Jack’s Week 12 BUG

Welcome to week 12 of the Featherstone Farms summer CSA program.

This is the week of the tomato, folks. We've got really peak tomatoes right now. I'll describe the four different types of tomatoes we have in boxes this week, what to do with them, how to keep them, what's coming in the pipeline. It's also the first week where we begin to pivot into fall. Our first fall broccoli, some other crops that are going to be increasing with the cool nights of September and October, wonderful time of year and a great box. Let's get started.

We have a handful of muskmelons. I've had two that are really, really good this year. Not enough for every box at this point, but several patches still to come. Muskmelons come in later than watermelons, so there's a lot of these still coming in September if it stays warm in the coming weeks.

Napa cabbage, to me, is the summer classic for coleslaw or stir fries, other things like that, and can be pickled. Makes very quick 24-hour kimchi. You can look up recipes on our website or elsewhere.

We have the first of our fall broccoli. It is the months of September-October, folks, where the broccoli, growing slowly in cool nights, shortening days of autumn, gets larger, heavier. When it doesn't get a lot of rain on it, they get very beautiful. And the eating quality of broccoli this week is really high, so a lot more broccoli coming in the months of September-October. Peak broccoli season still ahead of us.

We have hakurei turnips, which are a favorite for dipping of all kinds, along with cucumbers and zucchini coming up. Thin slice, still thin skins. No need to peel them. These keep well in the plastic bag in your refrigerator.

We have a late crop of cucumbers, plenty of cucumbers for everyone, and thank goodness for the warm sun. We have the standard cucumbers, properly pollinated, straight, not a lot of disfiguration. Beautiful cucumbers for every box this week.

Zucchini, a few of them still coming in boxes. We have another couple of patches. Again, not enough for everyone just this week, but in coming weeks there will be more zucchini.

Red onions. These are cured onions. You can see down there the papers. These are the type of onions that do not require refrigeration, so that can be kept in this bag on your counter or on top of your refrigerator. Red onions.

We have the first of multiple tomatoes. There are paste tomatoes. These are stewing tomatoes for a sauce. These are not quite ripe. Again, anytime you find any tomato that's less than ripe in your box, you're going to want to keep it in a closed paper bag where the ethylene gas is trapped to allow them to ripen more thoroughly. We did have a lot of disease in these paste tomatoes. This kind of blotching it's a surface problem only, so it does show up on some fruits, but we have had to leave a lot in the field, which is why they're not enough for everyone, but more of these paste tomatoes coming.

Field grown radishes with really nice tops. This is a fall crop. There'll be many more of these coming soon.

We've had a wonderful crop of tomatillos. This will probably be the last full week of tomatillos because this patch has produced a lot. But it has been great year for green salsas and plenty for this week as well.

Standard hybrid tomatoes. Again, need a few days to ripen up, but if we put them in the bag too ripe, we don't want bruising or tearing of the skins. These will take a couple days to ripen up, but will be really good slicing tomatoes for sandwiches.

We have a really healthy large bag of mixed hot peppers. This is a big heavy bag, folks. There are jalapenos, cayennes, Hungarian wax, and then these orange habaneros, which are very, very spicy. The recipe this week in the box features jalapeno cornbread to make good use of these. And we have a lot of hot peppers still in the pipeline, folks. So if these seem like too much in this bag, or if you get them in future weeks, keep them in your refrigerator. We're going to research ways of drying these peppers. I'm convinced that thin sliced on a cookie sheet in the oven for a couple hours, we can dry hot peppers like this, and then can have them all winter to shake into chili, just ready to go. So I'll be experimenting this myself and talk about storing these peppers. There's more than you can use this week, but how to keep them for winter from this week's box, or future boxes, because there are a lot coming.

Heirloom tomatoes, now we're in peak season. There are brandy wines, the yellow Valencia. This is a green tomato that will ripen green. It's nearly ripe at this kind of color. Others are like it, but will ripen purple. Just keep that bag closed at the room temperature in order to ripen them properly.

Handful of other herbs here this week. A beautiful cilantro, this cilantro also a fall crop. By far the best flavor this time of year, in my estimation anyway, to go with all these wonderful tomatoes and peppers.

Still will be around here for a little while, the basil, but this is a very cold sensitive crop. We have a couple nights in the 40s forecast this coming week, and could be towards the end of our basil season.

Wonderful green kale, like the broccoli. This is a September-October crop, in my estimation will just be getting better and better. Wonderful eating.

For all those wonderful cucumbers we've got, dill tops for a lot of people. If you like to make refrigerator pickles or dill pickles for canning, you'll want these guys. Really fine herb to go.

You can see that this is a full box this week, folks. We're at peak season. The tomatoes may be on the decline, melons fewer in the future, but we have these wonderful fall crops coming on. Root crops, cabbages and broccoli, of course, and and of course winter squash.

So we'll see you next week. Thank you.