Hi, September! The Latest News from Farm & Larder and Bella Luna Farms

Fall is in the air! Here at Bella Luna Luna Farms we are enjoying the best that September has to offer with dewy mornings, cooler evenings and, yet still, sunny days:

As the summery weather lingers, we continue to enjoy seeing the blue jays and squirrels dashing about competing for walnuts and hazelnuts and the honeybees busily filling their hives with their winter honey; in the garden, we continue the everyday ritual of harvesting fresh tomatoes, beans, peppers, cucumbers and summer squash from the beds and hoophouse. This sunny season continues to keep us busy out and about off the farm working on our clients’ gardens for our landscape design firm, Parterre and then here at the farm with weddings and special events.

One such special event is our upcoming Autumn Scampagnata Supper on September 7th, the third in an inspiring four-part series of outings here at the farm that benefits Slow Food Seattle. The evening will begin with Chef Shane Ryan’s house-made charcuterie and traditional-style pizza baked in our wood fired oven, then move on to a six-course, family-style feast showcasing the authentic flavors of the Northwest. Supper will include such delights as octopus from the Salish Sea, Nicky Farms quail and an autumn bounty of farm fresh produce. Tickets are still available; join us!

This autumn-inspired event sure has us looking ahead to the cornucopia of the fall harvest: In the next few weeks we will see the apples and pears, squash and pumpkins, hardy kales and cabbages, that take us into the next season each year. The early apples will be the first ready with the crisp, tart Honeycrisp and Akane varieties; next up come the Asian pears, and the last of the blueberries. In the gardens, the kale, cabbage and broccoli seedlings are going into the ground to overwinter, right as the fresh garlic and storage onions like our favorite flat Italian Cipollinis are coming out of it. Cover crops have been sown in the fallow plots to turn under in the spring and help enrich the soil.
The kitchen continues to bustle with pickling, preserving and canning as we put away the summer bounty. September is always busy spent crafting big batches of Nonna Pat’s tomato sauce to carry us through the winter months. We are also putting our favorite Mathilde cucumbers to delicious use in small-batches of our signature French-style cornichons. Made using a traditional recipe, each jar is packed with a Grapehouse grape leaf during pickling to keep these tiny pickles crunchy and crisp.

From our family to yours, happy September!