As the days are getting noticeably shorter, the summer heat remains intense with few cloudy breaks from the sunshine. Our crops are enjoying the most recent rain showers followed by brilliant clear skies. Things are growing rapidly here and we find ourselves harvesting more than ever. We’ve harvested well over 8000 lbs of yummy food.

Tips on Preserving

Some veggies that you’ve been seeing lots of will be in the shares for a while. Tomatoes, green beans, eggplant, okra, and basil are staying healthy in the fields and are sure to last quite some time. Be sure to take advantage of these large quantities in the shares so that you don’t miss them when they’re gone. To preserve tomatoes, you can can them (link to canning tomatoes) or peel them, combine in a pot with salt, pepper, and garlic, and simmer down to desired consistency. You can freeze this sauce in a plastic bag as a base for pizza or spaghetti sauce in the winter when tomatoes are no longer growing. For green beans or okra, simply blanch the clean, cut or snapped pods in boiling water or by steaming. They’ll turn bright green. These both freeze remarkably well. Basil lovers can dry their leaves in a paper bag hung in a dry environment or combine the basil with garlic and olive oil and freeze for pesto (just add parmesan and nuts after you thaw.) A good idea is to freeze pesto in ice trays. You can pop the frozen cubes out and put into a plastic bag in the freezer. These serve as great single serving batches of pesto.

We hope you are enjoying the harvests and that your taste buds are happy with the summer crops. Some of you may notice that our tomatoes don’t have quite the shelf life of those that you may purchase in the store. The reasons? We let our tomatoes ripen on the vine for superior flavor. Also many (14 of 20) varieties that we grow are heirlooms. Here’s a great resource to learn more about heirlooms and seed saving.

Each variety that we grow at Serenbe Farms is hand selected during the winter months of planning. We choose these specific varieties for quality, flavor, and growing characteristics (climate preference, disease and pest resistance). We grow over 200 different varieties (11 varieties of potatoes, 4 varieties of eggplant, 6 varieties of peppers, 20 tomatoes, 10 melons, etc.) I’ve chosen this many so that we can select from year to year what does best in our soils and which people seem to enjoy the most.

I want to thank all of you that filled out the surveys; many of your ideas and responses help with future planning and give us ideas of how we can improve things on the farm. We appreciate your praise and recognition too! We’re having a great season and have a wonderful crew, we’re happy to have Turtle back on the team. One of our fine helpers, Katie Anderson, will be leaving soon to take a new job in Kentucky. We’ll miss her! Thanks for all your hard work Katie!

Be sure to mark your calendars for our First Annual Salsa Fest. This will directly follow our market Saturday, August 12th from 12pm to 2pm in the commons area across from the bakeshop in the Serenbe community. Activities will include music, piñata, homemade blueberry organic ice cream, salsa tasting, refreshing beverages, and much more. Please consider entering the salsa contest, use your own ingredients (farm fresh) and bring enough for 30 tasters. There will be prizes for the best salsa. Call or email me (770-463-9319, info@serenbefarms.com) for more information or to let us know that you’ll be entering your favorite salsa!

Farmer Paige and the strong, sweaty squad