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Week 23 of 28!

Beet Box -

Week 23 of 28! Pretty Parsnips! Manly Mustards!
What's Fresh from Valley Flora this Week...
View this email in your browser
In This Week's Beet Box Newsletter:
 
  • Pretty Parsnips! Manly Mustards!
  • Beautiful Fall, in Photos...
  • New Fall Farmstand Hours
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Your Share This Week:
  • Carrots
  • Yellow Onions
  • Gold Nugget Squash
  • Romanesco
  • Radishes or Hakurei Turnips
  • Head Lettuce
  • Mustard Greens
  • Parsnips
  • Parsley
On Rotation:*
*This means that some pickup sites will receive it this week; others in a future week.
  • Tomatoes
  • Radishes
  • Hakurei Turnips
Please Note: All of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball
What might be in your share next week (no promises!):
  • Onions
  • Head Lettuce?
  • Carrots
  • Cauliflower?
  • Celery
  • Potatoes
  • Butternut Squash
  • Brussels sprouts
  • Chard?
For recipes and ideas, check out these links:
 
Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.
 
Epicurious
A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients
 
Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.
 
Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.
 
Pretty Parnsips! Manly Mustards!
Holy cow, we have FINALLY managed to grow some reasonably pretty parsnips after 10 long years of trying! All of you who've been with us for awhile are used to my annual kvetch each fall about how I'm going to divorce parsnips for good, what a terrible vegetable they are (ugly, hard to dig, ungrateful for all the hard work we put into them, yada yada yada...). WELL, after our umpteenth frustrating tussle with parsnips last fall I decided to ask my network of farmer friends what the heck I was doing wrong. I wanted to grow the kind of parsnips that I wouldn't have to apologize about. I got all kinds of input (many of them said, "Parsnips, oh we don't bother with THOSE!"). But there were some useful tips: 1) Plant them a little later (June instead of May), 2) dig them a little sooner (before they get oversized and begin to crack and turn uber-ugly, which is why you're getting them this week and at Thanksgiving, instead of later), and 3) maybe add a trace amount of boron to the field.

We did all three things and WOW, did I get an oxytocin rush when we harvested the first ones a week ago! They are actually white! They are only a little bit cracked! They even look like something you might want to cook with! To do so, you could cut them up and roast them, or steam and puree them (they make a lovely mash!), or soup, or latkes! Just google it...there are lots of inspired recipes both simple and fancy to be had.

Also in your tote this week, a bunch of mustard greens in lacy maroon and frilly green. I was thinking it'd be fun to mix it up and have a bunched green other than our usual kale/collards/chard in the tote this fall, so we did an experimental seeding. They have a spicy kick (hence the "manly"... ok, semi-desperate attempt at alliteration, I admit...). You can eat them raw to spice up a salad or steam/sautee them like any other bunched green.
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Beautiful Fall, in Photos...
Rainbow Chard next to the Brussels sprouts forest
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Sunrise over newly-seeded cover crop in the summer corn patch
Evening harvest in the kale patch
Blueberry bushes aflame
Pinova apples backlit by evening light
The last of the grapes
Cover crop ground, rolled and ready for rain
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New Fall Farmstand Hours
Regular Fall Farmstand hours begin this week. For the rest of the season (until December 13th) we will be open every Wednesday from 10 am to 2 pm, rain or shine (no Saturdays). The farmstand abundance is beautiful right now, with all kinds of fall bounty - including giant kohlrabis! Come stock up.
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Farmstand Fall Hours:
Wednesdays from 10 am to 2 pm, rain or shine!
Fresh Produce
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce
Copyright © 2017 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.


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Week 22 of 28 from Valley Flora!

Beet Box -

Week 22 of 28 from Valley Flora!
What's Fresh from Valley Flora this Week...
View this email in your browser
In This Week's Beet Box Newsletter:
 
  • Giant Pumpkin-palooza!
  • October Farmstand Hours
-->
Your Share This Week:
  • Carrots
  • Red Onions
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Festival Squash
  • Leeks
  • Beets
  • Radishes or Hakurei Turnips
  • Head Lettuce
  • Lacinato Kale
  • Red Potatoes
  • Tomatoes!
On Rotation:*
*This means that some pickup sites will receive it this week; others in a future week.
  • Radishes
  • Hakurei Turnips
Please Note: All of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball
What might be in your share next week (no promises!):
  • Onions
  • Head Lettuce
  • Carrots
  • Romanesco?
  • Parsley
  • Peppers
  • Gold Nugget Squash
  • Radishes or Turnips
  • Parsnips
For recipes and ideas, check out these links:
 
Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.
 
Epicurious
A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients
 
Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.
 
Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.
 
Giant Pumpkin-Palooza
Every now and then farming gets to be about something completely silly and completely about our kids (and our inner kids). This year: giant pumpkins. Last January I ordered a pack of Dill's Atlantic Giant Pumpkin seeds, a variety that has produced the Guinness Book world record-holder: a 2000 pound pumpkin. My seeds came with instructions: to achieve largest pumpkin size, give each plant at least 70 square feet of space. Plant in rich, fertile soil. Provide ample water. Thin to one pumpkin fruit per plant. And if you really want to win the State Fair, inject milk into the stem throughout the summer.

