Market

For market on Saturday, July 2, 2011 we will have:

-Salad mix

-Red and Green head lettuce

-Savoy Cabbage

-Rhubarb

-Kale

-Basil

-Parsley

-Cilantro

-Beets

-Arugula

-Flower arrangements (hopefully!)

Have a great 4th of July weekend!!!

Eating our Hard Work

One of my favorite things is being able to look down at my dinner plate and know that every single component of the meal came from our garden. We are not quite able to have meals with food totally from our garden but we are getting there. This weekend Anne and Liz made pizza topped with Endeavor Farm arugula, basil, and sauteed scapes and spring onions from our neighbor at the farmers market, Maple Crest Farm. Liz made a salad with our spring mix, Mackenzie Creamery goat cheese, and Maple Crest beets. It was simple and delicious!

This is our first head of garlic! We picked it to see how the crop is doing and although it is not quite ready for harvest, it is beautiful.

Bev was busy in the kitchen making currant jelly this weekend. Every year our yield is getting larger and there is nothing like the bright pink, and tangy yet sweet jelly on homemade toast on a Sunday morning. Check out Bev's blog for the recipe!

Grandma enjoys the fruits of our labor and is holding a huge head of lettuce. We have been enjoying lots of salads but as the weather gets warmer, the lettuce is starting to bolt. We'll plant another crop of lettuce later in the summer when it starts to cool down but for now we're not going to plant anymore greens.

We hope you are cooking up a storm in your own kitchens and enjoying eating fresh and local produce!

Market

On Saturday, June 25, 2011 we will have:

-Napa Cabbage (last week!)

-Basil

-Cilantro

-Parsley

-Radishes

-Kale

-Red Lettuce

-Green Lettuce

-Salad Mix

-Arugula

-Fresh Flowers (maybe!)

Blue Skies

The blue skies and sunshine has proven to be wonderful for the garden. We are not complaining about the lack of rain, but it means that Terry has to keep on top of the watering to make sure the plants don't get too thirsty!

More flowers are making blooms and Anne hopes to be making some arrangements in the next few weeks to sell at the market.

The garlic is getting close to being ready to harvest because the leaves are starting to brown. That is actually a good sign and we hope to bring garlic to you soon. Harvesting garlic is a lot of fun and the wonderful scent of garlic lingers on everything you wear and touch for hours afterwards. Some may not enjoy that but the Rieses certainly do!

Below is a picture of our onions. Remember how tiny they were the day we planted them? They are coming along beautifully!

We also just want to thank our customers for coming out to the market and we enjoy seeing familiar faces.

Panoramic view of the garden. Click on it to see it larger!

Market

This week on Saturday, June 18, 2011, we will have:

-tomato plants

-eggplant plants

-kale

-salad mix

-arugula

-parsley

-napa cabbage

-radishes

-garlic scapes

-red head lettuce

-green head lettuce

Every week more produce is ready to harvest and we hope you are enjoying the evolution of the season! How about making a nice meal for your dad or husband this weekend with a beautiful fresh green salad with our greens, scapes, radishes and kale? Or make a pesto with the scapes and have it on crostini or over fresh pasta sprinkled with parsley? (See new recipe in recipe section!) You can supplement your meal with cheese, meat, or sweet treats - all of which you can get at the Geauga Fresh Farmers Market!

The arbor with blooming roses!

Color Starting to Show!

Unfortunately the weeds grow just as much, if not more, than the actual vegetables and flowers so we are trying to keep ahead of them. Weeding by hand is quite time consuming so Terry is (carefully!) tilling in the aisles to keep the weeds down before they go to seed. You can see clearly where we weeded the onions by hand below.

Garlic scapes are in! We sold some at the market but they'll all need to come off to make sure that all the garlic's energy is concentrated in its bulb. If you grow garlic, it is important to remove the scapes just as you removed the flowers from your rhubarb to focus all of the energy of the plant on the good stuff!

The aruglua carpet is looking good and tasting spicy. For our first year, we're quite pleased. We're cutting it like the spring mix and will sell it by the quarter pound.

Some color is finally popping up in the garden. We have our fist periwinkle ageratum blooms and ripening currants. The sour cherries are almost ready, but probably not enough for a pie yet. The beets are coming in strong and look beautiful with their purple stems and veins!

Market

On Saturday, June 11, 2011 we will have:

-kale (kale chips add a nice side to a meal and are a very healthy snack...see our recipe section)

-napa cabbage (don't forget to try that recipe I posted earlier this week!)

-green and red head lettuce

-salad mix

-radishes

-tomato plants (it's not too late to get them in the ground)

-basil plants

-garlic scapes (we have great cooking suggestions for these...make pesto, saute them, or eat them raw in a salad...and are only around for a week or two so come get them while they last!)

Scapes

Always learning...

There is no turning back now this season...with 3 markets under our belt and the garden almost fully planted we are all excited about this season and already learning things that we can do better next year. The next few years will be a lot about learning how much of each plant to grow. We are getting a better idea of what people want to buy at the market and what makes sense for us economically. Sometimes things come as a surprise like when we bought our plugs for herbs and flowers, we didn't realize that each plug came with almost 6 plants instead of just the 1 that we expected. Live and learn!

Our basil plants grown from the plugs. We are sold out of the plants but we will be selling cut basil once it is ready to harvest.

We are learning new things and one thing that was new to us was that we had to inoculate our bean seeds this year. Inoculating beans simply means that we made a paste with a Rhizobia bacteria powder that, once applied to the beans before planting, helps to draw nitrogen from the air and get it into the bean root system.

Foremost (white) and Provider (purple) are 2 varieties of green beans we planted last week.

Our Napa Cabbage was ready sooner than we thought this year and looks fantastic! There have been requests for more recipes on the blog and so I am adding a recipe for Vietnamese Slaw that Hannah makes a lot in her house and you can use Napa or Green cabbage. We will have lots of Napa ready soon so please try this recipe with our cabbage! (Check "Recipe" section for actual recipe).

Anne showing off our beautiful cabbage!

And finally, here are a few action shots of Terry tilling up more space and of Liz harvesting our salad mix for the market!

Market

Now that it is cooling down we are all a bit relieved! Please come visit us this Saturday at the Geauga Fresh Farmers Market. We will have:

Saturday, June 4, 2011

-Tomato plants

-Eggplant plants

-Broccoli plants

-Basil plants

-Salad mix

-Red and Green Leaf lettuce

-Rhubarb

-possibly Napa Cabbage

See you there!