Week 17

Last night I flew home from a three day trip to Colorado for a wedding.  You know you are at a wedding in a ski town when all the toasts not only toast the couple's future but also mention powder days.  It was great to see some old friends and to walk under the gold leafed aspen trees.  I cried at least three times at the beauty of the mountains this time of year.  Perhaps it is because I lived in that valley during such a carefree time in my life (and that of my friends) or perhaps it is because I discovered so many new things while living there (hiking, skiing, the joy of rivers) or perhaps I was completely exhausted and just so thankful for a little rest!  Regardless, it is a beautiful part of the world and I am so thankful I had the chance to visit.  Next week Kelly will get his chance for a quick trip out of town.  He is going to Omaha for his brother's 40th birthday.  I am pretty sure I got the better deal in terms of destination but I am keeping that to myself.  The ability to take those trips are a sign that our season is winding down.  We even had a little frost on the ground at our house.  The farm is usually a few degrees warmer on a cold morning so we probably did not have had one there.

After this week those of you who did not skip will have two more boxes and those of you who did skip a week will have three more boxes.  If you didn't skip but wish to go an extra week you can always pay for an additional box.

Carrots
Green Beans - hopefully
Kale
Acorn Squash
Onion
Cabbage 
Salad Mix - Large Only
Head Lettuce - Small Only

Week 16 

With the equinox just around the corner and the ground littered with leaves it seems appropriate to start dishing out winter squash.  Your first squash will be a spaghetti squash.  There are people who think it tastes great with marinara.  I am not one of them, but the strands are fun and it makes a simple side dish when tossed with some garlic, herbs and butter.  It is also good tossed with butter, roasted kale, mushrooms and topped with a bit of Parmesan.  Because it has a mild flavor you can season it any way you like.  If you are looking for some  inspiration and recipe ideas  the Huffington Post has a couple dozen photos with recipe links you could check out.

We have only pulled spaghetti squash and some delicata (in your boxes soon, I promise) thus far but this week we hope to get the rest of it out of the field and into the barn.  Where it is all going to go I have no idea!  We didn't seed anymore than last year but after seeing how much space the spaghetti squash is taking up I am a little skeptical.

Carrots
Beets - If you haven't jumped on the beet chip bandwagon yet here is your chance.  Be careful, they are easy to burn.
Potatoes - We have been rubbing potatoes with oil, rolling them in course salt and rosemary and baking them right on the oven rack.  So good - I forgot how tasty a good baked potato can be.  I know what potatoes I would like to give you tomorrow but some of the varieties have a lot of bug damage so I am going to resist making promises about the variety but I find that even the waxy potatoes are great baked.
Lettuce
Turnips - These small Japanese white turnips star in a very nice short video in the Kitchen Vignettes segment on PBS.  It is only three minutes long and shows you how to make soba noodles with turnips and shitake mushrooms.  You can find the dancing turnip video here or if you would rather just check out the recipe it can be found here.
Cherry Tomatoes - last of the season!
Kohlrabi - We don't grow much kohlrabi because it isn't particularly popular but I think it tastes great.  We had a salad tonight for dinner with some shaved radishes, kohlrabi, carrots and the the lettuce that most of you will be getting.  I made a poppy seed dressing that I liked.  It was much lighter than the really sweet poppy seed dressing you can buy.  The whole salad was inspired by the recipe for a shaved turnip and radish salad from a beautiful cookbook I heard about on The Splendid Table radio show.
Spaghetti Squash
Zucchini - Large Only
Number Two Tomatoes - The slicing tomatoes haven't been looking great lately but summer is quickly coming to an end and we thought you might enjoy one last tomato even if it is a little on the ugly side.

Week 15

After Monday's pick-up I shucked about 15 ears of the multi-colored, open pollinated "sweet" corn that we put in your boxes.  I took a bite out of each one raw (our pigs finished them).  Two were sweet, some where a lot like the ones we had tried at lunch - not real sweet but nice flavor and some where horrible.  A couple had the texture of paste.  The bad ones were so bad that we didn't put them in Wednesday's boxes.  They were just a bonus but bad produce isn't exactly a bonus.

