October 2011

Sauvie Island Farms will be open this year for PUMPKINS!!  As some of you may know, we were closed last year, due to needing all the orange pumpkins that we had to fill our wholesale orders.  This year, we have a beautiful huge field of nice orange pumpkins waiting to be picked and we are excited to have the farm open again for October!   We enjoy watching the kids..and adults get excited about finding their perfect pumpkin to take home with them!  For the fall harvest, we change things up a little and have an area for the kids to play, with a straw bale pyramid, straw maze, tractor tires and a hayride out into the pumpkin fields. 

You can visit our farmyard animals and see our new turkeys, duck, and chickens, as well as our cow, Barbie and Mossimo, the llama. There are still a few other crops left for you to pick-Chester blackberries, sweet corn, peppers, edamame, Rome apples, six varieties of squash, gourds, as well as over 30 acres of pumpkins...orange, white & cinderallas.  For your fall decorating, we have straw bales, corn stalks, Indian corn, gourds, and beautiful dahlias, sunflowers and more!

We will be open in October, Monday-Friday, 9am-6pm...closed Sundays, beginning Friday, Sept 30th.  Hope to see you on the farm this October!

It's raining...and green tomatoes

It's Saturday morning.  Usually I don't find the time to post anything on a saturday morning, but today is an exception.  It's raining and I just had a phone conversation with a sweet lady asking about tomatoes and peppers for salsa making.  We do have some nice peppers, ready to be picked on the farm today.  However, the tomatoes are green, green, green.  Anytime there was a slightly orange tomato on the vine in the past couple of weeks, its was picked off quickly!  I don't know if our green tomatoes will ripen this year, the night temperatures are dropping quickly.   So how about a green tomato recipe?  This was a post on the blog from last September.  It's weird because I could have written the same exact words this morning:

Tomatoes???

This has been a challenging year on the farm, due mostly to the random weather changes. Many of the crops were planted later than usual, and are being harvested later than usual. On the farm right now, we have a great planting of green tomatoes. We keep watching them, hoping that they will start to turn red. Since it gets so cold at night, we really don't know if they will ever ripen. There are plenty of green tomatoes to be picked, so if you have any good recipes for green tomatoes, this is the year to use them!! One of our long time employees, Sherri, wants to share one of her favorite recipes with us today. She says that this a favorite of her husband. He puts it on everything. Really?...everything?...well, you get the picture. It's a good relish recipe! So if you want to try something new, and you are looking for an easy canning project this cool, rainy weekend, come out, pick some green tomatoes and give it a try. Then let us know if you like it!!

Green Tomato Relish:

1 peck of green tomatoes. (a peck is is equal to a 5 gallon bucket)

3 green peppers

3 red peppers

8 lg onions

Grind with food processor. Add 1/2 cup salt. Let stand overnight.

Next day: Put in cloth bag (or colander with tiny holes) Drain juice. Place in pan and add 1 small bottle of horseradish, 2 T turmeric, one full can of whole spices (put in cloth and tie with rubber band), 6 cups sugar and 3 cups vinegar. Boil for 1 hour. (remove the spice bundle) Put in jars & seal while hot.

 Makes approx. 20 cups of relish.

Let us know if you try this recipe and like it!  And if you have a great green tomato recipe that you would like to share, we would love to know about it! 

oh...and fyi....we are open today, saturday from 9am-6pm.  After today, we will be closed until Friday, September 30th, getting ready for pumpkin harvest!  Our October hours will be Monday-Saturday, 9am-6pm.  More info coming soon about the pumpkins, squash, sweet corn, flowers, gourds...and all that we will have available this October 2011.  There might be red tomatoes by then, I'll let you know.

September....

Sauvie Island Farms Pick Your Own fields will be closed Monday-Thursday of this week.  OPEN again on Friday and Saturday, September 16& 17.  We are waiting for the end of the Veteran and Elberta Peaches to ripen.  We should  have Chester blackberries, Bartlett Pears, Sweet Corn, a few veggies and flowers ready to pick by the end of the week.  Call our farm line 503-621-3988 for more info.  Thanks. 

Peaches

We will open the orchard for the last time this year to finish picking Veteran and Elberta peaches on Saturday, September 10th.  The peaches may not last the entire day, so come early if you are wanting a tree ripened peach before the season is over.  We also have Chester blackberries, several kinds of sweet corn, Bartlett pears, zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, and of course beautiful colorful flowers, waiting to be harvested.  It's been a hot week on the farm...so much for my whining about fall coming early......  I am enjoying the weather this week, but some of our crops are feeling the heat, so it would be great to get them picked out of the fields and on to your tables.  Our 'summer' crops are coming to an end, but did I hear that there are strawberries coming on again in the back of the farm?  I will let you know if they ripen and when you can pick some:)!