Beach celebration for Kathleen’s birthday, and last day for the university students on the crew. Thanks so much Naomi and Kathleen, for all your hard work and joyful energy, and to Luke for giving up the last week of your summer to experience the farm. Avon River in background.
Harvesting greens with the crew this morning was a lot of fun. The quality of the greens is pretty fantastic! We have huge bunches of spinach, beautiful radishes (see below) and lots of tender but spicy arugula in the bag-your-own display and in big bunches that would be perfect for making arugula pesto.
As mentioned previously, the eggplants are very sick. This is so sad, and something I’ve never seen before. The peppers are also sick, but we are getting a few.
To make up for the loss, we ordered in some certified organic broccoli and carrots from our friends at Red Soil Organics in PEI. Our own carrots will be back in production next week. Since our sales have been much higher than expected, we will be buying in produce as needed. We will always do our best to clearly label where it comes from. We only buy certified organic or naturally grown by farmers we know and trust to follow organic standards.
Once again, thanks so much to all of our farmshare members and market customers. Your support is making our farm a successful business, which in turn allows us to offer well-paid internships to aspiring farmers and employment to local people.
Hope you enjoy the week’s bounty,
David, Jen, Marshall, Erin, Dakota, Rhi, and Christine
Recipes:
Chicken Tinga from Aroon, “I made it with all the produce (garlic, onion, tomato and tomatillo) from my farm share. One item’s worth of each item comfortably made a large double batch.”
Erin and Dakota. Erin’s thousand-watt smile. Dakota super cozy in her coveralls, now that the mornings are cooler. They were saying they didn’t recognize the arugula because it didn’t have little holes in the leaves. They think the protect net (background) is working to exclude those pesky flea beetles.
Bouquets from Barefoot Blooms. Available at the Warehouse Market and Seaport Market
Kathleen loves vegetables so I made a vegetable cake for her. Chocolate zucchini. Recipe at bottom of post. I made 3. They were popular! Unfortunately the mint leaves blew off at the beach. Nicola also made a blueberry/peach crisp. Yum!
Gretchen Tanner, bless her heart, made big mugs for everyone on the crew. Farmers gonna farm! Thank you Gretchen (madebygretchen.ca)
We went to visit the New Growers who have a market garden in Antigonish with the Sisters of St Martha. Ben, Gyungbo, Eli, and Mac seem to be doing well! Behind Ben and David is a garden started just this year from a hayfield. It is so productive, we are going to buy eggplant and cabbage from them to sell at our Warehouse Market in Halifax. Landscape fabric works! And check out that sky…
Another photo with Ben in the original 1 acre garden. He’s proud of his carrots….
…but in the next bed over he’s having trouble with spinach. The root is turning black from soil borne fungus. We used to have that problem, but now that we’re using deep compost, the spinach is usually fungus free all summer.
Meanwhile, back home on the ranch, people are laughing their guts out in the front field.
“OK guys, what did we learn this season?”
Before she left for Ontario, Hyla gave us this beautiful handmade bowl. We love it because, in addition to the beautiful van, it is a daily reminder of her.
Abundant Acres Farm 