Arrived Before the Rain!

The rain held off for at least the first hour at the Beaver Farmers' Market on Saturday. There were plenty of people and the booths were loaded with produce, baked goods, & cut flowers. There were mums and lots of decorative gourds, pumpkins, Indian corn, & corn stalks. The booth above gets my vote for best decorated booth of the market today!

Here's what it looks like from the farmers' point of view ..... lots of happy customers filling their bags.We spotted one young woman with one of those chest style coolers on wheels that you pull around like a wagon. She could have been a chef .....who knows?

Even the Penn State Cooperative Extension folks were there doing a squash cooking demonstration. The food smelled really great ..... garlic in one recipe & brown sugar in another. I'm planning to try the "Spaghetti Squash Delight" recipe on the right hand plate ...... use the orange colored spaghetti squash to get the "look" & the added benefit of higher beta-carotene.

Food From THIS Local Farm

Several years of watching & waiting have paid off. Two years ago, we noticed a self-seeded grapevine on the hill behind the dog kennels. It seemed to have a lot of grapes, but they were rather small. Instead of just cutting it out, the vine was allowed to grow. The ripe grape smell coming from the hillside this year was irresistible. Basket in hand, I went up to see what was there. WOW ....... it must be a good year for grapes. Or a least a good year for grapes growing on dry south facing slopes. The yield was almost half a bushel. Plenty for 2 batches of grape jelly. Here is the first batch. The second batch is cooling overnight so that it can be strained to remove any crystals forming in the juice. BYW, the new Ball Blue Book shown above, now calls for 10 minutes in the boiling water bath canner for this jelly. It used to be 5 minutes, but many of the recipes have been revised. I'd suggest getting the latest 2009 edition ..... it's the 125th anniversary edition. The older copies can be kept as collectibles, but techniques are always being updated.

At the Ambridge Market

Wonderful herbs ..... how about drying some sage for Thanksgiving? We don't see cutting celery very often either! Pumpkins are gathered in the corner of the image. It won't be long now before we get our fall decorations of gourds, heirloom pumpkins & squash, and decorative corn. This year I'll add broomcorn that was grown here on the farm ..... got a free packet of seeds and planted them.

Before & After

It took a few days, but the peppers from Douds-Floyd Farm at the Beaver Farmers' Market are stuffed. In fact, after a few days, the green pepper turned an orange/red color.

A few tweeks of the recipe --> Substitute your favorite spaghetti sauce for the plain tomato sauce. Substitute prepared spanish rice (cooked with stewed tomatoes) for the plain white rice. Vary the cheeses on top .......

Your Roving Reporter in the Field ....

There'll be a little more here than the usual pictures of great local food from the Beaver Farmers' Market. The market is LOADED with great produce right now! The peppers & tomatoes are really colorful ...... we got a beautiful multi-colored selection of peppers to stuff from Doud-Floyd Farm. Each week brings new varieties of apples. We picked up Cortlands this time for a change. This is the apple that LFLF uses for making applebutter every few years --- of course, that family project takes about 7 bushels!

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LFLF arrived at market around 12:15 PM, which is a little later than usual. The market is located in the Beaver County Courthouse rear parking lot. While parking, about 30 people were noted out in front of the courthouse and other people were trickling in to the area. One truck had a Lycoming County decorative plate on the front bumper. Yes, we arrived at the same time as folks were setting up for a Tea Party at 1:00 PM in front of the courthouse. Not one to miss out on a photo op and a nice crowd (after loading down the market bag), your local blogster joined the group out front as it gathered and snapped a few pictures. Seemed to be more than 200 people out there. Lots of homemade signs and a big "tea-stained" American flag in crowd. Kids, senior citizens, bikers, some folks in wheelchairs, etc. Looked like a pretty average crowd on the steps and the lawn ..... didn't see any astro-turf. The first shot is the group bowing their heads in memory of the victims of 9/11. After that are a couple of the signs. Double click for close-ups.

Canfield Fair Leads to Local Food

A favorite stop after visiting the Canfield Fair is Rhodes Farm Market on Ohio Route 46 between Canfield & Columbiana. They had an absolute abundance of cantaloupes on special for $1 each, but I was looking for a watermelon. We got the watermelon, nectarines, and some crab apple jelly from a local producer. This was a "must have" since it's rarely available unless you preserve it yourself.

And what about these great looking peppers? In the excitement(!) of choosing which jelly to buy, and while balancing a watermelon, LFLF walked away without any peppers .... but hey, there's always the Beaver Farmers' Market on Saturday.

As a final tribute to the Canfield Fair, here's a look at the Grand Champion Largest Squash enthroned at the fair! How's that for local farming?

It wasn't that long ago when a giant 1000# squash was the "world class" growers' ultimate goal!

Sweet Corn Trial!

Here's a sweet corn that we planted this year. It's Ruby Queen from Burpee seeds. Personally, the sweet corn recommended as a companion pollinator tasted better to me than this variety. I wonder if anyone has tried planting this for the farmers' markets? Some folks like to experiment, but it's a bet that a lot of customers would steer clear of it thinking that it was a decorative Indian corn.