DISPATCHES FROM THE FARM

Autumn Harvest Preserves

Friday, June 10, 2011

On a recent very cold, wet Sunday afternoon, we decided to get on and bottle the season's end eggplants and a collection of very baby beetroots we'd been hoarding...

Baby beets boiling away to al dente.

Salted eggplants - Called 'sweating' or even 'purging', the sea salt draws out excess moisture by osmosis prior to cooking and helps 'collapse' the inter-cellular air pockets of the flesh, which then minimises their infamous oil absorption capacity. Some say it reduces bitterness, but fresh (not old) fruits are not usually bitter and salting old fruits will not alter their bitterness - so go figure!

Beets after cooking and before peeling.

Peeled beets - don't they look so vibrant and lovely?

All our beautiful, fresh herbs awaiting their addition to the marinades.

Char grilling the eggplants, once salted and rinsed and after a short steep in garlic and olive oil.
This char grilling was a challenge in the wind and between down pours!

Beets slipped into their jars, whilst the herb vinaigrette is simmering and infusing in the pot.

Pantry fillers complete - The eggplants in their marinade and the beets in their pickling juice.

All fresh produce courtesy of Angelica Organic farm - one of the perks of being a farmer :-).

It is very satisfying playing the 'ant' as opposed to the 'grasshopper', when at the end of the day you have the results of your labour after taking the time to make the most of the autumn harvest. We can now look forward to eating our 'sunshine' in a jar during the cold months.

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Autumn so far!

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

We are definitely into autumn now. Victoria switched back from daylight savings 2 weekends ago and it's nice to have light by 7am and does give a sense of season 'shift' when it's dark by 6pm. Plus its been cold (13 degC days) and wet again the past few days.

Damaged poly-tunnel plastic destined for recycling on a smaller tunnel some day.

This is where I left you last post (above) and this is where our PT 'beast' is at now...

...so now she's got her new 'skin' on and farmer Tim has begun preparing the soil inside her for some autumn plantings, which we hope will help keep us going with some produce into early winter. I say 'hope' because no matter what us farmers do, we are always somewhat at the mercy of Mother Nature.

In the meanwhile, we have been very fortunate with later summer/autumn tomatoes, considering most everyone we speak with are struggling with theirs.

We have yellow ones, red ones, yellow-orange ones, Green Zebras, Purple & Black Russians (though not as many this year) & of course cherry, yellow pear & Pink egg varieties (see down page...)...here's just a few above.

We also are now enjoying the arrival of some new, tasty cool season root crops...

Beetroots making good progress in the paddock.

Baby beets at our Collingwood Children's Farm market stall last Saturday.

More baby carrots making excellent progress in the paddock.

See our lovely, healthy baby carrots in the background, beetroot leaves in the mid & various cherry-style toms. in the foreground.

Potato plants soon to be harvested.

The first of the season - Dutch Creams, Otway Reds & Royal Blues.

Potatoes taste so much different when just harvested, I never imagined they could have such depth of flavour or variation between the different kinds before we grew potatoes. It's most obvious when they're fresh dug but because types like ours are long time varieties and ours in particular are grown in perfect spud growing earth, organically and with TLC, they retain a certain special-ness even after they've been dug up for a while. So much for my lower-carb dietary efforts! Mind you potatoes grown properly, of tastier types and colourful skins do have much more going for them nutritionally and aren't as much an issue for those keeping check on their simple carbohydrate intake.

Beautiful herbs still on-hand...fresh coriander (with long healthy roots) next to the tub of mixed herb posies. Front left purple basil, zingy dill between cori and basil and oregano at front, among other herbs we have at the moment. The Opal purple basil has amazingly survived the frost a couple of weeks back, but it will finish soon and the woody herbs will start their winter die-back too. We may be able to keep some 'border-season' cori and dill on the go until winter. It's been a hopeless year for parsley and it seems we're not the only ones to find that - there's always next season 'as they say'.

A Bella Rossa heritage aubergine.

Bless the aubergine (AKA eggplants), as they continue on for now, slowly and not in vast amounts but surely they come in the small poly-tunnels.

A few zucchs. are battling on but a sure sign the season has turned that we no longer can supply zucchini flowers or abundant zucchinis. Lets face it, we DO get our fill of zucchs. during their season do we not?!

Oh yeah, in case you might have forgotten our main thang is GARLIC...we'll be planting our new stock soon! Yippee x 1000!

We are looking forward to a way better 2011 garlic crop, and pray the weather gods are on our side in this for this season (& many others!), so we can all enjoy a new and abundant harvest by December. We are so terribly sorry to all of you loyal garlic friends who have begged us and whom we have not been able to supply for some time now and of course those who missed out altogether - thanks for your ongoing support :-)

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Indian Summer?...we're hoping...

