Farm News, July 5, 2022
We’ve turned the corner into July, hope everyone had a fun 4th weekend. Long, hot, days are norm, but this season so far, the weather is on the cooler side, the occasional 90 degree scorcher notwithstanding. We’ve especially been enjoying the cooler nights. Long days and seasonable weather, coupled with some well-placed irrigation, has most crops doing well. Rebecca and Olivia have planted tons of carrots this spring and they look great down in the south end of the farm. Tomato harvest is starting to pick up as well, although the cherry types are a little slower to come in this year.
C.J. handily harvests the salad mix.
The big item on our to-do list for the next week is to bring in the garlic. Shell and I prepared the greenhouses yesterday. Our greenhouses have something going on in them nearly every month of the year, and we use two of them to hang and cure our garlic crop. We cover them with shade cloth to mellow out the temps and keep the bulbs from getting sunburned. In the field, it’s time to get down and dirty and pull and bunch the crop. We’ll have fresh garlic for July, and by August the crop will be cured for long-term storage.
Getting to know kale intimately … weeding, harvesting … and hopefully eating too!
Strawberry season is pretty much in the rear-view mirror at this point. There are still some berries to glean, but it will take some time to find the good ones. It was a great June harvest! We’re working on next year’s patch. Last week we plucked the flowers off the plants we set in late-May. That means we crawled, weeded, and clipped flowers on thirty 300-foot beds. This will allow the mother plants to channel all their energy into making “daughter” plants, or runners, and then we’ll water and weed the beds that will give us the 2023 crop into the foreseeable future!
July seems to be peak craziness on most small produce farms. The combination of long harvest lists, incredibly fast weed growth, and the last plantings of sweet corn and fall broccoli and cabbage makes for a big workload. Luckily, we’ve got a good crew of folks on hand to help us out!
We hope you enjoy the farm and the harvest,
Paul and Rebecca for the Fort Hill Farm crew
Emily bunches one of many carrot bunches of the day. We love this crop.
Featured veg:
Spinach: This is some of the nicest spring and summer spinach we’ve grown. Smooth, dark leaves with that unique flavor everyone loves. Spinach is always a gamble in the spring and summer (and yes, fall too!): first its the pests who love it more than we humans, and then it’s the heat, which launches the crop into a bolting mess. You won’t see spinach for a long while after this round because of the hot summer days, so get it while you can! (See the Torta below.)
Fresh garlic: just when a farmer thinks July can’t get any busier, half an acre of garlic all needs to be pulled and hung to cure within a one-week window. We’ll begin this task in earnest this week, and curing takes many weeks, but in the meantime, will have the first fresh garlic stalks pulled and available. Store on the counter for several weeks. Our garlic is a German Extra Hardy (porcelain) variety with big fat, easy peeling cloves and wonderful flavor roasted or chopped into oil for your favorite recipe. We also prize fresh garlic for its incredible juiciness.
Also available:
Head lettuce, arugula, salad mix, pea shoots, carrots and rainbow carrots, radishes, salad turnips, scallions, Chinese cabbage, curly and lacinato kale, rainbow chard, fennel, cilantro, basil, parsley, dill, chives, radicchio, escarole, frozen ginger, red and Chioggia (kee-oh-jee-uh) beets, Purplette onions, garlic scapes, summer squash, cucumbers, heirloom & beefsteak tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes
Coming Soon:
Sweet corn!
Pick Your Own:
Flowers:
Picking is as they are available; many are open, some are still shy, soon it will be bountiful!
Strawberry season is at the end: gleanings early in the week.
How Does Strawberry PYO Work?
1. Head to the north of the parking lot and grab some quart containers
2. Pick ripe, red berries only (pick from the rows with flagged stakes)
3. Head to the barn to pay and stock up on the week's veggies
PYO Hours: (PYO begins 30 minutes before and goes 30 minutes beyond barn hours.)
Recipes
Suggested by Rebecca Batchie
For more recipes, check out the Fort Hill Farm Recipe Database
Fermented Garlic Honey
By Andy Baraghani via Bon Appetit
If the raw honey you find is solid at room temperature, warm it in the microwave or in a saucepan over low heat to bring it back to a liquid state before using for this recipe. You can drizzle this honey over pepperoni pizza (trust!), serve alongside spicy fried chicken, use in a glaze for grilled pork or fish, and/or add a few spoonfuls to savory cornbread.
Ingredients
12 garlic cloves (about 1 head), crushed
1½ cups raw honey
SPECIAL EQUIPMENT: A heatproof 1-qt. jar
Preparation
Step 1
Place garlic in jar. Pour honey over garlic and stir to combine, making sure all the garlic gets coated. Seal jar and let sit at room temperature 3 days. Unscrew and remove lid to let out any gases; give garlic honey a stir. (You’ll most likely see tiny bubbles at this stage, which means the fermentation process has started.) Reseal jar and let sit, stirring once every other day, at least 1 week before using.
Step 2
Do Ahead: Garlic honey can be made 1 month ahead. Keep room temperature.
Torta Pasqualina
From RecipesFromItaly
Recipe is for an 8-inch, round cake pan.
Ingredients
13 oz of chard or spinach
5 oz of ricotta cheese
2 oz of parmigiano reggiano
1 oz pecorino romano
2 sheets of puff pastry
4 whole medium eggs
a pinch of fine salt
freshly ground black pepper
Directions
Step 1) – Wash the leaves of the chard or spinach carefully, based on what you have chosen as vegetables. Then place them into a large pot with a little water.
Cover with a lid and cook over low heat for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare the filling.
In a bowl mix ricotta, Parmigiano cheese, Pecorino Romano cheese and 1 egg. Stir and mix all the ingredients. Add a pinch of fine salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.
Step 2) – Now drain the vegetables and squeeze them well with your hands to remove all the water. You can leave chard as they are or mince them, as you prefer. We’ve let them whole. Now add them to the mixture. Mix well to combine all the ingredients.
Step 3) – Take an 8-inch round cake pan and line it with baking paper. Then line it with one of the sheets of puff pastry. Now fill it with the mixture of cheeses and chard. Make three small hollows in the vegetable mixture, evenly spaced. Crack into each hole one whole raw egg.
Step 4) – Finally, Cut an 8-inch circle out of the second sheet of puff pastry. Place it carefully over the top of the mixture. Close the pie, folding down the edges of the pastry lining to join up with the disk. Put in oven and bake at 350 F for 50 minutes. Serve Torta Pasqualina still hot or let it cool to room temperature.
You can keep Torta Pasqualina in the refrigerator covered with plastic wrap or in an airtight container, for 3 days.
Once cooked and completely cooled, you can even freeze it. You can already cut it into slices in order to defrost only the portions you will need. Before serving, defrost it in the refrigerator and then reheat it in the oven or microwave.