Week Fourteen: Falling into Autumn

Well, ready or not, Fall seems to be upon us. I hear it's going to be hot again in the next week, but we can't avoid the fact that it's already mid-September! Somehow the summer has slipped away again and we're back to chilly harvest mornings and fall crops. This Monday we did one of my favorite farm tasks--harvesting winter squash! This job is a bit scratchy and hard on the hands, but it's also great fun tossing the squash from hand to hand out of the field and into the wagon. It's like a game! Farmer Anne says my throw has improved from last year :-). One fun aspect of the task this time around was getting to use our new solar-powered tractor to pull the wagon we loaded the squash onto. It's so quiet and pleasant to be around with its electric motor. Wednesday's harvest morning started off quite chilly but we gradually took off our outer layers and by afternoon it seemed positively hot in the fields.
This week's harvest was:
Choice of 1 lb tomatoes or 2 summer squash
Pears - 1 box
Swiss chard - 1 lb
Bok choi - 1 lb
Eggplant - 1
Melon - 1
Hot peppers - 3
Sweet peppers - 4
Garlic - 1 bulb
Basil - 1 (large) branch
Damaged winter squash - 1
Plus, I spent some time in the u-pick tomato patch picking tomatoes to be used in recipes in the coming weeks!

And the menu will be:
Pesto from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks for a Crowd p. 267
Ratatoille from Moosewood p. 119
Creamy Choi Soup from Farmer John's Cookbook p. 80
Winter squash and chard and sweet pepper curry from Sundays at Moosewood p. 303 (Thanks to Suzanne for the gift of the cookbook!)

We're beginning to develop rather a backlog of hot peppers, so I'm planning to try making our own CFK Louisiana Hot Sauce. Hopefully this will be nice and spicy!

That's it for now. See you Friday!
Mary
ps. sorry, no pics this week. We'll try for next week!