Last Saturday morning rain brought in beautiful dark skies with a steak of white light running through. Before heavy rains came in much of the morning harvest was complete with chard, kale, flowers, eggplant and peppers for Sunday's market. During the the weeks of no rain on the farm we often do a rain dance or call to the rain clouds while we move irrigation pipe from field to field day after day, here Joe is letting the rain clouds know that we've had enough rain for now and to pass over us, no such chance!
On Monday Armando, Joe and Francisco began extracting honey. It took them all day to go through 18 supers that hold 10 frames each. Once they were finished we were able bottle nearly 600 pounds of honey. Pictured on the left, Joe scrapes the wax caps of the frames, which we saved for potential candle making this winter. Armando then takes the frames and slides two of them in an extractor that spins very fast allows the honey to come off and drip out into a bucket that has a screen on top to catch any loose wax, pictured below.
Francisco then takes the buckets of honey and pours them into jars, heat seals the caps on and puts on our label. Honey is here!!!
This week's CSA is for all Full and Half Share members as well as our Seasonal Fruit members.
This week's vegetable bounty:
Honey
Fresh Thyme
Green and/or Yellow Wax Beans
White Sweet Onions
Jalapenos
Tomatillos
Orange Carrots
Mix of dark Red Norland and Adirondack Blue Potatoes
Whole Wheat Flour*
*The whole wheat flour is from our farmer friend, Molly Breslin. Molly, along with her father, grow small grains and dry beans in Ottawa Illinois. Please visit their site for more info Breslin Farms.
The mix of potatoes may be slightly cosmetically challenged but don't let that discourage you from eating the skin as well. These cook well together, drizzled with olive oil and thyme make a perfect side of roasted potatoes.
This week's fruit bounty:
Pristine Apples
White Nectarines
Maverick Orange Melon
Arava Green Melon
The melons this week come from our friend, Peter Klien of Seedling Fruit, in South Haven Michigan. Although he is not organic he does offer the best fruit he can with as little pest control as possible leaving us with great tasting locally grown fruit. Enjoy!
Recipes! Recipes! Recipes!
More pictures of the farm this week.......
Above the chard and kales is Armando prepping more beds for our fall/winter seeding.
Tomato season is in full bloom! Although you don't have any in your share this week we will have some heirloom beauties for sale at our farm stand. Pictured is Michael harvesting some sweet summer tomatoes!
In between all the rain we're surrounded by plenty of mosquitoes. Here, Joe, Elliott and Charlie, gear up with head nets and long sleeves while they harvest Green chard.
Tuesday morning welcomed us with more rain but that didn't stop us from harvesting green beans!
These angelic flowers, Oscar Butterfly Weed, has won me over as my favorite flower this season!
At the farm stand this week:
We will offer our honey for sale along with various cooking greens, herbs, onions, eggplant, chicken, eggs and more! In the next few weeks we will also offer maple syrup. This will be locally sourced from Hilltop Sugar Bush in Wisconsin. Although we have many maple trees that have given us beautiful maple syrup at the farm we don't yet have the licensed kitchen to be able to offer it to you. Until then, we will have a limited supply! If you know you'd like to purchase any please send me an email so that I may have you on our list to save you a bottle or two. Please let me know! tempelfarmsorganics@yahoo.com
We hope you enjoy this week's bounty!
Your farmers,
Tania and Chris Cubberly along with their crew, Joe, Francisco, Michael, Elliott, Charlie, Sherman, and Armando!
