Frog Holler Farm

RECIPES: We had  Minestrone  this week and it worked fine on a breezy late summer day. The linked recipe calls for two cups of mixed seasonal veggies so you have lots of options from your share. Only the Pak Choi seems like it might not sync with Minestrone - but then again, why not? Fusion soup! Apparently Minestrone was traditionally made to use up leftover vegetables, so feel free to use any seasonal vegetables and greens you have on hand. It might sound strange but we had  Arugula Peach salad  this week and it was delicious! The recipe calls for feta, which would be delicious, but we didn't have it so we added chopped sweet peppers along with the arugula, peaches and walnuts. Also delicious! We dressed it with a classic balsamic vinaigrette. Peaches are in season in Michigan now so don't miss a chance to pair their luscious juicy sweetness with our assertive peppery arugula (so much more flavorful than "baby arugula"!). NOTES FROM THE FARM: We have been feeling s...

  Our first tractor: 1954 Ford Golden Jubilee Now in retirement among the flowers (No we didn't purchase in 1954! Thanks to neighbor Tom for the photo tip) RECIPE TIPS: Now that you are past the half-way mark in the CSA, you're ready for some advanced items in your share. Although some of you will no doubt welcome that large white root veggie thing reclining in your share box, many of you will no doubt be scratching your heads. How can  this  be a  radish! ?  Daikon Radish  is a widely used root vegetable in Japanese cooking. It has a crunchy texture along with a light peppery flavor with sweet undertones. It is much milder than the small round radishes we are more familiar with. Daikon is popular in many types of Asian cooking and grated or pickled Daikon is often served with deep-fried dishes and heavier meals. It is believed to help eliminate fats and excess toxins, as well containing enzymes that stimulate digestion and improve blood circulation. Low in...

Our view from the packing area NOTES FROM THE FARM - WEEDS! From Adrian Higgins, Home & Garden writer for the Washington Post: If   you had to define the purpose of gardening, the answer might be that it is the act of crafting beauty from nature. That would be the poetic response. At its base, gardening is about holding back the immense, ravaging forces of weeds. A garden is, metaphorically, a quivering bunny rabbit surrounded by snarling wolves. This sounds like hyperbole. It is not. In the Mid-Atlantic, and surely in many other regions of the country, the weed pressure is unrelenting in every month of the year. In the heat and humidity of summer, the pace is supersonic. Well, it sounds like Mr. Higgins has been weeding a lot - or maybe too much :-)! But here's another expert chiming in  - from Timothy Tilghman, the head gardener at Untermyer Park and Gardens in Yonkers, N.Y., a 43-acre former estate on the Hudson. “If you can’t enjoy weeding, you won’t be a happy gardene...

All good things must come to an end..... Cale leaves the patch with the last crate of potatoes! NOTES FROM THE FARM: Ah, tomatoes at last! Seems like ours have been a long time coming, while other local farms have been featuring their tomatoes on Instagram and Facebook for a few weeks. In thinking about why we are on the late side, we realized that we have a whole separate operation in the spring that ties up our greenhouse, hoophouse, and time. And that would be the organic seedlings that we have grown for area gardeners since the early nineties. This spring, with the farmer's market closed and so much uncertainty about where basics would come from, many folks decided to garden. We were fortunate to have a family member who set up the Square Online Ordering system for our seedlings, and we started to field hundreds of orders - the first ones in early April were being filled while snow was coming down. The A2 Farmer's Market eventually opened and we were able to take the seedli...

Milan and Keegen just drew the winning name! AND THE WINNER IS...t he winner of the first ever CSA Beans Crossword Puzzle is Bi-Weekly CSA member  Sara Samuel!!  Due to technical difficulties we could not award Sara a bouquet but she will receive a coupon for a half-pound of the Frog Holler Farm signature salad mix - and of course bragging rights. Stay tuned for more fun and informative CSA puzzles and word games. And prizes! Thanks everyone who entered and solved the puzzle! Tubs of spuds - Crates of 'tates RECIPE TIPS:  So much good food it's hard to know where to start! One place to start could be the  Frog Holler Recipe Box . This is a (often share box oriented) recipe blog that we published in our early CSA days. The link will take you to the last recipe published in 2016 (!) for Zucchini doggy biscuits. That's for when you have really run out of ideas for preparing zucchini - you're not there yet are you? Although who says the pooches can't ...

Keegen, Cale and Ashleh in a sea of beans, and that can only mean... GREEN BEANS! Do you know how many idioms there are for beans? After reading the newsletter you will! RECIPE IDEAS:  Last week we reported that there have been concerns about carrot top toxicity due to the presence of alkaloids and nitrates to which some people can be sensitive.  CARROT TOPS  are not inherently toxic to most of us unless we eat them by the wheelbarrow-full. And you won't find a wheelbarrow-full in your share - at least not yet! ;-) We revisited the "carrot top controversy" after a customer at the stall took great pains to describe to us how she blanched the carrot tops and regularly added them to her salad. Hailing from Europe, where apparently carrot tops are traditionally consumed without concerns, this customer convinced us to be more open-minded about including the carrot tops in our cooking. A quick Google search brought many recipes for  Carrot Top Pesto . We particularly ...

Cheers for Garlic! This hot week was garlic-digging time and the crew went at it with digging forks and good spirit!  NOTES FROM THE FARM: the week of the "stinking rose'! Garlic has been called the stinking rose for nearly a century, thanks to a French writer and physician, Henri Leclerc, who in 1918 roughly translated garlic’s ancient Greek name, scorodon, to skaion rodon, and then to rose puante, or stinking rose. * Although garlic is in the Lily family (along with tulips and, of course, lilies), roses are  not  in the Lily family. But the "stinking rose" nickname has been affectionately embraced by garlic lovers; there is even  a popular California restaurant named "The Stinking Rose" and renowned for including garlic in every dish. (now temporarily closed ) Garlic, like many garden crops, requires patience and delayed gratification. We plan and we plant; we weed and we wait. Garlic, however, might win the delayed gratification prize, requiring planting...