Week 9; August 3, 2023

What’s in the box?

notes on the box.

Apologies on the hail damage on the romaine. It’s looking a little ratty, but still does its job on a BLT quite well!

Tomatoes are mostly heirlooms, with a handful of folks getting red slicers. If you will be eating your tomatoes fresh, we recommend storing them stem side down on your counter. If they are getting over ripe or you plan on cooking with them, you can put them in the fridge. The texture will change, but if cooking them, that’s not an issue. Enjoy! There will be more coming!

The Sweet Corn snuck up on us this week, but it’s always a welcome guest at our table.

cosmic Wheel creamery cheese shares.

This week I went with fresh whole-milk ricotta and the creamy Lyra that was made this Spring. I love this cheese! It makes the very best grilled cheese with a slice of tomato sandwich imaginable. It’s a higher moisture cheese that’s younger, so it doesn’t have as long of a shelf life as some of the other aged cheeses. Go ahead and eat it up! Same with the ricotta. Try to get it eaten within a week (it might hold a bit longer though). If you aren’t going to get to it, you can put it in the freezer for cooking with later. But I love it fresh, especially with the sliced tomato on bread with olive oil and pepper. Or mixed into a pasta dish with sauteed zucchini and sweet corn kernels!

Next week I will send along another aged cheese (maybe our jack style) and feta.

recipes.

Zucchini, Sweet Corn, and Ricotta Pasta
Slice or dice zucchini and sautee with minced garlic (or chopped garlic scapes) in butter till garlic is fragrant and zucchini is tender. Add corn kernels that have been cut off the cob and cook till warmed.
Meanwhile cook pasta in well-salted water (any shape will do) and reserve a cup of cooking water before draining. When pasta and veggies are done, toss together with some whole milk ricotta, a squeeze of lemon juice and lemon zest (if you don’t have a lemon, diced tomato is another good way to add a some acid), and as much cooking water as needed to create a nice texture. Add fresh herbs such as parsley, basil, dill, or thyme if you like! Quick and easy and yummy!

Chilled Cucumber, Celery, and Avocado Soup
Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a pan. Add a diced onion, a bunch of diced celery stalks, 2 cloves of minced garlic to the pan and saute until tender. Add 2 cups of chicken or vegetable stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until veggies are soft. Chill well. When fully chilled, transfer to a blender and add 1 seeded, unpeeled large cucumber or a couple of medium cucumbers and some chopped cilantro, dill, or other fresh herb of your choice. Blend well. Add 1/2 an avocado, diced and 1/4 cup plain greek yogurt (optional) and blend until smooth. Season to taste with salt. Garnish with more diced cucumber and avocado and serve.

French Carrot Salad

Sticky and Spicy Baked Cauliflower

on the farm.

Last Friday evening We enjoyed the first sweet corn of the season as classic corn on the cob (just shuck corn and drop into a pot of salted boiling water for long enough to get it warm - just a few minutes) with lots of butter, salt, and some lovely golden evening light. We also put the very fun “It’s corn!” song from the internet on repeat while we ate. Sweetcorn is one of the things that makes us remember that we love the Earth, and as Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us, the Earth loves us back! Hope you enojoy! We have several more weeks coming!

We also have been enjoying the first of the tomatoes as they began to trickle in. Finding the first ripe ones in the greenhouse is such a treat! First just a little blush, and then some full fledged ripe beauties shining bright and calling out to be picked. We have been enjoying the first ones as tomato sandwiches. Just tomato and mayo on regular sandwich bread. There’s a small debate around here about whether we like many thin slices (Rama-style) or one EXTRA thick slab (Josh-style). Truly who cares? It’s just the most perfect,d effortless snack or meal on a hot summer day.

A BIG thank you to all who came out to Sunday Sundaes! It was so nice to see you again or to meet you! We hope you enjoyed the Icecream and the farm. We were running around a bit too much to get pictures, but it was a nice time with a great turnout. If you weren’t able to make it or if you want to come out again, the next Sunday Sundaes Ice Cream Social will be on August 27 from 1-4. Fiddlehead Kitchen is scheduled to come along make up the Sundays and also maybe selling some of their amazing snacks! More info coming on that!

