Why did you give me a bush today, you ask!? Well, that plant with those delicious pods are edamame also known as fresh soybeans. Edamame are traditionally sold on the plant as we have presented it to you today.  Just shuck the pods off as you would any other bean and boil or steam them.  You can add a little salt to the cooking liquid OR sprinkle with salt after they have been cooked.  Use your teeth to pop the beans out of the shell and you have an amazingly delicious snack with a nutritional punch!  We LOVE this treat here at the farm.  You most often find these served in Asian restaurants as an appetizer.  There are fancier ways of preparing edamame and you could likely find a recipe or two online, but none as simple.  The other goods in your bag this week are Tongue of Fire shelling beans, carrots, green tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, beets, green peppers, and jalapeño peppers.  If you have not had the pleasure of eating fried green tomatoes in your day, this is your chance.  Fried green tomatoes are simple and delicious!  They are awesome dipped in a homemade aioli (garlic mayo).  You can find a recipe for fried green tomatoes in our tomato recipes, and homemade aioli is under garlic.  Green tomatoes can be used in just about any dish as a regular vegetable would be.  Try them in soups or stew or even stir fry.  Just go lightly!  One green tomato is enough to give a dish a nice kick without making it mouth-puckering.  What a treat!  Jalapeño peppers have a bit of a kick so look out.  They are great mixed in with veggies or beef in a Mexican stir fry or taco filling blend.  Summer is winding down as are the cucumbers and first succession of green beans.  Cucumbers are finished for the season, but we will have more beans in the next couple of weeks for you.  Our winter squash is doing super well and will likely be ready a bit early this year. . . Just like everything else this season! Enjoy your meals this week.

It has gone by amazingly quickly this summer, but if you can believe it, we are half way through your share this week. What a summer it has been eh!? The crops are growing fabulously, the weather has been gorgeous, our summer interns have been awesome, and we have had many wonderful visitors!  Aside from a whole lot of broken equipment, things are going well!  This week you will be enjoying kale, melons, tomatoes, summer squash and zucchini, cucumbers, beans, and sweet onions.  As an extra we gave you a bunch of scallions and hopefully you got to pick up some flowers at the market!  It’s a beautiful array and delicious to boot.  Let me remind you of the recipe for kale casserole. . . try substituting the kale in for Swiss chard in the garbanzo bean, goat cheese, tomato dish. So, what lies ahead you ask in this summer of fabulous food. . . We will have winter squash and turnips again, lettuce will be back soon, and the sweetness of storage carrots.  Don’t forget to ask about specials for veggie you want to freeze extra of such as beans or cucumbers for pickles.  It is the time to preserve now so check in with us if you want any veggies for winter!

So, did any of you notice that I didn’t write to you last week?  I was away in NC for a friend’s birth.  I fully intended to write the newsletter until her modem blew in a lightning storm a couple days after I arrived.  With no internet access I left you to your own devices to figure out what everything was!  I hope it was no problem for you.  By this point in the season, I have a mind to believe that you are a pro in figuring out what the different veggies are AND what to do with them.  There are a couple of newbies in your bag this week.  You have fennel, dragon lingerie beans, and a melon (or two small melons!).  YUMMY!  This was the first year that we have grown melons and what a year for them.  It has been hot and dry, which is just what melons love.  The melon you have today is called Sweet Granite.  It is a cantaloupe style melon, that is amazingly sweet.  You do not need to refrigerate melons until you cut them, but you should eat them within a few days.  If you want your melon to finish ripening more slowly then go ahead and put it in the fridge just don’t lose it near the back!

Dragon Lingerie beans are the larger ones that are white with purple spots.  They are fantastic!!  They have an amazing flavor and a juicy texture. They are a 19th century heirloom bean from the Netherlands.  Prepare them just as you would any other string bean.  As with most string beans they do not store long so eat them up soon.  Have you learned how to freeze any vegetables yet?  Has the abundance forced you to try that skill?  Most beans freeze very well, but it is not recommended with Dragon Lingerie.  This week freeze the royal burgandy beans and eat the dragon beans!  On that note, please ask me for tips if you need to freeze or pickle!  What a treat it will be to eat some of your harvest this winter.

Finally, as a new crop this week you have a couple of fennel bulbs.  Fennel is crunchy and slightly sweet with a licoricey taste.  It is most often used in Italian cooking, but is also becoming popular in Mediterranean dishes.  It is a unique vegetable, but can add lots of flavor to many dishes.  Try slicing thinly and topping a pizza with this veggie or simply slicing and topping with plain yogurt and fresh mint.  We love to eat fennel with beets and you will find our favorite recipes under fennel on the recipes page!  Be creative as always!  Many love to have fennel roasted or simply sauteed with onions.  Let us know if you find any favorites.

