it's Wednesday and rainy, a good day to check the many e-mails. Thanks for all your feed back on the newsletters. We got all the winter squash, melons and beans planted with some potatoes, carrots and beets still to go, and weekend work. After next week all the big fall root plantings will be done and we can focus on weeding, trellising tomatoes and plowing up grassy fallow to put in buckwheat. Buckwheat is the cure for quack grass, because it grows so fast that it shades out all weeds. So, the plan is to get all fallow ( land not used this year) into buckwheat so that next year will be easier and not endless hours spent on forking, sifting through the fields and fields and fields. At night I see quack grass, too much.
Truffel has not returned and we have to just love the other two guinea pigs more. Ella duck is still sitting on her four eggs. At times there are up to six eggs in the nest, because the ladies share and sit together in one nest. We marked the sitting eggs, so we don't try to cook them.
The gardens look great. The zucchinis are flowering the tomatoes are growing the peas are rolling in.
Flowers: It is not too late to get in on the flower share, $77 for 12 weeks. The flowers are coming on and the bouquets are getting fancier every week
We have seen a little swede midge on some broccoli. I pulled the plants out and cooked the leafs for dinner, quite tasty.
Leafs... for the Extra Leafies we have lambsquater this week. I know it is a weed, but it is so tasty, cooked like spinach and high in protein. I thought since it is growing in the spinach field where there should be spinach I try it with you. If you don't like it, we will go back to kale.
Kale: So in the chapter of the yummies of kale this weeks recipe is my favorite sesame dressing that works on all cooked greens ( spinach, kale, lamsquater, collards chard). I have sent it other years, but here it is again.
Birdsfoot Sesame dressing:
1/2 cup of olive oil
1/2 cup of nice vinegar
1/2 cup of water
1/4 cup or less of soy sauce
1-2 cloves of garlic or pureed garlic scapes
1/4 cup of tahini or toasted sesame seeds
pepper)
1/2 minced onions
a little honey or maple syrup
mix all and marinade coked greens for some time. ( I like my kale cooked soft and gray, not green and crunchy that's German)
Please share your kale recipes for future newsletters.
Please mark Saturday, July 23 and Sunday July 24 for the garlic festival where we harvest all 12000 garlic in two days. They get the outer skin peeled and hung in the barn to dry. We need lots of help that weekend. We serve food and garlic and you get to take garlic home.
So long
Dulli