Veggie Spotlight: Tomatoes

Farm Update

The piggies are happily rooting up their pasture.

Hello everyone! We hope you're making the most of the last few weeks of summer!  We can feel the waning of summer in the air, which will soon bring relief from the constant heat and an eventual transition to the hearty foods of fall.  For right now though, summer veggies are in high supply, especially the great tasting tomatoes which we have been eating tons of lately.  At the farm, the dry conditions we fought so hard against during the summer seem a distant struggle and now it is a game of waiting until the soil is dry enough to cultivate and do other field work.  Despite the increased rain, the weeds are now an easier battle and the cool season crops are starting to show more vigor.  The pigs, though wild in their youth, have become much lazier, spending most of their day with their heads in the feeder and sitting in their pile of wet straw.  Though lazy, they have almost rooted up their entire pasture, and they are fun to watch as they plow through the sod.

Speaking of the pigs, it’s time to reserve one if you’re interested in pork this year.  They will available in half and whole quantities, and they’ll most likely be ready to take home in early- to mid- November in time for the hearty meals of the holiday season.  We estimate most whole pigs to yield around 140lb of meat, but it will vary a little on the size of each pig.  You can also request a largish or smallish pig as well.  The piggies are a cross of two heritage breeds, Gloucestershire Old Spot and Hereford, and are raised on pasture and fed non-GMO feed grown and mixed by the Amish in and around Clare, MI. The cost to you is a simple $6.75 per pound (there will be no other charges, such as for butchering).  This is for finished individually packaged cuts including bacon, sausage, pork roast, pork chops, ham and maybe a couple others.  They will available for pickup at Bellingar’s Packing just south of Ithaca, and we will let you know when they are ready. So if you want a whole or half pig, let us know ASAP!

What to Expect in Your Share this Week

These are some of many lovely specialty tomatoes that
will be in the share this week.

Here are the options in each veggie station this week!  If you have a half share, you'll choose one from each category, and if you have a full share, you'll choose two.

• Tomatoes for everyone!
• Cherry tomatoes for everyone!
• Green beans or beets
• Potatoes or surprise veggie
• Cabbage, kale, or Swiss chard
• Green peppers or specialty tomatoes
• Garlic, small onion, or jalapeno peppers

If you have your share delivered to your home or workplace, or if you pick up at our East Lansing drop-off, here are your options for this week.  If you have a half share, choose one, and if you have a full share, choose two.

Share A:                                      Share B:

Tomatoes                                    Tomatoes
Cherry tomatoes                         Cherry tomatoes
Green beans                                Beets
Potatoes                                      Surprise veggie
Kale                                            Cabbage
Specialty tomatoes                     Green pepper
Garlic                                         Onion


If you have a preference for share A or share B, just let me know by noonish the day before your delivery day, and I'll make sure you get your preferred share.  If you don't have a preference, I'll just choose for you. :-)

Veggie Spotlight:  Tomatoes

The tomatoes are really flourishing in the coldframes!

You might have noticed that there are a lot of tomatoes in the shares this week, from slicing tomatoes, to cherry tomatoes, to specialty and heirloom tomatoes.  That’s because it’s that tomato time of year again!  This year has been hot and dry (with the exception of the last week or so) and the tomato plants have thrived in these conditions.  Now we are enjoying the vast abundance of tomatoes that all that heat has helped to bring to fruition!  We love tomatoes, and we encourage you to take full advantage of the great flavor and plenty while it is here (because let’s face it, those February grocery store tomatoes really aren’t worth eating.)  Also, tomatoes are great sources of the antioxidant lycopene, vitamin C, folate, potassium, and vitamin K.

