What’s in the box?

celery
dill
cucumbers!
sweet onions
green top beets
red or savoy cabbage (medium and large shares)
carrots
basil
zucchini/ summer squash

Notes on the box.

Cucumbers coming in heavy now. We had just had the hoop house cukes, but the field cukes are ready now. Time for refrigerator pickles and cucumber based salads.
The greens of the beets are edible and can be prepared as you would cooked spinach or chard. The greens are also great sauteed and added to beets that have been roasted or sauteed until tender.
Remove the tops from the carrots right away to keep them crisp.
Basil can be stored with stems in a cup of water on your counter. It doesn’t like to be in the fridge.

Cosmic Wheel Creamery Cheese Share.

Herdsman cheese and garlic dill quark. Both are excellent on veggie sandwiches or on pasta. A quick dinner idea is to cook some pasta and while that is cooking, saute some zucchini and onion. Drain pasta and mix in quark cheese, the sauteed veggies, and some freshly chopped basil. So quick and easy! Bread with quark and sliced cucumbers make a great snack, or add a fried egg for a really yummy breakfast.

Recipes.

Cold Cucumber Soup

Saltibarsciai: Lithuanian cold beet soup with kefir

Zucchini, Rice, and Cheese Gratin

On the Farm.

Last Saturday would have been the Eat Local Farm Tour. We looked at the calendar and felt dissappointed that the tour couldn’t happen this year. The farm is looking really great with weeds mostly under control and things growing so beautifully. We would have loved to have people out to see it. If you will be in the area and want to stop by the farm, give us a heads up and we might be free to give a socially distanced farm tour.
A few days ago Sadie, 6, came up and announced that the corn will be ready soon. She went out to the field and picked some ears and saw tiny kernels. She’s right! We think we are a couple/few weeks out. Last week of July or first week of August. Sadie also found the first red slicer tomato in the greenhouse. Just a couple more weeks and we will be looking at some very Summery boxes! We are happy that Sadie is developing good observation skills. It’s nice to have more eyes observing things on the farm.
Have you all been able to see the NEOWISE comet? We are lucky on the farm to have very clear, dark skies at night so we are able to see it very clearly. A friend asked if there would be a NEOWISE cheese coming form Cosmic Wheel Creamery and I think that might be a good idea!

Josh checking out the garlic. It’s going to be a beautiful crop this year!

Cabbages!

greenhouse cucumbers and dill

new potatoes coming soon

start to finish all by himself! Otto is really into learning cooking so he can open a resturant

lovely lavender clouds over the pasture at sunset

potatoes and the first slicer!

these gorgeous broccoli plants holding out another week

a perplexed farmer. Where’s the heads?!

found a few this week, but not enough for boxes yet.

corn tassels

corn growing

Winter Squash looking great!

baby bird nest in our personal blueberry patch

Next Week.

broccoli
cauliflower
beets
carrots
greenbeans
celery
kale or beets
peppers?
squash
cucumbers
fresh garlic

What’s in the box?

Cucumber
Zucchini/Summer Squash
Celery
Green top Beets
Butter Head Lettuce
Green Onions
Carrots
Cilantro
Basil
Fennel (medium and large shares)
Napa (large shares)

Notes on the box.

Remove the tops from the carrots and beets for best storage. The beet greens are edible and can be cooked as you would spinach or chard.
Fresh celery! What a treat. It has a lot of really nice celery flavor. Tuna salad with finely chopped celery is a favorite no-stove summer meal.
The butterhead lettuce is so tender. It’s a favorite on the farm.
Fresh basil should be stored out of the fridge. I like to have it in a little cup of water on the counter like a bouquet until I’m ready to use it.
All the other veggies from this week should be stored in the fridge.

Cosmic Wheel Creamery Cheese Shares.

This week I included Moonshadow and Moonglow. These two cheeses are made with the same recipe in the same way. The Moonshadow is made early in the Spring before the pastures are ready for grazing, so the cows are eating only hay. The Moonglow is made the rest of the season when the cows are eating all fresh pasture. I like to send the two together so you can taste them and look at them side by side to see what a difference what the animals are eating makes in the finished cheese. The Moonshadow has a creamy color and the Moonglow is more bright yellow. The Moonshadow has more tastes of broth and hay and the grassy flavor in the Moonglow is more apparent by comparison. It’s a fun side by side that I like to do each year. Hope you enjoy it! Besides snacking, I like theses cheeses on pizza with summer squash or diced in a salad with some roasted beets and nuts.

Recipes.

Basil Cilantro Oil - great for drizzling on top of hummus, roasted beets/fennel, or any grilled meat for an extra flavor kick

• 1 cup basil leaves

• 1 cup cilantro leaves and stems

• 1 large clove garlic or garlic scapes roughly chopped

• 1/2 jalapeno (optional)

• 1/2 cup olive oil

  Add all ingredients to blender and process until smooth.