In addition to those new crops you have beets, purple beans, red onion, Swiss chard, garlic, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes. Eat well this week!

What a nice sound it is to hear the rain falling outside my window this morning!  Yesterday, as I was harvesting young onions for your bags, I couldn’t believe how dry it was.  Since we do not do any type of irrigation, the rain is a good thing for all the plants in the gardens.  Nothing seems to have been damaged by the lack of rain though, which is  far different than the story from past years with too much rain.  So, no complaints here at the farm! Today in your share you will find cucumbers, squash and zucchini, ugly (but tasty) carrots, Swiss chard, snap beans (green and purple), and young onions.  You will find a funky looking Shuyo Long cucumber in your bag.  This is a delicious, tender and sweet cucumber with no seeds.  It remains crispy under the most stressful situations.  I once had a customer leave one in a hot car for several hours.  She returned expecting a limp, floppy cucumber, but alas it was still firm and crisp!  You do not need to peel it as the skin is very thin. . . Just slice and snack!  I’m not sure that there is anything else that needs much explaining in your bags today.  We have harvested our first few tomatoes, which promptly were eaten in the field!  I would suspect you will have your first tomatoes next week and maybe even a pepper, but as always with growing food we will have to see what the weather brings.  Have a great week!

We are deeply immersed in our annual garlic harvest as I write this! It is an amazing amount of work, but worth it for such a delicious crop.  We use garlic in pretty much everything savory from morning eggs to aioli on a lunch sandwich to dinner fish or pasta.  We have a lot of garlic seconds, which you have some of in your share today.  If you would like to get more of this garlic to process and store or use in pickle making let me know as we are offering it for less than half the price of our storage garlic.  This week you have a lot of produce in your share!  You have fresh beans, both green and purple!  You also have potatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, zucchini, and scallions.  If you were lucky enough to end up with a patty pan squash try stuffing it (recipe under Summer Squash). . . YUMMY!  If you ended up with a large zucchini, try our Zucchini Parmesan rolls or make up a favorite sweet zucchini bread recipe.  The larger ones are SO much easier to grate!  Another delicious summer squash dish is a chowder.  You could use either squash or zucchini for the soup.  Don’t forget how well a squash puree freezes too so that you can have soup made with summer squash during the winter.  One of the benefits of all this amazing food is putting up some for winter!  If you are ever over flowing with veggies make up a soup to freeze.  Another trick we use here at Grassland is that we save our veggie scraps to make vegetable stock.  We keep the onion and carrot tops, wilted beet greens, and so on in a gallon size bag in the freezer.  When it gets full we add all those goodies to a pot of boiling water and then simmer for a few hours.  We often will add salt, fresh herbs, and garlic too!  Then we have stock all ready for fall and winter soups.  Grocery store, canned stock is very high in sodium and usually other junk we don’t want to eat. Please pass along any creative recipes you come up with using our produce and we will gladly add it to our blog. Eat well this week!

Farming is never quite perfect no matter how much you pray for rain or sun or whatever it is that you can’t control.  This summer, however, is coming the closest that we have ever seen.  Despite many mechanical challenges here at Grassland, the weather has been just right.  Recently, it has been quite dry here, so the rain yesterday was much appreciated by all living things cows, veggies, and farmers alike. I was having my Orono and Waterville farmers’ market inspection at that time, and none of us complained about walking around in the rain.  My crew was mulching the winter squash plants and worked away smiling.  Farming is so amazing and rewarding. . . Lest I forget. . . CHALLENGING!  There is bad news lingering though in Waldoboro.  The first late blight has been discovered on tomatoes in a home garden.  If you are growing tomatoes or potatoes, be diligent to check for disease and follow correct protocol for removing the disease to help control the spread to other farmers/gardeners crops.  For more information about what you are looking for or how to control it, go to http://plantclinic.cornell.edu/FactSheets/lateblight/late.htm.  You can also find info by searching “late blight” at www.mofga.org.  We can only hope that we get tomatoes this year after last year’s debacle.

This week in your share you have the first cucumbers!!  Also, summer squash and zucchini, mixed varieties of beets, kale, salad mix, carrots, young onions, and kohlrabi.  You will notice that the golden beets (yellowish color) and the Chioggia beets (pink skin, white and red swirled center) are sweeter than the dark red beet.  Bulls blood, which has the dark red greens, has the most “rooty” beet flavor and is grown particularly for the leaf.  Young onions can be used like scallions, but have a stronger flavor.  Use them in cooking or raw in salads.  You may have a yellow cucumber!  Interesting, eh?  This is a classic Maine variety called Boothby’s Blonde.  You will find that it is sweet and delicious.

