Onion harvest has begun!

Today was the beginning of the onion harvest.  When the tops of the onions start to die it is time to pull them.  A few varieties were ready--Candy, Superstar, and Red Candy Apple.  We pulled out the onions, cut off and discarded the tops, and left them on the plastic to dry in today's almost 100 degree heat.  Tomorrow we will put them into mesh bags for storage.

Onions that have been pulled out of the plastic, tops cut off, and laid out to dry in the sun.

Onion champs!

That's one nice onion, Alice!

This is Cole saying, "I hot."

Onion pickers.

Cole concentrating on cutting the top off an onion (with a little help from Gran and Alice.)

Blueberry pie I made today.  The star crust was pretty fun to do.  Don't know how it tasted though, it was a gift for Dale Clapper as a thank you for his help picking blueberries last week.

Big City or Little City, Take Time to Buy Fresh Local Food

A couple of days ago I took a short trip to visit my brother and family in Cincinnati.  The main reason for my visit was to see my brand new niece but we managed to do a little bit of sightseeing as well.  I asked him to take me to the Findlay Market in the Over-the-Rhine district.  This is Ohio’s oldest surviving municipal market house, in operation since 1855.  It is open six days a week and many of the vendors have permanent stalls inside the building, with an amazing variety of meats, cheeses, baked goods, and countless other items.  Outside there are stalls where farmers set up to sell their goods, but because I was there on a Sunday afternoon, I only saw a few.  I would have loved to see and chat with the many farmers that show up on other weekday mornings, especially Saturdays.

It was so interesting to see how a large market in a big city works, but also made me proud that we have such a nice market with a lot of variety to offer the public in a town of our size.  Lori Law’s article in last week’s paper was another great reminder of all the fresh market shopping opportunities right here in Zanesville. 

One advantage of buying fresh food in a community of our size is that you have the opportunity to get to know the people who are producing it.  You can actually develop a relationship with them and know exactly where things come from.  It always amazes me how closely people are watching the vegetables growing in my garden as they pass by along the road.  I often hear comments from my customers such as “I’ve been watching those beans climb higher and higher,” or “I saw a deer munching on something yummy in your garden the other morning.”  It is nice that in Muskingum County we are not so far removed from our food production as most of the customers I saw at the market in Cincinnati. 

At a coffee shop near my brother’s house, the special of the day was Summer Squash Gazpacho, featuring locally grown squash, so I had to try a bowl.  Gazpacho is a tomato based soup that is served cold.  I liked the soup at the coffee shop because they left the summer squash chunky instead of pureeing everything as gazpacho recipes often direct.  Therefore, I left the puree step out of the following recipe, which I found at winespectator.com  This recipe seemed most similar to what I tried at the coffee shop.

SUMMER SQUASH GAZPACHO

• 1 pound summer squash (i.e. yellow crookneck, zucchini, patty pan, etc.)
• 1 medium onion
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1/4 cup virgin or extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 quart water
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 2 pounds ripe tomotoes, chopped, or 28 ounces canned tomatoes, chopped, and their juices
• 1 bunch basil
• 1 bunch tarragon
• 2 cups tomato juice
• 2 tablespoons wine vinegar
• Juice of 1 fresh lemon (or more, to taste)
• Garnishes: lemon wedges, diced cucumber and diced scallions, chopped parsley, croutons

Cut the squash and onion into 1-inch chunks. Combine them in a large saucepan with the garlic, olive oil and the water. Season with 1 teaspoon salt and 10 or 12 grinds of pepper. Bring the contents to a boil, reduce the heat to medium, cover the pan and let the vegetables boil gently for 5 minutes.

Uncover the pan and add the chopped tomato (with skin and seeds) and fresh herbs. Boil the soup for 10 minutes, then add the tomato juice, vinegar and lemon juice. Cook for 5 minutes longer. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and more lemon juice, if desired.  Let soup cool to serve at room temperature with garnishes. Makes about 3 quarts. Serves 10 to 12.

Cole inspecting the lobsters at Findlay Market.

Nate and Cole inside Findlay Market.

We met up with the Peyton clan at the market.

Cole eating a cookie as big as his head!

Marshall in front of a painting at the Findlay Market.  They have these paintings at locations all over Cincinnati--finding them is like a treasure hunt.  This one was called something like "Cattle Grazing."  I wish I could remember the artist.

My sweet new niece Maya Rose.

Just a few recent pictures:

Bushel basket of peas

Blueberries

Blueberry picking!

Little green heirloom tomato!  Isn't it cute?

Busy market table.  See the ladies arguing over strawberries--too funny!

More market goodies.

