August Snapshots

August is a beautiful month at the market.  Produce, perennials, and great food! Mouse over for captions, click for larger images, and enjoy!

 

Helenium "Copelia"

Hot peppers, eggplant, cherry tomatoes, and sweet pepper combine for a beautiful palette of summer color!

Gentian "True Blue" and Heuchera "Obsidian" are a beautiful summer perennial pairing for your garden!Ratatouille, ready to go in the oven! Eggplant slices alternate with zucchini, tossed with garlic, olive oil and sea salt.Every year we grow a a rainbow of gladiolas in the field. They are usually available right up to Fall!Fresh, Kirbygrown sweetcorn, a summertime essential.Another planting of homegrown beets are here.Sungold yellow cherry tomatoes and Sweet 100's cherry tomato are like a little bowl of sunshine!Rudebekia triloba, an adorable little black eyed susan, frames the entry next to a stationary display.Gladiolas are one of the best flowers we can grow for arrangements. Every bud will open, even the tightest one. Just keep trimming from the bottom as the older blooms die, and keep the water fresh.

A reminder that Fall is right around the corner! Every tree in our orchards is loaded with apples, some of them nearly ready for picking!

Does this cool weather make you think about Fall? It will be here before you know it! Make sure you take full advantage of the wonderful summer produce filling the market throughout August and September!

What's Fresh

Peaches - bushels of peaches arrived this morning. As you can see, the color is gorgeous. We pick our peaches tree ripened for flavor and a little firm to avoid bruising. The first peaches are always clingstone  (the fruit clings to the pit) but the flavor and incredible juiciness make up for it!

Sweet Corn- Our very own. Order by the bushel for your next summer picnic!

Tomatoes - nothing compares to the taste of a field grown tomato! Available by the pound right now, but canning season is just around the corner. Stay tuned...

Sweet Peppers - green for now, the red are getting redder all the time in this sunshine!

Eggplant - a unique vegetable in appearance and texture... eggplant parm, anyone?

Pickles - you can pick up these tiny, crisp versions of cucumbers one at a time or by the bushel. Our favorite cucumbers for salads. Available in 3-4" (perfect for whole dills) or 5-6" (best for sweet chunks, relishes and slicing). We also have regular cucumbers for slicing.

Zucchini and Summer Squash -  Have you tried grilling zucchini yet? Just toss it with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, maybe some fresh herbs and you're good to go.

Black Raspberries - Fill a few freezer bags to enjoy this amazing flavor in the winter time! Great with yogurt for breakfast, in cobblers, cakes and pies... if they make it home, that is.

Beets - have you tried them shredded on top of salads? They add a wonderful splash of color to so many dishes

Sweet Cherries - won't be here too much longer. Another great treat to stock up in the freezer!

Sour Cherries - Their season is very short, so grab them while they're here. If you're a fan of these refreshing, sweet-tart stone fruits, check out the previous blog entry. You can enjoy them allll year long.

Locally grown - we also have blueberries from Fabry's in Holley, red raspberries from Brown's in Waterport, and carrots from a farm in the Rochester area.

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Sweet, Cold, and Delicious

IQF Cherry Pickup! Call Now to Place Your Orders

637-2600

Pick up Dates Are:  Friday, August 5th 9am to Noon

Saturday August 6th, 9am to Noon

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IQF Blueberries - 30 lbs

IQF Sour Cherries - 20 lbs or 40 lbs

***NEW!  IQF Sweet Cherries - 40lbs ***

Please note that we don't have enough freezer space to store frozen  fruit past noon. Come as close to 9am as you can to make sure your cherries thaw as little as possible!

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Do you have a favorite sour cherry recipe? Post it as a comment on this post for a chance to win 4lbs of IQF Cherries! A winner will be randomly selected on August 5th.

 

 

Have you ever seen a cherry shaker?

They look pretty strange. There are two very similar halves that go on either side of the tree, each driven independently by a 'tractor', tucked beneath a large, moveable, piece of yellow canvas stretched on a metal framework. A big pair of retractable pincers is nestled in the middle of one half. The pincers grab the tree and shake it! Ripe cherries tumble onto the canvas and cascade down the angled fabric, while a conveyor belt on the other half of the machine catches the cherries, sending them into a giant bin full of water and ice.  I can totally imagine the thought process that went into designing this contraption!

The Kirby brothers (Francis, George, Bob, and John) invested in a cherry shaker together around 1980. Every year each farm would send a representative or two to help out as the cherry shaker made it's way from orchard to orchard. You need a truck driver, someone to man both halves of the shaker, people to drive the tractor or two moving bins around and loading them on the truck, as well as several people to fill bins with ice and water.