The origins of tomatoes are disputed, but they are generally thought to have originated in Mexico or Peru.  Regardless of their origin, they were only grown in the Americas until the Spanish exploration and exploitation of Aztec lands in the 1500s AD led to the tomato being brought back to Europe.  These first tomatoes were mostly yellow in color and met a somewhat conflicted acceptance, surrounded by suspicions of being poisonous.  These original tomatoes were likely not quite as great to eat as later varieties, often being hollow and having harder cores.  In 1870 a breeder named Alexander Hamilton introduced a much improved variety called Paragon. This variety spurred the wider acceptance of the tomato on people’s tables, and led to it being a major horticultural crop on most continents in the world. 

On our farm, tomatoes are mostly grown in our unheated greenhouses called high tunnels or coldframes.  This has been the trend in the U.S., especially in Northern states like Michigan.  Tomatoes do best in very warm, dry conditions which are more reliably found in these tunnels.  However, our large (sometimes 15 foot) plants start at our farm as a small seed that is sown into greenhouse flats in the our heated greenhouses.  Then when the plant can be pulled out of the flats, we plant them into raised beds covered by black plastic mulch with drip irrigation underneath the plastic.  As the plants grow, they are trellised using the basket weave method until they are as high as we can reach, after which the vines start coming back down towards the ground.  Once the plants have fruit that starts to turn color, we only irrigate a little bit to give the plants enough water to keep going and to inject some fish fertilizer into the root zone to keep the plants healthy.  This helps concentrate the flavor and sweetness of the tomatoes and greatly lowers the chances of cracking.  We grow many varieties, and a few varieties like our red romas and small red beefsteaks, we grow outside with no trellis. These outside tomatoes are at greater risk for disease and deformity, but we often run out of coldframe space.  My favorite varieties for flavor are the yellow cherry with its rich sweet flavor, and Riviera, a new heirloom type tomato that is red slightly pear shaped with some ribbing.

We have really been enjoying the tomatoes these last few weeks, and have had a couple phenomenal Caprese salads, omelets, and roasted tomatoes grilled with sausage, onions, and peppers among other things.  Hopefully, you will have a chance to enjoy this great summer treat to its fullest as well.  There will be a lot of tomatoes, so enjoy them while they are here!

Recipes

I'm especially excited to try this Tomato-
Cheddar Cobbler!

Tomatoes, tomatoes everywhere, and so many awesome things to do with them!  Here are 40 Fresh Tomato Recipes from Midwest Living to get you inspired.  Some quick mental math informs me that I probably won't be able to make all of these before the end of tomato season, but I really want to try all of these gorgeous-looking tomato dishes!  I guess there's always next year...

Continuing Education: Recommended Reading on Health and Sustainability

Farm Update

Every year I get excited all over again for our specialty
tomatoes, which are not only delicious but lovely.

Hi everyone!  We've been getting a lot of good rain at the farm lately, and the ground has been absorbing it well despite the sheer volume.  The weeds have really taken off, but Fred has been doing a lot of cultivating and the guys have been making a dent in the weeding that has needed to happen for a while now.  Fred has also been turning under some old plantings.  It's actually been kind of nice, because now the visual reminder of what a rough June we had is gone, and we can replant that land.  We'll plant some of it with crops for the fall (such as lettuce, spinach, broccoli, and cabbage), and some of it with cover crop.  Fred put in several large plantings of carrots over the last few weeks, and some spinach earlier today, in preparation for the last part of the season.  The CSA is exactly half over right now, and in time we'll transition from tomatoes and basil and other summer staples to beets, sweet potatoes, and winter squash, and the year will wane in the familiar pattern.  But in the meantime, we have several more weeks of summer to relish!

What to Expect in Your Share this Week

Here are the options in each veggie station this week!  If you have a half share, you'll choose one from each category, and if you have a full share, you'll choose two.

• Cherry tomatoes
• 4 large tomatoes or lettuce
• Broccoli, beets, or kale
• Green beans or chard
• Cucumber or pepper
• Small cabbage, garlic, or onion
• Potatoes or surprise veggie

If you have your share delivered to your home or workplace, or if you pick up at our East Lansing drop-off, here are your options for this week.  If you have a half share, choose one, and if you have a full share, choose two.

