A Day in the Life

over an inch of rain - - - finally!

more squash, leeks, scallions, collards, cabbage, Brussel sprouts, cabbage

we'll have chickens in here soon

cucumbers

sugar baby in the rough

desert king - it's orange and yellow on the inside - not your typical watermelon

eggplant

eggplant up close and personal

string bean green beans

our tomato plants are ridiculously tall

can't wait til the corn's ready

Jeremiah the bullfrog's home

See y'all again soon!

Ben's Produce Summer Spaghetti

Ingredients
1 summer squash
1 Japanese eggplant
2 small red onions
3 tomatoes
fresh basil sprigs
1 tablespoon olive oil
8-16 ounces cooked pasta
shredded Parmesan
salt, pepper, garlic (diced)
1 pound ground beef from Smith Angus Farm

Preparation
1. Dice tomatoes. Reserve about half for garnish.
2. Chop, slice or dice remaining vegetables (with peels on).
3. Brown beef with onions and garlic (or just onions and garlic with oil if you're not using beef).
4. Add vegetables (eggplant first); let cook until tender.
5. Toss sauce and pasta. Add salt, pepper, raw diced tomato and fresh chopped basil as garnish.

ENJOY!

you say tomato...i say YUM!

Hi everyone out there in cyberspace (wow - remember when that term was used regularly?!). I hope you're having a fabulous summer and keeping as cool as you can. We're still sporting our multi-bandanna stylee and drinking lots and lots of water to keep hydrated. Life is good - and it would be even better if it would only rain! Yesterday I drove from Chattanooga back to Raleigh. The rain followed me the whole way...well, not the whole way - it followed me until about Durham and then it just stopped. We managed to get a few sprinkles but we didn't get much. The bright side though was that it was our friend Josh's 4th birthday yesterday and he wanted fireworks to celebrate. The rain would have put a damper on a very cute and funny little boy's birthday - so I guess we can't be too upset about its absence ;).

So, I realized I haven't posted many recipes lately (or posted much all summer actually)...so I'm going to use the rest of this blog for exactly that. Right now we have tomatoes, summer squash, onions, potatoes, purple peppers, cucumbers, basil, and a few melons and eggplant (more of those to come soon). As usual, please feel free to post your own recipes to the comment box below or e-mail them to me at parker.patricia@gmail.com. We would love it if you shared some of your recipes with us!

Okay - moving on...

Here's a basic summer spaghetti recipe. Our CSA members are receiving a TON of tomatoes this week - and even though they're amazing all by themselves, I figured some of you might want a little more variety in your lives - especially as you continue to get more and more of them. I found this recipe on a blog called Closet Cooking. You can access the link to the recipe here. It's easy and tasty - you can't go wrong. Of course, vary according to taste and what you happen to have in your kitchen/garden.

Ingredients:
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 clove garlic (chopped)
1 serving pasta (cooked)
2 roma tomatoes (chopped)
1 tablespoon basil (chopped)
1 tablespoon parsley (chopped)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Heat the oil in a pan.
2. Saute the garlic until fragrant, about 30-60 seconds.
3. Turn off the heat.
4. Add the pasta, tomatoes, basil, parsley, salt and pepper and toss to mix.

This one came from Southern Living (here). You can get peaches at the Western Wake Farmer's Market from Clayton Orchard. This is another simple one - but feels and looks like it came from a fancy schmancy gormet restaurant.

 Ingredients:

• 1/3  cup  white balsamic vinegar
• 1  garlic clove, minced
• 2  tablespoons  brown sugar
• 1/4  teaspoon  freshly ground pepper
• 1/8  teaspoon  salt
• 2  tablespoons  olive oil
• 1  large peach, chopped
• 1 1/2  tablespoons  chopped fresh basil

Preparation:

1. Whisk together first 5 ingredients until sugar is dissolved. Whisk in olive oil. Stir in chopped peach and basil. Serve immediately.

This one calls for tomatoes and squash - it's a tomato and squash gratin. You can access the original link here.

Ingredients:

5-6 summer squash, sliced thin lengthwise
3-4 large heirloom or large, red tomatoes, sliced thin
1/3-1/2 cup olive oil
15-20 whole basil leaves
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Breadcrumbs
Salt & pepper to taste


Preparation:
Preheat oven to 400 F.

Place one layer of sliced squash in the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch baking dish. Top with a layer of sliced tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper and a few basil leaves. Generously drizzle olive oil over all and sprinkle a little Parmesan cheese on top. Repeat in the same order until you run out of vegetables. Top layer should be tomatoes.

Add a final toss of Parmesan and a generous coating of breadcrumbs and more olive oil. Bake until everything is soft, bubbly and brown on top (about 30-40 minutes) Serve as a side dish with whatever you're grilling or with a bean salad or pasta dish for a complete meal.
 This one's called "Mom's Summer Squash" and it's from Simply Recipes. You can access the original posting here.