Close up of the Sugar Snap Peas.

Meats and Beets

            Yesterday was the first official day of summer for 2012.  This week has certainly felt like summer with 90 plus degree days.  As I am writing this, the predicted high for Saturday is back down into the 80’s, which will make for nicer temperatures for visiting Farmers Market. 

            For those of you who take the time to preserve the summer harvest by canning and freezing, now is the time to get your supplies organized and prepared.  I speak from experience when I say don’t wait until the last minute to buy canning supplies because, sure enough, if you wait until the day you are ready to start, the store will be sold out.

Now is also the time to go through the freezer and use up any produce left from last year.  That way you will have enough space when this year’s crops are ready.  Another important tip is to check your freezer frequently to make sure it is working properly.  Earlier this week we had a freezer malfunction and discovered that all of the contents of our kitchen freezer had thawed out.  I’m just so glad it was not our large deep freeze which is currently holding half a beef and all of the deer meat.  Needless to say, I am now going to invest in a freezer alarm as an extra precaution.  It will warn us if the freezer temperature gets too high.  Last summer my friend Sarah had the same thing happen and lost all of the tomatoes she had worked so hard to preserve for the winter months.  You don’t want a whole summer’s worth of hard work to be wasted, so be sure to check often.

Since I haven’t yet convinced my family to let me raise pigs, I buy a lot of pork from the meat vendors at Farmer’s Market.  This accounted for a large portion our meat that accidently thawed out.  First, I fixed a large crockpot of pork and homemade sauerkraut, which we ate for about three days.  Being one of my favorite meals, I didn’t really mind.  Then, on Tuesday my grandma came over and she and my mom and one of my cousin’s children made a large quantity of ham salad.  It was pretty neat to have four generations in the kitchen at once working on the project.  Mom and Grandma wanted it to taste “just like what they used to get at Zakany’s” and in the end they decided they succeeded.  However, the project was slightly messy and time consuming, so I suggest you go the easy route and let the meat vendors at our market do the work for you and try their ham salad and other spreads.

Beautiful beets are now showing up on the vendors’ tables at market.  I was raised by a mother who hates beets more than any other vegetable in the world, so my appreciation for them has only come about in the last couple of years.  I figured out that there are wonderful ways to cook them.  Here is an adapted version of a beet salad recipe from allrecipes.com.  I changed the method of cooking the beets to roasting, because it is quicker and tastier in my opinion. 

Honey Beet Salad

·        4 large beets

·        1 T. olive oil

·        3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

·        1 tablespoon honey

·        1 1/2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

·        1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

·        1/4 cup chopped sweet onion

·        1/4 cup chopped walnuts

·        1/3 cup crumbled blue cheese

·        2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

·        salt to taste

Preheat oven to 425º.  Cut beets into bite size pieces, coat with olive oil, and spread on baking sheet.  Roast in oven for about 20 min.  Whisk balsamic vinegar, honey, red wine vinegar, and black pepper together in a bowl. Stir slightly cooled beets, onion, and walnuts into vinegar dressing. Sprinkle with blue cheese, parsley, and salt to serve.

Don’t Squash the Berries

            Rain, or the lack thereof, seems to be the foremost topic of conversation these days.  It was nice to have a few showers on Monday even though they were pretty scattered.  We got less than a ¼ inch at my house, while a friend a few miles south reported having a ½ inch.  In spite of the dry weather, my garden continues to look good so far.  An old farmer friend of mine used to tell me that being a bit dry as the garden plants are getting established isn’t necessarily a terrible thing.  Rather, it means that the plants are putting down “deep roots.”  This will help make them stronger in the long run.  Let’s certainly hope this is what is happening right now.

            Another topic of conversation seems to be how early things are coming on this year.  A friend’s blueberry patch has been ready for a week and we have been picking away.  This seems to be a couple of weeks earlier than normal.  I notice that some customers seem amazed that blueberries actually grow around here.  With the right soil and a lot of TLC they do just fine.    

            I have also begun picking wild black raspberries.  These are my favorite berry of all and usually hard to come by.  Risking life and limb and worst of all--poison ivy, I managed to get about a half gallon in my first picking this week.  Good thing I traded lettuce and peas for a bottle of Ali O’s Poison Ivy Relief at last week’s market just in case I wasn’t watching for it closely enough.  Dad and I both commented that the black raspberry crop this year was the best we have ever seen in our neck of the woods.

            Aside from berries, summer squash and zucchini are just getting started.  It’s easy to get excited about squash this early in the season.  I have made a lot of zucchini bread in my day, but never thought to put fresh blueberries in it until I saw this recipe on allrecipes.com.  The best of both worlds!