My empathy for trees and the serious demeanor of everyone involved, combined with the activity, noise, and vibrations in a place normally so quiet and tranquil, all added up to make quite the impression on my seven year old mind. Every year we would go out to the orchard to watch. If you're interested, there are some videos on youtube showing how the different parts of a cherry shaker work! I'll try to get some photos up of our cherry harvest this year.

The Kirby clan has sent many tons of cherries to the processor over the years. Only a small fraction goes to market as fresh fruit because they just don't keep that long. (They're fresh picked in the market RIGHT NOW, grab 'em while you can!) The cherries are washed, pitted, and frozen at the processors. From there they go to various companies to be made into pie fillings, juices, etcetera.

For decades large tins of frozen cherries, some of them sugared, were available to retailers and the public. Anyone remember those? My Dad made a trip to Middleport twice a year, bringing back a truckload of frozen cherries to fill the orders. People line up in the front room, pick up their cherries, pay at the register, and whisk them away to their freezers to enjoy a year of pies, cobblers, and other cherry dishes. It goes like clockwork!Sour Cherry Dessert

There aren't too many things that have changed over the years...

Instead of a tin full of frozen cherries that often stuck together in blocks, the fruit is now quick frozen so they pour out like marbles, and packed in large blue plastic bags. After a fire closed the plant in Middleport, we now get our truckload of IQF cherries from Holley Cold Pack, along with IQF Blueberries.

The biggest change is that you can get IQF fruit from Kirby's whenever we're open, May-December. We have a freezer in the market  full of 4-8 pound bags of fruit - sweet cherries, sour cherries, and blueberries. We still have the big IQF event each year (coming up soon!) because as always, you save money by ordering large amounts.

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(585) 637-2600

 

In Season Now

Dark Sweet Cherries showed up last Saturday.

Freeze them, dry them, blend them with lemonade, toss some onto a salad - if they make it home that is!  When the Sweet Cherries show up, Sour Cherries can't be far behind.

July is fast approaching!

We've had strawberries for several weeks but they won't be here much longer. Now is the time to purchase by the flat for jam, juice, and freezing. Freezing is my favorite way to preserve strawberries for the winter. Last year I somehow ran out of time and only got around to making jam. Let me tell you, I missed them alll winter. And I learned my lesson - there are eight quarts in my freezer right now!

Our lettuce is grown right behind the market,

so we can take a short walk out back and pick more whenever we need to. We keep at least two heads of each type available (Green Leaf, Red Leaf, Ithaca, and Buttercrunch), and you know it's fresh! I didn't know what good lettuce was until we started growing it ourselves. It is so sweet and tender and beautiful!

Regular Peas are still going strong!

We'll have them for a few more weeks, so take a few pounds home to enjoy a little pea-shelling meditation on the front porch.

Ode to a Busy Saturday Morning

Five bushels of edible pod peas, still warm from the sun.

Twelve flats of strawberries, surrounded by a cloud of sweet perfume.

Crisp lettuce, like huge, ruffled, green roses, lined up patiently in a crate.

A pile of curling garlic scapes, like the discarded jewelry of faeries, ready to add garlicky flavor to anything cooking in the kitchen.

A wagon loaded with forty pounds of strawberries, picked by three generations!

The last of the asparagus: short, tender and sweet, like a final good bye from Spring.

They all disappear one by one, in the hands of a steady stream of fruit and vegetable lovers. Our customers!

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Baked Goods from Greg'ry's, Bergen, NY

Aside from the beautiful produce coming in on this beautiful day, I am excited to share the news with you that we are once again carrying baked goods from Greg'ry's Bakery in Bergen. For years we sold rows of their delicious fruit-filled pies, stacks of cookies and plenty of loaves of bread. Once again our display is full of their high quality treats. (I have spent the entire morning resisting the urge to try one of everything! Now I just have to make the choice between giant cinnamon rolls, coffee cake, scone or a little strawberry rhubarb pies...what to pick...).  Stop by on any Friday, Saturday or Sunday and savor a treat from Greg'ry's!

Rhubarb, a Last Taste of Spring

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Definitely one of the lesser known vegetables, rhubarb is tart, tart, tart. Just about any rhubarb recipe you encounter will also have a good amount of sugar in the ingredients list. Next time you pick some up, try a bite of it raw and you'll know why. Although rhubarb is most often found in pies and crisps, sometimes in breads, and occasionally as a sauce (my favorite), I've also heard of plenty of people eating it raw dipped in sugar. For those that favor this method, there's usually a story about hiding in grandmother's garden among the tall rhubarb leaves, with the sugar bowl.

History and Nutrition:

Wikipedia tells us that rhubarb has been enjoyed for thousands of years in China and Russia. As an import, it's value topped expensive spices like cinnamon in medieval Europe, but it didn't appear in the states until the early eighteen hundreds. Rhubarb's biggest nutritional contribution is Vitamin K (45% of your daily allowance) and Vitamin C (16%). It also tallies up a notable amount of Calcium (10%), Potassium(10%), and  Manganese (12%), among other nutrients. The leaves are, in fact, poisonous. That's why you will never see them for sale, we always chop them off first.

