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From Field to Table
What's Happening Now at Magicland Farms
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Issue Number Nine
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Monday - September 14, 2009
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Magicland
Farms
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Everything We Sell We Grow Ourselves
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Greetings!
Welcome to the Magicland Farms' newsletter for the week beginning September 14th. 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
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This Week at Magicland Farms - September 14th to September 19th
We will still have several types of sweet corn picked fresh off our farm everyday except Sunday! Also, tender green beans, tomatoes (including heirlooms), peppers, beets, watermelon, sand-grown potatoes, many types of winter squash including acorn, butternut, buttercup and hubbard, freshly pulled jumbo red and yellow sweet onions and cut sunflowers.
Our fall apple harvest has started! We started picking McIntosh, Gala and Jonamac apples! Other
varieties available from our own orchard right now include Zestar,
Paulared, Tydeman's and Earliblaze. Many more varieties after October
2nd.
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From The Kitchen
If you have visited the stand recently, you may have noticed that winter squash has definitely started to make its appearance. We have many different types to choose from. Since we get a lot of questions about winter squash, this seemed like a good topic for the Kitchen portion of our newsletter.
Types of squash
Acorn - This winter squash is dark green and shaped like an
acorn. It has a sweet, slightly fibrous flesh.
Buttercup - Buttercup Squash are dark green with a button like knob on the base. They have a sweet
and creamy orange flesh. This squash is often sweeter than other winter
varieties.
Butternut
- It has a sweet, nutty taste that is similar to pumpkin. As a matter
of fact a lot of the time when you buy canned pumpkin, it is actually
butternut squash. It has a yellow/tan skin and orange fleshy pulp. When ripe,
it turns increasingly deep orange becoming sweeter and richer. This
variety is very popular because it's so easy to use. The rind is thin
enough to peel off with a vegetable peeler.
Delicata - Also called Peanut squash, Bohemian squash or Sweet Potato squash.
It is oval shaped with a yellow rind with green stripes. This is one of the tastier winter squashes, with creamy pulp that tastes like a sweet potato. The thin skin is also edible.
The Delicata squash
is actually an heirloom variety. It was originally introduced by the Peter Henderson Company of New
York City in 1894, and was popular through the 1920s. Then it fell into
obscurity for about seventy-five years, possibly because of its thinner,
more tender skin, which isn't suited to transportation over thousands of
miles and storage over months. However, it is becoming popular once again.
Heart of Gold - An early winter squash that combines a sweet dumpling with an acorn
squash to produce a small acorn shaped vegetable. The outer skin is
cream colored with dark green stripes covering a fine-grained inner
flesh that is orange when ripe. This squash has a sweet rich flavor and
can be baked, mashed or steamed. We have tasted it this year (the first year we have grown it) and we liked it.
Hubbard - The extra-hard
skins make them one of the best keeping winter squashes. These are very
large and irregularly shaped, with a skin that is quite "warted" and
irregular. They
range from big to enormous, range in skin color from green to blue/gray to orange, and taper at the ends.
The yellow flesh of these tends to be very moist and
longer cooking times in the oven are needed.
Spaghetti - It has a golden-yellow oval rind and a mild flavor. When cooked,
the flesh separates in strands that resemble spaghetti pasta. The more yellow the squash, the riper it is. To prepare spaghetti squash, cut in
half lengthwise and remove the seeds, then bake or boil it until tender. Once
cooked, use a fork to rake out the stringy flesh, and
serve.
How to Cook Winter Squash
To bake:
Scrub squash and cut in half or pieces. Remove seeds and strings - unless it is spaghetti squash (see above). Put a small amount of water in a baking dish. Place squash in dish, cut side down. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees F. about 60 minutes or until tender.
To microwave:
Prepare as for baking (see above instructions). Put 1/4 inch of water in a microwave safe baking dish. Put squash halves cut side down in dish. Pierce squash several times with a knife. Microwave on high for 6-7 minutes. Rotate dish and microwave for another 6 to 7 minutes. Microwave times vary depending on wattage. Disclaimer: We don't microwave our squash so instructions are from the MSU Extension Bulletin on Winter Squash.
After baking, top with salt and pepper, butter or brown sugar. For spaghetti squash, top with butter and parmesan cheese or your favorite pasta sauce.
How To Store and Preserve Winter Squash
Winter squash can be stored whole in a cool (45 to 50 degree) dry spot. If stored correctly, most varieties will keep up to three months. In our experience, the varieties that store the best are the acorn, delicata and hubbard.
Winter squash can be frozen. Follow the baking directions above. Remove flesh from the shell and mash. Cool. Put cooled squash in freezer containers leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Freeze. Use frozen squash within 8 to 12 months for best quality.
