Wk 24 | Summer 6 Sneak Peek Tu-Th | Aug 13 & 15
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Hardneck garlic--which produced the swirly green scapes in June--are harvested in late July and allowed to "cure" for a couple of weeks before being stored to be doled out through the rest of the season. As Chris has mentioned, our garlic harvest suffered this year for a number of reasons, and won't be as plentiful as we'd like, so savor each savory clove!
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'Tis the season!
Tomatoes are beginning to come on strong now, and for the next six weeks or so you should expect to see quite a few every week in your box.
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Our small fruits: Sun Golds & Juliets
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Expect both quantity and variety, which in any given week might include some or all of the following:
Small Fruit
We're known for our super-sweet Sun Gold cherry tomatoes. These are pretty easy to figure out--just pop them in your mouth and eat them til they're gone! They're also a big hit with otherwise tomato-phobic kids. Juliets look like a cross between a plum tomato and a grape tomato; in sweetness, they're closer to the latter. They are supremely versatile and long-lasting. Great for snacking, lunchbox, salads, and sauces; I've been known to say that they'll do anything you want from a tomato except give you a big slice for a BLT.
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Mariana
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Plum / Roma / Paste
A meatier tomato variety with lower water content, it's the usual choice for making sauces, but can be enjoyed raw too. We grow Mariana, an exceptionally prolific tomato, as well as a San Marzano variety. If you're looking to put up tomatoes in the fall, check with us for bulk purchasing of these beauties.
Hybrid Slicers
While the possibilities are endless for hybrid tomato varieties, we tend to stick with those we know best. For all-around taste and performance in a smaller hybrid slicing tomato, we haven't found anything we like better than Estiva. A relatively new hybrid, Defiant, is a medium-sized tomato; with its
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Big Beef
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high acid content and resistance to disease, it's become a "workhorse" tomato, making it into many of our processed items as well as your CSA boxes. The granddaddy of them all, Big Beef, is our entry into the beefsteak-type category. This is the one that gives you those big sandwich-sized slabs that say "summer." With all the mixing and matching that goes on each week in the boxes, we hope you'll encounter a few of these.
Heirloom & Specialty Tomatoes
Heirloom varieties definitely have cachet, but they'll be hard to come by this year. They're difficult to grow with any consistency, and weighing in at 1 to 2 pounds, it's a hard sell to put a $5 to $8 tomato in a box that
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Prudens Purple
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is valued at $14 as in the case of our Solo size. And, truth be told, we like most of our hybrid varieties better and they give us--and you--more bang for your buck. Still, we grow a few heirlooms, including Prudens Purple, a lush, early version of the better known Brandywine variety, and Hillbilly, a yellow-red mottled variety. Other "specialty" varieties that you might see are Pink Beauty--a truly pinkish tomato with great flavor, and Nyagous, a small "black" (actually brown/green) variety.
Check out the Tomato page on our website for more photos and descriptions. And let us know what you like!
-- Robin
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Questions?
Call Robin (in Chicago), 708-370-8017 | Chris (farmer/owner), 608-712-1585
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Click links below for info
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COMING NEXT WEEK
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(small fruit, romas and/or slicers)
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Carmen peppers
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WHAT'S COOKIN'
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Garlic has so many uses and you probably know what to do with it, but check out this delicious looking recipe for Roasted Potatoes with Garlic Sauce. Couldn't be easier...well, I suppose throwing it on the grill in a foil pack might simplify the "roasting" though it might lose some outer crispness. But once you pour garlic sauce on it, who's gonna care?!
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Extra Produce | Maple Syrup | Sunflower Oil Raw Honey | Pastured Chickens | Organic Eggs
Stone-Ground Flours, Corn Meal & Pancake Mix | Blue Corn Tortilla Chips | Our Salsas, Soups, Preserves & More | Chocolate Sauce Seasonal Cookbooks
Be sure to apply multi-jar discounts when you purchase our jars!
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