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Recipe: Rhubarb Sauce

New to the flavors of rhubarb? I definitely recommend trying this recipe for Rhubarb Sauce. It's incredibly simple, you get to put it on vanilla ice cream, and it would be impossible to feature the flavor of this unique vegetable to a higher degree.

  • 1 Cup Sugar
  • 1/2 Cup Water
  • 2 lbs Kirbygrown Rhubarb, trimmed, washed, and cut into small chunks.

Preparation: In a saucepan simmer sugar and water until sugar is dissolved. Add rhubarb and simmer for 15 minutes,  stirring occasionally. Adjust sugar to taste.

Set aside to cool for about twenty minutes, then serve warm over vanilla (or strawberry!) ice cream, or simply in a cup by itself. It's also a great breakfast chilled, with vanilla yogurt.

Variations: Stir in 1tsp vanilla extract before serving to balance out the rhubarb with some mellow sweetness. For another delicious variation, add 1 cup of fresh, chopped Kirbygrown strawberries or whole raspberries right after you take the sauce off the stove.

 

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If you've tried all of the the usual rhubarb options and you're looking for something new, check out some of the ideas at epicurious. The sweet/sour/savory chutney paired with a pork tenderloin is definitely on my to-do list! Have any favorite uses for rhubarb, or stories of grandma's garden? Let us know, we'd love to hear about it!

Asparagus Season!

History and Nutrition

The brief season of our first vegetable is full of enthusiastic fans, and for good reason! Asparagus has been enjoyed as far back as 3000 B.C, as documented in an Egyptian frieze. Beloved by kings, early physicians, and ancient epicureans alike, asparagus has a lot to offer the modern vegetable eater! 4-5 grams protein and 3 grams of fiber per cup, an excellent source of folic acid and a very good source of vitamins B1, B2, B3 and B6, not to mention it's high rating on a scale of deliciousness. Grilled, satueed, steamed, boiled, roasted, or broiled asparagus is delicious with just about anything. Beef, chicken, eggs, salads, pasta... The flavor of asparagus pairs especially well with garlic, rosemary, tarragon, thyme and lemon.

Try this simple recipe!

  • Cut 1 pound of fresh, rinsed, Kirbygrown asparagus into even pieces.
  • Heat 1 Tablespoon of olive oil in a pan on medium.
  • Add one clove of fresh, minced garlic and saute briefly, then toss in your asparagus.
  • Cover and cook for 5-10 minutes, stirring now and then, until the asparagus is crisp tender. (My asparagus of medium thickness was done in 8 minutes.)
  • Sprinkle with 1/4 tsp salt or to taste, and serve! I recommend a garnish of chive flowers or purple violas.

Variation: Toss with the juice of 1/2 a lemon.

Storage and Peparation Tips:

  1. It's best to use asparagus within a few days of purchasing to get full flavor and nutritional benefits.
  2. To store asaparagus, wrap the ends in wet paper towel and then put the entire bunch in a plastic bag. You want to contain a little moisture so the stalks don't get dried out.
  3. Asparagus loves growing in the sandy soil of our Ridge Road farm, so make sure you rinse it well to avoid crunching on grains of sand.
  4. Break off the white woody end before cooking to remove the fibrous part of the plant that grows under the soil.

More recipes to come!

Field Update 5/9/11

Peaches - Our early peach varieties are in full bloom right now! When you drive by the farm you'll see rows of cloudy pink - those are the peaches and they smell fantastic. Peaches won't be ready until July, but Spring is still a crucial time of year for our peach crop.  A hard frost wiping out thousands of peaches is a very real danger through the month of May, which would mean the end to delicious Kirbygrown peaches for 2011. How can you tell if it gets too cold? The morning after a cold break Mr. Kirby will go out to the orchard and open up a blossom. If the center is black, the fruit has been killed. This is also true of strawberry blossoms. As of this moment our peach crop is looking great - let's hope Mother Nature is kind this season!

Asparagus - On a hot day you can practically watch the asparagus grow. This cold wet Spring we've had so far has slowed it down. Our first picking came in last week but it will be a few days before we pick again. If you're planning to come by for asparagus before the weekend, call ahead to be sure we have it in. We also take orders by phone, which is always a good idea for large quantities (asparagus freezes and pickles well). Check our facebook page for updates!

Rhubarb - we'll be picking some nice big stalks this weekend. Rhubarb pie anyone? Or sauce! Yum.

Spinach & Beets - if we continue to get warm sunshine for a while (cross your fingers!) we'll have spinach and beets in two weeks.