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Yesterday’s storm was wild, but we are all safe and ready for CSA pick-up today! Due to the damage to our CSA tent in yesterday’s storm, we have temporarily moved CSA pick-up into the greenhouse, which is attached to the farm stand. We hope to have the tent fixed or replaced soon!
Also, Ag Day is on today - come visit us in Concord Center 10am - 2pm! We will have access to our Barrett’s Bucks database, so if you are a Bucks member you will be able to use them at the market.
Carmella seeded clover and annual ryegrass cover crop in the pathways of our cabbage and kale plants last week. It’s strange to say after such a rainy season, but we are planning to set up irrigation here to help the seed to germinate in the hot and dry weather this week!
This week we are looking forward to the annual Ag Day farmers’ market on Saturday 10am - 2pm in Concord Center (the farm stand and CSA will still be open regular hours). It has been a very challenging season for all Concord farms, so it will be nice to come together for a fun and celebratory event! We hope folks will come out and show support for their exhausted farmers!
In other exciting news, the Fall Fat Moon Farm Mushroom CSA will start September 19th! Sign-ups are available now in our online store. The cost is $127 and Fat Moon Mushroom CSA members will receive one pound of Fat Moon's fresh, organic mushrooms each week for 8 weeks.
One thing that customers will probably notice this week is the limited leafy green options. While we might have enough under-sized arugula, salanova and lettuce to eek out a full week’s worth of store and CSA salad fixings (albeit in small bags), if we did so we would just find ourselves in a continuing cycle of borrowing from the following week’s plantings and never having quite enough. Our kale supply would be fine if we had a solid amount of salad greens, but to make it through the week with kale as the only leafy green, we would likely need to strip the plants, depriving us of kale for the rest of the Main season. As a result, we are going to rotate through different greens options for the week, trying not to over-harvest and shoot ourselves in the foot down the line! We might be in a different position if heavy rains hadn’t wiped out last week’s arugula planting and stunted this week’s, or if deer hadn’t started clearing entire lettuce beds a month ago! Fortunately, future plantings look good and we are hopeful we will be able to provide some more reliable salad greens going forward. The good news for CSA members this week is that we have purchased sweet corn to help fill in the gap created by a lack of greens. We still have many other veggies as well of course, including carrots, tomatoes and the first of our delicata squash!
Delicata squash - These are a customer favorite. They were harvested last week, so some paler ones might not have had a chance to fully cure. You can leave pale squash in a sunny window for another week or two if you want to make sure it lives up to its full sweetness potential!
Sweet Corn - From Verrill Farm in Concord, MA, not organic. A special treat this week! Just like last year at this time, we have found ourselves in an in-between week, with summer crops fading and fall crops maturing slowly. Last year the drought was the source of our late August and early September woes. This time it has been caused by deer, coyotes and a cool, wet season! The corn will be under the CSA tent and included among your options for filling your CSA bag. As always you will get to select what you’d like to put in your CSA bag so if you don’t want the corn you will have more room for other veggies!
Radishes
Beets or leeks - We are aiming to have beets the whole week, but if we don’t have enough then we will start harvesting leeks to fill out the CSA.
Green and purple peppers
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Scallions
Uncured garlic
Carrots
Cucumbers
Kale or lettuce or arugula
Cherry tomatoes
Hot peppers - Check out the Aji Rico peppers at the back of the bed - they have a slightly citrus-y flavor and they are plentiful!
Shishito peppers (see recipe below!), tomatillos or husk cherries - Members will be able to select one of these to pick.
Herbs - Sage, thyme, oregano, chives, mint, parsley, dill, dill flowers, cilantro and basil
In addition to the items listed in the CSA, we will have green beans, eggplant, colored peppers, and possibly summer squash. If the stars align we might have some limited salad greens at the end of the week in the store (we won’t have CSA quantities until next week). We will also have sweet corn from Verrill Farm, honey from Double B (from hives on the property, mushrooms from Fat Moon Farm and eggs from Pete and Jen’s.
We accept credit card, cash, check and EBT in the farm store. The farm store is open Tuesday - Friday 11am - 6pm and Saturday 9am - 3pm. We also continue to take online pre-orders for Wednesday and Friday pick-up. The link for online orders is https://openfoodnetwork.net/barrett-s-mill-farm/shop#/shop. Online ordering currently opens at 6pm on Tuesday for Wednesday pick-up and 6pm on Thursday for Friday pick-up.
