Farm Share Week 8

Hello from the farm! It’s been a nice, hot July so far and many different plants are coming along nicely. Those carrots I have been stalking for weeks now are finally ready! Nothing like the taste of fresh carrots when you have been eating carrots from last fall’s crop (not so flavourful after a while). Speaking of things that sure taste better fresh, we have some fingerling potatoes! We mixed some of the different varieties together just for fun. They are very small because the plants were attacked by potato bugs and stopped growing while the potatoes were small. Sad indeed, but the wee potatoes we are left with are looking great, just small. We had to dig these tubers by hand and I got a whole education on. How a potato plant grows. (see picture). A potato, cut in half is used as seed. In spring, it sprouts and sends out roots that grow more little potatoes deep in the ground.

Those of you who didn’t get potatoes are lucky enough to get cauliflower‎…and it didn’t even cost you $8 (remember when the price of cauliflower spiked to an unbelievable high?!). The lucky whole share members will also get this or chinese broccoli (like regular broccoli but the heads are not as dense). I use them just like regular broccoli.

Some of you are getting black raspberries from a generous neighbour of ours (also organic) with a surplus of fruit. The red raspberries come from our farm. For either one, they are super perishable, so do me a favour and eat them quickly! We did our best to get them to you as fast as we could. Some will receive sugar snap or snow peas, so there is something sweet for all. 🙂

I am also stoked for the gorgeous Thai basil (see picture). It’s purplish and so flavourful with notes of mint and licorice. I am dying to make tea out of this stuff. ‎One of my staff makes “sun tea”, where she puts herbs and/or ginger in a tea diffuser in the sun and simply let’s it heat up and steep during the day. After a while she has tea! I think Thai basil would be amazing with some ginger root. Does anyone have experience making tea from fresh leaves?

I shared a collard green recipe last week-here was my attempt last night.  I couldn’t find the right type of flour…and I don’t recommend just using regular.  They didn’t steam properly and it wasn’t very good.  The rest of it was amazing-I was super sad that my hard work didn’t pan out but that’s how it goes.  Next time I’ll buy the proper corn flour the recipe calls for!   This week I’m sharing a page that has 10 ways to use dandelion leaves.  Hopefully one of those will spark your interest.  As always don’t forget to check out this page for more recipes http://pinteret.com/zephyrorganics
Please share anything you find great success with.  Share recipes on the FB page or in the comments on the blog.  Please remember to put out your boxes the day you get your next share too.