Week 18

With a possible frost in the forecast and limited crew we have had a busy week.  I am happy to say that all the winter squash is out of the field, my dahlias are all tagged and we got one last good picking off the zucchinis.  I am hoping to cover peppers and maybe some lettuce later today.  Those of you who pick up at the house will have to navigate around a few squash bins.  At the moment squash storage is split up with most of it at the South Bay location but we needed to use the building at our house for some of it. 

Carrots
Delicata Squash - We sliced some of these into half moons and roasted them on a cookie sheet the other night just so I could be confident they were ready to eat - so good.  Hope you enjoy them.
Spinach
Zucchini - We will continue to have some zucchini because we planted a late round in one of the hoop houses but this will be the last time we have enough quantity to put them in your boxes.
Potatoes- Yellow Finn is our yellow fall storage potato this year and it is not has pretty as the potatoes you have been getting but, the skin blemishes are superficial. 
Red Onion
Savoy Cabbage - Large Only

Week 17

Another damp Sunday morning.  I have not checked the stats but I know we have had more rain than usual for September.  I have mixed feelings about it.  It speeds up decay in the garden and forces us to transition to fall crops maybe a tad bit before they or we are really ready.  It does look like there is some sunshine in the forecast for the week and I am hopeful we will have sunny days to harvest winter squash.  It comes out of the field much cleaner on a sunny day.  It may have some soil spattered on it but that wipes off fairly easy.  Wet dirt that is smudged all over the squash requires a lot of wiping to get it ready for market.  You can expect to see some delicatas in the box next week.  We also grew a pretty blue grey squash called silver bell for the CSA.  There will only be spinach in the large share boxes this week but everyone should get it soon.  Kelly and I were harvesting cauliflower on Friday and I was coming up with mental rough draft of what would be in the boxes this week.  Kelly was harvesting out of the bed next to the daikon radishes which are covered with row cover.  I asked him to reach in and grab a daikon so we could see if they were sized up and ready for the boxes.  He pulled out what is probably the largest daikon we have ever grown which sent us both in to a fit of giggles.  Yup.  They are sized up.  Daikon is great raw but you should also try cooking with it.  Don't be intimidated by the word radish or by its size.  It is actually pretty mild and versatile. 

Lettuce
Carrots
Specialty Pepper - Either sweet pimentos, poblanos or shishitos.  The pimento or sheep nose peppers are hands down, in my opinion, the best sweet pepper we grow - and they are cute.  The poblanos this year are a new variety, but have the same rich flavor and heat that is typical of them.  Steak tacos with rajas or rajas con crema are a couple of our favorites.  Shishitos became trendy in food magazines several years ago, but ya know, things are a bit slow to make it to Olympia.  Blistered shishitos are a breeze to make and are delicious.
Kale 
Daikon Radish
Broccoli
Spinach - Large Only 
Onions - Large Only

Week 16

As I am sitting here, a little damp from morning harvest, with the front door open, I am wondering if I shouldn't close it and pop on the heat for just a minute.  For someone who works outside all day I am such a baby when it comes to being warm (as in very warm) when I am inside.  Perhaps I will build our first fire of the season. 

We are having farmers over tonight with a theme of food that you didn't eat enough of this summer and I am really not feeling all that summerish at the moment.  I am sure I can change my tune if I just think about the fact that I am not going to eat a tomato for many months starting very soon!

Hope you all are enjoying the rain.

Green Beans - We were really on the fence about planting green beans.  They can be hard to sell at a price that justifies growing them and they just never do as well for us as we think they should.  After 10 years of them not really working that well in our system and our downsizing it seemed like a good time to let go of them.  Then I got sad about it one May day and planted a bed in a part of the field that has always had hideous weed pressure. I knew it was less than ideal but it was one of the few places on the farm that wasn't already mapped out.  Well, that went about as well as one would have expected.  After the spring carrot field turned into our last planting of zukes and cukes there was about a hundred feet of empty space.  Hmm, I thought, is it too late?  Almost too late, but they made it and are in your box this week.  We ate some grilled on a salad with grilled steak, grilled onions and blue cheese and they were so good that we ate some again the next night.
Rainbow Chard
Carrots
Garlic
Potatoes
Cherry Tomatoes
Radish - Large Only
Herb - Large Only

This green beans goma-ae calls for mirin and is the recipe I use, but many recipes don't call for it if you don't have it and don't want to buy it.  They typically use a little more sugar.  With just a few ingredients it is an easy dish and incredibly delicious.  The Asian grocer, Arirang out by the Goodwill in Hawk's Prairie sells already toasted sesame seeds if you want to eliminate a step.  Some stores also sell them pre-ground but I don't think Arirang has them packaged that way.

Week 15

We are going to hit you with one last dose of summer!  Your boxes will still have summer items in it in the coming weeks, but this box is chock full of summer.  The field cherry tomatoes have been slowly succumbing to disease over the last month and I think this rain will put that into overdrive.  The cucumbers and the zucchini are slowing down as well. 

We loose a crew member this week and another next week.  It feels like it is decent timing.  The very end of the month with two more people gone might get a bit iffy, but I am really pleased with what we have accomplished in the past two weeks and I think stuff looks solid going into fall. 

Kelly has been handling the water on the winter squash and I hadn't been over to look at the field (they are all by themselves in a different location) in a couple months.  I turned the water on last week and walked around.  I was pleasantly surprised.  Kelly had talked a lot about deer damage and while there was plenty of it, all and all it looks good.  The first thing I always look at is the size and quantity of the delicatas.  That is my indicator of how everything will pan out and I am happy with what I saw.

But back to summer for now...

Cherry Tomatoes
Cucumber
Zucchini
Sweet Pepper 
Arugula
Lettuce
Beets - I made this beet and red onion tarte tatin last week and loved the flavors in it.  The puff pastry, tart presentation made it very pretty, but I realized I don't care a lot about store bought puff pastry and since I have no intention of making it myself, I might skip that part.  However, I will most definitely be making the beets again.  I ended up draining a little liquid off before I added the puff pastry so it wouldn't get soggy when I flipped it and I think that was a good decision. 
Slicing Tomato - Large Only

Week 14

Happy September.   A farmer friend got married yesterday and at the reception we were all rejoicing at the arrival of September.  The first part of the month is actually a lot like August, but it really is the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of life returning to a more reasonable pace.

We aim to get onions out of the field this week.  We should have had them out before the rain last week. Somehow we didn't look at the weather for a few days and we missed the rain prediction.  It wasn't the best thing for them, but they seem to be okay.  We are in the midst of peak harvest in terms of the amount of time it takes up in the day and we haven't had a chance to get much else done on the farm over the past week.  It is the final push.  Onions and some weeding need to happen this week and then we will shift into clean up projects when time allows at the end of the harvest day.  We will have another push at the end of the month when it is time to pull winter squash.  Nothing to it but to do it!

I noticed someone left a post card for the Hunger Walk.  If any of you saw the card and are vaguely interested in donating but just need it to be a little more convenient I am including a link here to the donation page.  I don't typically talk much about social justice issues around food because I don't really see this as a forum to talk politics but let's face we are all incredibly lucky to eat the food we do.  I can't tell you how many conversations Kelly and I have around the intersection of our desire to grow food, our need make a living/pay our crew and the cost and affordability of the food we grow.  Anyway, everyone needs to eat and this walk supports three great organizations. 

Carrots
Slicing Tomato
Small Melon - cantaloupe, or charentais, or honeydew
Broccoli
Potatoes
Cauliflower-Small Only
Eggplant - Large Only
Garlic - Large Only