Soak up this Summer! It’s peaking and it’s really flying!

next week.

sweet corn!
peppers
tomatoes
cucumbers
zucchini
basil
garlic?
carrots or beets?
kale or another green?

Week 8; july 27, 2023

What’s In the box?

Notes on the box.

Cosmic wheel creamery cheese shares.

Garlic Dill Quark in a slightly larger container than usual since it’s hot out and we are eating this for dinner all the time. Just spread some on bread and put some cucumbers on there or use it as a dip for carrots of fresh green beans. Very yummy and delicious and simple.

Aquilla is a raw milk aged jack style cheese. It’s good on nachos or grilled cheese or for snacking. I call is the potatochip cheese because I have trouble stopping eating it once I get started. Hope you enjoy!

Next week we will likely have Lyra, which is creamy with a wine washed rind made this Spring and ricotta or feta.

Recipes.

On the farm.

What a week! It took several days, but the garlic is all harvested and in the barn drying! It was an all hands on deck job becasue we are growing for a seed company this year. Rama got to get a day outside of the cheese room and got her hands back in the dirt. Along with our trusty farm crew, we were also helped out by our friend Loyal and beekeeper Kristy. The garlic is so beautiful! After it dries down for about a month we will begin the job of trimming off the roots, getting it cleaned up and the leaves trimmed off. Still lots to do, but getting it out of the ground feels like one of the big pushes is complete.

Over the weekend we got hit with some hail. It came suddenly and was mostly marble sized. It drove holes through some of the more tender leaves, It battered the zucchini. I was really worried about the tomatoes and peppers in the field, but both have a lot of foliage that seemed to do a good job of protecting the fruit on those plants, so hopefully they will be just fine when it’s time to start harvesting them. It seems like most everything is bouncing back without much issue which we are super grateful for!

This Sunday is our Sunday Sundaes Ice Cream Social from 1-4. We hope you can make it out! If you are planning on coming out this Sunday, give us a heads-up so we have an idea of how many people might be coming. We have an ice cream social the last Sunday of each month, so if you can’t make this one, be sure to mark your calendars for August 27.

We hope everyone is staying hydrated and finding ways to stay cool! Tomatoes and sweetcorn and peppers are just around the corner!

Next week.

celery
green beans
cukes
squash
onions
tomatoes?
carrots
beets
cauliflower?
broccoli?
romaine?

Week 7; July 20, 2023

What’s in the box?

notes on the box.

These beautiful potatoes are from our friends at Threshing Table Farm. They had a bumper crop while we -once again- had our potato plants eaten to nothing by potato beetles. They were kind enough to let us trade some harvesting of potatoes for potatoes for you all. We love these so much for potato salad and potatoes with butter and parsley. Yum!

Did you know that you can freeze garlic scapes?! I just learned it and you can bet I’m going to be freezing so many for soup, stir-fry, and roasted veggies this Winter. Simply cut them into inch size pieces and place them in a pastic bag, squeezing out as mich air as possible for freezing. Alternately, you can pulse them in your food processor with some olive oil and freeze in cubes for later. I adore having prepped garlic in the Winter.

cosmic wheel creamery cheese shares.

This week I included fresh cheddar cheese curds and an aged cheddar wedge. Fresh cheese curds are part of the process of making cheddar cheese. Tiny curds are drained, formed into slabs, then milled into cheddar cheese curds in a process called cheddaring. These milled curds are salted and can be enjoyed fresh or pressed with a lot of pressure to form wheels that are aged as cheddar cheese. Our curds are pasteurized for fresh eating, but the aged cheddar is made from raw milk. This is probably my favorite batch of aged cheddar that I’ve made and I hope you enjoy it, too!

recipes.

on the farm.

Thanks so much to all who came out for the farm tour day! We weren’t sure how many people to expect and we heard it was a great turnout! Josh and I were both at markets, so we missed much of the tour time, but big thank you’s to Otto, Mattie, Charlotte, and Andrew who held it down here!

This week is our big garlic harvest! Josh really loves growing garlic, so we decided to grow for a seed contract. Garlic that doesn’t meet the size requirement for seed (the hugest heads) will be coming your way! I don’t know about you guys, but we use a lot of garlic around here. I hope you are still enjoying the scapes. They are a great stand-in until the heads of garlic are cured, sorted, and ready to go out.