Blueberry Zucchini Bread

·         3 eggs, lightly beaten

·         1 cup vegetable oil

·         3 tsp. vanilla extract

·         2 ¼ cups white sugar

·         2 cups shredded zucchini or other summer squash

·         3 cups all-purpose flour

·         1 tsp. salt

·         1 tsp. baking powder

·         ¼ tsp. baking soda

·         1 T. ground cinnamon

·         1 pint fresh blueberries

   Preheat oven to 350º.  Lightly grease 4 mini-loaf pans.  In large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar.  Fold in the zucchini.  Beat in the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon.  Gently fold in the blueberries.  Transfer to the prepared mini-loaf pans.  Bake 50 minutes or until knife comes out cleanly.  Cool 20 min. in pans, then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.

Pass the Peas Please

            Each week at Farmers’ Market the produce vendors’ tables get a little fuller as each new vegetable is ready to harvest.  Last week some of the new items included beautiful beets and even the first homegrown tomatoes.  These tasty tomatoes came from a farmer who has turned most of his greenhouses into high tunnels which allow the tomatoes to be grown directly in the garden soil earlier in the year than normal due to the season-extending protection and warmth of a greenhouse roof.

            Peas are another item coming on strong right now.  The first types of peas to be ready are sugar snap and snow peas.  These peas are great because they save the work of shelling.  As opposed to regular peas, snow and sugar snap peas are meant to be eaten pod and all.  They are both very sweet and, therefore, most people just end up eating them raw, but there are a lot of great ways to use them, especially in stir fry dishes.     

Lunch time on the farm provides a nice little break in the middle of the work day.  Meals can be pretty fun with all of these fresh vegetables at my fingertips.  However, there is a lot of work to be done, so most days I have to come up with something that is tasty and filling yet also not too time consuming to prepare.  Here is what I threw together for yesterday’s lunch.  This dish, plus a small dish of leftover strawberry shortcake for dessert, made for a very satisfying and re-energizing lunch.

Easy Peasy Sugar Snaps and Bacon

·        Six pieces Pepper Bacon

·        1 quart sugar snap peas (or snow peas), stems removed

·        ½ cup garlic scapes, cut into 1 in. pieces and/or ½ cup green onions, chopped

·        1 carrot, peeled and grated

   

    Cook bacon in skillet, remove.  Pour off most of the grease.  Add onions and/or scapes to skillet and sauté for a minute or two.  Add whole peas and grated carrots.  Cook a few more minutes, crumble bacon and add back to pan.  Add salt to taste (if using pepper bacon, you won’t need to add pepper.)  Do not overcook the peas; you want them to still have some crunch. (Serves 2 as a main dish or 4 as a side.)

Strawberry Season Brings Back Sweet Memories

            Last Friday night I found myself helping the neighbor kids pick quarts of strawberries from their strawberry patch.  This brought back memories from my childhood picking strawberries from their grandfather’s large strawberry patch for $.25 per quart.  Looking back, I guess I can say this was my very first job.  I was pretty young when the family took a hiatus from berry growing, so the job was short lived and I probably wasn’t all that great of a picker, but it must have planted some roots that helped lead me down this path to becoming a produce farmer. 

My father remembers picking strawberries for the same family in his childhood for just a nickel a quart.  Many of his cohorts have related similar stories of working for the various truck farmers along the River Road in their youth.  This type of hard, hot, back breaking farm work was the norm back then.  It brightens my day to see that there are still some kids out there who are willing to do these jobs.  I wish more children had the opportunity and the drive to do this “character building” work.

One of my favorite things about strawberry season is that once a year we have “Strawberry Shortcake Night” at my Grandma Jean’s house.  Instead of eating a real supper, we just eat strawberry shortcake.  That way there are no worries that we will be too full for dessert!  Be assured that I will show up at my grandma’s with a bucket of strawberries very soon.

            Hopefully, some of my readers were lucky enough to know a famous local farm woman and pie maker, Ruth McLaughlin.  Her berry pies were famous at church and Farm Bureau events throughout the county.  She often shared her recipes, so I feel she would approve if I publish her recipe once again.

Ruth’s Strawberry Pie 

1 quart berries for 8 in. pie (you’ll want more for a larger pie and Ruth said “Use only good berries!”) cleaned and sliced.  Bake pie crust and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Cook:

1 c. sugar

1 c. water

3 Tbsp. corn starch

4 Tbsp. strawberry Jello

Boil one min. then let cool, but not too cool.  Lay berries in crust and pour over top. Top pie with whipped cream.  Ruth used this method for all her berry pies.