Abundance is our word of the day – as in we picked an abundance of vegetables and other crops today!! And we will do the same tomorrow, and probably all week. It’s a combination of the time of year (mid-August is prime vegetable season), the abundance of rain we received last week (3+ inches), and the bright sunshine & hot temperatures. Put it all together and the result is abundance!!

Here are some examples …

What’s in the box?

Blackberries, shishito peppers, cucumbers, carrots, green beans, tomatoes, onions, fresh garlic, zucchini.

• Blackberries are always a highlight of the summer. It seems almost everybody enjoys blackberries. Picked properly they are a little sweet & a little tart. If they aren’t quite ripe, they are sour. Too ripe and they are soft & mushy, but incredibly sweet. We try to pick them as ripe as possible, but still firm. Unlike raspberries, blackberries are not hollow, but have a centre core which is soft & edible. The only way to eat a blackberry is to pop the whole thing in your mouth. Try to take a small bite, and you are covered in black, staining juice. Blackberries are best eaten fresh, but also make great jam, juice, sauce, ice cream …
• Please note that we do use pesticides on our blackberries. For many years we did not. That was one of the good things about growing blackberries – no spraying necessary! Then along came the spotted wing drosophila. Spotted wing drosophila is an invasive vinegar fly that has the potential to cause extensive damage to many fruit crops – especially soft and dark coloured fruit like blackberries. In the last few years it has been found throughout much of southern Ontario and most of the fruit-growing areas of North America, and has become a chronic pest in berry and tender fruit crops. Effective biological controls are not yet available. There are cultural practices that we use to help reduce the insect populations, but the only effective control right now is chemical. And so we spray regularly to try to kill the spotted wing drosophila and protect our blackberries (and elderberries). We would rather not! But then again, we would rather not have worms in our blackberries!
• Shishito peppers are a Japanese pepper – bright green, with a sweet, fruity flavour and thin, tender, wrinkled skin. What makes a shishito exciting is that 1 in 10 peppers will be hot! They are simple to prepare and delicious to eat! While you can use them as you would any other sweet pepper, they are at their best when charred in olive oil in a cast-iron skillet or other heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add some minced fresh garlic. Cook the peppers whole, turning occasionally, until they begin to blister on all sides. This only takes a few minutes. Sprinkle with salt and maybe a splash of lemon or lime juice and some parmesan cheese, and serve immediately. Eat the whole pepper – except the stem.
• Cucumbers were not listed as being in the box last week – but there they were! They surprised us with a big & unexpected pick. And here they are again! Returning favourites are the white Silver Slicer, a delicious, crunchy cucumber. They really are great! We also have long green cucumbers – with the beautiful name of Summer Dance – also delicious, but disappointing for us as they get scabby so quick and then look poorly. Lastly we are trying a couple of heirloom varieties. These get rather large and sometimes a bit seedy but like the others they do taste great. If it sounds like I like cucumbers, I sure do. They are one of my favourite vegetables!
• The remaining vegetables in your box this week are familiar to you – carrots, green beans, tomatoes (various sizes), onions, fresh garlic & zucchini.
• What isn’t in the box perhaps should also be mentioned. Lettuce was missing last week and is absent again this week and might be for a few more weeks. The extreme heat & humidity we had recently slowed down the lettuce’s germination first and then its growth when it was finally planted. We kept picking earlier plantings longer than we prefer, but now it has caught up to us and there will be this lettuce lull for a while. We are harvesting a small amount from what has recently grown, but not enough for our CSA. It’s a similar story with most of our greens. But they will return …

Some final examples of abundance …