Friday, March 04, 2011

It continues to be a strange old growing season down on the Angelica O.F. 'ranch' (as for most crop farmers this year)!

Wilderness of Eggplant and heritage tomato plants in the poly tunnel -
fruiting much slower and less for this time than in previous years but lovely stuff is to be had on harvest and we anticipate much more to come with predicted upcoming warmer, more stable temps.

Cherry tomatoes in the field.

Here we are, technically in the early days of autumn or what is often more a late summer for these parts this time of year, but we are experiencing a mixture of warmer summer'ish and much cooler late autumn weather - as in a few days of each per week (e.g. today 6 - 12 deg C & the prev. 4 days not much better!!). This has been going on for around 3 weeks now, following what was a couple of weeks of warm-hot and humid weather with mild-warm nights - i.e. good growing weather. Normally February is the only month we can count on for full-blown summer weather!

A Qld Blue pumpkin, about the size of a rockmelon and as such way small for late Feb.
However, the pumpkins we have coming on look great and might surprise us yet. Previous years we have lost many to no rain - fancy!

We are presently wishing for the Indian Summer effect for best results with our now ripening abundant tomatoes and all those other summer/autumn crops we have on the go, which have been finally kicking on, slowly but surely, as we hope to get them to full fruition before say May. We even got a frost one morning this week, which is un-seasonally early and less than helpful - sheesh!! You really need to be an optimist to be a farmer, that's for sure - it's not that you don't get down on your uppers (& any farmer who denies this is fibbing) BUT you inherently need to have a sense of all things passing and of good times to come.

Toms and Tim - a couple of our luscious Grosse Lisse...see the tomatoes are mostly doing rather well, they all just need enough warm and non-frost time over the next month in order to all get to ripening and onto our plates.

We estimate this summer here has consisted of probably about 2 weeks-worth of summer days/nights if you add them together, with lots of mild spring weather (o.k. & pleasant but not overly productive) and a considerable amount of uncharacteristic humidity, which can aid growth but also precipitates some disease, like downy mildew on zucchini plants. The repeated drop of overnight temperatures to below 8 deg C is particularly problematic for all the summer 'night shade' vegetables we all love (toms., zucchs, cucs, capsicum, eggplants...), as these do their growing during the night and if it's too cool at night, well they just sit there and don't fruit or fruit at a much slower rate, even in the poly tunnels unless you have climate control mechanisms, which we don't. So, anyway, you get the gist...it's been too cold and/or wet much of the time and generally unpredictable to sum up!

Thankfully, the last few weeks have never the less been much more productive at Angelica Organic Farm, see below last weekend's farmers' market offerings at Abbotsford Convent Slow Food f.m. and you can expect this and more this Saturday at Daylesford F.M. - Daylesford Primary School, Vincent St Daylesford (9am - 1pm) - be nice to see you there!

Rainbow chard, heritage carrots and eggplants.

Lebanese Cucumbers...freshly picked and crispy.

Sexy zucchini flowers and heritage eggplants.

Various herbage...

Yellow button squash, zucchinis.

Beautiful green, shapely 'Italian' zucchs and tender, sweet yellow zucchs.

A mix of new season colourful tomates - cherry, yellow pear, heritage varieties and Grosse Lisse.

We also have a range of scrummy potatoes coming along and loads of beetroots and more heritage carrots coming up AND seed going in the ground before it gets too cold for the little beauties to grow, grow, grow...Golden shallots and Jerusalem artichokes are planning a come back for next year folks, as of course is our gorgeous gourmet red rocambole garlic!

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Jerusalem Artichokes Dug Up!

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The Jerusalem artichokes have been harvested! They certainly are delicious, sweet and nutty...

Before...(around March)

After...fresh dug Jerusalem artichokes still attached to their flower stalks last week.

After they're lifted, we let them dry off (just the dirt & out skin), then we brush them clean, ready for sale.

One of our regular market customers dubbed them "F-artichokes", in reference to an effect they can sometimes have on some people's digestive system. It didn't stop him or others buying more! The main thing to do to avoid the issue of wind, is to make sure they're well cooked. Apparently par-boiling them before baking them or going onto to use them in any recipe remedies the problem. Personally we think it's a matter of quantity consumed per sitting and that not all people are particularly susceptible to the gas effect. It is said to be caused by the inulin (type of fibre) within them, but I have read this is also what makes them a good food for diabetics and controlling blood sugar balance.

There's a really great, traditional French soup recipe that introduced me to J.artichokes and had this humble rhizome impress me. I didn't get the recipe from the French chef I worked with at the time but I have found a rather nice sounding soup recipe, "Jerusalem Artichoke Soup with Bacon" on Chocolate&Zucchini , the excellent foodie blog of Parisian, Clotilde Dusoulier, one of our favourites. I'd be inclined to add a little cream or sour cream to finish the soup off to enrichen it and highlight its silky 'mouth feel', but it's up to you :).

Bon appetit!

N.B.: We do NOT sell bulk/wholesale Jerusalem Artichokes.

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Love apples - tomatoes get you in the mood!

Thursday, April 08, 2010

When I was a child, I learnt from the plum-voiced Penelope Keith doing a canned tomato soup advertisement that tomatoes are also known as 'love apples' or 'pomme d'amour' as I prefer to hear! I have always wondered why it is so and recently I did some research and found this out...

Apparently, the tomato hails from down Mexico way and the Aztecs can take credit for developing it to the fruit we now know - they were discovered way back then making salsa with tomato in the mix! In the 1600's, the fruit attracted the marauding Spanish Conquistadors and they began shipping it back to Europe. Slow to take off and needing to overcome a suspicion for being toxic due tomatoes being a member of the deadly nightshade family (which includes, potatoes and eggplants too) and for being considered an evil luscious, red temptress encouraging 'girl power' (some thought maybe it was the actual 'apple' involved in the original sin!), the tomato did indeed capture the taste buds of the Europeans, particularly after a creative marketeer of the time touted them as an aphrodisiac, naming them 'poma amoris', but before long the French in turn named it 'pomme d'amour'...who could resist?!

Angelica O.F. pomme d'amours in the field

Some references site that the 'love apple' title and suspicions of toxicity stem from the tomato's relation to the mandrake or 'love plant', also a deadly nightshade family member.

Angelica O.F. heritage mix

Our Yellow Pear Toms.

Tomatoes are rich in the anti-oxidants, lycopene and vitamin C. They need to be cooked to maximise the lycopene availability when we eat them.

Our Grosse Lisse Toms.

Our Brandy Wine Yellow Toms. in the foreground & Romas behind.

Our Cherry Toms.

We'll soon be making sauces and bottling some of our summer sunshine to get us through the winter months!

Perhaps with some of our lush, robustly flavoured sweet basil...

...and of course including some of our private stash of our rich, piquant garlic...

Some Refs.: http://www.epicureantable.com/articles/atomatohis.htm , http://www.foodreference.com/html/artloveapples.html
& http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/org_vegetable_garden/106600#ixzz0kOisn84t

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Crab Apple Jelly

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

We are 'in the pink', in more ways than one! I picked our backyard crab apples and apples the other day and on Sunday arvo we got around to having a small cook up...

Crab apples are often grown ornamentally for their handsome trees, lovely pink spring blossoms and dainty ruby-coloured fruits. Certainly that was the main reason we planted ours in the backyard originally but as we have gotten more and more into growing and appreciating food plants and their produce they have become more than a 'pretty picture' to us.

I have been meaning to make crab apple jelly for several years but each year struggle to get my act together at the right time and/or our little trees haven't produced enough fruit for the recipes I had. I only picked about 700g of crab apples last week (more than previous years though), but I found an adjustable recipe, that allowed for adding the water, sugar and lemon juice according to the quantity of fruit on hand.

Crab apples are small rosie little fruits, which are way, way too tart to eat 'as is' but are gorgeous for making aromatic jellies, syrups and preserves or pickles with. Crab apples are an excellent source of pectin, which is a natural 'setting agent' found in fruit pips, cores and skins, that helps make good jams and jellies.

And, and... they look so pretty once cut in half. Stunning I think!

It only gets more colourful as you can see above with the crab apple juice in the pot with the other ingredients, on it's way to becoming the sweet and spicy full-flavoured jelly. I find crab apples do actually have a sweet, rose-apple scent to them even before you cut or cook them.

Ta-dah! My finished product...only 2 and a bit jars were made from my 700g of fruit, but that's plenty for us, including a jar for a lucky friend.

Crab apple jelly is usually served with light meats such as turkey, chicken and hams but is also great with roast lamb. I reckon it also lends itself to being incorporated in to cakes and tarts too. Why not?

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DISPATCHES FROM THE FARM

Autumn Harvest Preserves

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Autumn so far!

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Indian Summer?...we're hoping...

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Jerusalem Artichokes Dug Up!

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Love apples - tomatoes get you in the mood!

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Crab Apple Jelly

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