In May I started 6 seeds and got three healthy plants. In June, I planted them into an old compost heap along our fence, ran some drip tape, and then stood back and watched. Slowly, surely, over the course of the summer, those vines grew. And grew. And grew. Through the fence and into the county road. Towards the asparagus patch and into the sunflowers. The pumpkins began to swell. At the end of August the kids all chose one and carved their name into it, leaving it to grow another couple months and scarify the name into a raised welt of letters. I forgot to inject the milk. They still grew. I figured we could have a "guess the weight of the pumpkin contest" at the farmstand, until it dawned on me that we didn't have a scale big enough to weigh them...
Pumpkins lurking and swelling in the vines...
Uma enjoying a snack atop her very own pumpkin in early October...
Monday evening we decided it was time to bring in the harvest. But how to move them? Tarps? A pulley? Straps? We finally resorted to the bucket loader and some good old 7 year-old brawn:
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Pippin and Cleo, kind of like football practice...
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It always helps to pick your nose while moving giant pumpkins with the tractor...
Pumpkin-palooza 2017! Feel free to come take your picture with these behemoths. We won't be moving them again anytime soon!
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October Farmstand Hours
We are slowly easing into Fall Farmstand hours. For the month of October we will be open every Wednesday and Saturday from 10 am to 2 pm, rain or shine (instead of 9 am to 3 pm). The farmstand abundance is beautiful right now, as summer and fall food collide in a crash of color.
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Farmstand & U-Pick October Hours:
Wednesdays & Saturdays from 10 am to 2 pm, rain or shine!
Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries and Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce
Copyright © 2017 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.


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Week 21 of 28!

Beet Box -

Week 21 of 28! Pie Pumpkins! Acorn Squash! Hakurei Turnips!
What's Fresh from Valley Flora this Week...
View this email in your browser
In This Week's Beet Box Newsletter:
  • The Scurry Before the Rain
  • Pie Pumpkins and Acorn Squash
  • New October Farmstand Hours
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Your Share This Week:
  • Carrots
  • Yellow Onions
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Acorn Squash
  • Pie Pumpkins
  • Savoy Cabbage
  • Hakurei Turnips
  • Head Lettuce
On Rotation:*
*This means that some pickup sites will receive it this week; others in a future week.
  • Cauliflower
Please Note: All of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball
What might be in your share next week (no promises!):
  • Red Onions
  • Head Lettuce
  • Carrots
  • Beets
  • Brussels Sprouts?
  • Peppers
  • Festival Squash
  • Radishes
For recipes and ideas, check out these links:
 
Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.
 
Epicurious
A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients
 
Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.
 
Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.
 
The Scurry Before the Rain...
October is reminiscent of spring in many ways: green shoots of grass popping up; Hakurei turnips in your CSA share; the compulsive need to check the weather forecast three times a day. Not unlike springtime, there is so much to do that depends on good weather - and on good rain - that we live and plan by the 10-day forecast. This week we have been scurrying ahead of today's storm to get orchard fruit picked before the south winds knock it all down, to prep ground for cover cropping (tearing out spent cash crops like zucchini, eggplant, strawberries and salad greens to make space for winter cover crops), rolling up drip tape, bringing in sprinkler pipes, digging potatoes, and perhaps most importantly - seeding our winter cover crops on every bare corner of the farm and rolling them in with our antique horsedrawn cultipacker. The transition from the farm's summer appearance to its fall-winter look is abrupt at this time of year. The space we are harvesting from gets smaller every week and the bare ground expands. With this perfectly timed rain, we should see acres of cover crop greening up the farm by next week.

The one significant difference about fall and spring is that the scurrying takes place with the full, luxurious knowledge that these urgent bursts of activity are some of the last big to-do's before we wind down into a slower time of year on the farm: winter! Every farmer's favorite season!  And every farmer's husband's favorite season, right Danny :) ?

My husband really does put up with a lot: a wife who barely fits the definition of one; who stays out late almost every night from May through October (at least I'm in the field not at the bar); who comes home grubby and doesn't wear perfume (although I personally LOVE the eau de parfum of horse sweat); and who leaves most of the cooking to him during the busiest months (albeit he gets to use some pretty nice produce that I had a thing or two to do with....). He's not a farmer so it's probably a longshot that he'll ever fully understand this life that I am so in love with, and will probably continue to chafe at the fact that we will never eat dinner by six pm, and feel frustration at the fact that the weather forecast trumps everything in our lives. Given all that, thank you, Danny, for all the waiting you have done over the years, and for bending to the seasons that have me so fully in their grip. I hope you will continue to put up with me.
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Pie Pumpkins and Acorn Squash
There are some big roundish things in the tote this week, in addition to the huge cauliflowers and big savoy cabbages we packed for you. The sugar pumpkin is a variety we grow especially for pie-making, but always feel compelled to give it out before Halloween in honor of the spooky pumpkin season upon us. You could carve your little pumpkin, but I'd recommend going the distance to make a real, homemade pumpkin pie.

The dark green, lobed squash are Acorn. They're often cut in half, seeds removed, and then baked face down. You can turn them into soup bowls!
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New October Farmstand Hours
We are slowly easing into Fall Farmstand hours. For the month of October we will be open every Wednesday and Saturday from 10 am to 2 pm (instead of 9 am to 3 pm). The farmstand abundance is beautiful right now, as summer and fall food collide in a crash of color.
-->
Farmstand & U-Pick October Hours:
Wednesdays & Saturdays from 10 am to 2 pm, rain or shine!
Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries and Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce
Copyright © 2017 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.


unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences 

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