This Week at the Farm: Strawberry Drinks, PYO, Scapes, and Flowers

We’re looking forward to a few slightly cooler days after temperatures reached 90 degrees the last couple days! It was a great week, despite the heat—especially for the strawberries, which are still going strong in the pick-your-own patch.

As we head into week four of strawberry season, we’re keeping the patch open for picking (weather permitting) and our farm crew is moving on to other crops. This means we’ll only have pick-your-own strawberries from now on. Don’t worry, there are tons out there and picking could go on for another week if the weather cooperates. Come on over this weekend to get one last taste of fresh strawberries and to pick berries for your freezer!

Strawberry Goodness and Other Treats from the Kitchen

You may have noticed that we recently introduced new drinks in the cafe. Two of them, inspired by the current berry season, are perfect for a hot summer day: strawberry lemonade and strawberry milk. The kitchen used organic strawberries grown in our field—and picked by our farm crew—to make a wonderfully sweet syrup for these light and refreshing seasonal drinks!

To go with your strawberries, we’ll have rhubarb cream bar cookies for sale in the farmstand this weekend, along with our other regular offerings like granola, cookies, and brownie bars, to name a few.

Remember, we’re happy to take special orders for any of our food products. Just make sure to give us enough notice so the kitchen has time to make it! Email any requests or questions to Theo.

From the Fields to the Farmstand & Cafe

When you walk in the farmstand, you’ll notice the vegetable displays are expanding. The ice table is piled high with beautiful beets, cabbage, fennel, green garlic, celery, radishes, and napa cabbage. We just started harvesting shelling and snap peas, as well as 3 different varieties of new potatoes.

Keep an eye out for carrots, fresh onions, and summer squash in the next week or so. We just harvested the first couple zucchinis and it looks like the carrots and onions are just about ready!

Tasty Scapes

Around this time every year, we trim scapes off of our garlic plants. Removing these thin, green curlicue flower buds from the center of the plant refocuses the energy toward the growth of the garlic bulb.

Scapes have a mild garlic flavor and can be used just like garlic in many recipes. You can make a pesto, grill them, pickle them, etc. Click here to read more about scapes and how to use them, or try this Garlic Scape and New Potato Dip.

Since they’re abundant during this fleeting season, the price is marked down 10%—to $9.00/lb—through Monday, July 8. To give you a better understanding of how the price translates to cooking: one scape weighs about 0.05 (and costs 45 cents), and you only need about one half pound to make a pesto.

Plant Sales

In case you missed it, a lot of our plants are on sale right now:

• 35% off annuals, through Sunday
• 50% off hanging baskets
• 50% off vegetable starts *does not include herbs

Hanging baskets and vegetable starts will be on sale until they’re gone – don’t miss out!

Summer Learning and Fun on the Farm

Our campers celebrated the end of the first week of camp with tie-dye and homemade ice cream (which one group made by hand). They were busy all week with all sorts of activities, such as: making boats with natural objects and sending them down the Connecticut river; a tour of the hard-working tractors here on the farm; building a solar oven to make mini pizzas; and writing perspective stories from animals here on the farm. These are just a few of the activities they got to choose from!

Community building is something that we emphasize a lot during camp (and in all of our education programs). One of the highlights from this week was a community-effort Strawberry Shortcake, which everyone helped make for a special snack on Tuesday. Three groups were led by our educators Seth, Helen, and Ben, and each group contributed one component. Seth’s group baked the shortcakes, Helen’s group shook up the whipped cream, and Ben’s group harvested and macerated strawberries. We can get a lot done when we divide up the work and work together!

Gardening Tips: Cutting Flowers in the Garden

Cut the stem of the flower above a new leaf set to encourage branching and to ensure that the gardens continue producing. Be careful not to cut stems longer than 12 inches (except for Gladiolas and Sunflowers, which can be cut all the way to the ground). Lisianthus will have clusters of buds at the top of a stem; in this case, you may cut a stem with buds. Click here for more flower picking tips!

As we get further into the summer, we have a wider variety of veggies available—you can walk into the farmstand without a plan and leave with all the ingredients you need to make a delicious meal. Chat with our farmstand staff or check out our recipe suggestions for inspiration (in the back corner of the farmstand, by the baked goods) and see what you can come up with!

See you at the farm!

–From all of us at Cedar Circle

Upcoming

July 6: Norwich Farmers Market, 9–1.
July 7: Knife sharpening at the farmstand, 10–2.
July 9: Little Farmers drop-in class for children ages 2 to 5, 10–11 am.
July 11: Lebanon Farmers Market, 4–7 pm.