|
|
From Field to Table
What's Happening Now at Magicland Farms
|
Issue Number Eleven
|
Monday - September 28, 2009
|
|
|
|
|
Magicland
Farms
|
Everything We Sell We Grow Ourselves
|
Greetings!
Welcome to the Magicland Farms' newsletter for the week beginning September 28th. 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 - September 28th to October 3rd
|
We will still have sweet corn picked fresh off our farm everyday except Sunday!
Sweet Corn, apples, pumpkins,
and many types of winter squash including acorn, butternut, buttercup and
hubbard. Also, slicing tomatoes,
peppers, beets, potatoes, jumbo red and yellow sweet onions, red and yellow
popcorn on the ear, gourds, Indian corn and other natural fall decorations.
Picking pawpaws now! Get them while they
last!
Our fall apple harvest has started! We are picking Honeycrisp, McIntosh, Gala, Cortland and Jonamac apples! Many more to come!
|
|
From The Kitchen
This week we are turning the recipe corner over to our daughter Rebekah. She has an interest in cooking and baking so every Sunday is her day to make something. You can check out some of her accomplishments at Sabbath Supper.
Last weekend, she made the dish below and everyone loved it. It was a hearty dish and perfect for those times when you want a meatless meal. The dish, though meatless, can fool the meat lovers in your family.
Rebekah's Quick Eggplant Pasta with Mozzarella
(Adapted from Rigatoni with
Creamy Eggplant and Mozzarella, a
recipe created by Aida Mollenkamp.)
Ingredients
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive
oil
1 large yellow onion, finely
chopped (about 1 cup)
4 medium garlic cloves, thinly
sliced (about 1 tablespoon)
5 medium eggplant, medium
dice (about 5 cups)
2 medium zucchini (about 2
cups)
1 pound rigatoni OR macaroni
2 pounds crushed Magicland Farm tomatoes, either fresh or canned
1 pint of grape tomatoes cut
into halves OR two medium tomatoes, chopped
8 ounces mozzarella cut into
small cubes
Directions:
Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat.
Meanwhile, heat oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. When it
shimmers, add the onion and garlic and cook until just softened. Add eggplant
and zucchini, stir to coat in oil, then let cook, stirring rarely, until
softened and golden brown, about 5 to 7 minutes.
Meanwhile, add the pasta to the boiling water and cook according to the
package instructions.
Reduce heat to medium-low, add the crushed tomatoes and let simmer, stirring
occasionally, until flavors meld and sauce is slightly thickened, about 4
minutes. Add grape tomatoes.
Drain pasta and return to the pot off the heat. Pour sauce over top and stir
until well coated. Add mozzarella and mix until the cheese starts to soften.
Serve immediately. Serves 8.
Pepper-Onion Relish (this is one of our favorite relishes)
Yield: about 6 pints
4 quarts chopped sweet green bell peppers (about 20 medium)
1 ½ cups chopped onions (about 1 ½ medium)
4 jalapeno peppers, finely chopped (optional)
4 teaspoons mixed pickling spices
1 ½ cups sugar
4 teaspoons salt
3 ½ cups vinegar
Combine vegetables in a large bowl. Cover vegetables with
boiling water; let stand 5 minutes. Drain; cover again with boiling water and
let stand 10 minutes. Drain. Tie picking spices in a spice bag. Combine spice
bag, sugar, salt, and vinegar in a large saucepot. Simmer 15 minutes. Add
drained vegetables; simmer 10 minutes. Remove spice bag. Bring to a boil. Pack
hot relish into hot jars, leaving ¼-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Adjust
two-piece caps. Process 15 minutes in a boiling-water canner. For more information about boiling water canners, see Using Boiling Water Canners
Note: When cutting
or seeding hot peppers, wear rubber gloves to prevent hands from being burned.
|
Specials In The Spotlight
ACORN SQUASH
$4.OO for a half bushel or $7.00 a bushel
MIXED WINTER SQUASH
$5.00 for a half bushel or $8.00 a bushel
STARK JUMBO APPLES
$6.00 a half bushel - (a fantastic pie apple where 2
to 5 apples will make a quick, but delicious pie!)
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
|
Questions Our Customers Are Asking
Q: When do you close?
A: Usually we try to stay open until November 1 despite the
weather. If the fall is mild (which is
what I expect) we will be open until Thanksgiving. NOTE: IF ROADS IN THE MORNING ARE ICY OR
SLUSHY WE WILL BE CLOSED FOR THE WHOLE DAY.
Q: When can I buy
Pawpaws?
A: We are starting to pick
them now. They are $2.88 a pound. We think we will have them most of the week and
perhaps into next week. Their season is
quite short.
Q: Do you have parsnips or
turnips this year?
A: We will start digging our
parsnips after a frost, or after October
5, whichever comes first. Parsnips taste
best when the weather gets cool.
While we did plant turnips,
the dry weather in early September was bad for them and we just might have a
crop failure. However, we also made a
large planting of Swedish Turnips, also called Rutabaga, and they look good.
Q: I love cauliflower. Do you grow it?
A: No. However, we did grow broccoli but it is done
for the year. We do plan on having a
larger planting of broccoli next year.
