Farm Happenings for July 16, 2022

anging out at the bottom of this email evvvvverrryyy week is a list of our Storage Tips for various vegetables. There are some gems of info in there! The most salient points this week are: -> Keep Tomatoes and Eggplants OUT of the fridge. (Eggplants have the shortest shelf life of anything we grow. Eat them soon after getting them from us.)

Eggplants will feel softer/less firm after a few days at room temp, but they are still very fine to eat.

The earth spins and times moves along! It's close to mid July and (like usual) some plants are doing great and some plants are dying. :) This particular summer, our greens are even healthier than usual for this time of year. We've never had Kale still happy and healthy on July 11, but it is completely ready for us to harvest tasty leaves for you tomorrow morning. Same with Chard, Head Lettuces, and our Salad Mix (though Salad Mix harvest amount is less this week as usual for this time of year compared to a month ago.) Slicing Tomatoes are on point, sizing up and ripening up nicely this time of year as usual. Cherry Tomatoes and our snack-size peppers, however, are both struggling compared to previous summers, so those harvest numbers are modest in comparison.

REMEMBER: Your TOMATOES will almost always be separate from the rest of your vegetables at pick up. Look in the crate located with shares.

Farm Shares are starting to explode with color! We've got green things and purple things and yellow things and red things and orange things. Eat the rainbow!

EGGPLANT loves July and we love Eggplant! These beautiful purple orbs are a bit mysterious for some folks. The key to success with Eggplant is to remember that it is a SPONGE. It doesn't have a whole ton of flavor on its own but it soaks up whatever yumminess you give it and then returns it to you ten-fold when you roast, bake, or grill it. Soak it, marinate it...let the sponge do its job! Garlic, oil, vinegar, tomato sauce, etc. Embrace the sponge! We have three different varieties of Eggplant and they can all be used inter changeably in recipes.

Our cut flowers are also really shining brightly these days. We grow flowers because they make us smile in the summertime!

And despite the mid-summer heat that most lettuces don't like, we've found the right varieties and the right strategies to get them to grow. So, our "Salad Mix" harvest yields go down this time of year, but we have crunchy and delicious heads of Lettuce to make up the difference. (PRO TIP: The heads of Lettuce are more tasty than the Salad Mix this time of year. It's reflective of how well suited (or not!) the different plants are for the heat that this time of year brings.

During some parts of the next few weeks we'll have the leaves of these lettuce heads to offer you, separated from the intact head. This is due to how some plants grow this time of year and how we need to manage certain plants for adequate air flow.

Here's what some of our fields of Lettuce and Salad Mix look like right now...
The white ground cover is a new experiment for us this season. It's durable landscape fabric that we'll roll up after use and reuse for many, many years. It serves as a weed barrier, a moisture retention layer (for this time of year in which we often enter drought conditions), a protective soil cover (keep the soil covered!), and a cooling mechanism for the plants that prefer cooler temps than what would otherwise exist right now. Earlier this week we took the temperature on this white ground cover and black weed barrier in the same field and the temp differential was 30 degrees!!

It's always great to have a comedian on staff, and some funny person recently planted a beach ball in our watermelon field. It got some people really excited for a few moments. Be amused or disappointed, but this large orb is plastic:

Vegetable prep suggestions:
- SOAK slices of Eggplant in oil, maybe oil + Vinegar, for a few minutes or a few hours. Then roast or grill. Top with a combination of soy sauce, sriracha, and garlic.
- Do the same with Summer Squash! We grow the varieties in which the seeds stay very small even when the squash is bigger than may look ideal. Slice them up, soak them in oil with garlic and salt, and roast in the oven or cook on the grill.
- Dice up Tomatoes and toss with olive oil, garlic, and salt. Maybe also Balsamic vinegar. Put on top of Salads or simply enjoy as its own side dish.
- Use Lettuce leaves as wraps/boats for any assortment of fillings: tunafish, chicken salad, tofu "chicken" salad, egg salad...the list of options is loooong.

If you've received this email, you have a share scheduled to pick up in two days. (Sudden need to be out of town? No problem -- log in and click on "Reschedule or Hold this Share" BEFORE 6am the day before pick up.)

For Pick Up:

- Please remember to bring your own bags each week.

- At Self Serve locations: Our vegetables are in green plastic boxes at the pick up location, labelled with members' names. Find the box with your name on it. - Empty the vegetables into your bag and leave the empty, green box for us to collect.

- Loaves of bread, for those who have ordered one, will be near the green boxes, labeled with your name. Pick up your loaf if you are due one. (Some people have purchased a Bread Share for a loaf each week of the season. Some people order a loaf when they please.)
- Same for cooler(s) at pick up locations with any cold items that aren't vegetables (tomatoes, eggs, fermented vegetables, etc...)

- At Staffed locations: One of us will be there to quickly gather your items for you to bag up and bring home.
- Preparation ideas and recipe suggestions are in your email. Also check out our Pinterest Page for lots of recipe ideas, organized by vegetable.

Vacations:
If you will be gone and can't pick up a particular week's share you can reschedule that week's share for a different week in the Harvie software, or you can have a friend or family member pick up for you. Just forward this email to them so they know the details.

Vegetable Storage Tips: Storing them properly allows them to last longer in your fridge (or on your counter!), stay more crisp, and serve you best. Here’s what the pros do…

-> All GREENS and ROOTS need to be refrigerated in an AIR TIGHT bag or container to prevent going limp/wilty. Keep bagged greens in the bag in which we pack them.

-> ROOTS store best if you remove the tops and refrigerate them in a separate container or bag.

-> If you’re short on fridge space, you can also keep Peppers, Onions, Potatoes, Garlic, and Cucumbers (for a brief time) out of the fridge. (Though, our standard is to store Peppers & Cucumbers in the fridge. Just keep an eye on them. They’ll go bad after a time.)

-> Keep Tomatoes and Eggplants OUT of the fridge. (Eggplants have the shortest shelf life of anything we grow. Eat them soon after getting them from us.)

Thank you again for being part of our Farm Share! Our farm wouldn't exist without you, and we're so happy to grow vegetables to nourish you.

With huge gratitude ~
Janet, Dan, and the whole Broadfork crew (Julie, Mia, Natalie, Sophie, Magda, S., Zach, and the farm kids)

Want to follow along during the week, including Farm Stand updates? Visit us on Facebook or Instagram

Owned and operated by Janet Aardema and Dan Gagnon, Broadfork is a small family farm in Chesterfield, VA providing the metro-Richmond area with Certified Naturally Grown vegetables, herbs, and flowers.
We use traditional European methods of biointensive, raised bed production while maximizing soil and plant health for nutrition and sustainability. No synthetic/chemical fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, or fungicide is ever used in any part of the process of growing your food. Everything we sell is grown by us, and we farm full-time, supporting ourselves and our four children through our farm business.

Growing practices at Broadfork utilize only ecological methods: compost, cover crops, organic fertilizer, and minerals are used to feed the soil that feeds our plants. Raised beds are used to prevent soil-compaction, allowing for happier plant roots. We use organic potting soil and fertilizer, as well as amendments like fish emulsion and sea minerals. No chemical fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, or pesticides are ever used on your food and we are Certified Naturally Grown (which follows the same national standards used for Organic Certification). We are also proud members of the Virginia Association for Biological Farming and Slow Food RVA. Janet and Dan both hold Bachelor’s Degrees in Biology from Davidson and Lafayette Colleges, respectively. Janet holds a Master’s Degree in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. We both thrive on putting our biology backgrounds to use in a farm setting and share a passion for farm education.

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