Author: Wayne

Where are you delicious asparagus?

We will begin the 2019 season with fresh asparagus!

Hope you are as anxious as we are for all the great recipes using this wonderful vegetable.

We are watching & will let you know as soon as we have asparagus ready to sell.

 

We have had a few calls for chestnuts in the past few weeks, so we thought it best to send out a little update. Chestnuts are a very perishable nut, and unfortunately the season for them is well past. Our quantities are small (we only have two trees) and this year’s supply is long gone. We would love for anybody who wants some to have some. If that includes you, please contact us in early September, as they begin falling around that time. Most folks associate chestnuts with the Christmas season. Unfortunately, they do not ripen in Oklahoma during December, but in September and early October. They do not keep outside of refrigeration, and therefore we cannot make them available, even by cold storage, during December. We do, however have some of the finest cooking pumpkins on the planet. The variety is called Jarrahdale and they look nothing like your typical Jack-O-Lantern, which happens to be the worst of all choices for cooking. We also have a few Butternut pumpkins that are another good cooking “pumpkin” choice. They are also just plain good eating right out of the oven– cut in half, with a pat of butter in the cavity, and foil covering the top. Call up and get your Christmas Cooking Pumpkin today!

We haven’t posted in quite a while, for which we are very sorry. Sometimes you just get so busy you don’t have time to write like you should. Come by and see us and we will tell you all about it.

While you are here let us show you our chestnut trees–amazing trees with an amazing story. We have a good supply of chestnuts right now but they won’t last long. Come get yours today (please call ahead).

When the first settlers came to North America, the American Chestnut was the majority tree in the forests east of the

Mississippi. By the early 20th century nearly all of them had died from Chestnut Blight, imported to America on infected nursery stock from European and Asian Chestnut varieties.

 

Our okra is still going strong, and this morning’s pick was especially nice, made up mostly of small pickling-sized pods. If you have been looking for picklers, this is your chance. Sure, they will slice up and make a great batch of fried okra, but…just saying. The last few days our okra has slowed down a bit, first because we needed some rain, then because of cooler temperatures. Now that we got about an inch of rain a couple of days ago, and since the sun has come out and the temperature has risen a couple of days, okra is back in the summer swing. It will not last forever, however; fall is coming, and shorter days have an effect on all plant life. Slowly but surely our okra is winding down. There is nothing to worry about. There will be plenty okra for the next four or five weeks, but then when it is gone… it is gone. Don’t be sorry you waited too long.

Our third planting of Yellow Squash and Zucchini have kicked and is benefiting from that inch of rain we recently received. We have plenty. Come and get it. We do our best to pick daily, so you won’t find any green baseball bats at High-Fence Farm.

For those of you true Southerners, we also have a small supply of Black Eyed Peas (Pink Eye Purple Hull, to be exact. Isn’t that a name?). We try to pick them young so they are all snappers and very few shellers. Supplies are limited. We love these better than our green snap beans. Those of you familiar with all cow peas is that the pods are more “fuzzy” than green beans, so that when you cook them they hold more butter or broth or stew soup. You get the idea. We love the flavor.

And now for the freebee: we have a small Paw Paw tree that has been producing for a couple of weeks and we would like to share some of that abundance with any customer who comes out to buy our other produce. Quench your curiosity and take one or two on us. They have a custard-like texture and a sweet flavor like nothing else on earth. We eat them fresh right out of the skin with a spoon. You will be amazed at the size of the seeds inside. Plant the seeds about 10 feet apart in an out of the way place and in a few years you will have a tidy small tree that will produce Paw Paws for you in late July-early August. More than one tree is needed for successful pollination in most instances.