Q: I don't believe it but I
see you still are picking sweet corn!
How did you do it?
A: We plant over 35 acres of
sweet corn. Some of the answer to our
late sweet corn this year is the cool July since we didn't start picking corn
until July 22, about 10 days later than normal.
Another reason is that we planted sweet corn where our peas were-that's
called double cropping and is quite important today to make some sort of profit
because of the sky high farmland prices.
We will have corn until frost unless frost holds off until November,
which it won't!
|
The Boss's Corner
Hi,
We had a real good sales week
last week thanks to our wonderful customers.
Over 99% of our customers are delightfully nice and it is a pleasure to
be able to help and serve them. Thank
you!
It's unbelievable but we
still have real nice tomatoes out in the field. To be honest, back in mid and late August we
thought there was a chance, because of the late blight, that we would be real
short of tomatoes, even by the pound, by Labor Day and then we would have nothing
worth picking by September 10th. (When
people asked us in mid August if we would have canning tomatoes, we replied
"Maybe, we're not sure." A few people
took offense with our evasive answer
figuring we should know. Well, we were
just being honest although we didn't go into long explanations.) Our fungicide applications after we saw signs
of late blight must have really helped...and then out came the sun--practically
100% of possible sun for around 3 weeks--starting a few days before Labor Day. Many tomatoes lying right on clay
ground look just like they came off nicely staked vines-just beautiful! Looks like we will have nice tomatoes until
frost this year-which is unusual.
(Again, average frost at Magicland Farms comes the first week in October
and by inland lakes the last week of October.)
Also, we might even have a few canning tomatoes on some days, although
there won't be any real quantity of them that's for sure! We still estimate our quantity loss this
year was about 2/3rds -which means we had a huge tomato crop coming until the
blight came!
I promised to mention our
sweet potato test plot in the last issue.
Well many people don't realize that you can grow sweet potatoes in Michigan. Many years ago
I didn't know that either-until I visited the Benton Harbor Retail Fruit
Market. That was a fascinating place-too
bad I heard it was no longer in operation--they apparently just have the
wholesale market going there now (I checked a few years ago, and the retail
market was no longer there-but things might be different today, who
knows). Well anyway, I stopped there on
the way back to Chicago and one of the vendors there had huge piles of big
sweet potatoes all over the place and they were all grown locally. That surprised me. I then found out that there are enough sweet
potatoes grown in Michigan so that MSU includes sweet potatoes in their weed
control and insect control guides. While
writing the proposal for my vegetable book (Grow
With a Pro..) I decided to include sweet potatoes in it and in order to do
this I needed some hands-on experience so decided to try to grow sweet
potatoes. Well, I did and it does look
like you can grow sweet potatoes in Michigan! Two things
you absolutely need for sweet potatoes in Michigan-full sun (sunup to sunset) and sandy soil. (These
are the same requirements for another crop thought to be only grown in the
south-watermelons.) Since sweet potatoes
are grown with rooted cuttings and not seed like watermelon or planting small
sweet potatoes like you do with Irish potatoes, I had to find a way to do
this. One way is to order them from
places that sell the little plants. The
other way is to buy some sweet potatoes from a supermarket and get them growing
and then root the cuttings from the vines.
I did both and both methods worked!
Freshly dug sweet potatoes
are only moderately sweet when baked.
However, they have an enzyme which slowly changes the starch in the sweet
potatoes to sugar. This means a sweet
potato that was dug and put in the kitchen a month or two before baking will be
much sweeter than a freshly dug one. We
ate them fresh and everybody still thought they were tasty-but not extremely
sweet. This brings us to winter
squash-especially the Bon Bon buttercup squash.
We have found that Bon Bon
buttercup squash get sweeter than most sweet potatoes. They also have delicious tasting smooth
flesh. The only problem we found with
them is the high cost of the seed-often over a hundred bucks a pound! Well, that's our problem. Early in the
season, say late August, ripe Bon Bon taste great but they aren't nearly as
sweet as they are now-and it has nothing to do with ripeness it has to do with
curing. Remember, you cure both squash
and sweet potatoes by just letting them sit-as long as the temperature is above
50F and below 80F-in other words room temperature. This is usually real easy to do by just
sitting them in a kitchen or another room in a house. Last year I thought some of our acorn squash
became as tasty as the buttercup. It
seems to me that all winter squash improves by sitting a while. Right now the squash on our piles are curing
just nicely and they are getting tastier and tastier. However, a frost will be becoming shortly and
we will need to find a place for them.
While they will keep OK at temperatures as low as 40F, they won't get
any better tasting. I figure, this week,
and perhaps next, they will be near their prime.
This year we planted some Heart of Gold winter squash which looks
a bit alike a cross of Sweet Dumpling
and Acorn-which it is. Well we and several customers tasted it and
agree it is better than either of its parents!
We do have quantity specials for acorn squash for those who wish to keep
them for Thanksgiving and perhaps Christmas--$4.00 a half bushel and $7.00 a
bushel. We also are selling mixed
varieties of winter squash for $8.00 a bushel.
Hoping for a glorious, but
continued genteel fall,
Nashle!
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
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
