Mark your calendar for Local Food Weekend, September 9, 10, 11. It’s a chance to experience area farms and food businesses, including special events, guided tours, custom menus, live music, kid friendly activities and more. Every farm and business that features local food was invited to participate in the manner they chose as long as the event was in the 3-day time frame. The resulting offering includes 30+ unique events. This has been organized by Flip and her co-workers in the Ag and Food System office at Cornell Cooperative Extension of St. Lawrence County. It’s the first-ever collective event of it’s kind in our county. littleGrasse has 2 events on Saturday the 10th. At 10am, a presentation by local homesteader and corn breeder Dan Kelleher who will share his 40+ years experience saving seed to foster a climate change adapted grain seed corn. We have a plot of this corn which will be featured as part of his presentation. Dan is a funny, humble and engaging presenter. The second, separate event is a free guided tour of the farm at noon. Let your friends know, if there’s anyone that has expressed curiosity about littleGrasse. Seize the weekend by reviewing the full schedule of Local Food Weekend events here. Try a different activity every day and support all the diligent folks working towards a robust NNY food system.
Options to plug into the garden:
- Wednesday, Aug 31st, 9am-noon
- Wednesday, Aug 31st, 5:30-7:30pm
Tomatoes everywhere! A productive Garden Morning with an excellent tomato and potato harvest, abundant edamame plus mulching the onion field and weeding the leeks.
Preparing Edamame/ Green soybean 1. Pull green pods from plant 2. Boil pods in ample salted water for 6-8 minutes 3. Slip beans from pods 4. Enjoy straightaway as appetizer or add beans to other recipes 5. The edamame plants and the inedible pods can be composted at the farm
It’s a treasure hunt in the pepper patch and there’s many goodies to enjoy. Each has a popular use such as stuffing, drying, frying, or pickling. As a general guideline, green peppers have a more vegetal flavor while orange/red ones include fruity notes. All of these are on the lower end of the Scoville heat scale, with the exception of orange habanero which packs a mighty kick. Left to right: sugar rush peach, jalapeno, cherry bomb, shishito, habanero.
Tips for Success
- If you harvested more hot peppers than you can use fresh at home, put them in a jar and cover with your favorite vinegar. Both parts of this new infusion can be used in the kitchen. Mince up the peppers and use as normal or add the spicy vinegar to finish stir fries or as a base for vinaigrette.
Mixed lettuce greens are available again. Remember to cut these ABOVE the point where all the leaves come together at the base. This is the growth crown where new leaves emerge. When we cut above this point we can get multiple harvests from the same planting.
In the next week or so the hops are ready for harvest. This tenacious perennial climber is related to hemp and cannabis. Hops are best known in alcoholic drinks but the flower -also called cones- can also be used in teas, calming homemade herbal pillows and other projects. To harvest pull the individual flowers from the plant. These can be used fresh or frozen for later.
We rotate cook nights here at the farm and everyone has dishes they particularly enjoy creating. For GH, dal is near the top of the list. He loves the “one pot” aspect of this dish, where new ingredients are added to the pot in consecutive order. There’s time to prep the next ingredients while cooking and the result is a filling, aromatic entree. Find his dal on the recipe section of our website.
Crops Available
This list and availability are subject to change, check the share whiteboard at the start of every visit. If you are unsure about how to harvest: ask us! In person, via text or email.
Cell phone numbers, Flip: 315-854-5399 and Bob 315-854-5395.
*Asterisk marks crops added this week
- Arugula*
- Beets
- Cucumbers, green or yellow
- Cutting celery (harvest individual stalks, not entire plant)
- Edamame/green soy*
- Flowers
- Groundcherries
- Hot peppers: sugar rush peach, jalapeno, cherry bomb, shishito, habanero
- Kale
- Lettuce greens*
- Onions
- Potatoes
- Rainbow chard, also called Swiss chard
- Tomatoes
- Zucchini
Culinary and Medicinal Herbs
- Anise hyssop
- Basil
- Bee balm
- Bronze leaf fennel
- Cilantro
- Coriander seed
- Dill
- Hops*
- Lemon balm
- Lemon verbena
- Mint
- Nasturtium, edible flower
- Oregano
- Parsley
- Rosemary
- Sage
- Sorrel
- Thyme
- Winter Savory