wine vinegar)

Add all ingredients into a Pyrex measuring cup.  Pour everything into a recycled dressing jar to make pouring and storing easier.

Fennel info

This is a relatively new item for the farm and we love adding new things.  Most often when buying fennel in a grocery store, it comes with the stalks and fronds trimmed off.   We are harvesting them with it all attached as you can eat it all.  The bulbs can be eaten raw or cooked, although the bulb can be tough so should be cut thinly.  Trim the stalks and fronds off when ready to cook and use the fronds as you would any herb.  Fennel has a light licorice flavor.  Fennel goes well with seafood and also is paired with citrus in dishes, too.

Brenna’s Excellent Fennel Salad

When John’s daughter, Brenna, was here visiting us a couple of years ago, she made this excellent salad.  Neither John, nor Heather-Marie, had cooked much with fennel at that point so this was a treat.   

• Fennel bulb, and stalks
• Apples
• Celery
• Lots of herbs
• Olive oil
• Lemon juice
• Salt and pepper

1. Cut fennel into thin strips.

2. Cut apples and/or celery thinly.

3. Chop up some fennel greens and some herbs (whatever is around mint oregano thyme whatever) and toss that in a bowl with chopped stuff 

4. Mix it up with some oil, kosher salt, lots of lemon juice, and toss it around with some pepper

5. Finish with flaky salt 

Tomatoes, onions, cilantro, sweet & hot peppers

Fresh Salsa, Farm Style

This is so yummy- we could eat one batch in a sitting!  This recipe is from Karola Dalen, of Northern Harvest Farm.

• 1 small onion
• ½-1 green pepper (optional, but we always add it)
• ½-1+ hot pepper, seeds removed, or leave them for extra hotness
• basil and/or cilantro (amount depends on preference)
• 2-3 minced garlic cloves
• salt to taste
• splash of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice
• 1 ¾ pounds tomatoes

Process all ingredients except tomatoes in a food processor or blender.  Add tomatoes.  Process again, and it’s ready to eat.  Will keep in the refrigerator for 1 week.  Does not freeze well.  Experiment with different quantities.