This week I have some very big news to share with you. You might want to sit down. No, we’re not having a baby. Even better, we bought a combine! It’s actually an All Crop Harvester, made by Allis Chalmers, so it can harvest any kind of grain or seed crop. We plan to try it out first on some cereal rye, a cover crop gone to seed. When farmer Colin first proposed this purchase I thought he was joking, as I was under the impression that one needed quite a bit of land to grow grains, (you know, like the entire mid-west) but I have since learned that a small patch can yield a good size load of seed, and that this old harvester is designed for exactly that, a small patch. The goal is to produce some of our own cover crop seed and grains to feed our chickens. Buying organic seeds and feeds is one of our larger farm expenses, so buying a combine can somehow actually save us money. Hmm. We also have to build it a roof of it’s own because it is too big to fit into the barn.

As promised, I will now reveal to you the answer the seed company gave to me about the mysterious squashes. CSA member Mike Neely was the first one to call me with the answer, and my seed company was only one day later. Both confirmed that there had been a mistake at the seed supplier packager place, and that the whole batch of “Tondo Chiaro di Toscana” had been mislabeled as “Costata Romanesco.” It’s just another fine Italian fancy summer squash with tender skins and sweet flesh, great for grilling, frying, or any other standard summer squash recipe. I do find them to be slightly more moist than the Costatas were, those were a very dry squash, so these Tondos should work out just fine for baking recipes, too. The actual catalog description of Tondo says that it’s round shape is ideal for stuffing, sounds about right.

Today we did that thing we don’t like to do so much, again. We picked peas and beans in the same day. Most seasons, we get a week off in between when the peas finish and the beans come on. Not last year, and not this year either. But that’s ok, we can do it. We are the greatest farm team ever!

Since the kids are away, Colin and I have had a few out to dinner dates, and one of them featured beets. I won’t mention the name of the restaurant because they didn’t buy my beets to serve, and I don’t like that at all, but I did go there and have a nice salad that was served on a beautiful fan of thinly sliced, cooked beets. Transparent, luminous, ruby rounds make the greens look greener and provide a sweetness not common to the average salad plate. I will tell you the name of another restaurant that does buy my beets, and lettuce, and lots of other things: Acqua Via! They served us some very special beets with cured meat bits and a light honey horseradish sauce that was very subtle and perfect.