Holy Hotness, Batman!

Hello Friends!

And hello hot August weather! Monday was completely miserable … and I only spent 20 minutes outside walking from city hall to the Movie Fan to get a guilty pleasure flick to watch between the end of work and the start of the Town Council meeting! I can only imagine how hot and uncomfortable the farmers were that day.

Tuesday was much worse, though, for so many reasons. Tuesday was filled with the most improbable of circumstances. A ripper of a thunderstorm came through around 5 a.m. Not a problem for us – just one branch down and the power stayed on. Not so in Eureka. I took Ben in to preschool Tuesday morning to find that the entire town had no power, and huge tree limbs were laying all over highway 117. The preschool teachers told me they’d have to send the kids home if power wasn’t restored within a couple of hours given the forecasted heat. That was bad news since it was a harvest day (in which Bill has no time for anything) and it was a day in which I was giving a presentation at 10 a.m. for which I had not prepared.

I proceeded to work, hoping that of the 27,000 people without power in the Peoria area, the Ameren line workers would come to Eureka’s rescue first. Right.

About 8 miles from the preschool (and half a mile before getting onto the interstate), I heard a very unpleasant and very loud grating noise under my car. I immediately pulled over and found that the strap holding my muffler up had busted. I called my neighbor, who works at ISU, and was able to hitch a ride to work with him, leaving my car to be towed.

I furiously prepared for my presentation (which turned out mediocre at best – I’m not being modest, either!), and at 9:30 a.m. I got a call from the preschool. No power. I had told Bill to check the phone messages frequently, figuring it was likely that he’d get a call from the preschool. Unfortunately, Noah had been the last person to use our phone and hadn’t hung it up correctly. So when I called home, all I got was a busy signal. I had to then call the neighbor (the one neighbor that we have who would be home!) and have her send her kid over to find Bill either at home or down in the field.

The story ends with Bill picking up Ben, harvesting with two small-and-marginally-helpful boys, and bringing them both in to the market. I then took part of the afternoon off to help run the circus that we call our market stand. (It was also Noah’s first market where he sold his “art” – colored pictures out of the Elmo coloring book – for 25 cents.) If we seemed a bit out of sorts (code for “crabby as hell”!), that’s the back story.

But enough about us, how are you? Are you feeling like making pesto this week? I hope so! Our basil is kicking some major butt right now and needs a serious thinning. We will be bringing in small bunches as usual AND one pound bags for a discounted price of $6/bag.

Here’s a very easy pesto recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook:

Place 3 cups (packed) fresh basil leaves and 3 garlic cloves into a food processor and mince well. Add 1/3 cup pine nuts, walnuts, or almonds (we use almonds – CHEAPER!) and keep blending until ground. Drizzle in 1/3 cup olive oil while machine is still running, until you have a smooth paste. Transfer to a bowl and then add in 1/3 cup parmesan. Add salt and pepper to taste. (Side note: You can also make pesto with the same recipe but substituting cilantro, dill, parsley, etc. for the basil.)

We primarily use pesto on pasta and pizza. We always freeze batches of it in the summer for use in the winter. To freeze it, just mix up everything except the parmesan. You can add that when you thaw it out. We have had great success freezing into ice cube trays and then popping them into a freezer bag. It also works to use mason jars with a layer of olive oil on top. In fact, if you keep a layer of oil on top, you can keep pesto in the fridge for weeks and weeks.

Many customers have asked about storing fresh basil. It is a very perishable item, but we’ve been most successful getting it nice and wet (especially after a morning out at the market stand) and putting it into a glass of water on the counter. If you want to put it into a bag, it can’t be nearly as wet or it just turns to mush against the plastic.

What’s going on in the field? Many of the fall crops have germinated – rutabaga (which has yet to become a chic vegetable), fall radishes, chois, arugula, tatsoi, salad mix, head lettuce, and daikon. The sweet potatoes look great. And thank heavens that the parsnips look awesome. What a change of pace. Usually, Bill plants parsnips and can’t keep them weeded and they turn out to be a big failure and waste of space. Not this year! The fall markets promise to be amazing unless we have a serious breach of security in the deer fence.

We hope that the market won’t experience the annual drop off in customers after the start of the school year. We think it won’t be as drastic given how many new people seem to be attending the market this season. It’s truly been amazing.

Here’s some additional info on erstwhile missing vegetables … head lettuces will reappear in two weeks with Japanese turnips following in another two weeks. I also anticipate some salad mix before too long.

New this week will be sweet peppers and fresh soybeans! Yay! As most gardeners will tell you, this has been a bad pepper year. We’re not sure why, but the cool weather in June was likely the culprit. Our bell peppers aren’t as productive as usual, but they’re still tasty! We’re also bringing non-bell sweet peppers that are more flavorful than the bells. This year we’re featuring Jimmy Nardello, Carmen (an Italian Sweet Pepper!), Marconi Red, Krimson Lee, and Golden Treasure.

We’ll also have some hot peppers, including Anaheim and Poblano.

And since not a week can go by without a mention of my sweet baby boys (am I becoming Kathy Lee Gifford?), I should point out the pictures this week of Ben helping with the onion harvest. He’s actually quite helpful with the less delicate vegetables. He can be very focused when he gets set on a task. He’s got two cute little habits that I wonder about in the long-term … he’s a hand wringer when excited and he sticks out his tongue when concentrating. It’s so cute, but I have a hard imagining a 40-year-old doing the same thing.

Here’s what we’ll be bringing to the market this week:

Eggplant
Beets (Traditional, Golden, and Chioggia)
Kale
Parsley
Basil
Swiss Chard
Summer Squash/Zucchini
Carrots
Garlic
Bulb Onions
Leeks
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Okra
Fennel
Peppers
Soybeans

Bill has just started a new delivery system. He’s delivering to the Garlic Press in Uptown Normal on Tuesdays and to Common Ground in downtown Bloomington on Saturday mornings. So if you miss a market or just run out of veggies, head to Common Ground! And if you need the veggies prepared into a fabulous meal, Garlic Press is right down the road.

We’ll see you at the Downtown Bloomington Farmers Market on Saturdays from 7:30 a.m. – noon. BRING YOUR BAGS!! We’ll also be at the Trailside Market in Uptown Normal, every Tuesday from 3:30 – 6:00 p.m.

Please let your friends know about the blog. We plan to put out the email sign-up sheet during the market season again. Call us at 467-9228 or email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com if you have questions.

Thanks!
Mercy Davison