The flower field is open to both Flower CSA members and the public this week for picking by the jar. The first of 4 varieties of sunflowers we seeded in the flower field are now blooming. Other varieties currently available for picking include zinnias, bachelor button, marigolds, gomphrena, strawflower, celosia, statice, ammi, rudbeckia, scabiosa, cosmos and amaranth. Please pick flowers above branching points. Picking hours are during any farm store hours: Tuesday-Friday 11am-6pm and Saturday 9am-3pm. We recommend bringing your own pruners or scissors as well as water for transporting your flowers home.
Adapted from: Cookie and Kate
Shishito peppers
Extra-virgin olive oil or avocado oil
Lemon wedge, optional
Salt, preferably flaky sea salt or kosher salt, to taste
INSTRUCTIONS
Rinse and pat the peppers dry on a clean tea towel. Transfer the peppers to a medium bowl, drizzle in the oil, and toss until the peppers are evenly coated. Set aside.
Preheat a medium skillet over medium heat until it’s hot enough that a drop of water sizzles and evaporates quickly on contact. Add the peppers and let them cook, stirring every minute or so (not too often), until they are tender with charred spots, about 8 to 12 minutes.
Transfer the peppers to a serving plate. Spritz with a lemon wedge, if desired. Sprinkle with salt, to taste (don’t skimp). Serve with a little bowl on the side for the pepper stems.
By Jennifer Segal from Once Upon a Chef
1 pound carrots, peeled
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice, from one lemon
1½ tablespoons vegetable oil
1½ tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1-2 teaspoons honey, to taste
Heaping ¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 finely sliced scallions (or 1 tablespoon finely chopped shallots)
Shred the carrots in a food processor. Set aside.
In a salad bowl, combine the dijon mustard, lemon juice, honey, vegetable oil, olive oil, salt and pepper. Add the carrots, fresh parsley and scallions (or shallots) and toss well. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.
Notes: Depending on the sweetness of the carrots, you may want to add more or less honey. Also, if you make this salad ahead of time, be sure to check the seasoning again before serving as the flavors tend to mellow.
Deer love to graze on bean plants. Fortunately there are still some really nice beans on these plants!
This season has been notable not only for the heavy rains, but also for the heavy wildlife pressure. The deer always love to graze on lettuce, beet tops, carrots tops, strawberry leaves, sweet potato vines, bean plants and edamame plants, but the pressure we’ve seen this season has been unlike any other year. Usually our electric fence does a good job deterring deer, but this summer it has been ineffective and we have had to put protective netting over all of our lettuce plantings for the first time (plantings that weren’t covered earlier this season ended up being almost a total loss). We’ve also seen the leaves of edamame plants completely stripped, and we are starting to see it happening on our newest bean planting too (fortunately the beans on those plants are looking beautiful!).
We’ve also seen a higher amount of coyote incursions in our fields, and while they don’t eat our crops aside from carrots and watermelons, they do love to play in our fields in ways that are very destructive. This season in particular they have loved to play fetch with the watermelon, roll around in freshly prepared seedbeds, dig up strawberry plants and drip irrigation line, bite through our deer fencing and rip up the (brand new!) coverings we put on all our lettuce plantings to protect them from deer!
We have already gone on and on about the Colorado potato beetles wreaking havoc on potatoes, eggplant and tomatoes in previous posts, so just suffice it to say we’re feeling a bit under attack! We’ve had to divert energy away from important tasks like weeding, trellising, mowing and seeding cover crops in order to pick bugs off plants, put up secondary fences around the strawberries and watermelon, chase off destructive geese, and shuffle around netting and the sand bags used to hold it down. We are looking forward to researching and brainstorming new wildlife deterring strategies this winter, as well as taking a little break from constantly worrying about who (other than our customers!) are eating our crops!
Beets - From our fall planting!
Spaghetti squash or eggplant - Our spaghetti squash really struggled this season, likely in part because of too much rain, so we’ll have a choice between squash and eggplant this week. We’re hoping other winter squash varieties fared better!