 Ingredients:
2 lbs squash and/or zucchini, sliced
1 green bell pepper, seeds removed, sliced
2 smallish tomatoes or one large tomato, peeled and cut into wedges
1/2 yellow onion, peeled and sliced
1 clove of garlic, chopped
Olive oil
5 or 6 slices of cheese - jack or cheddar
Basil, either dry or chopped fresh
Salt and pepper

Preparation:  

1 Put onion, garlic, squash, bell pepper into a large saucepan with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Put on high heat and brown the vegetables slightly to develop flavor. As you are browning, sprinkle either dried basil or chopped fresh basil on the vegetables. When vegetables are slightly browned, remove from heat, add the slices of cheese, and cover the pan.

2 In a separate stick-free fry pan, put the tomatoes and cook at medium hi heat for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. You want to let the juice from the tomatoes evaporate some. After 5 minutes, add the tomatoes to the rest of the vegetables and stir. Salt and pepper to taste.
Serves 4.

This one's a variation on the classic BLT - it's a BTB (bacon, tomato and basil). This recipe is from Southern Living and you can access the original posting here. 

Ingredients

• 9  slices ready-to-serve bacon, halved
• 1/2  cup  shredded Parmesan cheese
• 1/3  cup  mayonnaise
• 1  garlic clove, minced
• 9  slices extra-thin white bread slices
• 3  plum tomatoes, sliced
• 12  fresh basil leaves

Preparation

1. Heat bacon according to package directions until crisp.
2. Stir together cheese, mayonnaise, and garlic. Spread mayonnaise mixture evenly onto 1 side of each bread slice. Layer 3 bread slices, mayonnaise sides up, with 3 bacon slices each. Top bacon evenly with 1 bread slice, tomato slices, and basil. Top each with remaining bread slices, mayonnaise sides down. Cut each sandwich into quarters.

You can also access recipes for tomato pie (amazing!), tomato grits, and my mom's cucumber salad on this blog (an old posting) here. a;lsdkfj

Alrighty - hope y'all try out some or all of these recipes and enjoy 'em.

As usual, thanks for stopping by!

time keeps on slippin slippin slippin...

Hi folks! It's hard to believe it's been almost a MONTH since I last posted here. As you can tell from the title, time sure has been flying by for Ben and I. We successfully moved from 604 Sasser in Raleigh to 1000 McLemore Road in Clayton, then I went to TN to see my family, came back and we've been working on the farm pretty much from sun up to sun down since. Where did June go?! Well, I hope July doesn't fly by as quickly. I'm loving the summer - even the heat - I am in NO way ready for the fall and for classes to begin.

I plan on posting some more recipes asap. I have some computer work to do in the next month, so that means I'll be procrastinating a bit with it right here on the blog ;). Until those recipe postings though - I thought I'd share a few pictures with y'all so you can see a little bit of what we've been up to here at Two Trees Farm.

To the right is our new farm truck. It's a '93 Chevy Cheyenne. We managed to get a good deal from a very cool man named Gene. He sold us a camper shell too. I even got him to throw in a kitchen cabinet when we picked up the camper shell. Lately I've been discovering how much I'm getting to be more and more just like my mama - especially when it comes to finding a good deal or turning one person's trash into my own treasure. That kitchen cabinet is gonna get fixed up and placed in our office/study.

This is the back shot of the truck. Ben and I still have most of our things in storage for the time being - but as soon as we get to unpacking Ben hopes to find a sticker he bought two years ago for his future farm truck: "I *heart* G.R.I.T.S." (translation: I love girls raised in the south). Haha. Gotta love it! Farmer Ben from Massachusetts sportin a southern pride sticker. ;)

While we miss our neighbors on Sasser Street - Karl, Dave and Matt - and their beer garden - the farm is full of charms and good people. Our current roommates and soon to be neighbors are Beth and her two children Lucy (10 years old) and George (9 years old).Two Trees Farm (where our 1/2 acre plot is located) belong to Beth and the kids. When our lease on Sasser came up (without chance to renew - the owners are looking to sell), Beth kindly invited us to move to the trailer that is on her property. She and the kids are living there until the old farm house is finished.The farm house was Beth's great great grandad's - it was built in 1887. You can learn all about how Beth came to live on the farm and more at Beth's blog (she's a writer and stay at home mom) here. Anyway, it turned out that the farm house wasn't finished in time, so Beth offered us a bedroom and bathroom in the trailer until she and the kids could get moved into the farm house. Of course, we jumped at the deal. When I tell people about our living situtation, a number of them feel compelled to express sympathy for us - but there's really no need. Our schedules work such that we all tend to have our own space. When you're living on a farm and most of your work is done outside (or in Beth's case - in the other house painting and getting other stuff finished in there), it's pretty hard to feel cramped. Ben and I really enjoy living with Beth, Lucy and George. We really couldn't have better roommates - and I hope they feel the same way about us. It's also insanely wonderful that we can open our front door and see our crops! The first day we were moved in, I walked out to the field and picked most of what we ate for dinner. Life can hardly get better. We truly are so very blessed. Sigh - okay, but moving along...and getting back to the pictures :) -->