Be sure to let us know if you have questions, concerns or love stories about any of our produce, recipes, or notes here in the newsletter.  We love to know you are out there keeping us with your farm!  You are invested, it’s true, and we hope to make it worth your investment in many ways.  Happy eating this week!

Summer is rolling right along here at the farm.  We still need to plant our fall carrots and transplant out our fall broccoli, but other crops are finishing out their annual lives.  We are about to pull our pea plants and till in a bunch of lettuce mix in order to plant cover crops in preparation for next year.  This week in your share bag you have: Summer Squash and/or Zucchini, two heads of Romaine Lettuce, a bunch of fresh garlic, 1 pound of Swiss chard, Shell Peas, and kohlrabi.  If you are not familiar with kohlrabi, you are in for a treat!  Kohlrabi is known as the Apple of the Cabbage family.  It tastes mildly like turnip, but has the crispness of an apple.  To prepare it, you simply cut away the leaves, peel off the thin green skin, and the cut into chucks or slices.  Try eating it raw on a salad or as a veggie with dip OR cook in a stir fry or soup.  The leaves are edible too so use those in a stir fry as well.  Fresh garlic is more mild than dry garlic, but is moist and delicious!  Use it just as you would dry garlic. . . For our family, that means adding it to everything from stir fry to soup to pasta to mashed potatoes to mixing with our ground beef for hamburgers.  Garlic is very good for you and is delicious so be creative!  Don’t forget that it is time to start thinking about what you will eat all winter.  I know it sounds crazy to be thinking winter in July, but it is time to start freezing and canning summer foods to eat in January.  If you would like to get some bulk veggies for processing such as freezing chard or kale talk to me and we will give you a good deal.  Have a wonderfully delicious and nutritious week!

I guess Mother Nature is truly making up for last summer with this heat!!  We aren’t complaining though.  As time flies by here I know it will be December as soon as I blink my eyes.  Then I will be longing for these beautiful summer days.  This week you have in your share: Scallions, carrots, kale, snap peas, new potatoes, and golden beets.  The golden beets are sweeter than a classic dark red beet and you use the greens just as you would normally.  They can also be substituted for Swiss chard in any recipe.  You could make a roasted veggie mix with the carrots, potatoes and beets.  Try marinating your scallions and grilling them along with your favorite steak!  They are delicious this way.  No matter how you eat the goodies up. . . ENJOY!

Once again I am amazed at how fast time is flying by.  We hope you have been enjoying your summer eating thus far and are looking forward to all of the excited veggies to come!  This week you have 1.5 lbs of snap peas, 1 lb. of garlic scapes, 1/2 lb. of lettuce mix,  bunch of carrots, scallions, and radishes.  It is a great “salad share” this week, but don’t forget to get creative!  Follow the recipe for scape pesto on our recipes page and try adding some scallions.  Don’t forget that radishes are delicious cooked as well as raw!  Add them to stir fry, roasts, or soup.

Here at the farm all is well!  We are having a small amount of trouble with cucumber beetles on some uncovered zucchini, but in general the crops have been in love with the weather pattern.  We are about to finish putting in our fall crops soon such as rutabaga and storage carrots.  We have been working on cleaning the commercial kitchen in hopes to get it up and running one of these days!! There are so many possibilities with regards to how we utilize that space. . . We haven’t decided exactly what we will be offering yet.  Any suggestions: cheese? reduced fat milk? yogurt? pre-made soups, salads or prepared foods? meatballs?  The sky is the limit for now anyway.

Keep in touch! Let us know if you have questions of comments about anything in your share!

It is amazing how last season at this time I was writing a newsletter to you complaining about how the rain was starting to damage crops.  What a difference a year makes!!  The rain/sun combination has been absolutely amazing and the crops are growing like crazy.  You will find that you even have PEAS in your share this week.  It is certainly the earliest pea crop we have ever had.  These are snap peas so be sure to eat them pod and all.  We will have shell peas for you, but they are not ready yet.  You will also find some dry beans in your bags as well!  What a treat!  We grew these last year and had some left over after seeding them for this season.  We thought you might enjoy having some.  There are a mix of beans, but all can be soaked overnight and then parboiled for an hour or so in order to use them.  Try making a bean salad with your radishes, salad turnips, and scallions or a bean soup with the braising mix of mustard, kale and asian greens.  Please comment back if you have questions about anything in the bag.  Enjoy and eat well this week!