Share A:                                      Share B:

Cherry tomatoes                          Cherry tomatoes
4 large tomatoes                           Lettuce
Broccoli                                       Beets
Chard                                           Green beans
Pepper                                          Cucumber
Small cabbage                              Onion
Potatoes                                        Surprise veggie

If you have a preference for share A or share B, just let me know by noonish the day before your delivery day, and I'll make sure you get your preferred share.  If you don't have a preference, I'll just choose for you. :-)

Continuing Education:  Recommended Reading on Health and Sustainability

Ah, August.  That exciting time of year when the weather is warm, the produce is plentiful, and the days are a little lazier. (Unless you happen to be a farmer.  In which case, not so much.)  This is also the time of year when teachers, students, and parents of school-age kids start thinking about back to school.  Having been a student and then a teacher, late August always feels like a time to make preparations, either for my own education or for that of people I am charged to educate.  That got me thinking:  If I were to teach a course on the organic/sustainable/locavore lifestyle, what would be my assigned reading list?  What books would I have my students read in order to have an understanding of what it takes to be generally healthy and support sustainable food systems?  The following are books that have informed my own understanding of health and sustainability over the last decade or so, so if you’re interested, check them out!

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver:  Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family embark on a yearlong experiment in hyperlocal eating.

 From the book’s website: The family’s year long experience leads them through a season of planting, pulling weeds, expanding their kitchen skills, harvesting their own animals, joining the effort to save heritage crops from extinction, and learning the time-honored rural art of unloading excess zucchini. Barbara Kingsolver’s engaging narrative is enriched by husband Steven Hopp’s in-depth reports on the science and industry of food, and daughter Camille’s youthful perspective on cooking and food culture. 

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life, and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Giuliano:  Author and CEO Mireille Giuliano recounts her experience as a college student relearning the merits of her traditional French food culture after a year abroad, and applying those principles to her healthy lifestyle for the next several decades.

From the book’s website: Stylish, convincing, wise, funny, and just in time: the ultimate 

non-diet book, which could radically change the way you think and live.  French women don't get fat, but they do eat bread and pastry, drink wine, and regularly enjoy three-course meals. In her delightful tale, Mireille Guiliano unlocks the simple secrets of this "French paradox" -– how to enjoy food and stay slim and healthy. Hers is a charming, sensible, and powerfully life-affirming view of health and eating for our times.

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan:  Author Michael Pollan explains the difference between real food and “edible foodlike substances”, and makes the case for the nutritional superiority of real food.

From the book’s website:  Food. There’s plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?

Because most of what we’re consuming today is not food, and how we’re consuming it — in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone — is not really eating. Instead of food, we’re consuming “edible foodlike substances” — no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball:  Farmer and author Kristen Kimball recounts the grueling but extremely rewarding first year that she and her soon-to-be husband Mark had their farm.  She chronicles the work, the food, and the ups and downs.  Basically, this girl gets it.

From the book’s website: “The Dirty Life is a wonderfully told tale of one of the most interesting farms in the country. If you want to understand the heart and soul of the new/old movement towards local food, this is the book you need. It's the voice of what comes next in this land, of the generation unleashed by Wendell Berry to do something really grand.”

— Bill McKibben, author Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan:  Author Michael Pollan discusses health, farming, food manufacturing, cooking, economics, and environmental ethics in an attempt to answer the question “What should we eat?”

From the book’s website: In this groundbreaking book, one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. 

Recipes

It's finally cherry tomato season, and we love to use them in practically anything!  These Sauteed Cherry Tomatoes with Garlic and Basil are a super fast and easy side dish for a busy evening.