If the sweet corn we grow is tasty and reliable, which I think it is, than why do we bother wasting space on a crapshoot?  There are three reasons.  Corn is an interesting crop and there are many sweet corn types.  Supersweet hybrid corn, the most recent corn to be developed, can be up to 40 percent sugar.  We grow what is called a sugary enhanced hybrid sweet corn.  It converts sugars to starch slower then a normal sugary hybrid corn and is suppose to be sweeter and more tender.  It isn't as sweet as supersweet but I am sure that it has a high sugar content.   I  made a corn soup earlier in the summer with nothing more than garlic, onions, chicken stock, thyme, a little carrot and corn that was bordering on too sweet for me.  Modern sweet corn is bred for sugar and I am interested in something that while still sweet has less sugar and a more traditional corn flavor to grow in addition to the hybrid sweet corn.  The multi colored corn is also higher in phytonutrients.   The second reason is that although we grow several open pollinated varieties we are a hybrid heavy farm in general.  We like vegetables that look and taste good and it is important for the success of our farm that we have good yields.   Many open pollinated varieties have a lot of variability in looks, harvest window, flavor and some have poor disease resistance.  As a result we often choose hybrid varieties.   However, I believe that one of the reasons why there are not better open pollinated varieties out there is because a lot of time and money is put into developing hybrids.   Hybrid seed is big business.  While I don't have a problem with the concept of a hybrid they are often produced by companies whose policies I don't agree with and who also manufacture chemicals I would never support using in a garden.  I think that buying open pollinated seed is important because it both encourages old varieties to be saved and new varieties to be developed by improving those older varieties.  It also more likely to support smaller seed farms and individual plant breeders.  This year we are also trialling several other OP varieties including a winter cabbage, a broccoli, a couple cucumbers, a couple peppers and some tomatoes.  One of the best open pollinated item we grew this year was a watermelon that we look forward to growing in greater quantities next year.  The final reason is that it is easy to get stuck in a rut and while growing things that you know do well isn't the worst rut you can be in, in the long run I think it can hold you back.  Kelly just added that there is a fourth reason - because it is fun.

Anyway, you can still be pissed if your so called sweet corn had the texture of paste(I was) but at least you know where we where coming from!

Hope you all found a way to enjoy the amazing weekend.  We had several customers inquire about winter squash this week and we should be pulling it out of the field soon.  We have already pulled some spaghetti squash and some pumpkins.  The Wednesday shares will be getting the fennel that we didn't have enough of previously.

Carrots
Radishes -  They're back.
Beans - Our new planting isn't picking great but I am hedging my bets.
Mixed Peppers
Garlic
Broccoli
Cherry Tomatoes
Collards - Large Only
Shallots - Large Only
Fennel - Wednesday Only

Week 14

Today was a good day!  Our friends Bill and Cat came over and we now have the arches of a greenhouse up next to our house.

Kelly, Bill and Cat have been working on it for the past several Tuesdays, getting the site ready, digging holes, sinking posts and putting together the trusses. Not every Tuesday went smoothly and I think everyone was really happy to see things go so well today.  The greenhouse has been at the farm in pieces since Kelly took it apart in Elma and brought it to Shincke Road several years ago.  I knew it would go up eventually but I think other people were beginning to doubt us.  Perhaps it is because we have been talking about putting it up for six years!  Sometimes it just takes a while for things to fall into place.  The four of us celebrated with a nice fall meal of roasted potatoes, kale and chicken braised in mustard and white wine.  For desert we had ice cream with homemade mini ice cream cones.  I couldn't resist buying a pizzelle iron at a yard sale a couple weeks ago even though I had never made them.  I think it was the picture on the box of the pizzelle rolled into a cone shape that sealed the deal.

The summer harvest is coming to close.  Suddenly we have a ton of empty crates that used to be filled with melons and tomatoes.  The end of melon season is sad but it gives a little break from lugging around heavy crates.  Soon they will be filled with winter squash.

Hope you all are enjoying your labor day weekend.


Carrots
Kale
Arugula
Lettuce
Onion
Cherry Tomatoes
Cucumber
Poblano Peppers - Large Only
Cilantro - Large Only

Week 13

When I sat down to dinner on Thursday night I looked at my plate and I thought to myself we have turned a corner.  It was a grilled steak,  a hearty slice of bread grilled an smeared with garlic butter, roasted fennel and a bunch of roasted kale thrown on top of everything.  Summer is fading and I think I am actually okay with that for once.  We will be having tomatoes, corn and zucchinis tonight for dinner so summer isn't gone for good, but it is defiantly waning.

