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| Freshly cultivated broccoli and Brussels sprout seedlings, for your autumnal enjoyment |
Greetings from the east bank of Rt. 206! We're successfully installed in our new apartment, and can now commute to the farm without traveling on any public roads, which is an improvement. With the big move behind us, we're excited to get our focus back to growing, harvesting and especially eating all these delicious summer veggies.
We harvested our garlic on Friday (see below for more), and though most of the crop is curing in the barn, we will have some fresh garlic at the stand again this week -- basil, too, so put on your pesto-makin' shoes! Baby carrots, kale, and new potatoes are back as well. This is probably our last week for string beans, but who knows? Maybe they'll get a second wind.
ON THE FARM
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| October 2013 |
If I've said it once I've said it a hundred times: garlic is the greatest crop out there. You plant it in the fall, mulch it, basically ignore it for five or six months, then pull the scapes (if you planted hardneck garlic), and, a month or so later, the bulbs themselves. All of our garlic -- which, you may remember, was planted by the ladies of Kirby House back in October -- was harvested on Friday by our intrepid interns, and at the moment it's lounging in front of a fan (aren't we all in this heat?) in the barn, curing. For the next few weeks we'll have small quantities of fresh garlic for sale, but we'll cure the bulk of the crop for fall consumption and next year's seed.
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| Garlicky interns |
What's the difference, you ask, between fresh and cured garlic? Cured garlic is what you buy in the store; its outer coverings have dried to a papery texture, and it keeps almost indefinitely sitting on your countertop. Fresh garlic, on the other hand, is just that. It needs to be refrigerated, and it doesn't have a papery outer layer. I actually find it easier to peel fresh cloves than cured ones, because the layer I'm peeling off is much more substantial and durable. The flavor of fresh garlic is pretty great, too!
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| A pretty full truck |
As I mentioned, we'll save a portion of this year's garlic crop as seed, which we'll plant this fall and harvest next summer. We always save the biggest and nicest bulbs for seed, in a constant effort to improve the quality of our stock. The plants that produce the largest, most uniform bulbs are the ones that have adapted best to the particular conditions of our farm -- soil, weather, pests, etc. -- so by planting those cloves we're selecting for the plants that perform well in those conditions. Over time, the size and quality of the garlic should continue to improve.
RECIPE
I still haven't unpacked/found a place for many parts of the kitchen, so I'm taking another easy week on the recipe front (sorry, folks, I'll get back on my feet next week, I promise!). Also, no pictures I could take or comments I could write would improve on those of my cooking sherpa, Deb Perelman, so I'm just going to send you straight to her. I have made this in the past and it's delicious, and I think that, as we probably won't have any more green beans for awhile, this is your chance to find out for yourself just how delicious! {Pesto Potato Salad with Green Beans}
AT THE FARM STAND
This week we hope to have the following available from 1pm to 5pm in front of Pop Hall:
- Multicolored String Beans (probably last week for these) - $3.50 quart
- Basil - $2.50 bunch
- Beets - $2.50 bunch
- Baby Carrots - $3.00 lb
- Fresh Garlic - $1.25 bulb
- Kale - $2.50 bunch
- Lettuce - $2.50 head
- Mixed New Potatoes - $3.00 lb
- Rainbow Chard - $2.50 bunch
- Summer Squash/Zucchini - $2.00 lb
HOW TO FIND US:
The farm stand is located right in front of Pop Hall, at the top of the stairs that lead down into the Bowl. Enter campus by the main gate on Route 206 (opposite the Lawrenceville Post Office and Craven Lane) and bear right into the circle. Bear right again at the fork in the road and continue straight until you see the farmstand signs.
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