June Newsletter 2014
June is my favorite food month. All of my favorites are ready for harvest in June. My very favorite is sweet corn. I can eat nothing but sweet corn for dinner, the first few days of corn picking. The squash are ready in early June. I love a good squash casserole but just plain squash and onions can’t be beat. The tomatoes are also ready in June and while I’m not a fan of raw tomatoes, I love some tomato pie. One of my favorite things is okra and tomatoes or as my family calls it gumbo. We start picking okra in June too. My husband Rick practically lives off tomato sandwiches this time of year. He will only eat tomato sandwiches with fresh white bread and Duke’s mayonnaise. We are picking green beans this month and we have been eating them at almost every meal. We just finished with the cantaloupes and are picking a few watermelons. I’m not a big fan of the watermelon either but it is poplar at my house and the summer camp children really enjoyed them.
There is nothing more satisfying than knowing that you had a hand in growing everything on your dinner plate. If we just would grow rice here at the farm and plant some tea bushes then everything would be grown here. We had ham from our pigs and cured and smoked by Ham It Up Specialty Hams with corn on the cob, green beans, gumbo, squash and onions, and sliced bell peppers for me and sliced tomatoes and cucumber for Rick along with sweet tea for dinner last night. Have I made you hungry? I know I’m making myself hungry.
We finished up our Spring/Summer 9 weeks of deliveries for the CSA vegetable program last week. We will start back with 6 weeks of Fall deliveries around the first of October. We will be taking new members for the Fall season. Now that we are finished with vegetable deliveries, we are selling boxes of tomatoes and butterbeans. I hope the tomatoes will last 2 to 3 more weeks.
Speaking of food, we have hamburger patties available for 4th of July cookouts. We also have ground beef if you want to make your own burgers for your cookout. Nothing better than hamburgers and corn on the cob for a cookout. See the Special of the Month below for more information.
I haven’t been enjoying the hot weather but the vegetables have and the crops are also enjoying the rain showers. We had a couple of dry weeks but now we are getting those afternoon thunderstorms. I hope they keep coming every few days so we don’t have to run the irrigation so much.
We have had a couple of bad experiences lately with out of state companies renting our property to do theme races. The Mega Mud Run Challenge is done by a local guy and he will continue to do 2 races per year. Since we are now a little gun shy of out of town companies, we are going to put on our own race. We still have a lot of planning to do before we can give you a lot of details but we are calling it the 5K Cow Pie Skip. If you were registered to run in one of the cancelled races, we will be offering you a great discount on the registration for our race. We feel really bad about the way these out of town companies treated people. Stay tuned for more info.
Linda asked me to include this from her:
I would like to thank a lot of people for making our summer camp this year one of the best ever. Thanks to the wonderful kids who attended and were so much fun, thanks to the parents who brought them(some driving from as far away as Summerville and Mount Pleasant. Thanks to the wonderful sponsors who donate money for a number of scholarships. This enabled 15 children to attend camp that might not have otherwise been able to come. Thanks to Carla and Tammy at Kiawah Cares who helped put this together. And thanks to my wonderful helpers, Lindsay and Steven. I would also like to thank Kip and Catherine Valentine at Burden Creek Dairy for donating 2 adorable baby goats for our animal barnyard. Which brings me to our next project, and one I need you help with. We need names for the goats. Both are male, one a butterscotch color and the other black and white (see their pictures to the left). Send in your suggestions for one or both and the person who is chosen for the winning name will get a pumpkin patch ticket package. Speaking of the pumpkin patch, we are in the planning stages right now. One of the things that we need is long sleeve pants and shirts for scarecrows. If you have any you would like to donate, give us a call and we will make arrangements to get them.
Volunteers
We will need volunteers for painting fences towards the end of August and September. We can always use an electrician and a carpenter for projects.
Calendar
September 27 Charleston Mega Mud Run October Pumpkin Patch
November 2 Fall Harvest Dinner
Feature of the Month
Honey is our feature of the month. The bees have been busy gathering pollen and the beekeeper Woody has been busy gathering honey and bottling it. This is local from the farm and is raw honey. We have it available in 4 sizes, 2 lb. jar, 1 lb. jar, large bear, and small bear. They are $10, $8, $6, and $4 respectively.
Special of the Month
Hamburger is again the special of the month. Ground beef comes in 1 lb. packs and is on sale for $4.50/lb. We also have hamburger patties available. They come 4 per pack 1/4lb patties so they are in 1 lb. packs also. They are $6.50/lb.
Recipe of the Month
Okra and Tomatoes 2 lbs okra 2 medium onion, sliced 1 tablespoon salt 2 tablespoons bacon drippings 8 large tomatoes diced 1/8 teaspoon pepper
Put bacon drippings in large pot. Add onions and cook until clear. Add diced tomatoes, pepper, and salt. Cook until soft. Wash okra well. Cut off tips and stem ends; cut okra crosswise into ½ inch slices. Add okra to tomatoes and simmer until okra is tender.
I serve over rice. I also sometimes add sausage for a complete meal.