It’s June all over the place! Peonies are at their peak – and will be done by the end of the month – why, oh why can’t we have them longer?! For the same reason snow peas are so precious and prized – their season is brief. And we will have peas this week! So some comfort in that. And we are getting organic strawberries from Pure Nelida Farm in Skagit Valley and have them available for preorder now (pickup Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri) next week). To learn more about Pure Nelida Farm, I encourage you to read their story on their website here
Projects and experiments
We’ve accomplished a lot of projects already this season on the farm. And now we’re experimenting with new soil and weed management techniques using stale seed bed methods and tarping, growing tomatoes in low tunnels, beginning some research on dilute sea water for fertilizer, and testing different kinds of eye coverings to try to sleep in past 5:30am.
The chickens have done their first full rotation in the pasture and are returning to a lush. green grass. We’re very pleased with the chicken tractor that Livie & Roger built earlier this season and have a lot of ideas for the second one we build. Roger has said that he will write a post for everyone about the chicken tractor in case anyone is interested in more of the finer details and specific products we incorporated into it (like the automatic door and rollaway lay boxes). Mark and Roger are working on improving the solar evaporator too so that we can offer more salt this year. Stay tuned for a post about that in the near future as we learn more.
Now for some recipes …
Many of you have sent me notes to tell me what you’ve been cooking and have asked for more recipes, so here we go (some are mine, written below, and others are linked).
The first is a simple, but essential salad dressing recipe. Our salad greens are nonstop right now. Look for the delicious, umami taste of chrysanthemum leaf (the vegetable, not the flower) and red and green Mizuna in your salad greens starting this week.
Our salad dressing – makes 1.25 cup
¼ cup vinegar (red, white, champagne, whatever you have)
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, smashed with side of knife
2 T grated Parmesan cheese
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground black pepper
1 T Dijon mustard
1 tsp dry oregano (optional)
Zap all ingredients in a food processor or put in a jar and shake it up.
Makes enough for several salads and lasts a long time if you store it in the fridge. If you store it in the fridge, make sure to remove it about 20 minutes before you’d like to use it to allow the oil to soften so you can shake it up before dressing your salad.
In addition to the above salad dressing, we also like this radish leaf dressing from Dorie Greenspan!
Beets and Tokyo turnips are here and combined with baby carrots make an unforgettable butter and honey glazed braise
Not a recipe, but how about some inspiration? We just heard from one of our customers who made beans with beet greens and served it with homemade Merguez sausage. Yum!
Ok, onto the next recipe …
Smoked Salmon Pasta - serves 4
4 oz smoked salmon
2T olive oil
2 Medium shallots, chopped fine
Dry white wine - 3/4 cup
Cream - 1 1/2 cups
Water from pasta to thin sauce
Lemon juice 1T
Lemon peel, grated 1 tsp
Fresh dill, 3 T chopped, plus sprigs for garnish
Pasta 8 oz – linguine preferred
Instructions:
Break up smoked salmon into large flakes. Heat olive oil and sauté shallot until soft. Add white wine and reduce over medium heat until syrupy. Meanwhile, add pasta to boiling, well-salted water and cook for 1 minute less than the package instructs. You’ll want your pasta just underdone because you’re going to cook it in the sauce a bit. When finished, drain, RESERVING 2 cups of the cooking water.
Add cream and 1 cup water to mixture in sauté pan and return to medium heat. Add cooked pasta to pan. Let mixture thicken and reduce slightly, adding more water to reach a saucy consistency and stirring to evenly coat & finish cooking the pasta. Add salmon, lemon zest, lemon juice, & chopped dill. Let heat briefly and serve on warm plates with dill sprigs for garnish.
And Livie’s favorite way to enjoy smoked salmon.
Smoked Salmon Cream Cheese Spread
2 oz smoked salmon
8 oz cream cheese
1 T capers, rinsed and slightly chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
3 or 4 sprigs of fresh dill, chopped
1 T chopped red onion, shallot, green onion, or chives
Small squeeze of lemon juice
Mix all ingredients together and schmear on toasted bagel.
Bagelry Bagels!!
The bagel delivery was a hit! At long last the fantastically good bagels of The Bagelry are ours to savor once again. Get your order in to us by this Monday at 8AM (or earlier) for next Friday delivery to the stand.
We are harvesting and planting as fast as we can. Cauliflower and cabbage, Napa and broccoli, corn, peppers, tomatoes (of course), squash, and cukes are looking large in our future. So that also means pickles, kimchi, sauerkraut, and other ferments will join sauces, jams and jellies in our pantries later this summer.
Coming this Wednesday, we’ll have spinach back in stock, along with parsley, and the gourmet mushroom mix with Lion’s Mane, Oyster, and Shiitake mushrooms.
We have a couple of surprises coming, too. Stay tuned …