Dedicated volunteer Diane Williams captured this shot at the CSA pickup last week. Thank you for all your hard work setting up the vegetables for the CSA pickup, Diane!
│ Announcements │ This Week’s Share │ U-Pick │ Recipe │ Coming Soon │
Announcements:
Featured farmer oyster sale
Pirates Cover Oyster Company is selling oysters during our CSA pickup in Annapolis on Thursday, September 2. Visit piratescoveoysters.com/CBF to order.
At checkout, select “Pickup” as the order type, then choose “Chesapeake Bay Foundation Headquarters” as the pickup location from the dropdown menu. Select September 2, 2021 as your pickup date.
Last week was a scorcher. We feel lucky to be alive! No one suffered heat exhaustion, and we are especially grateful for the kind souls who brought us popsicles and cold drinks—particularly when the power went out on Wednesday (we’re looking at you, Aretha Carr).
Hungry for some good news? The infrastructure bill that was just passed by the US Senate includes $238 million in additional funding for the Chesapeake Bay Program (helping states achieve the 2025 pollution reduction requirements of the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint). You can read details about this big Bay success here:
If you know and love anyone in Afghanistan or Haiti this week, we are thinking of them and wishing, WISHING for a bright future resilient to the storms ahead and a responsive, competent government of their community’s own choosing.
This Week’s Share:
A lot like last week!
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Garlic
Yellow onions
Squash
Red potatoes
A green bell or ripe, sweet pepper
Choice of beans, okra, chilies, or tomatillos
U-Pick:
In our herb and flower garden behind the washing station:
Basil (Genovese, Greek, Thai, Round Midnight, Lemon, and Tulsi)
Garlic chives
Lemon balm
Mint
Oregano
Parsley
Sage
Shiso
Sorrel
Thyme
Flowers and ornamental greenery for your vase.
In field G2, which is beside the parking area, next to the washing station:
Parsley
Basil of various types
Sunflowers are spectacular!
Zinnias, Cosmos, Gomphrena, and Tithonia flowers
This is a moment captured from a Student Leader trip that the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s educators brought to Clagett Farm earlier this summer. Did you know your student can take one of these trips? Check out the options for outdoor field trips (subject to change according to pandemic guidelines) to learn about the Chesapeake Bay and spread the word to your students’ teachers.
Recipes:
Fried rice is one of those recipes that can accommodate all kinds of vegetables that you have handy. Here’s the basics:
Use leftover rice if you have it. If you don’t, make the rice and leave it in your fridge for a day. For a nice big main entre, make about 3 or 4 cups.
Scramble a couple eggs or rip up a block of firm tofu and sauté it with some salt and turmeric (for the yellow color). Set aside.
Mince your garlic and hot chilies and chop up your other vegetables into small, bite-size pieces: Summer squash, onions, beans if you have them, peppers, and some okra for the adventurous. In the largest sauté pan you have, sauté all the vegetables until they are tender and browned. You might need to add the vegetables in stages—if you crowd the pan too much they will all steam instead of browning. Set aside.
Now it’s time to crisp up the rice. Spread it out on your big, hot, oiled pan with the heat up, and let it sit (don’t stir it around) until it gets brown and crispy. Then flip it all over and crisp it up some more.
Add in the vegetables and egg or tofu. Pour in a few tablespoons of soy sauce (I like to add a little liquid smoke in this step, as well) and grind some black pepper on top. Frozen peas or edamame are also a nice touch if you have them. Stir it all together and taste for seasoning.
If you picked some garlic chives from the herb garden, toss them (minced) on top liberally as a garnish. Scallions would also work (if you can believe it, I still had a few garlic scapes and some green tops from the shallots in the back of my fridge).
Serve!
Coming Soon:
Asian pears! Probably beginning next week and continuing for a few weeks.
We expect to hold steady at about a pound of tomatoes per shareholder per week for a while (fingers crossed). We’re trying to figure out if there’s a way to give you all an opportunity to U-Pick tomatoes before the end of the tomato season. If we do, please don’t expect this to be the year you go home with a big haul to can or freeze. The sun golds are growing like crazy, so we can at least be glad for those little bursts of flavor!
Squash and cucumbers are still looking good and will continue through the end of the month.
We’ll get one more week of red-skinned potatoes, probably week 16.
We’re starting to see more of the orange (Oranos) and red (Cornito Rosso) peppers that we love so much. Slowly but surely, the peppers are producing more fruit.
This year we planted a mild habanero. I know, right? We didn’t realize there was such a thing, so we decided it would be fun to try. We didn’t want to confuse anyone, so we did NOT plant the more typical super-hot habanero this year. This fruity, mild habanero is called Tobago Seasoning and it looks like they are just starting to ripen.
Tomatillo plants are starting to show their age. If you have plans to make salsa verde, you should do so before the end of the month.
The deer made quick work of the few red okra plants we had. But you’ll keep seeing green okra for another month.
Garlic forever!
The eggplants continue to be sparse but resilient.
Sweet potatoes still have a long way to go, but the winter squash is making some serious-looking fruit! We’ve held off the groundhogs and deer, but with all this rain, there’s still a chance that blight will wipe out the plants before we get to the finish line. Since we’re optimists, we think this is going to be a great year for butternuts, spaghetti squash, and acorn squash.
We’ve just seeded a number of greens and roots for late September through mid-November. Thank you, Jared, for planting during that heat wave!
Thank you for Supporting our Farm!
CLAGETT FARM
Wednesdays, 3:00-7:00 P.M.
Saturdays, 1:00-4:00 P.M.
DUPONT CIRCLE DC
Wednesdays, 5:00-7:00 P.M.
ANNAPOLIS
Thursdays, 4:00-6:00 P.M.