|
|
From Field to Table
What's Happening Now at Magicland Farms
|
Introductory Issue
|
Monday - July 20 2009
|
|
|
|
|
Magicland
Farms
|
Everything We Sell We Grow Ourselves
|
Greetings!
Welcome to the Magicland Farms' newsletter for the week beginning July 20th. We hope to keep you up to date with the happenings at our farm, along with providing you with some of our favorite recipes and other information we think you might find of interest. If you know of someone who might be interested in receiving our newsletter, you can forward it to them by using the forward link at the end of this newsletter
|
|
|
|
This Week at Magicland Farms
Despite the cloudiness of the past few days, there is plenty of produce to offer at Magicland Farms this week. Last Friday, we picked the first tomatoes of the season for sale - Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes and Little Red tomatoes. Also the first wax (yellow) beans of the season showed up on our shelves.
We plan on having handpicked green and yellow beans, sweet
Sun-Sugar cherry tomatoes, Little Red tomatoes, butterhead lettuce, sand-grown new red potatoes,
kohlrabi, zucchini, beets, pickles, cucumbers, and garlic this week.
If all goes well, the first sweet corn will be available for sale on July 24th. Of course, that date is dependent on the weather cooperating with us.
|
From The Kitchen
This is a new recipe for us. I tweaked a couple of versions I found online and everyone loved it.
Green Beans, Magicland Style
6 slices bacon, chopped
1 pound Magicland Farms green beans, washed, trimmed and cut into pieces
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 cup water, boiling
1 chicken bouillon cube
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
Fry bacon until crisp. Remove from pan and set aside. Drain fat from pan, leaving only enough to lightly coat the pan. Add garlic to pan, fry over medium heat for about one minute. Add green beans and cook for about 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, mix boiling water, bouillon cube, brown sugar, salt and pepper. Pour over bean mixture in pan. Simmer until water has evaporated. Lower heat and add chopped bacon, stirring until bacon is combined with beans.
Cooking Fresh Green Beans
I have struggled with finding just the right way to cook green beans, they always seemed to get too mushy. This past week I found a technique that seems to work.
Add 1/2" of water to a pot. Heat until boiling. Once the water boils, put the trimmed green beans in the pot and cover. Let beans steam from 15-18 minutes. Adjust the time to suit your taste buds.
The beans turned out tender-crisp, exactly how we like them.
|
In The Spotlight - Green Beans and Pickles
By canning or freezing green beans, you can enjoy their goodness during the winter months. Now's a good time to start thinking about freezing or canning green beans. We are running an early season special on half bushels of green beans - $11 a half bushel. If you want a bushel, the price is even better - $20 for a bushel.
We are also running a pickler's special this week on pickling cucumbers - 33 for $4.00. Fresh dill will also be available.
|
The Boss's Corner
Next week we should have a good supply of bi-color sweet corn and yellow sweet corn. While we plan on having sweet corn until frost this year, our supply runs down after Labor Day because our late patches are smaller in size. (We planted 36 patches of sweet corn this year!) Also next week, our large and tasty slicing tomatoes should be in abundance. These first tomatoes are from our high tunnel which is really a tall unheated greenhouse where the tomatoes are planted directly in the ground. It won't be long after this when our field grown heirloom, Roma type and coanning tomatoes should be ripe.
Talking about fruit, we have a real nice crop of peaches, plums and apples. Next week we plan on picking our earliest peaches (Flamin' Fury PF1) as well as our Golden Plums and Quinte apples.
(The very latest on Flamin' Fury--I just tasted on of the first of these peaches. Boy was it good! Sweet yet sprightly with lots of flavor! Not at all bland. I hope the rest are as good. Of course they will only be of medium size. This is our first year for PF1s.)
Weather News
Joe Bastardi, probably the very best long range meteorologist around, thinks Michigan, for the rest of the summer, will average out about normal. In other words, the second half of will be warmer and sunnier than the first half. In the next issue, I will mention what Joe thinks about the fall. Hint: It's the same view I hold and I am usually quite optimistic about the coming weather--though perhaps a bit too optimistic!
Ciao, Tom
|
|
|
|
|
We appreciate your business and hope to see you this week at Magicland Farms.
Sincerely,
Tom and Annemarie Fox
Magicland Farms
|
4380 S Gordon
Fremont, Michigan 49412
231-652-2368
Open 10AM to 5:30PM Monday through Saturday
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
