Think of Agriculture this Holiday Season

Think of Agriculture this Holiday Season
Thank you for your support of our local agriculture this year. All of the members of our farm team are thankful for the opportunity to share the gifts of the farm with you.

Have a wonderful holiday with those you love.

Eat well!

Much love, happiness and health,

Patricia

Taproot Farms Team:

Patricia, Josh, Izaak, Lily, Frank, Justine, Tim, Jeff, Jem and Malcolm

Noggins Corner Farm Team:
Carolyn, Bill, Melissa, Ian, Andrew, Beth, Jillian, Dwaine, Debbie, Erlene, Greg, Cathy and many more...

A pic of the share - week 6

Week 9 of the Noggins CSA

This weeks share will consist of:

1 qt Quinte Apples
1 qt Shiro Plums
1 qt Early Golden Plums
1 3L Peaches
1 pint sweet Cherries
1 bunch rhubarb

The Shiro plums may need to sit out on the counter to soften up a bit. The peaches are coming on heavy now. If you would like to order extras for canning here is a list of what is available now. You can email me to place an order if you like.

3L Basket of peaches - 5.50, 1/4 bu Peaches - $12.00, 1/4 bu plums $10.00

Around the farm everyone is harvesting plums and peaches. We are also working to get all of the apples thinned. We do this so that the apples that remain on the trees will be a good size.

Our corn maze and agritourism area is open for the season. You may wish to check it out on the webpage.

On Sunday, the 15th of August we are hosting the Incredible Picnic. Come on out with your family for a great time!!!


Recipe:
Fruit Custard Pie - Simpy in Season pag. 163 (this is a wonderful cookbook!!!)
9-inch unbaked pastry shell
2 cups apricots, plums, cherries or berries
1/4 cup sugar (adjust to the sweetness of the fruit)
Arrange fruit in pastry shell. Sprinkle with sugar.

2 eggs beaten
1 1/4 cups milk
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Mix together until well combined. Pour over fruit. Bake in preheated oven at 450F for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350F and continue baking until custard is set, about 25 minutes.

Raspberry Pictures

Week 6

This weeks share will consist of:
1- 2L Sweet Apple Cider
1- Bag of Jonagold Apples
2- pints Raspberries
1- pint sweet cherries
1-12 oz bag of frozen cranberry
If you are not getting your e newsletter each Monday please email me so we can be sure you are in the loop. I know I have missed some of you. So sorry!!! pbishop@nogginsfarm.ca

This week is raspberry week. My father, Andrew came in to visit yesterday and told me that the raspberries are on strong this week. Some years there is a nice steady pace of ripening. The weather provides the conditions for a more drawn out season, but this year it is boom – raspberry season.

It is also the time to enjoy the sweet cherries. With the amount of rain we had last week quite a few cherries split. The trees take up water via their roots and cause the cherries to be nice and plump. If there is too much water during the ripening, then the cherries split. They are still very good even if they do split – i just ignore how they look and eat them. If you get a crack or two, don't be afraid to eat it up just like the rest. It would be great if we could start to relearn the idea of a perfect piece of fruit. It doesn't need to look perfect it needs to taste great.

I have always wanted to make Brandied Fruit. I don't like Brandy, but the idea of a brandied fruit dessert sounds so good. Or giving away, as a gift, a nice jar of brandied fruit seems like it would be different and fun. All you need to do is continue to add fresh fruit to a mason jar with brandy in it. Just an idea I've had and wanted to pass it on.

Raspberry Sauce – Taken from this link:
http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/raspberry-sauce-4/Detail.aspx

Ingredients
1 pint fresh raspberries
1/4 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons orange juice
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup cold water
Directions
1.Combine the raspberries, sugar, and orange juice in a saucepan. Whisk the cornstarch into the cold water until smooth. Add the mixture to the saucepan and bring to a boil.
2.Simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly, until the desired consistency is reached. The sauce will thicken further as it cools.
3.Puree the sauce in a blender or with a hand held immersion blender and strain it through a fine sieve. Serve warm or cold. The sauce will keep in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.

Have a great week!

