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From Field to Table
What's Happening Now at Magicland Farms
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Volume Two, Issue Eleven
Sunday - July 25, 2010
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Greetings!
Welcome to the Magicland Farms' newsletter for the week beginning July 26th. 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 - July 26th to July 31st |
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Both our famous Bon Appetit Bi-Color Sweet Corn
and all yellow Kandy King Sweet Corn are now ready. Also green and yellow beans, beets, salad
tomatoes, pickling and slicing cucumbers, freshly pulled Newaygo Newaygo sweet
onions, new red and Yukon Gold potatoes, cut sunflowers, zucchini and more. Also our craft room is now open! Here you can find handmade jewelry, art, gourd crafts, knitting, rosaries and more!
We accept both the Bridge Card and Project Fresh. |
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From The Kitchen |
| Most Fridays during farm season, we have baked potatoes and some other vegetable as our evening meal. This past Friday, we decided to have some carrots. This is a very tasty side dish that (at least at our house) resulted in an empty pot at the end of the meal.
Candied Carrots
adapted from Allrecipes.com
1 pound carrots, cut into 2 inch pieces 2 tablespoons butter, diced 1/4 cup packed brown sugar 1 pinch salt 1 pinch ground black pepper
Directions:
1.
Place
carrots in a pot of salted water. Bring water to a boil, reduce heat to
a high simmer and cook about 20 to 30 minutes. Do not cook the carrots
to a mushy stage!
2.
Drain
the carrots, reduce the heat to its lowest possible setting and return
the carrots to the pan. Stir in butter, brown sugar, salt and pepper.
Cook for about 3 to 5 minutes, until sugar is bubbly.
My notes:
- I found that a cooking time of 20 minutes resulted in the perfect texture for the carrots-not too mushy.
- I added a couple of pinches of black pepper (I like pepper) and thought it was not overwhelming. I would add pepper to taste; you could probably even omit it if you wanted to, although it adds a little something to the dish.
Enjoy!
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Specials In The Spotlight |
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Sweet Corn-$8.00 a bushel. This
special low sale price is only good through July 31 and is only valid while we
still have a good supply of ripe corn in the field. The corn is picked fresh daily and is a
large-eared bi-color that is sweet, tender and tasty. Buy 5 bushels or over and
take 10% off. Again, the $8 a bushel
sale price is only good through July 31 and subject to availability!!!
Please bring your own containers in which to pack the corn.
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Questions Our Customers Are Asking |
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In this section, we usually answer the most commonly asked questions by customers at the stand and via email. If you have any questions, email us and we'll do our best to answer.
Question: Where are the summer apples?
Answer: Due to a freeze that occurred over Mother's Day weekend this spring, we lost most of our apple crop. There will be no apples available in August or September. There seem to be some apples on our Golden Delicious and Crispin/Mutsu trees but those won't be ready until October and will be very limited in quantity.
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The Boss's Corner
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Update on Magicland Farms' Woodchucks
As you know if you read our earlier 2010 newsletters,
Rascal, Connor, Big Bertha and many other woodchucks have made our electric
fenced in 25 acres of farmland their home this year. These critters have really prospered,
apparently because our electric fence has kept out bobcats, coyotes and other
predators. That is until now. About 2 weeks days ago we started to see
coyote tracks in the fenced in area-we now shut the fence off when
thunderstorms are threatened because lightning destroyed our earlier
charger. About a week ago we saw that in
a portion of the east field that there were so many coyote tracks around that
there wasn't a square inch that they didn't touch-they apparently were having a
coyote dance party there! (Also see our
website's Weird and Funny-click funnies under the Boss's Corner Drop Down Menu or use this link.) Then, we just noticed that we hadn't seen a
woodchuck for over a week-a few weeks ago we saw several everyday. As a clincher here, we recently saw a woodchuck
skull while picking corn. Woodchucks are
said to be tasty-ask Wile E. Coyote.
(PS-We don't have any road runners on the farm anymore!)
Pumpkins/Winter Squash, Sweet Corn and the Two sisters
One type of companion planting was used by Native Americans
for centuries. It is called the Three
Sisters. Here corn, squash/pumpkins and
climbing beans are planted close together. The idea is that the climbing beans use the corn stalks to climb on,
while the corn shares in the use of the nitrogen that forms in the bean plant's root nodules. The squash/pumpkin vines act as a living
mulch keeping weeds down and preserving topsoil moisture because they shade the
ground. Since squash/pumpkins have roots
that go down 4 feet or more they can make use of the normally plentiful subsoil
moisture. (This subsoil moisture, of
course, also needs to be replenished. However, most of this replenishing is done through snow and spring
rains.) We at Magicland Farms do a variation of the
Three Sisters companion planting which we call the Two Sisters (how original!),
where we plant strips of winter squash and pumpkins in with the corn
field. See photos at drop.io.
What Are Newaygo Newaygo Sweet Onions?
Simple. They are the really sweet Walla Walla variety of
onions that we grow in Newaygo county. It is interesting to note that Walla Walla, Washington and Newaygo,
Michigan have several things in common. For one thing, like Newaygo County, there is both a county and a city with
the same name. The other thing is that
both counties produce excellent sweet onions. If you like sweet onions, I would highly recommend that you try at least
one of our amazingly sweet and mild Newaygo Newaygo onions. Like all the produce we sell, we grow it
ourselves. One caution here. Like Walla Walla onions, Newaygo Newaygo
onions are poor keepers. Don't buy more
than you will be able to use in about three weeks. Shortly, we will be harvesting our red and
yellow Sweet Spanish onions. While they
aren't quite as sweet and mild as Newaygo Newaygo, they are larger and will
keep well into winter-they keep for us well into February and often even into
March.
Newaygo County Michigan-Central Michigan, including Newaygo
county is blessed with the best vacation summer weather in the United
States. The high temperature during the
summer averages about 80-82F and drops to 60F. (By the way, this is almost
identical to that of Walla Walla County in Washington State.) More than this. Normally there is plenty of sunshine, pretty
cumulus clouds and a humidity level that is lower than any other area east of
the Mississippi. While sometimes summer
activities are hampered somewhat by rain, it usually comes during the night. The sad point here is that during most Julys
(2010 and 2009 are exceptions) there isn't enough rain to keep up with the
evaporation so crops dry out. This is
common knowledge and we have had many customers wonder what was going on during
the July of 2010 since rain actually fell-we had over 3 inches this month so we
didn't have to spend time getting out the sprinklers like we did in previous
years. But for those who vacation here, this is all good news.
It also looks like that the next couple of weeks will be
more typical Newaygo County weather-temps in the low 80s, plenty of sun, a few
puffy cumulus clouds to decorate the sky and only a passing night shower or
two-in one word BEAUTIFUL!
Make sure you get out and enjoy the beautiful weather the
next couple of weeks. This year it just
might be that as the nights lengthen, the heat just might strengthen!
Nashle!
Tom
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This Week's Photo Album |
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This year we are doing our photos for the newsletter a bit differently. Due to space
constraints on our newsletter hosting service and concern for those of you on a
dialup connection, we are going to host them on Drop.io (a web based file sharing
service). Every week you will get a link to a photo album that shows the photos
that go along with the newsletter. Simply click on the link below and it will take
you to the photos. Clicking on a photo will yield a larger image along with a description
of the photo.
This Week's Photo - 07/25/2010
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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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