Hot Weather Veggie Smoothies

Farm Update

Hi everyone!  We finally got some much needed rain, so we are all breathing a little easier this weekend!  That will really help our plantings of fall veggies along.  Tomatoes are also starting to come out in force, so it's likely that everyone will get tomatoes of some kind this week, whether it be cherry tomatoes or slicers.  We're also starting to see a lot more tomato horn worms (which, if you've never seen one, are completely gross).  We will still have bulk green beans available this week at $9 for five pounds, so just let me know if you're interested!  The watermelons are starting to become ready, so we'll likely have some for the CSA this week, and we should have some for the next few weeks.  We have both red and yellow watermelons, and in case you're wondering, they do have seeds, so don't be surprised by the seeds when you cut them open.  On the home front, we got to take a little bit of a break this weekend due to the rain.  I love rainy weather because it means Fred can get away from the farm for a few hours, which he did on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.  But the new workweek begins right now, so it's time to hit the (now well-watered) ground running again for another week!

What to Expect in Your Share this Week

Here are the options in each veggie station this week!  If you have a half share, you'll choose one from each category, and if you have a full share, you'll choose two.

• Tomatoes
• Green beans
• Carrots or beets
• Cooking greens mix, cabbage, or basil
• Peppers or kohlrabi
• Garlic, onion, or cucumber
• Potatoes or surprise veggie

If you have your share delivered to your home or workplace, or if you pick up at our East Lansing drop-off, here are your options for this week.  If you have a half share, choose one, and if you have a full share, choose two.

Share A:                                      Share B:

Tomatoes                                     Tomatoes
Green beans                                 Green beans
Carrots                                         Beets
Cooking greens                            Cabbage
Kohlrabi                                       Sweet peppers
Onion                                           Garlic
Potatoes                                       Surprise veggie

If you have a preference for share A or share B, just let me know by noonish the day before your delivery day, and I'll make sure you get your preferred share.  If you don't have a preference, I'll just choose for you. :-)

Hot Weather Veggie Smoothies

Is it just me, or has anyone else been avoiding the oven and stove this last week?  Sometimes when it gets so hot, you just want to stay away from sources of heat and eat something cold... which brings me to smoothies.  Not only are smoothies a delicious and easy meal or snack, they're also a great way to use up any veggies you might still have left over at the end of the week.  So keep reading for some yummy veggie smoothie ideas!

Carrot Cake Smoothie:  Try out this nutritious smoothie for the closest thing you'll ever find to carrot cake in a glass!

Mango-Cucumber Lime Smoothie with a Kick:  Spoiler alert!  The kick is cayenne pepper.  Intrigued?  Read on.  You can also trade out the baby spinach in the recipe for cooking greens, but I would wilt them a little bit first before throwing them in the blender.

Kale Berry Smoothie:  Use cooking greens mix or leftover kale for this smoothie, and if you happen to have some frozen blueberries on hand, all the better!

Or if you want to create your own smoothie recipes out of whatever odds and ends you have on hand, here is a good basic template for making your own smoothie creations!

Veggie Spotlight: Snap Beans

Farm Update

Fred examines a green bean before
picking it.

Hi everyone!  It's been another hot and dry week at the farm, which has been a little rough on the veggies.  We've been irrigating nonstop, which is helping, but as always a good rain would be very welcome.  One exciting thing though is that our tomatoes are ripening up nicely, and we should have an excellent crop of them!  We might be bringing some of them for the CSA this week, although they'll still be fairly limited.  We've been experiencing some deer damage once again.  They've been especially detrimental to our corn and carrots, so Fred is continuing his attempts to scare them off every night.  We're also going to try to get our deer fence much more quickly than we originally planned.  But in other good news, we had our annual organic inspection on Friday, and it went really well.  We're also putting in another large planting of carrots this weekend, so that we'll have plenty of nice carrots for the fall.  We're almost at the halfway point of the CSA season, so now is the time when we are fully into preparation for the end of the season.  It happens every year; I start to see the back-to-school stuff at the store and I realize that another farm season will start to wane shortly.  Even though the weather is hot and the days are long, November starts to appear in my mind, and I start feeling compelled to dry basil, freeze stray green beans and cabbage, and start preparing for a time of less abundance.  In case you're interested in doing the same thing, we have plenty of green beans for freezing.  You can get them in five- or ten-pound bags, and they'll be $9 for five pounds.  Just let me know!

