Today we had some exciting visitors. Mario Batali and his wife Susi Kahn visited the farm and then proceeded to signup for a share! As you may know, they are summer residents of Leelanau County and so are shoppers at Hansens Grocery in Suttons Bay. They were on a tour with the Leelanau Conservancy checking out various farms and we had fun showing them around, talking about our farming business and then inviting them to the garlic harvest tomorrow. They may come for awhile and soak up the aromas of freshly dug meadowlark red garlic and we hope that you will come too! Tomorrow is the annual harvest of meadowlark red garlic and at last look there is a very slight chance of rain, so we are planning to push ahead and go for it. We encourage you to come after 9:00 and lend a hand, tour the farm and even pick some sugar snap peas! Please know that there is work for all, as we will set up stations in the shade for cutting garlic and placing it in crates for curing. The garlic we are giving out right now is juicy, full of water and not it's most potent. The wrappers are soft and delicate and in order to have it last through the winter, it needs to cure or dry. It take about 3 weeks for a proper cure and for those weeks the barn will be pungent and delicious smelling and make us perpetually hungry as we work on flowers up there. Please bring with you a pair of gloves, a water bottle, a sun hat and a pair of hand pruners if you have them, a snack and a lunch if you plan to stay for awhile. Come for a little, come for the whole day we love to see your faces and we especially love to share this annual event with you....

Boxes today have some of the continued early summer crops and some new additions. We are excited to share some beautiful, delicious, organic sweet cherries with you! The Weavers of Northport grow some amazing cherries and we hope that you will enjoy them. You will notice that they are coated with white which is a clay spray that organic growers use called "Surround". It is only colloidal clay and will wash off with water. The cherries aren't washed so they will hold up better and we hope that you will appreciate the hard work that goes into organic sweet cherries....Boxes include: salad mix, lettuce head, a small onion, fresh garlic, fennel(the bulbish white root with ferny big leaves; see recipe below), carrots, broccoli, sugar snap peas, green curly kale, italian flat leaf parsley and for premiums the first cauliflower, purple carrots and a beautiful kale bouquet picked for you especially by Helio plus extras of onions and garlic. Here is a recipe for using the fennel which may be new to some of you. It is one of our favorite farm crops and we hope that you will give this, one of our favorite recipes for fennel:

PASTA WITH GOLDEN FENNEL

-1 large fennel bulb -2 TBL unsalted butter -1 TBL olive oil

-grated zest and juice of 1 lemon -2 garlic cloves, minced -3/4# fettucine

-parmesan cheese

Quarter the bulb, setting aside the ferny greens(which are delicious in salads) and slice the bulb thinly. Heat a large pot of water for the pasta. Melt 1 TBL of the butter with olive oil in a wide skillet. Add fennel and sauté over high heat, stirring occasionally until browned in places, 7-10 minutes. Season with 1 tsp salt. Toss with lemon juice and add 1 c. water. Reduce the heat and cook, covered until the liquid has evaporated. Add another ½ cup water and continue cooking in this fashion until the fennel is very soft and deep gold in color, about 25 minutes. Season with pepper. Chop handful of fennel greens with garlic and lemon zest and set aside. Add salt and pasta to water and cook until al dente. Scoot it out and add to pan with fennel and chopped greens. Taste for salt and season with pepper. Serve with cheese grated over top.

One last plug for the garlic harvest is this: delicious, scrumptious baked goodies created by Liz and Ella. These ladies are some of the finest bakers around, so don't miss out....they are baking coffee cake, Liz's famous cinnamon rolls and more. MMMMM......love, the meadowlarks

This page last updated on 7/15/2009.

Click here to make comments about this web site