Sweet colored peppers
Green and purple peppers
Tomatoes - Slicing and heirloom types.
Potatoes
Scallions
Uncured garlic
Carrots
Cucumbers
Kale
Lettuce or arugula or mustard greens - a combination of rain damage, flooding and deer pressure have made salad greens a challenge this week. Future plantings are looking better!
Cherry tomatoes
Green beans - They’re back!
Shishito peppers, tomatillos or husk cherries - Members will be able to select one of these to pick.
Hot peppers - One per membership to spice up your cooking this week.
Herbs - Sage, thyme, oregano, chives, mint, parsley, dill, dill flowers, cilantro and basil
In addition to the items listed in the CSA, we will have the last of the summer squash and zucchini, as well as flower bouquets later in the week. We will also have sweet corn from Verrill Farm, honey from Double B (from hives on the property, mushrooms from Fat Moon Farm and eggs from Pete and Jen’s.
We accept credit card, cash, check and EBT in the farm store. The farm store is open Tuesday - Friday 11am - 6pm and Saturday 9am - 3pm. We also continue to take online pre-orders for Wednesday and Friday pick-up. The link for online orders is https://openfoodnetwork.net/barrett-s-mill-farm/shop#/shop. Online ordering currently opens at 6pm on Tuesday for Wednesday pick-up and 6pm on Thursday for Friday pick-up.
The flower field is open to both Flower CSA members and the public this week for picking by the jar. The first of 4 varieties of sunflowers we seeded in the flower field are now blooming. Other varieties currently available for picking include zinnias, bachelor button, marigolds, gomphrena, strawflower, celosia, statice, ammi, rudbeckia, scabiosa, cosmos and amaranth. Please pick flowers above branching points. Picking hours are during any farm store hours: Tuesday-Friday 11am-6pm and Saturday 9am-3pm. We recommend bringing your own pruners or scissors as well as water for transporting your flowers home.
from Taste of Home, July 12, 2023
Ingredients
2 cups cooked brown rice
3 small tomatoes, chopped
1 cup frozen corn, thawed (or use fresh corn!)
1 small sweet onion, chopped
3/4 cup cubed Monterey Jack cheese
1/3 cup chopped ripe olives
1/3 cup canned black beans, rinsed and drained
1/3 cup canned red beans, rinsed and drained
4 fresh basil leaves, thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
6 large peppers
3/4 cup meatless spaghetti sauce
1/2 cup water
4 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese, divided
Place the first 12 ingredients in a large bowl; mix lightly to combine. Cut and discard tops from sweet peppers; remove seeds. Fill peppers with rice mixture.
In a small bowl, mix spaghetti sauce and water; pour half the mixture into an oval 5-qt. slow cooker. Add filled peppers. Top with remaining sauce. Sprinkle with 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese.
Cook, covered, on low 3-1/2 to 4 hours or until heated through and peppers are tender. Sprinkle with remaining 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese.
We are now accepting sign-ups for the 2023 Fall Mushroom CSA from Fat Moon! The CSA starts Tuesday, September 19th and includes one pound of Fat Moon’s fresh, organic mushrooms each week for 8 weeks. Sign-ups will be open until September 14th or until the CSA is full.
The cost of the CSA is $127. Sign-ups are available here on our website.
The Fall mushroom CSA begins Tuesday, September 19th. For the first 6 weeks of the CSA mushrooms will be available for pick up at the farm stand any time the farm store is open: Tuesday-Friday 11am - 6pm and Saturday 9am - 3pm. After the farm store closes for the season on October 28th, mushroom pick-ups will be during the Vegetable CSA hours, Wednesday 11am-6pm and Saturday 9am-3pm.
The mushrooms are grown by Fat Moon Farm in Westford, MA and they are certified organic. Over the course of the CSA, expect to get a taste of varieties like Shiitake, Blue Oyster, Yellow Oyster, Chestnut, Lion's Mane, King Trumpet, Black Pearl, and Pioppino. For more information including variety descriptions, recipe suggestions, instructions for storing and more, visit Fat Moon’s website page: Make the Most of Your Mushroom CSA!
