Hollyhock, Gaura, and Daylight White Scabiosa in one of the mixed perennial beds.
IN THE FLOWERS THIS WEEK
Pro-tip: If you decided to take us up on last week’s challenge to incorporate seed heads into your bouquet, consider saving the seeds when your bouquet is done! This could either mean letting them dry fully and packing them in an envelope for planting later, or just sprinkling them somewhere that you’d like to see flowers. (If you take the second option, the seeds will likely not germinate until the rainy season unless you’re watering, but some may survive and surprise you come fall).
This Week’s Flower Challenge: This week, consider an act of focused devotion — try making a large bouquet out only one type of flower. Varieties that come to mind as likely to dazzle are our purple Queen Anne’s Lace, vibrant and long-lasting Marigolds, or the Daylight White Scabiosa that’s exploding in the upper east side of the garden.
Shortbread cookies with edible flowers, featuring Bachelor’s Buttons, Fennel, Viola (Pansies), and Calendula.
IN THE HERBS
Oregano, Marjoram, Thyme, Chives & Garlic Chives, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Chamomile, Tulsi Basil, Purple & Green & Bi-color Shiso (aka Perilla), Mints, Italian Basil, Purple Basil, Thai Basil, Cilantro Flowers, Dill Flowers, Anise Hyssop, Sage, Tarragon, and Vietnamese Cilantro, Culinary Sage, Sorrel
Herb Challenge: For this week’s herb challenge, we’re going to do something a little different — edible flowers! While edible flowers are always delightful atop a salad, or frozen in ice cubes in a fancy cocktail, we think these magical flower-topped shortbread cookies really take them to another level. If you have a favorite shortbread recipe, feel free to use that, and read on for many variations below!
Ina Garten’s Shortbread Cookies
Ingredients:
3/4 lb unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Mix together the butter and sugar until just combined. Incorporate the vanilla.
In a medium bowl, sift together the flour and salt and then add them to the butter and sugar mixture. Mix until just combined.
Roll the dough into a log with the diameter of the designed width of your cookies. Wrap in parchment paper and refrigerate for a half hour, until firm.
Once firm, cut the log into discs that are 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick, depending on your preference.
Press flowers firmly into the top of the cookies, sprinkle with coarse sugar, and bake! Baking time will depend on the size of your cookies, and will vary from 10 minutes to 25. Look for the edges to just begin to brown. (Since these shortbread are all about the looks, we prefer a shorter bake time and less caramelization.)
Flower topping suggestions:
For the most showy, consider Viola (Pansies), Calendula, Anise Hyssop, Nasturtium, Lavender, Fennel and Borage.
For an elegant, flavorful twist consider Lavender or Rosemary. If you want the flavor to really come through, consider pulsing some of the flowers or leaves with the sugar before mixing up the dough.
Don’t forget about leaves! The tiniest leaves on Shiso, Lemon Verbena, Anise Hyssop, Lemon Balm, or Purple Basil would be both beautiful and flavorful.
Garlic for sale
We are excited to share that our organic, heirloom garlic is ready for sale! Please bring cash — $10 / lb, available anytime. This beautiful softneck variety is one that we originally purchased from local garlic superstar Bernier Farms in 2017. Ever since then, we’ve saved the best of each season’s harvest to be used as seed stock in the coming year, thus selecting the most vigorous plants best adapted to our unique growing conditions. It’s available for sale on the front table of the barn, right next to the basket of clippers.
Pint Baskets
We are currently out of pint baskets in the barn. Please remember to reuse your baskets, and, if you’ve developed a stockpile, please bring them back to the barn so that some are available for members who’ve forgotten theirs.
CONSTRUCTION ZONE FOR SOLAR ARRAY
For the next 6 weeks or so, the area in front of our barn will be a construction zone — for the best possible reason: A giant solar array!
Please pardon the inconvenience and make sure your little ones are extra careful around the construction site.
NOTES & REMINDERS
Venture forth: Don’t be trapped by the first strawberry sirens you hear calling to you as you approach the rows — have inner fortitude and journey to the far reaches of the strawberry patch where you will be rewarded with bountiful treasure.
Confused? Ask us! If you’re ever confused about anything in the garden, don’t hesitate to ask us in person or via email. We love helping you use the garden!
How do I find the herbs? All herbs that are ready to pick are marked with a colored stake with the name of the herb on it.
FARMER’S LOG
ECHOES
In the field, time is an echo. Each season, and everything that comes with it, returns as if from a long distance — the long distance of a year. A corn plant itself is an echo. Its whole life, from seed to harvest, the echo of the untold thousands of lives of corn plants from years long past.
For the farmer, these echoes are full of memory. All it takes is a smell, the angle of the sun, a certain task, and there you are again, surrounded by memories of who you were with, of who you were, of what has changed, and what has not.
Last August 7th, we were rich in vegetables. Our bumper onion crop was swelling handsomely. This year is different. The drought has left our fields empty of food plants. Our hearts long to be harvesting food for you again.
But even in this silent year, the August light is full of echoes. We can hear them in the early morning light, shimmering out over the dry grass, and they make us smile.
And sometimes, when we are still, the echoes seem to continue on forward, strangely, and it is as if we can hear the echoes of August harvests yet to come…
Harvest share from the first week of August 2020
AUGUST EMPTINESS — 8/1/2020
This time of year it is hard to find time to write one’s thoughts down… the rhythm of the steady, bulky harvests drowns them out with an ever increasing tempo. The sun blares down. It’s hard to think about anything but the farm. To sneak in planting and seeding and other tasks in the margins, your only thoughts are farm thoughts, your only feelings are farm feelings. You must remain disciplined, focused… you can’t miss a beat.
This week we turned the farm another turn towards Fall. Kayta seeded our 5,600 ft of Fall carrots. We cultivated our Fall Brussels sprouts and planted Romanesco for our Fall selves. We trellised tomatoes and planted our last cucumber succession.
Our internal lives — our emotions, dreams, and whimsies — feel far away at this time or year; shoved aside by harvest and urgent needs in the field. But at the same time we never feel more full.
There is a strange fullness in being so busy as to be empty.
Then, the swelling corn stalks can lift you up to the eaves. The heat is your sorrow. The flowering potatoes are your whimsical thoughts. And the simple things — a good sip of coffee, a crew mate’s joke, a good harvest — can fill you to the brim.
See you in the fields,
David and Kayta