Today we chose not to open the stand on due to the high wind advisory and instead we will open for a bit on Sunday.  We did our Sunday chores on Saturday and Sunday will be taken up mostly by having the stand open.  It felt great to have just a small change in our routine.  The work was the same but doing it in a different order was oddly refreshing and surprisingly confusing.  So many times today I had to remind myself that it wasn't Sunday.  I think one of the reasons why I am okay with shorter days, the rain, the big pile of kale on my plate is that I am ready for a little change in routine.  Normally I cling to tomato season and sunshine with desperation!

Hope you all found the storm to be a refreshing change of pace and didn't loose any trees (I can hear Kelly running the chainsaw on the tree that went down on our fence as I write this).

Carrots
Fennel - I love, love, love fennel.  It pairs well with tomatoes, citrus, apples, celery and seafood.  I love sautéing it until it caramelizes, I love it shaved in a salad, I love it just about anyway.  Cooking it softens the flavor.
Colored Bells - Another beautiful thing about late summer is red, yellow and orange bell peppers.
Potatoes 
Zucchini - No one has informed the current planting of zucchini that summer is on it's way out.
Broccoli
Tomatoes of some sort
Rainbow Chard - Large Only

Week 12

 Six little spotted piglets arrived today.  They are so cute!  I have spent most of the last hour feeding them watermelon.  They have had a lot of human interaction and are friendly.  We will keep them in a secure area for a few days before putting them out on electric fence just to make sure they know this is home a.k.a where the food is to be found.  However, these guys are so chill they probably would have been just fine outside right away.  The first pasture they will be in is where I someday hope to plant a new orchard.  We have 15 older apple trees at our house, which is great, but some plums, pears and quince would be nice.

There is corn for everyone this week.  I am hoping to make a corn soup with some of the culled ears.  If anyone has a recipe that they really like I would love to hear about it.  I usually keep it really simple but it would be fun to try something new.

It isn't easy to pull off a nice planting of napa cabbage and from a distance I thought maybe we had, but up close there is a bit of browning on the outer leaves.  As a result most of you will notice your napa cabbage looks rather pale.  That is because we stripped off the out leaves and left you with the blanched interior.  I love this vegetable.  You can use it in place of regular cabbage if you like slaw.  The leaves can be blanched and used instead of rice paper for spring rolls.  It can be stir fried, used in peanut noodles, chopped in salads, used in soups or put on sandwiches.  It is very versatile and mild tasting.

Carrots
Lettuce
Garlic
Corn
Zucchini
Cucumbers
Cherry Tomatoes
Napa Cabbage
Slicing Tomatoes - Large Only
Green Beans - Large Only 

Week 11

There is a farm share customer who always jokes that the purple carrots must have been planted too close to the beets.  Well, using that logic, today you also have beets planted too close to the orange carrots!  Interestingly, the orange carrots in your box most weeks, are descended from a wild carrot from Afghanistan that was purple.  I have thrown around that tidbit of information since we started growing purple carrots but last winter I read a book called Eat on the Wild Side by Jo Robinson.  I was prepared to dislike it because we had a few customers who seemed fanatical about it.  It turned out to be really interesting and I recommend it.  I won't bore you with a full critique and there were some parts of it that  annoyed me but the historical information on how certain vegetables were developed and how sometimes nutrition was lost in the process was fascinating.  She has a lot of interesting information on carrots including how the orange carrot came to be and also how much more nutritious purple carrots(higher in antioxidants) are than orange ones.  Given that, I thought she might have a lot of negative stuff to say about golden beets but apparently they have some health benefits.  Personally, I love them.  They are not as earthy as red beets.  They are mild, sweet and look beautiful when sliced in a salad.  As a bonus they don't bleed so if you find red beets to be too messy golden beets might be up your alley.

We frantically pulled onions last Thursday just in case it really did rain on Friday.  We were a little doubtful but what shower we got - such a nice change of pace to where rain gear.  Looks like we are back to hot and sunny for a bit.

Small shares will have a choice of either cherry tomatoes or slicing tomatoes.  Large shares will get both.

Have a great week.

Head Lettuce
Purple Carrots
Golden Beets
Ridiculously Large Sweet Onion - Some of these are so big they make me laugh.  I know we might not share a sense of humor when in comes to vegetables but if you like sweet onions these will put a smile on your face.
Red Slicing Tomato 
Cherry Tomatoes
Tomatillos - make some salsa - it is easy and delicious
Choice of Melon - We have lots of watermelon, some Tuscan melons, some piel de sapo and maybe a couple other random types.
Cilantro - Large Only
Bell Pepper - Large Only