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Black Cat and Bramble & Hare

Black Cat and Bramble & Hare

  • Joined: November 11, 2022
  • Articles: 285

TOMATO Harvest Celebration Dirt Dinners! Plus, News About Bulk Vegetable Program

Our acres devoted to tomatoes are so thick with fruit that we fear the land itself might sink. We raised enough of one of our star vegetables that we could probably craft a pool of sauce the perimeter and depth of the Boulder Reservoir. Yes—it’s been an epic growing season for the many varieties of tomatoes we grew this year. While the fields still look fairly brown (not for long!), what’s happening beneath and at the surface is extremely consequential for the life of the farm.

Sweet Potato Harvest Celebration Dirt Dinner! Plus, Farm Store, Farmers Markets and Bramble

Prepare for the heat. It’s looking like a scorcher. Lakes and streams are calling. The High Country beckons. And the summer swelter invites us to bag the oven, skip the stove and head outside to fire up the grill. For that, we have lots to offer. Whole eggplant grilled until charred all over, and then used to make baba ganoush. Sliced squash slathered in olive oil, kissed with zatar and latticed with grill marks. Onions and peppers blackened and incorporated into salsa. And of course, burgers and rib-eye, sausage and long-cooked pork shoulder, lamb chops and chicken thighs and Alaskan salmon.  While the fields still look fairly brown (not for long!), what’s happening beneath and at the surface is extremely consequential for the life of the farm.

Welcoming the Monsoon

The forecast suggests that the monsoon season is now arriving. So long, weeks of dry and hot. And hello eruptions of rain and cool. It’s a late start, but meteorologists predicted that, this being an El Niño year, the (mostly) annual pattern of late-afternoon thunderstorms would arrive somewhere in August, rather than July. We’ll take it. And we are quite pleased that the return of precipitation waited until we had harvested a lot of hay this week. If the fields had been sodden, we would have postponed driving the sickle bar mower into the fields, scything the hay and then turning it into big blocks of winter food for our sheep.While the fields still look fairly brown (not for long!), what’s happening beneath and at the surface is extremely consequential for the life of the farm.

Garbanzo Bean Harvest Celebration Dirt Dinner! Plus, Farm Store, Farmers Markets and Bramble

This week we finished harvesting wheat, drying it in the sun, and sending it to our own vintage mill, which turns the wheat berries into flour we use in Bramble & Hare dishes and sell at the Farm Store and Market booths. We also continued the chickpea harvest. We’ll dry the legumes and use them throughout the year. In addition, we are getting ready to plant more broccoli and cauliflower—the starts are in the shade beside the fields, poised for planting under Colorado’s blue skies and insistent sunlight. Long rows of outdoor tomatoes, which were mostly green just two weeks ago, today broadcast their readiness for topping burgers, getting simmered into sauce and commingling with other vegetables for gazpacho. And peppers are coming on strong, while eggplant is finally bulbous and teasing us with whispers about baba ganoush and ratatouille. While the fields still look fairly brown (not for long!), what’s happening beneath and at the surface is extremely consequential for the life of the farm.

Fennel Harvest Celebration Dirt Dinner! Plus, Farm Store, Farmers Markets and Bramble

Eric picking fennel blossoms to harvest the seeds, from a couple of seasons ago.
We’ve got fennel fever over here in Black Cat Organic Farm World HQ. It’s one of our favorite vegetables, and it’s coming on strong in the fields. The plant stars in our next Harvest Celebration “Dirt Dinner,” on Monday, July 24. It’s also now available at the Farm Store, and will be for sale at our booths at the Boulder County Farmers Markets in Boulder and Longmont.

Asian Greens for Harvest Celebration Dirt Dinner! Plus, Farm Store, Farmers Markets and Bramble

A pepper plant with a small blossom. We planted quite a diverse lineup of peppers this year, including some hot ones. Most of the plants are in full flower now, and soon will yield gorgeous peppers. Look for them at our outlets, and stay tuned for u-pick events in August and beyond that will offer peppers and more.
And happy Bastille Day, too! The culinary professional side of our lives owes quite a bit to French cooking techniques, preparations and innovations. Where would we be without soufflés, crêpes, baguettes, quiche, terrines, croissants, a diversity of sauces and a bazillion other treasures? The answer: We’d dwell in a less grand place, one with far fewer gustatory pleasures.