This is our new wash station. Ben and I found this tub at the Habitat for Humanity Restore for $15. We happened to have Art's truck (Art is the farm manager of Veggie Barn - to check out their facebook page click here), which was lucky because that tub is mighty heavy. The truck bed tips, so we were able to tilt it and use a bit of gravity to our advantage. Well, I say "we", but really, I left this particular job to the menfolk. Ben, Aaron, Derrick and a couple other guys from the house crew unloaded the tub onto the crates (which we got from Logan's Trading Company - an awesome local garden supply store that you can learn more about here).

To the left is our room in the trailer. The window is probably Charlie's (the dog's) favorite thing about the house. He also loves the barn and all the rooms - including the hayloft - the farm cats (who are now out of sight quite a bit - poor kitties!), the monkey grass, the woods, the creek, the pond, and well, just about everything outside. The crazy fool loves to chase bugs and there are countless bugs out here. He is truly in dog heaven! :)

These are wild black eyed Susans. My cousin Thomas, who is quite the woodsman (and car mechanic and artist), told me that chanterelle mushrooms are in season when black eyed Susans are in season (they thrive off of similar weather conditions). Ben and I tried searching the woods for them but have yet to find any - but we're convinced they're there :).

This is a cold frame Beth is letting us use. No one's using it now, except these pretty flowers and weeds, but we'll be using it once the weather cools down for sure.

This is a sideways picture of Ben stretching after about 5 hours out in the field. We get up between 5 and 5:30 a.m. and then go in to eat breakfast and have some coffee sometime between 8 and 9. It's SO nice being able to step inside and take coffee breaks. It's also nice to sit in the shade of the trees and look at all the tasty and beautiful produce growing right in front of us.

It gets really hot out there. And when you get hot, you sweat. And when you get really hot, you really sweat - so much so that it drips into your eyes. For this reason, bandannas are necessary. Tie one around your head and you have a sweat sponge to keep it from rolling into your eyes. I posted this picture on facebook and once of our friends commented that this picture has a Marky Mark flavor. Hahahahaha! Remember Marky Mark (Mark Walhberg) and the Funky Bunch?! Anyway, you should see what kind of silliness we get into with these bandannas. They also make for good shields from the sun if you stick them in the back of your hat. Sometimes Ben rocks as mancy as 5 bandannas at a time. I'll have to get some pictures of our 80s inspired banadanna farm fashion. Most of the bandannas came from my mama, who kept them from when my brother Matthias used to sport banadannas (he's 14 years older than me - so he was a teenager/young adult in the 80s).

Here's Ben putting leaves and compost down to add nutrients to the soil.

This is gomphrena. I love these flowers. Lara, one of our CSA members (and quickly becoming one of our friends), told us that you can dry the tops and replant them and they'll flourish. I'll have to get the specifics from her on this.

Of course, this is basil. Basil is one of my favorite herbs. I can eat it all alone and LOTS of it. But it's also good with fresh tomatoes, olive oil, salt and pepper, and mozzarella.

These are the cucumbers. I took this picture less than a week ago and they are already much bigger than they were then. We also tied the posts more so they can really grow up well.

These are the peppers. They are also growing quickly. We've tied them now as well.

Here's our solar dryer. I LOVE it! Ben and I have always hung most of our clothes - but we used doorways and lines inside the house. This thing is the premium model for us :).

Tomatoes. They are all tied up now too. They are also finally producing a bunch more. Ben has fertilized them and sprayed (organic approved - you'll have to ask him what) for stink bugs. Stink bugs are boogers. They get on the tomatoes and suck all the juices out. We're also beginning to see horned green tomato worms...hopefully Lucy and George will catch most of them for us. They want to catch them and keep them until they turn into moths. They'd be better off that way. If Ben & I get a hold of them, they get squished. They will eat the entire plant in no time!

Here's another shot of the bar and our wash station.

Here's a picture of the truck with the camper shell. Fancy aye? ;) We are LOVIN it!

Okay!!! I think I've written enough to make up for the fact that it's taken me almost a full month to update the blog. I hope I didn't bore y'all too much. We hope to see you at market tomorrow, but if not, have a great holiday weekend!

Keep cool!
Patricia & Ben