Week 5 CSA Fruit Box

Week 5 CSA Fruit Box
July 12 - 15th

This weeks share consists of:
1 bag Crispin apples
2 pints raspberries
2 quarts strawberries

The season of berries is upon us. The strawberries have gone so quickly. These are the final days of strawberries until we get the fall bearing varieties in the late summer and fall.
Sweet Cherries are just beginning. They will be plentiful next week. The rain, although wonderful for most crops, is touch and go with cherries. The water provides a good sized cherry, but too much will lead to cracked cherries. It is really hard to control the amount of rain fall. Where cherry production is done with a tunnel over head, there is the ability to control the amount of water the trees take up, and so we are able to size up the cherries without splitting them. Without the cover, it is up to nature, what kind of cherry season it will be.
For those who have not been getting this enewsletter, but have now been added to the list, the apples for the past two weeks have been Jonagold. They have held up really well in storage. This week you are getting Crispin. Both of these apples are great for fresh eating and also for cooking.
If you are getting overwhelmed with berries you can easily freeze them. If you don't have time to deal with them you can just rinse them and pop them into the freezer in a ziploc bag or container. If you want frozen berries that will not be stuck together, just lay them out on baking sheet in the freezer. Once they are frozen then you can put them into bags to dip into them all winter.
Smoothies and jam or sauces are also great ways to use up berries. Raspberry Strawberry Jam sound lovely!. ORRRR, like I have just discovered, dehydrated berries are a great snack. Our kids love them. We didn't add any sugar, and they devoured them.

Farm day picnic

First week

Here is Erlene in the packing house grading out Golden Delicious




And here are the fruit boxes packed out and ready to go for today.



Have a great day!

Week one of Noggins Fruit CSA

Welcome to the first of the Noggins Fruit CSA Shares. We are excited to enter on this journey with you.

The apples this week are Crispins. They were harvested last year and have been in storage since they were picked in October 2009. On the farm we have storage rooms that take the oxygen out of the room so that the apples slow down their respiration rate and do not break down as fast. This mean we are able to keep apples throughout the winter and into the spring and summer to keep local apples available year round. Some varieties do better than other in long term storage. Researchers, farmers and other in the apple industry spend a lot of energy on learning how to improve storage of crops so we can keep the customer happy with crispy, juicy apples.

We have 400 Crispin trees on the farm. They are a Japanese variety, and the original name was Mutsu. They changed the name to Crispin to be more appealing from a marketing perspective. These apples are best for fresh eating but you can bake with them too.

Activities on the farm:

Beth is busy with school tours in the agritourism area.

Thinning Peaches - all the focus is into thinning peaches right now to ensure we have good size fruit for harvest.

Orchards - looking great. They are 9-10 days ahead of schedule. The great rain fall was welcomed by the trees as the orchards were very dry.

Cherries – the pits are beginning to harden meaning we will begin to harvest in about 3 weeks time. Yippy!

Raspberries - in the tunnels they look great and should be ready to harvest in 2 weeks. Outside the tunnels the raspberries are in bloom.

Recipes:

The cranberries can be used as a cranberry sauce for chicken or turkey, but also you could make cranberry coffee cake, cranberry salad, oat bran cranberry pancakes, just to suggest a few ideas. I will add some of these recipes to the Noggins blog.

Roasted Rhubarb

4 cups chopped rhubarb

½ cup sugar

¼ cup orange or lemon juice

2 tbsp candied ginger or fresh ginger root (minced)

1 tsp orange or lemon peel (grated)

Combine in a baking pan. Spread evenly and bake in preheated over at 450F until rhubarb is soft but retains its shape, about 25 minutes. Stir, cool slightly, and serve with ice cream or yogurt.

Serves 4

This recipe is taken from Simply in Season cookbook, page 74. It is a great cookbook and we have copies available for sale at the farm market.

Oat Bran Cranberry Pancakes – page 187 Simply in Season

¾ cup oat bran

½ cup whole wheat flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

¼ tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp ground ginger

Stir together in a large bowl

1 cup milk

1 egg

1 tbsp oil

2 tsp honey (slightly warmed)

Combing separately. Mix into dry ingredients.

½ cup cranberries (chopped)

½ cup apple (chopped)

Fold in. Fry in a medium-hot, greased frypan. Serve with cranberry syrup (optional)

Cranberry Syrup: boil together 1 cup cranberry juice, 2 tbsp honey, 1 tbsp cornstartch and a pinch of ground ginger.

Update on orchards

The peaches are in pink on late varieties and are in full bloom on the early variety,  Harrow Diamond. It is a great time for a photo opt. The Early Goldens and Shiros [both yellow early plums]are out in full bloom today and the pears are almost ready to pop.
Some gravenstiens are starting to show pink and the buds are separating on
the other varieties. We spent some time today putting out a little fertilizer
around some apple trees. We are pruning in earnest. The season is about
three weeks ahead of normal.

Peach Blossoms

The peaches will be blossoming this weekend. If you have the time to take a drive this weekend you will see the plums and peaches are blossoming as well as the blueberries. They are so beautiful!