Ayers Creek Farm Newsletter July 18 2010 Market

admin — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 17:16:09 +0000

This will be a good weekend to visit the Hillsdale Farmers’ Market. It takes place Sunday, the 11th of July, opening at 10:00 and closing at 2:00.

This will be our last market for the month of July. An unexpected event draws us eastward for the weekend of the 25th. We will be back at the market on the first of August.

Here is what we will have this week:

Purslane, fenugreek, quelites

Frikeh

Black and red currants, gooseberries

Raspberries, Loganberries, Boysenberries — This week is the last hurrah for the early season berries. We will have a good number of boysenberries. The ripening conditions over the last week are truly Oregonian. Warm days, cool nights produce the best flavored fruit. Ideal is a high of 80 during the day and a low of 50 at night.

This year was bad for the purple raspberries and blackcaps. A combination of poor weather during pollination and a spike of heat when they were ripening assured a poor crop. We did pull some off for preserves, a nonprofit venture, but necessary for some.

Cherries – mostly Montmorency

The rose family provides us with a wide diversity of fruits. The members of the rose family bearing a drupe are assigned to the genus Prunus and include almonds, plums, peaches, apricots, nectarines and cherries. A drupe is a fruit fleshy out part, and a hard inner part enclosing a single seed; farmers refer to them as stone fruit. The berries in the genus Rubus also produce little drupes, but they part of a compound fruit. Each little lump of a blackberry fruit is called a drupelet. Plants in other families bear drupes. The fruits of the pistachio, date and mango are familiar drupes. The pistachio and mango are in the cashew family, Anacardiaceae, which includes poison oak. Most of the plants in the cashew family cause some form of dermatitis.

There are numerous species that are described as cherries, including Prunus avium,the bird or sweet cherry. Prunus cerasus, what we call the pie or tart cherry, has the greatest claim to the title of cherry. Originally from the area bordering the south-eastern coast of the Black Sea,the tart cherry came from the town of Cerasus in what was then called the region of Pontus, now part of modern Turkey. The word cherry is an English corruption of Cerasus. The Romans brought the cherry to Italy, and it spread quickly through the empire, up to the Danube, and through France and England.

Often, people assume sweet and sour flavors are opposites. That is incorrect. What people perceive as a “sweet” fruit is merely one of low acidity. At their perfect state of ripeness, tart cherries have a very high sugar content. Earlier this week, their Brix, as measured with a refractometer, was hovering around 19 degrees. In contrast, our berries are between 10 and 13 degrees Brix. Acids and sugars can both be high in a fruit, and the tart cherry is a good example of a fruit with this quality. When ripe, tart cherries are naturally sticky on the outside, even as they hang on the tree. Unlike sweet cherries, the true cherries never leave you with a bilious feeling after a cherry binge.

The tart cherries are further divided into two classes. The Morello types have a dark red juice, and the Montmorency types have a clear juice. Both have a gentle astringency that makes them exceptional fruit for fresh eating. This week we will have Montmorency cherries. The Hungarian Morellos are not quite ready. In a couple of weeks, we will bring in what the starlings and robins have left on the trees. We thank our friend Trillium for suggesting them.

Dry Goods

If you cannot make it to the market Sunday, have a good couple of weeks, and we will see you all in August.

Anthony and Carol Boutard
Ayers Creek Farm

Apple-Berry Breakfast Crisp

admin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:58:51 +0000

(from Unger Farms)

Topping:

1 cup quick-cooking or old-fashioned oatmeal, uncooked
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/3 cup margarine or butter, melted
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

Filling:

4 cups peeled and thinly sliced apples, about 4 medium
2 cups fresh or frozen sliced strawberries
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Heat oven to 350 degrees

To prepare topping:

In a medium bowl, combine oatmeal, brown sugar, butter, and flour; set aside.

To prepare filling:

In a large bowl, combine apples, berries, brown sugar, orange juice concentrate, flour and cinnamon; stir until fruit is evenly coated. Spoon filling into 8-inch square glass baking dish. Sprinkle topping evenly over fruit. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes.