Crossway Farms

Crossway Farms Weekly Update

Hope your week has been as nice and wet as ours. As promised, this week I will describe our heirloom tomato varieties:

BLACK PRINCE - An old Russian heirloom with smooth, round fruits that have a deep, garnet skin color with dark, reddish - brown flesh. Very juicy and flavorful! For best flavor, the tomatoes should be harvested when the shoulders still have a trace of green.

RED BRANDYWINE - Our best selling heirloom tomato! First introduced in 1885 by Amish farmers in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the large vines produce fruit that are 8 oz. to 1 pound in size and deep red in color. This excellent tasting tomato is very meaty, rich in flavor, and one of our favorites!

BRANDYWINE, PINK - Introduced in the 1890’s, the large vines have potato-leaf like foliage and pink fruit that often weigh 1.5 pounds or more! The slightly lobed fruit is mild and juicy, with a low acid taste.

CHEROKEE PURPLE - Originally grown by the Cherokee Indians, this has been a popular tomato for over 100 years. This relatively disease free tomato has pink-purple flesh, with a smoky, sweet flavor. This tomato also has green shoulders when it is ripe.

MORTGAGE LIFTER - This old, heirloom tomato grows huge (2 pounds or more), pink fruit, that are very meaty and has few seeds. Folklore states that a farmer sold these tomatoes to pay off the mortgage on his farm! Mild in flavor.

Mr. STRIPEY - This tomato’s color is a rich golden yellow and is covered with reddish-pink vertical stripes to create a very striking color combination. Like other yellow type tomatoes, Mr. Stripey has a higher natural sugar content than most varieties, which gives it a low-acid tomato flavor.

We also have Early Girl, Mountain Fresh, and Celebrity hybrid tomatoes. In addition to the larger tomato varieties, we have tried several unique and tasty cherry tomatoes such as Green Grape, Chocolate Cherry, Brown Berry, Sun Cherry, and Sungold. We encourage you to try these; each have a slightly different flavor and will add color to your meals.

We are picking a few bell peppers in a multitude of colors. This week we will have lilac bells as well as green. The zucchini are taking over the market and the cucumbers will be ready in the next week. We have red cabbage for slaw or even for unique colored cabbage rolls. We do have green beans this week and have a good supply of tomatoes for offering. We still have Fulton’s sweet corn, it is a bi-color with full ears and great flavor.

The flowers are doing well, with new varieties maturing each week. There are still red raspberries at the market each day in limited supply.

We did recieve a wonderful rain Wednesday night at both farms and may recieve more in the next 24 hours. If it is storming Saturday morning we will have all of our Farmers Market products — including baked goods — at the Cisco Rd. location. If it is just raining, we will set up downtown.

Angie and Debbie will have their baked goods at the downtown Farmer’s Market (Saturday morning from 8 a.m. to noon) and I have listed the items below.
Baked Goods: No Bake Cookies, Peanut Butter Fudge, White Chocolate Fudge, Chocolate Fudge, Rice Krispy Treats, Lemon Bars, Frosted Cut-out Cookies, Oatmeal Cookies, Mini-Carrot Cakes with Cream Cheese Frosting, Hershey Kiss Cookies, Pennsylvania Dutch Coffee Cakes, Buckeyes, and Homemade Jams.

Have a great weekend!

Jason and Angela Frantom

Crossway Farms

Crossway Farms Weekly Update

Rain!! How nice it was to smell the rain in the air and then to actually have some of it land on our farms. We received anywhere from .5 inch to 1.2 inches on the farms. That doesn’t break a drought, but we will take whatever the Good Lord gives us. We have been planting strawberry plants at the Cisco Rd. location, weeding the pumpkins, and removing the old raspberry canes from the patch. The summer is going quickly — it will be pumpkin time before we know it. We are still picking a few red raspberries each day and are looking forward to the fall varieties coming in about a month.

Our flowers are blooming like crazy, and we have a wonderful supply of gladiolas, zinnias, and sunflowers. We also have plenty of small zucchini and yellow squash for grilling or stir fry, and there is red cabbage (and still a few green) for sale this week. One change from last week’s update: due to a gap in production for a few days, we will not have many green beans until late next week.

We have a good supply of Early Girl, Mountain Fresh and a few heirloom tomatoes for this week’s market. Plenty of cherry tomatoes! Next week I will describe in detail each tomato variety we have. We are selling Fulton’s sweet corn, too; it is a great flavored bi-color with very full ears. On cucumbers: they’ll be ready in about two weeks. They’re late this year because we lost our early-start plants.

Angie and Debbie will have their baked goods at the downtown Farmer’s Market (Saturday morning from 8 a.m. to noon) and I have listed the items below.
Baked Goods: No Bake Cookies, Peanut Butter Fudge, White Chocolate Fudge, Chocolate Fudge, Rice Krispy Treats, Lemon Bars, Frosted Cut-out Cookies, Oatmeal Cookies, Mini-Carrot Cakes with Cream Cheese Frosting, Hershey Kiss Cookies, Cinnamon Rolls, Pennsylvania Dutch Coffee Cakes, Buckeyes, and Caramel Corn.

Have a great weekend!

Jason and Angela Frantom
Crossway Farms

Crossway Farms Weekly Update

The weeks are flying by! Black raspberry season always seems to go fast, and this year was no exception. The blacks are finished for 2007, but we do have a few pre-picked red raspberries each day at the Cisco Rd. market. The reds will pick up again in late August for their fall season. In other berry news, we are getting ready to put in new strawberry plants next week. This will double the size of our strawberry U-pick patch at Cisco Rd. for next year.

You may do a double take this Saturday at the markets, but those really will be flowers we’re selling. We’re trying cut flowers as something new, and this weekend we will have some beautiful gladiolas, zinnias, cosmos, and a few sunflowers.

We are picking a good amount of green beans and should have them for several weeks. If your plan is to can or freeze green beans, we suggest that you order them during the week, as we usually sell out on Saturdays. We will have Stonehead cabbage for about one more week, and will have the Red Dynasty cabbage for a couple more weeks. This is a red cabbage with wonderful flavor and makes a beautiful slaw.

We have plenty of zucchini and yellow squash. Our cucumbers are coming, but slowly this year. We will have a limited supply of Early Girl and Mountain Fresh tomatoes this weekend, and of course will be harvesting more as they come on.

We will be selling sweet corn downtown at the Farmer’s Market and at the Cisco Rd. location throughout the week. This is the only item of produce that we have not grown — it is grown by Fulton Farms in Troy. Our goal at Crossway Farms in the past has been to grow everything we sell so that our produce is local and of good quality. As you can imagine, it is tough as a grower to grow everything and grow it well. So we have decided to buy sweet corn from someone we trust and who has a reputation for growing good sweet corn. We hope you understand our decision and know that we are still committed to quality and taste.

Angie and Debbie will have their baked goods at the Farmer’s Market and I have listed the items below.
Baked Goods: No Bake Cookies, Peanut Butter Fudge, White Chocolate Fudge, Chocolate Fudge, Rice Krispy Treats, Lemon Bars, Frosted Cut-out Cookies, Oatmeal Cookies, Mini-Carrot Cakes with Cream Cheese Frosting, Hershey Kiss Cookies, Cinnamon Rolls, Pennsylvania Dutch Coffee Cakes and Caramel Corn.

Have a great weekend !!

Jason and Angela Frantom

Crossway Farms

2211 Cisco Rd.

Sidney, Ohio 45365

937-210-1590

Crossway Farms Weekly Update

First, we apologize to those of you who have not been receiving the Weekly Update via web email. We are working to correct the problem. Until then, we’ll send the update from our personal email account to each of you. Please bookmark www.crosswayfarms.com and check there each week for updates on the produce and events.

We have a nice supply of raspberries in the U-pick patch on Cisco Rd., but now is the time to get them! In one week there won’t be many black raspberries to be found, as we are on the “downhill” side of those. We will have red raspberries throughout the summer but in smaller quantities than the past few weeks — at least until the fall reds come on.

We are picking some very nice Tenderette green beans and will have them downtown on Saturday as well as at the Cisco Road Farm Market. The Stonehead and Red Dynasty cabbage are doing well and are very nice dense heads. Our snow peas are finished for now but we hope to have some from our late summer planting. We also have zucchini, as well as cherry tomatoes.

We will have a VERY limited supply of Early Girl tomatoes for this weekend’s market but we will be harvesting more as they ripen.

We regret that we will not have any more sweet corn until next week due to Fulton’s market not having enough to wholesale, we apologize for this inconvenience.

Angie and Debbie will have their baked goods at the Farmer’s Market and I have listed the items below.
Baked Goods: No Bake Cookies, Peanut Butter Fudge, White Chocolate Fudge, Chocolate Fudge, Rice Krispy Treats, Lemon Bars, Frosted Cut-out Cookies, Oatmeal Cookies, Mini-Carrot Cakes with Cream Cheese Frosting, Hershey Kiss Cookies, Cinnamon Rolls, Pennsylvania Dutch Coffee Cakes and Caramel Corn.

Have a great weekend !!

Jason and Angela Frantom

Crossway Farms