What to Expect in Your Share this Week

Here are the options in each veggie station this week!  If you have a half share, you'll choose one from each category, and if you have a full share, you'll choose two.

• Snap beans
• Carrots, beets, or basil
• Potatoes or lettuce
• Kale, Swiss chard, or cabbage
• Sweet peppers or garlic
• Cucumber, zucchini, or kohlrabi
• Surprise veggie

If you have your share delivered to your home or workplace, or if you pick up at our East Lansing drop-off, here are your options for this week.  If you have a half share, choose one, and if you have a full share, choose two.

Share A:                                      Share B:

Snap beans                                  Snap beans
Carrots                                         Beets
Potatoes                                       Lettuce
Kale                                             Cabbage
Sweet peppers                             Garlic
Cucumber                                    Zucchini
Surprise veggie                           Surprise veggie

If you have a preference for share A or share B, just let me know by noonish the day before your delivery day, and I'll make sure you get your preferred share.  If you don't have a preference, I'll just choose for you. :-)

Veggie Spotlight:  Snap Beans

Perhaps one of the coolest looking
beans we grow is the dragon bean.

Snap beans, one of the best loved summer vegetables, are here again!  Beans are one of those warm weather plants that thrives in the long day lengths of the Michigan summers.  Michigan is actually one of the highest producing states for green beans, because our climate is ideal for this crop.

Beans are native to the Americas (originating somewhere between Southern Mexico and Costa Rica) and have been cultivated by humans since at least 5000 BC.  The fava bean, another type of plant also referred to as a bean, originated in Afghanistan, but we don't grow that type.  The snap beans we all know and love are vastly improved from earlier beans.  Many of you will remember from years past that snap beans were often referred to as string beans, because of the fibrous string that had to be removed from each bean.  Earlier cultivated beans were often more fibrous in general, and better for eating the seed inside the pod than the tender bean pod we enjoy today.  The earlier beans were most often the pole bean type, with longer vines that lasted the entire season.  Now most farms, including ours, grow the bush type.  This is easier to manage because instead of producing beans all summer, it produces one large crop all at once.  This makes them much easier to pick, and though beans are easier to grow than other crops, the greater amount of hand labor to harvest them is the major drawback to the farmer. Anyone who has grown a significant amount of beans in their garden can relate to the fatigue of hand harvesting beans. Since it is a one-time harvest, we seed many times throughout the season to ensure we are offering them several times during the CSA season.

This year we are growing five different varieties: green, yellow, purple, green Romano, and the heirloom Dragon bean, which is a long, off-white bean that has the purple streaking.  The green bean is the most productive, and the one you will see the most in the shares.  Most of the bean breeding effort has been focused on green beans because they are generally more financially important, and it shows in yield, taste, and tenderness.  We do have some issues every year with our beans, bean beetles being one of the most annoying as they chew little holes in the leaves and beans.  There is also some brown rust that will form on the beans in wet conditions, and it often is more prevalent in the late season.  Another odd issue that we have sometimes is that the beans are ready to harvest around the same time the thistle seed forms in pasture areas, and it starts to blow into the air and often gets stuck on the beans.  Most of it washes off but if you ever see something white on the beans that looks like a very light hair, that is the thistle.

At home, we love to use beans when they are fresh and full of flavor.  Most often we saute them in olive oil, often mixing in a little onion or shallot.  When tomatoes and peppers come in large amounts we often make a spicier dish with fresh tomatoes, peppers, fresh snap beans, and onions which is a really great mix of fresh summer flavors.  Whatever you do with your beans this week, we hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

Recipes

And for some inspiration, here are some great snap bean recipes from Southern Living!  They all involve using the beans at their freshest and most flavorful, so they're perfect for this time of year.  Enjoy!