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Specials In The Spotlight
UTILITY GRADE APPLES (MIXED VARIETIES):
$3.00 for a half bushel
Perfect for pies or applesauce
YELLOW OR RED JUMBO SWEET SPANISH ONIONS:
$3.00 for a half peck
YELLOW JUMBO SWEET ONIONS:
$10.00 for a half bushel
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The Boss's Corner
Hi,
So far this September, the
sun has sent its warm rays and bathed Magicland Farms with its photosynthesis
inducing electromagnetic energy from sunup to sunset. Clouds have been scant and fleeting and
liquid sunshine has been absent replaced with the genuine stuff. This sunny, dry weather has really helped our
tomatoes and it hurt the Phytophthora infestans fungus/mold, more
commonly referred to as late blight.
Canning Tomatoes
Tomatoes are usually canned using the hot water method,
which is well known by most of our customers.
It is also known that while tomatoes can be successfully canned with
this method beans can't be. Why?
It has to do with the acidity and the problem of botulism and other
bacteria. While it is impossible to get
a jar of tomatoes hot enough using a hot
water bath to kill the botulism organism, the botulism bacteria can't survive
in an acid environment. How to you
measure acidity? Using the pH
number. A pH of 7, like distilled water, is neutral, vinegar is an acid and has a pH
below 3 while baking soda is an alkaline with a pH above 9. In order to can tomatoes safely, the
tomatoes must have a pH BELOW 4.5. Every tomato of ours we tested tested below
3.8 which means they are plenty acid enough. (By the way our beans test around
pH 5 which means they must be canned with a pressure canner.) We looked up about the USDA's
recommendations concerning blight infected tomatoes and they say it is OK to
eat them fresh BUT THEY SHOULDN'T BE CANNED!!! Why?
The USDA never said in the bulletin although we think it is because
tomatoes picked from dead vines aren't as tangy (less acid) than those from
healthy vines. WE NEVER PICK TOMATOES
FROM DEAD VINES!!! If you have a
question about the acidity of your tomatoes, our tomatoes or any other
vegetable or fruit, stop by our market and we can give you, free of charge, a
little paper test strip that will let you know if the acidity of the fruit or
vegetable is below or above pH 4.5. We also can show you how to use it-this
takes about 20 seconds to show how. In
short, there is a tiny sensitive area in its center where you put a drop of
juice. This sensitive area turns color
and you can then tell what pH the juice is-the color coding is right on the
strip so you don't need another color chart.
Nice little thing...
Late Blight
First off, late blight generally
infects only tomatoes and potatoes. This
is the same disease that caused the horrific Irish potato famine of the
1840s. It is caused by the Phytophthora
infestans organism and loves mild (60 to 80F) temperatures and lots of
wetness. It is the same thing that
killed Martha Stewart's tomatoes in Connecticut and did the same to millions of other tomatoes across
the eastern part of the country this year.
I have never seen it before on our farm and a 85 year old woman who grew
tomatoes all her life in Newaygo County never saw it before either. What happened? Well, Lowe's,
Home Depot, Kmart and Wal-Mart all sold tomato seedlings with late blight in their
garden centers from April to June this year.
They obtained their plants form several southern growers who grew them
outdoors and apparently didn't take care of them right so they got full of late
blight. This explains how the blight got started but not how it spread to
people who grew the tomatoes themselves and didn't plant infected tomatoes
(like us). The other culprit here is the
weather-the lack of sun and the cool, rainy and wind. The two working together-the diseased plants
all over the place in home gardens and the weather-did many, many tomatoes in
this year.
Late Blight and Magicland Farms
My middle daughter, Rebekah,
called my attention on August 6th to something funny on a couple of
tomato plants in our #1 patch. It was
late blight. That same day we removed
and buried hundreds of plants, in all three patches, that had any sign of blight
on them The next day I put on a
fungicide on most tomato plants.
Apparently, the blight had already spread and a week later it was
visible on many, many more plants in all three patches. However, the fungicide and the warmer, dry
weather worked together to stop the blight in its tracks and about 2 weeks
later the tomatoes grew on and now look healthy with delicious blight-free tomatoes-however,
we lost about 2/3rds of our potential crop since the blight really set the
plants back and while they are growing well now it's very late for tomatoes
since the days are growing shorter and our usual frost is just a little over 2
weeks away (October 1). (By the way,
while at the farm the average killing frost is in early October, next to inland
lakes it is the end of October.)
Just to reassure you: we never
knowingly picked a blighted tomato except to toss it and we don't pick tomatoes
from dead plants!
Liking the sunny dry weather for now but have a secret
hope for some rain soon
Nashle!
Tom
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We appreciate your business and hope to see you this week at Magicland Farms.
Sincerely,
Tom and Annemarie Fox
Magicland Farms
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4380 S Gordon
Fremont, Michigan 49412
231-652-2368
Open 10AM to 5:30PM Monday through Saturday
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