This Week at the Farm: Getting Creative with Summer Harvests

After some much needed rain and a few thunderstorms this week, we’ve officially transitioned to August weather. With the drier air, cooler nights, and foggy mornings, it seems like summer is flying by. We still have a few more weeks left though so make sure you get out and enjoy the summer weather while it lasts! Try to get in a few more swims and hikes and cookouts, and come spend a day at the farm picking flowers, picnicking, or berry picking. Our blueberry patch is still open dawn till dusk daily, and there are still plenty out there.

Sales

If you have your own vegetable garden, you know that at this point in the summer there are more squash and cucumbers than you know what to do with. It’s that time of year here at the farm too, so we’re having a pickling sale and highlighting squash as the vegetable of the week.

Zucchini and summer squash are $1.75/lb through Monday (discounted from $2.25/lb). Cucumbers are 15% off when you buy 5 pounds or more, 20% off when you buy 10 pounds or more, and 25% off when you buy 20 pounds or more.

Our summer plant sale is also still going on! Summer annuals, indoor plants, herb starts, and hanging baskets are all 50% off until they’re gone. We still have a good selection, but don’t wait—things are beginning to sell out!

From the Fields

We started harvesting honeydew melons, cantaloupe, yellow peppers, and corn this week. There’s a steady flow of zucchini, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, hot peppers, beets, carrots, and more. The early season tomato greenhouse (the one you can see from the farmstand parking lot) was cleaned out this week, and we moved on to harvesting heirlooms and slicers from the hoop houses across the road. In just a couple weeks, we’ll have field tomatoes too!

From the Kitchen

Our wonderful kitchen staff are, as always, working hard to process all of the berries and veggies coming in from the fields. They’re busy pickling, fermenting, and freezing in addition to all of the other cooking and baking that they do.

You’ll see the fruits of their labor in the farmstand and cafe: lacto-ferments like Curtido, Garden, and Blush krauts and Kimchi, shelf stable marinara, pickles, stuffed patty pan squash, Greek Green Beans (with mint and parsley), loaves of zucchini bread and coffee cake, and more!

To special order food or food products from the kitchen, contact Theo in advance.

Getting Creative with Veggies

The summer campers use fruits, veggies, and herbs they find on the farm in so many creative ways — from baking focaccia for the staff using fresh tomatoes and onion, to steeping tea with herbs they picked from the garden, to making canoes out of zucchinis (zu-canoes) and sailing them down the river. The kids even got to use an old cider press to make cider out of apples that our production crew picked from our orchard. There’s no limit to what you can do on a farm!

Learning About Bees

Leif LaWhite, a local beekeeper whose bees live here at the farm, came to talk to the campers on Thursday. The kids were brave as they learned about the bees that help produce our food, and they even got to try fresh honey, straight from the comb!

Willing Hands Garden Tour

Open Farm Week has officially begun, and this Thursday, August 15th we’re offering a free tour of the Willing Hands Garden, a 2-acre permanent bed garden just south of the farmstand on Pavillion Rd. The permanent bed gets covered with a landscape material that acts as mulch, ultimately allowing us to avoid tilling and to keep the soil in a more natural state. Come to the event to learn more about this sustainable method of farming and how, in partnership with Willing Hands, we’re bringing food to human service organizations around the Upper Valley!

Read the Valley News article →

Gardening Tips: Plant Your Fall Crops

If you have a home garden, it’s time to start planting your fall crops. In this zone, you should plant arugula, spinach, kale, broccoli, beets, carrots, and radishes. Need seeds? We have beet, kale, radish, and broccoli seeds for sale in the farmstand.

As the end of summer approaches, many of the high school and college students who have worked in the fields, kitchen, cafe, and farmstand all season are finishing up work and heading back to school. We appreciate all of their hard work — we wouldn’t be able to do this without the extra help in the height of the season. We’re still looking for staff to fill positions in the farmstand and kitchen through the fall. If you know someone who is looking for work, please direct them to the employment application on our website and have them contact us.

Have a great weekend, and see you at the farm!

–From all of us at Cedar Circle

Upcoming

August 10: Norwich Farmers’ Market, 9–1.
August 11: Knife sharpening at the farmstand, 10–2.
August 13: Little Farmers drop-in class for children ages 2 to 5, 10–11 am.
August 15: Lebanon Farmers Market, 4–7 pm; Willing Hands Garden and Farm Tour (VT Open Farm Week), 6 pm.