Newly seeded spinach and small fall carrot seedlings under water after Friday’s rain
Last week we joined the many farms on the east coast that have experienced heavy rains and flooding. Due to our sandy soil the water receded within 24 hours, but it was not without causing damage. We had worked hard to seed fall spinach, daikon radishes, pac choi and other greens Thursday afternoon, anticipating rain Friday to help them germinate but instead the open beds were either flooded or had running water wash away the tops of the beds. We have yet to see if any seeds survived the event, and while we will continue to seed more beds of these crops, they will likely make an appearance in the CSA and farm store later than planned. Other more established fall crops like sweet potatoes and late carrot and beet successions were also temporarily flooded, but we are hopeful these crops will bounce back! The more immediate damage affecting us is the loss of a bed of arugula planned for this week’s harvest. A full bed, covered to protect it from flea beetles, was pummeled by rain, breaking the leaves and making them un-harvestable. Fortunately, our crop of the hour, tomatoes, are still doing great and are reaching their prime. This is in large part due to most of our tomatoes now being grown in our protective high tunnel, but even the field tomatoes and cherry tomatoes seem to have survived the event with only a moderate increase in split tomatoes!
Scallions
Sweet colored peppers or eggplant- Members will have a choice between the two again this week.
Tomatoes - Slicing and heirloom types.
Potatoes - Yellow or Peter Wilcox which are purple with white flesh. Both of these varieties were hit hard by the Colorado Potato Beetle earlier this year so they are smaller than usual in size.
Green and purple peppers
Uncured garlic
Carrots
Zucchini
Cucumbers
Kale
Lettuce
Cherry tomatoes
Edamame
Hot peppers - One per membership to spice up your cooking this week.
Herbs - Sage, thyme, oregano, chives, mint, parsley, dill, dill flowers, cilantro and basil
In addition to the items listed in the CSA, we will have seedless watermelon, tomatillos, dragon tongue beans, seedless and pickling cucumbers, summer squash, and at the end of the week we will also have flower bouquets. We will have sweet corn from Verrill Farm, mushrooms from Fat Moon Farm and eggs from Pete and Jen’s.
We accept credit card, cash, check and EBT in the farm store. The farm store is open Tuesday - Friday 11am - 6pm and Saturday 9am - 3pm. We also continue to take online pre-orders for Wednesday and Friday pick-up. The link for online orders is https://openfoodnetwork.net/barrett-s-mill-farm/shop#/shop. Online ordering currently opens at 6pm on Tuesday for Wednesday pick-up and 6pm on Thursday for Friday pick-up.
The flower field is open to both Flower CSA members and the public this week for picking by the jar. The first of 4 varieties of sunflowers we seeded in the flower field are now blooming. Other varieties currently available for picking include zinnias, bachelor button, marigolds, gomphrena, strawflower, celosia, statice, ammi, rudbeckia, scabiosa, cosmos and amaranth. Please pick flowers above branching points. Picking hours are during any farm store hours: Tuesday-Friday 11am-6pm and Saturday 9am-3pm. We recommend bringing your own pruners or scissors as well as water for transporting your flowers home.
Posted on September 16, 2020 by The Original Dish
2 lbs cherry tomatoes
3 heads garlic, ends trimmed+discarded
4 sprigs fresh oregano (or other herbs like thyme)
1 ¼ cups olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt
15 cracks fresh black pepper
Preheat the oven to 375°F.
Add the cherry tomatoes, heads of garlic (cut-side down), and fresh oregano to a large 12” cast-iron skillet. Cover with the olive oil, salt, and black pepper. Toss well to combine.
Roast for 1 hour and 30 minutes, or until the tomatoes are soft and caramelized.
Skillet size and cook time will vary if you cut this recipe in half or double it. Use a 10” skillet for about 40-45 minutes if you cut the recipe in half and 2 (12”) skillets for 1 hour if you double it. You always want a fairly even layer of cherry tomatoes to fit the bottom of the skillet.
All ovens are different, so use your senses to tell if the tomatoes are done – they should be soft, caramelized, and blistered.
The heads of garlic essentially turn into roasted garlic. To use it, squeeze out the soft garlic cloves and discard the roots/skins.
The olive oil becomes infused with tomato and garlic flavor. Save it for drizzling over eggs, dipping bread into, making sauces, tossing with pasta, etc.
