Weekly Share

19 Jul CSA Share Photo: Week 8

This week a few heirloom varieties of vegetables make their way into the share. In the pick-your-own field you’ll find the beautiful purple streaked Dragon’s Tongue Beans. This tasty attractive 19^th century heirloom hails from the Netherlands. It is considered a “romano” type bean, because pods are flat rather than round. Crisp, stringless and amazingly juicy when eaten raw, it does lose it’s purple coloration when cooked. You’ll also find the gorgeous elongated red torpedo onions, or Tropea onion, an Italian heirloom variety. The red onion from Tropea, Italy (Italian: “Cipolla Rossa di Tropea”) is a particular variety of red onion which grows in a small area of Calabria in southern Italy named “Capo Vaticano” near the city of Tropea. (You can also find it on the rolling hills of a small organic farm in the tiny hamlet of Blooming Glen, Pennsylvania!)

CSA Share, week 8.

Photos and text by Tricia Borneman, Blooming Glen farmer and co-owner.

13 Jul CSA Share Photo: Week 7

This week’s share, and the weather outside, has us really feeling like summer. The first of our greenhouse tomatoes, sweet fragrant cantaloupe and bright orange carrots complement the summer staples of cucumber and squash. Don’t worry, Jana’s weekly recipe gives some ideas for that three pounds of summer squash you got this week. And I opened up this month’s Martha Stewart Living to see a four page spread with recipes all featuring zucchini…get creative with zucchini bundt cake, or simply toss in oil and salt and grill. Whatever you do, its summer fresh eating!

Week 7 CSA Share

Photos and text by Tricia Borneman, Blooming Glen farmer and co-owner.

05 Jul CSA Share Photo: Week 6

“New” potatoes, fresh from the earth! Is there any better meal then boiled potatoes tossed with butter and dill?!

CSA share week 6

Photos and text by Tricia Borneman, Blooming Glen farmer and co-owner.

30 Jun CSA Share Photo: Week 5

The combination of scents mingling in the walk-in-cooler after harvest on Tuesday smelled like a wonderful earthy soup. Actually, combined with a chicken from Ledamete Grass Farm, the soup pot is where the celery and sweet onions, fresh garlic and parsley ended up in our kitchen. Speaking of great local offerings coming right to our doorstep, be sure to check out Otolith’s website to get in on the next community supported seafood share- early summer wild caught salmon! Otolith is a true family business. Owner and founder Amanda Bossard was here delivering the halibut share, and telling me how her youngest, at age 9, is spending the summer in Alaska fishing with Dad (Amanda’s husband, Murat), and loving every minute of it!

CSA Share week 5

In addition to the tasty produce, this week’s share saw a rainbow of bouquets, and big smiles, coming from the pick-your-own flower field.

Choosing the perfect flower, but really, how can you go wrong?!

The farm is blooming!

Sunflowers...golden, orange, and chocolate colored.

Photos and text by Tricia Borneman, Blooming Glen farmer and co-owner.

22 Jun CSA Share Photo: Week 4

Radicchio,  baby “arrowhead” cabbage, green beans, cucumbers and fresh garlic all make their debut in the share this week. Tuesday was the longest day of the year and the official first day of summer. Here at the farm, the solstice marks somewhat of a turning point in our season. We shift from planting, to tending and harvesting the crops. All of our major plantings are in, a goal we look to achieve before the solstice, for every day from here out will be a delightful dance towards winter, as the days gradually, almost imperceptibly, get shorter.

A little about fresh garlic: garlic is planted in the Fall, and the first harvest is when we snap the scapes to promote bulb growth.  Scapes, which you are familiar with by now, are the delicious, curly flower stalks on hardneck varieties. The next harvest, and main event, is of the bulb itself. Our entire garlic crop, about a half an acre, will be harvested the beginning of July and hung to dry and cure. Right now, we are harvesting some of the garlic as green garlic, which simply means it has not yet been cured. Uncured garlic doesn’t store as well, but how long are you really gonna let a single bulb of garlic hang around?! It is wonderfully aromatic, and a rare early summer treat. Use it just as you would regular garlic, but first you must remove several layers of moist skin to get to the cloves. With that bunch of basil, why not make some pesto?! Enjoy!

CSA share week 4

Photos and text by Tricia Borneman, Blooming Glen farmer and co-owner.

15 Jun CSA Share Photo: Week 3

If you have a back stock of turnips in your fridge, or have yet to experience their wonderful flavor, I was reminded today by a CSA member of a wonderful turnip soup recipe archived on our website. So after Farmer Tom came in soaking wet from the rainstorm I promptly made the quick and easy recipe. https://www.bloomingglenfarm.com/sm_db_item.php?id=52&featuretype=recipe 

Our dinner was turnip soup- which uses both the roots and turnip greens and a bit of Swiss chard, with cornbread on the side (made from cornmeal grown and milled in Bucks County- more on that later), kale chips hot from the oven and garlic scapes tossed in oil and salt and sauteed over high heat until carmelized. Fast, and delicious!

CSA share- week 3

Photos and text by Tricia Borneman, Blooming Glen farmer and co-owner.

07 Jun CSA Share Photo: Week 2

In case you get home and you’re not too sure what you left the farm with, here is a handy photo we plan to post weekly to help you out. Also keep an eye out for our weekly recipe from Jana. Enjoy!

CSA share June 7th (week 2).

And I couldn’t resist including this picture~ these strawberry pickers are travelling in style! Seriously- how genius! I can only imagine how much more farm work I might have gotten done if I’d had one of those when mine was just a wee one!

The mobile picking unit!

Photos and text by Tricia Borneman, Blooming Glen farmer and co-owner.