Today, the kids and I traveled to Secor Nursery in Perry Ohio.  From our house in Mayfield Heights, it was about 40 minutes away.  It took a bit longer due to the construction on route 2.  The upside is that there were lots of diggers and other equipment to entertain Nick and Sally along the way.  It’s about 4 miles further down than West Orchards Farm.

The U-Pick opened at 8 AM and we arrived just after 8 AM.  We parked in front and went into the market to check in and get more information.  We got our basket and directions and drove out to the strawberries.

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It wasn’t a far drive and was well marked (to the field and back).

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Sally was photogenic for a change.  I think she’s really starting to like all of these farms.

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She tried a couple of berries, but surprisingly, she isn’t a big fan of strawberries.  Her brother Nick, on the other hand, loves them and calls this strawberry eating instead of strawberry picking.  The scenery around the fields was breathtakingly beautiful, even with the Perry nuclear power plant in the background.

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With picking this good, it was easy to come home with just over 5 pounds of berries.  Grand total $11.67 which included a bulb of garlic that I picked up at the market for $1 when we checked out.

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Secor Nursery doesn’t seem to have a website, but I recently found their Facebook page.  You can call them for picking updates and they have an email list.  I would not have tried this farm out due to the lack of easy information available, but my local Rite Aid manage suggested it.  He and his wife do much of their picking there.  With that recommendation, we headed out.

I’m so glad that we tried this farm.  I think it is my favorite to date.  The berries were $1.99 a pound and that’s in line with our other picking this season.  The scenery was great, there was a port-a-jon available, and we had the picking to ourselves for the first half hour.  I can’t wait for cherries, black and red raspberries and blueberries.

 

Today was the second pick up for the Geauga Family Farms CSA.  As usual, we had no idea what we would receive.  A newsletter comes out that gives us an idea of what we may receive, but I usually don’t see it before our pickup.  Today was the second pick up and also the second time the truck was late.  Both times, it arrived before we did, so we haven’t had to wait for them.  I’m not sure what will happen next week since we want to come to the farm visit.  Maybe I’ll enlist some assistance from my husband.  Even with an on-time truck arriving at Whole Foods by 4pm, it will be tough to pick up, store and get to the farm by 6pm.

Here’s what we received:

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Let’s take a closer look.

1 bunch of kale, 2 containers of strawberries

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2 tomatoes, 1 dozen eggs

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garlic scapes, green onions

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pickling cucumbers, lots of lettuce (3 bags with 4 heads total)

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Here’s our plan of attack:

This week, we plan to have several salads with the lettuce.  I’ve been making spelt and quinoa and also using beans in some salads.  I’ll pickle the cucumbers.  I’m glad I stocked up on the spices for them.  I’ll need to double check our vinegar stock.  Some of the onions and garlic scape will be used in a batch of taco filling and the rest will be used in a sauté with mushrooms for the top of burgers or chopped and frozen.  There aren’t too many of them, so that might all got in the taco filling.  The tomatoes will go in the taco filling also.  I’ve been making baked oatmeal, scrambled eggs and hard boiled eggs so the eggs have been easy to use in a timely fashion.  Also, they have a long shelf life.  We just picked some strawberries and made jam today, so these will most likely get eaten.  If we feel like we have too many, we’ll make some strawberry ice cream or freeze them for later.

So, I’m left without a plan for kale.  It’s an item that we only received twice last year, and I don’t have a “go to” dish in mind.  Some quick searching in Google gave me lots of ideas.  Now, I have to think about it.  We have plans to eat dinner away from home Wednesday and Thursday , so kale will have to be lunch for us one day or for dinner on Friday.  I’m leaning toward steaming it with vinegar, garlic scapes and green onion.

Update on last week:

Since the bread was opened for a snack on the way home, Nick, Sally and my husband had no trouble making sure it was eaten.  The bok choy went into an Asian tofu stir fry along with some of the garlic scapes and green onions.  The eggs were used in regular cooking and the cucumber and lettuce were used in salads.  Some of the strawberries were eaten and the rest went with some others we had to make jam.  The rest of the green onions and garlic scapes went into a Mexican filling for salad.

 
Breakfast
blueberry and banana baked oatmeal
Lunch
spinach with scrambled eggs, shallots, shrooms, cheese
slice of toast with strawberry jam
Afternoon Snack
strawberry banana smoothie
Dinner
cheeseburger on whole wheat bun
watermelon
handful of chips
1/2 serving baked oatmeal
Late Snack
slice of toast with peanut butter and jam
cup of milk
 Posted by at 9:15 PM