It is still August, but really feels like fall now. Look how leaves are turning yellow. Too bad for cucumber lovers.

Hovering dragon flies were replaced by chirping crickets. Above all, I feel fall when I feel cool temperature in early evenings.  Last week’s average temperature at 6pm on Gabriola was 18 degrees Celsius, and, interestingly, that is the night-time temperature at the end of September in 1970s in Nagoya city in Japan where I spent most of my childhood!  I guess our physical memory drives our sense of the season rather than actual calendar.  

German butter potatoes that we planted in spring seems to be ready for harvest!  Leaves are now yellow and some of the stalks are leaning down, so I dug up a few.

We will bring these potatoes to the markets starting this week.  In the meantime, I cooked our family classic, “Potato Cheese”. This was liked by both our son and daughter, and when we could not come up with a definitive answer to ‘What’s for dinner?’ question, this was our saviour!  It is very easy, delicious and satisfying.  Recipe is at the end of this newsletter.  We hope you like it, too!

Our prime growing season seems to be coming to close to the end and I started to reflect how we did this year and how we could do better next year.  Our growing space is limited and it is still a big challenge for us to plan timing and amount of planting so that the harvest can match the demand from our customers.  We want to have enough supply for our restaurant/retail customers and also meet the demand from customers at the farmers markets.  Demand changes at a whim (market is quiet if it rains…), and plants’ growing speed and harvest rate change from season to season.  We also want to grow as many varieties of crops as possible so that our customers can enjoy more choices of delicious and nutritious food, but more varieties add more complexity to farm operation, such as crop and space planning, different sets of gardening skills and more daily chores. Running a financially sustainable small scale farm is a real business challenge… Having said all these, if you have a vegetable that you can’t get enough from local farms, now is a good time to let us know so we can consider growing them next season!  

I have been looking for true cinnamon sticks for our cinnamon&raisin bread for a while but they have been out of stock… Last week I tried cassia cinnamon as an alternative but the fragrance was too sharp for daily bread.  When I freshly ground true cinnamon and use it in our bread, it adds gentle but distinctive fragrance with a hint of sweetness. I could not compromise it. So, I decided to bake simple raisin loaves without cinnamon last week.  This is a moist and tender loaf with simple ingredients of just wholegrain spelt, salt, water and organic raisins.  We liked to eat it either toasted or fresh, with butter, or olive oil and Zaatar spice mix.  We will continue bringing them to the markets, so please try one!

Now, here is the recipe of the “Potato Cheese”:

Ingredients for one person
A few medium sized potatoes
One medium sized onion
Your choice of cheese (today I mixed Swiss and Asiago), shredded
Olive oil for frying
Salt and pepper

Method
1. Wash and cut potatoes into 1/8 inch thick slices
2. Thinly cut onion
3. Heat olive oil in a pan, medium heat
4. Add onion to the pan, sauté about a minute, add a pinch of salt and continue to cook until onion becomes translucent
5. Add potatoes into the pan, add a pinch of salt and pepper and sauté until potatoes almost cooked through
6. Add cheese, lower the heat, put a lid on and cook until cheese melts. 
7. Season as you like and enjoy!

Our market schedule is as follows:

• Island Roots Farmers’ Market: Beban Park, 2300 Bowen Road, Nanaimo, 3 – 6pm on Wednesday
• AGI Market: AGI Hall, Gabriola, 10am – 2pm on Saturday

Thank you for your support and reading our newsletter. Have a wonderful week!