Thai Cucumber Salad
Cucumber Salad Ingredients:

• 2 cucumbers, sliced

• red or white spring onion thinly sliced with thinly sliced tops

• thinly sliced celery, about a half cup

• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

• 1/2 cup chopped fresh basil

• 1/2 cup chopped peanuts

• optional toppings: toasted sesame seeds, red chili flakes

Dressing Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice

• 2 tablespoons avocado oil (or olive oil)

• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar

• 1 tablespoon fish sauce

• 1 small clove garlic, minced or pressed

• 1–2 tablespoons sweetener (such as maple syrup, honey or brown sugar), to taste

Mix all ingredients together.

Roasted Beets and Sauteed Beet Greens

Beef and Celery Stir-Fry

Shaved Fennel and Celery Salad - you can substitute sunflower seeds or walnuts for the pinenuts in the recipe

On the Farm.

We got an inch of rain this morning. The heat! Summer crops are growing beautifully. We think we will have new potatoes in a couple of weeks. Tomatoes and peppers are putting on fruit and looking great and loving the hot weather. We have sweet corn tasseled out so probably a month until that’s ready to go.
The cows aren’t the biggest fans of hot weather. They prefer about 50 degrees. The milk production has gone down, but the grass is still growing.

veggie love

picking summer squash and zucchini

beautiful beets

Sadie and Erica washing beets

Morning milking

Otto with some onion art

bees love the thistle. letting them get some pollen before we mow it down

adolescent eagle at a local park

Next Week.

beets
celery
zucchini/ summer squash
cucumber
carrots
green onions
red cabbage/savoy cabbage??
broccoli/cauliflower??????!

echnical difficulties are making getting photos on the blog impossible right now. I hope to update soon once I figure out what is going on!

What’s in the Box?

Napa Cabbage (Large and Medium)
Lettuce
Carrots
Cucumber
Zucchini/ Summer Squash
Fennel
Hakuri Turnips
Radishes (Meduim and Large Shares)
Red Onions (Medium and Large Shares)

Notes on the box.

Small shares got either two lettuce or a lettuce and a napa cabbage.
Fennel is a new vegetable this week and might be new to you. It has a nice anise flavor. It can be sliced thinly and eaten raw in salads or it can be roasted. More details about fennel here! Otto likes to make a salad with sliced cucumbers, cabbage, thinly sliced fennel, and fennel leaves. I like to make a quick pickle with the fronds. Recipe Below.
Summer has started with the beginning of the squash and cucumbers! More will come in the following weeks.

Cosmic Wheel Creamery Cheese Shares.

Fresh, whole-milk Ricotta and Cygnus, our swiss-style cheese. Ricotta is usually made from the whey from cheese making. Our whole-milk ricotta is thicker and more rich than whey ricotta. It’s a personal favorite of mine and I hope you enjoy it, too! I’ve included a hefty pint so you have enough to enjoy in a couple of meals. I encourage you to try some fresh on a nice piece of toasted bread with a drizzle of good olive oil and some salt and pepper. You can also go sweet with it. There’s a lot of recipes for ricotta cakes and pancakes and other sweet treats. Just remember that this ricotta isn’t as liquid as a lot that you might get at the store, so you might have to adjust baking recipes by stirring in a little milk or whey if you have it.
The Cygnus is a swiss-style cheese. I can’t get those nice big holes in our swiss. That requires different aging rooms with different temperatures, but the flavor is nice! I hope you enjoy it!

Recipes.

Carmelized Carrots and Fennel with Ricotta and Walnuts

Roasted Fennel

1. Preheat your oven to 425.

2. Remove the fronds and core from the fennel bulb and roughly chop.

3. Toss the chopped fennel with 2 T extra virgin olive oil, sprinkle with salt and freshly ground pepper.

4. Place the fennel on a baking sheet and roast for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or so to ensure the fennel does not burn.

You can add lemon zest and juice and put this on just about anything! Including the recipe below!

Lemon Ricotta Pasta with Zucchini, Summer Squash, Roasted Fennel, or Greens

• Spring Onions and/or garlic scapes, Sliced

• Olive oil, as needed

• 1/3 cup ricotta cheese

• 2 tablespoons or more Parmesan or another gratable, flavorful cheese such as CWC Antares

• Zest and juice from 1/2 lemon

• 1/4 teaspoon salt, to taste

• 1 pinch dried red pepper flakes

• veggies of your choice

1. Boil pasta in well salted water. Drain and set aside, retaining about 1 cup of liquid from cooking the noodles.

2. Saute onion in olive oil. Add zucchini, summer squash, or greens such as kale or chard and cook until tender. OR

3. Roast fennel as above recipe

4. Combine the ricotta and Parmesan in a small bowl, and add the lemon zest and juice, salt, and red pepper flakes. Add to the veggie mixture in the saute pan and mix well.

5. Add cooked pasta and some of the pasta water as needed.

On the Farm.

We got 6 inches of water in 2 days. That’s a lot! I mean, it was really dry, but the water came faster than the ground could absorb. This is a perfect recipe for erosion. We would have lost a lot of soil and veggies if we hadn’t changed to low/no-till, raised beds, and using landscaping fabric to grow our veggies.
We are watching the broccoli and scratching our heads about what’s taking so long. We hoped it would be ready this week, but maybe next week…

Next Week.

lettuce
beets
cillantro
fennel
squash
cucumbers
cabbage?
broccoli?