This Sunday we will be hosting our annual Open House farm event. Once a year we clean the farm up a little and create a day for sharing with you. CSA Farming is rooted in the philosophy that consumers want transparency and wish to know where their food is coming from. CSA is also founded in the idea that what is produced locally should be consumed locally. We all win when farmers get to produce fresh, local and organic produce and get to sell it to their neighbors, friends and have it distributed locally at the peak of it’s freshness.
One of my personal favorite fall activities is pressing apple cider. We have a small orchard here on the farm and have gotten most of our apples picked so far this year. We have them in bins in the packing shed and are excited to press them into cider this Sunday with you. Farmer Adam will be offering wagon ride tours of the farm from 3-5pm. Even our kids like to ride the wagons around and get a tour of the fields.
We will also be hosting a Pot-luck dinner in the packing shed at 5pm. Bring a dish to set out and your own bowls, plates and silverware if you can. We will have a wash station set up so you can take home your clean dinnerware after the dinner. We always have extra clean plates and utensils if you forget. I will be making a couple roasters full of chili to share with our farm tomatoes, peppers, onions and garlic.
Events like this are our way of saying that we appreciate you. The event is a celebration of food and farming. It’s a celebration of the community that we’ve created together. We’re a family in way. We hope that in creating events like this, if you come to the farm and you have an enjoyable experience and memory here, it will deepen your connection to your farm family and you will want to keep your connection with the farm alive and strong for many years to come.
Award Winning Vegetables!
This last week the kids entered some of our vegetables into the Vernon County Fair. They entered some of our carrots, onions, tomatoes and butternut squash. They were delighted when they saw that the carrots, butternut squash and the onions all won blue and purple ribbons! This year the girls also did paintings and drawings that won blue ribbons as well!
The blue ribbons mean “First Prize” and the purple ribbons mean “Judge’s Favorites”. So this means that your vegetables are actually award winning vegetables!
This was especially exciting for Adam and kids. Farmer Adam likes to tell me about how when he was a kid he and his mom used to make special insect, leaf and nature displays as well as produce and other ideas to enter into the fair. They would often win blue ribbons because of the extra effort they would put into their entries. He and his mom were pretty into it. I find this very cute.
I helped the kids the last couple years do fair entries, but did not put as much effort into it as Adam did and we did not win blue ribbons. Adam is feeling a little extra inspired for next year and wants to enter more vegetables from the farm with the kids. It’s fun watching him get excited about doing this with the kids.
What’s in the Box?
Spaghetti Squash- The large yellow squash in the box that has a slight oval shape. Squash prefer a 50-60 degree storage temp, so do not put your winter squash in the fridge. It should store just fine on your counter top. Spaghetti Squash are notorious for not keeping well, so use yours up soon!
Red Potatoes- 2.5lbs per member. These are fresh-dug potatoes that are un-washed. They should hold just fine on your counter-top for many months. Nothing quite like fresh-dug potatoes.
Tomatoes- 4 lbs per member. Production is waning now. We grow a wide variety of tomatoes on the farm. Some are your standard red slicers, some are yellow slicers, a mix of roma tomatoes and also a variety of heirloom tomatoes. The heirlooms are all different shapes, sizes and colors. Heirlooms have a lot of ‘character’. They can be bumpy, have healed cracks, striping, and color variations. Some of the heirlooms are pink and purple. We pick tomatoes with any kind of a ‘blush’. Once a tomato has a blush they will ripen just fine if allowed to sit out on the countertop at room temperature. Do not refrigerate tomatoes unless they are getting over-ripe and you need to buy yourself time to use them up. We need to pick them slightly under-ripe so they can handle the shipment to you.
Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes- About .40lbs of sun gold cherry tomatoes per member this week. Shipping these in little brown paper bags because the plastic clamshells are expensive and are not biodegradable. For this quantity, the brown paper bag is perfect. A small mini-sweet pepper or two tucked inside your cherry tomato bag.
Celeriac Root- Celeriac Root is especially cultivated so that the root of the celery plant grows large instead of the stems. The root has a celery flavor and a potato consistency when cut into. The fresh leaves on the celeriac root can be eaten and used like celery or added to stock for flavor. Celeriac root is a fantastic keeper. Keeps best in a plastic bag in the fridge.
Carrots- 1lb bag per member. Our famously delicious carrots!
Green Cabbage- Fall Brassicas are beginning!
Onions- 1-2 small onions. May be white or yellow storage onions.
Green Curly Kale- Strip the leaves from the stems and add to your favorite soup, salad or even on pizza! Stores best in a plastic bag in the fridge.
Bell Peppers- 2 Bell Peppers per member this week. Sweet bell peppers could have been red, orange, yellow or even purple this week. Such gorgeous peppers! We’re not having our best pepper year. In a good year we would be giving double what we have been giving these last couple weeks. We’re not sure why production is down this year.
One Hungarian Hot Wax Pepper- Technically a hot pepper, but a very mild hot pepper on the spectrum of hot peppers. One of these tucked inside your tomato bag.
Next Week’s Best Guess: potatoes, red kabocha or butternut squash, celeriac root, onion, garlic, swiss chard?, tomato, pepper, broccoli?
Recipes-
