November 15th
Winter on the farm is only just a few days away. It’s hard to believe! We’ve been working as busy as bees taking advantage of every hour of daylight these days trying to get the last of our storage crops out of the field. We have just 1 bed of carrots, 1 bed of parsnips, and some rutabaga left to harvest. They crew has been working very hard lifting out all of the plastic mulch that we used this summer and rolling it into balls so that it can be taken to a recycle dumpster. We are very fortunate to be able to take our plastic mulch and plastic irrigation tape to a dumpster near by that will go to an agricultural plastic recycle center. We aren’t proud of our use of plastic mulch, but it has it’s place on our farm and saves us huge amounts of labor and fuel in cultivation in the summer.
We also just finished garlic planting and mulching in the nick of time before we had some very hard freezing weather. We planted about 600 lbs of garlic on the farm this year and managed to get it all mulched by last Friday. Now we’ll have just a few more days of field clean up picking up irrigation lines and a little mowing on top of our harvesting we can get done before old man winter moves to town.
We are also very excited about nesting and preparing for the arrival of our 3rd child who is due on December 14th. I have been working hard to keep up with the crew and help with the field work in whatever ways I can. I’m feeling thankful for the crew of young, strong workers this summer to help compensate for my lack of strength this Fall. This baby comes at great timing, at the close of a long season and when we’ll have a chance to really rest and bond as a family in the darkest winter months of the year.
But our resting period is not long! We’ll get a few short months free of field work, but we’ll be back to work marketing for 2018, ordering seeds and supplies and beginning greenhouse work the first week of March. For now we are very much looking forward to Thanksgiving and spending more time doing what we love most, cooking warming, home-cooked meals in the kitchen and sharing them as a family.
1 Butternut Squash– All Squash varieties will keep best at room temperature. They prefer a warmer or dry area. If they start to develop spots of any kind, you’ll know it’s time to eat them up. They don’t like to be kept in refrigerators and they look very festive sitting on your countertop. Butternuts are the classic, creamy orange squash that everyone loves and many recipes call for.
1 Pie Pumpkin– Keeps best at room temp. One very cute looking pie pumpkin with just enough flesh to make a home-made pumpkin pie.
1 Sweet Dumpling Squash- Keeps best at room temperature. They have a flesh similar to color, texture and flavor as a delicate. Usually a very sweet squash, but they can vary.
5 # Carrots– A nice bag of carrots for you to snack on, add to your fall soups or cook in any way you can dream up. We thought the carrots this fall were very sweet and crispy!
5# Potatoes- Many of the potatoes were the Yukon gold variety which is a very creamy potato that is very nice for mashed potatoes. But some members may have received russets which are a more textured potato that hold together very nice in a soup or stew or for baking.
1# Garlic– Garlic will keep best in the refrigerator. You can keep a bulb or two on your counter at a time, but truly they will keep best in the cold and dry of your refrigerator. They will dry out and possibly sprout if left on your counter.
1 # Leeks– Leeks are in the onion family and can be used in soups much like an onion. Potato leek soup is the most common recipe. Leeks can be used all the way up the stem to where they turn into the dark green leaves. The dark green leaves are edible, but a little more tough (toss them in your stock).
1 Celeraic Root– Don’t judge this book by it’s cover! Celeriac is the price disguised as a frog. It is very ugly on the outside, but a true gem to have in your fridge to add to your soups and stews. Peel it, cube it and boil and mash it with potatoes for a celeriac mashed potato recipe. It is also wonderful if peeled and then cubed very small into a soup or pureed into a creamy celeriac potato soup.
1 Rutabaga– Rutabaga are lovely if peeled, boiled and mashed with a little butter. Your family might not know that they aren’t mashed potatoes. Rutabaga are also nice if peeled and cubed very small and added to any soup or stew of your choice. They don’t have a lot of flavor, similar to a potato, so very benign in a soup or stew. They have less starch and carbs than a potato as well.
3# Sweet Potatoes– This year our sweet potatoes weren’t quite as last year. Due to when the slips arrived in the mail, we planted them later than usual and they didn’t size up as nicely this year. So some of your sweet potatoes are a little smaller than what we have given in the past. But the small ones are just as good! No need to peel your sweet potatoes! Did you know the skins are healthy to eat and perfectly edible? Yes! We like to make home-made sweet potato oven fries. Toss them (cut into sticks with skin and all) with coconut oil and bake them into fries. Yum!
3# Onions– A nice mix of red and yellow onions for storage. Onions also prefer a refrigerator for long term storage, but if you cook with a lot of onions, they’ll be fine on your counter for up to a month without sprouting.
3# Beets– Beets keep terrifically well in a plastic bag in the fridge for months. But these guys are so sweet, I know they won’t last long at your house! Boil or roast them and discover your favorite beet recipes.
1 Brussels Sprouts Stalk- Brussels are truly a unique fall gem that can only be enjoyed this time of year. They’re a bit of pain to snap off of the stalk, peel back and prepare, but they’re so worth it! Have you had roasted Brussels Sprouts? Try it!
Shepards Pie with Rutabaga Topping
