Italian olives and a subtle shift in seasons
Well it was my turn to go away and leave Chris with his nose to the grindstone but he seems to have done pretty well, smashing all my previous veg sales, so I might just leave him to it ;) Not really....I have come back to a fair amount of consulting work (my other 'hat'- which covers extra things like holiday expenses, luckily!) but am keen to get back into the shop and see some familiar faces so hope to see some of you this week. I was lucky enough last week to spend some time on an organic olive farm in Southern Italy (bit of
a bus man's holiday!), fresh figs and prickly pear fruit for breakfast and ancient olive trees everywhere we looked. We may be able to buy some olive oil direct from the farm, going to look into it.
Chris hasn't stopped since I left, but he's had lots of good ideas in the midst of the hard work. So we're excited about the coming months and being able to work through some of them.
We are just noticing the changes that come at this time of year, darker mornings and evenings mean we feel under less pressure to be out in the field at all hours, the weeds aren't as manic, and we're reaping the rewards of the months of hard work.
In the field:
Cleared broad beans, cleared 2 beds of courgettes and squash and cleared bed of french beans and bed of turnips. Getting beds ready for sowing winter salads and planting out spring greens. Martin did a fab job of clearing the mammoth amout of purple bean foliage in big polytunnel - we've got bucket loads of beans!! Courgettes are coming to an end. French beans have finished. Don't forget you can blanch and freeze beans so worth buying extra to bring out when we're all a bit bored of brassicas ;) We still need to get better at our preserving and freezing but it's small steps and each year we maage something new.
In the boxes:
Small - purple beans, Savoy cabbage, leeks, courgette, Bryn Cochyn apples
Regular - turnips with tops (see recipe below!), runner beans, sweetcorn, uchi kiri or butternut squash, tomatoes, cauliflower, conference pears, cucumber
Small boxes got purple beans which we weren't sure whether to put in as they're so big. Chris has been podding the beans and eating them raw so we reckon in a bean salad or stew they'll be good (rather than keeping them in pod and using them as regular beans).
The uchi kiri squash we ordered in were tweice the size we expected them to be, so was lucky we had some of our own growing for just this kind of emergency!
Next week we will have some spaghetti squash coming in from Glanllyn Farm.
In the shop:
Cauliflowers, sweetcorn, chestnut mushrooms, Roscoff garlic and onions & regular onions, Padron peppers, fresh ginger and turmeric
From Prion: Lettuces, tomatoes, cucumbers, curly kale, cavalo nero, hopefully some leeks, garlic. Also got a couple of marrows if anyone wants to make chutney - we're still getting through our piccalilli (secret recipe!) from last Autumn, marrow is a vital ingredient.
Fruit: Discovery apples from Bryn Cochyn, lemons, bananas, plums (so much love for these last week)
And all the other yummy extras including Pentrefelin milk, Nant y Felin sourdough, and other organic bits.
Recipe inspiration:
Let's talk about turnips! When I was away last week I tried the local speciality which was pasta with turnip greens - told Chris and he said he was going to put turnips in this week without the tops... glad we had that conversation before it was too late, and hopefully you can try this as it's good. Lots of different recipes but this is a Riverford one I found.
There's also some other turnip tips here if you're stuck.
Think we've shared an Indian style tomato rice recently that we love, but when I ran out of rice the other evening we went for this Italian inspired tomato risotto baked in the oven -S O easy and really tasty. Can also have cold next day. Recommend.
Finally, it may not be new news but if you like a good walk, and you've heard of Wainwright, you might be interested in his coast to coast walk being made into a National Trail. More here.
have a good week