Thanks to all the sunshine this month, we will be kicking off the season on schedule this year!

Your first delivery of food will be next week, the week of June 4th!

We will be delivering:

• Valley Flora Harvest Baskets
• Abby's Greens Salad Shares
• Egg Shares
• Bread Shares
• Tamale Shares (once per month, the first week of the month)

PLEASE familiarize yourself with WHERE, WHEN and HOW to pick up your food next week:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/valley-flora-pick-locations-protocol

This web page has the answers to all of your burning questions:

• directions to your pickup location,
• instructions for claiming your food,
• day and time of your pickup, and more....

PLEASE READ IT! Our pickup sites are mostly unattended, which means we rely on YOU, our members, to know the drill so that things go smoothly. It's a bummer when someone doesn't get their salad share because someone else mistakenly took it home. So, even if you are a returning member, please read the info; there are a few new aspects to your pickup location this year - like eggs and bread.

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/valley-flora-pick-locations-protocol

The most important thing when picking up your food is to ONLY TAKE WHAT YOU HAVE PAID FOR! Next week at your pickup site, you're going to see blue or red rubbermaid totes (Harvest Baskets), red coolers (salad shares), blue coolers (tamale shares), white styrofoam coolers (egg shares), and bread. It's a lot! To avoid any mishaps, know what you paid for, and only take what you paid for.

VERY IMPORTANT: In our experience thus far, most of the SNAFUs at our pickup sites happen when someone has a friend (or even spouse) pick up for them. If you are sending someone else to pick up your food, please give them a thorough orientation to our pickup site system and be sure that your proxy knows exactly what they are picking up for you (1 harvest basket, 1 dozen eggs, and a half pound salad share, for instance....). S-P-E-L-L it out for them!

Also, we have added a new feature to our website: a monthly calendar. You'll see it on the left sidebar. It's a great way to stay abreast of when your tamale shares are scheduled for delivery, or what time your pickup is each week.

If you have any questions, please be in touch via email. You can also call, but please know it might take a couple of days before I can get back to you by phone. Things are hopping in the field right now and we're out there late every day.

And finally, the real reason you signed up for all of this: the food! Here's a sneak preview of what might be in your Harvest Basket next week!

• Asparagus
• Pac Choi
• Lettuce
• Arugula
• Radishes
• Hakurei Turnips
• Strawberries, if the sun shines warmly this week...
• A cherry tomato plant (your choice of variety)

We're excited for the first harvest, at long last! Thanks for being part of our 2012 season!

Zoë

Our Harvest Baskets are sold out BUT you can still sign up for other goodies from the farm this season, including:

• Abby's Greens Salad Shares
• Candace's Pastured Egg Shares
• Seth's Bread Shares
• Juana's Tamale Shares

To sign up, visit our website: http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/catalog/7

If you have already signed up with us this season and would like to add something to your order, no problem. Just follow the link above and place another order for the additional items you want.

Signing up for any of these products this season guarantees you a Harvest Basket next season, should you want one.

If you are not a member of the farm this year and DO NOT WANT TO RECEIVE EMAILS FROM US, please click the unsubscribe link below! Our apologies for any unwanted communication!

REMEMBER, the priority sign-up period is underway for the 2012 season!

Sign up before March 23rd to secure your Harvest Basket!

Instructions to sign up are included below. If you have trouble with the sign-up process, please read our "simple shopping helper" tips: http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/simple-shopping-helper

Sign-Up Instructions:

To "shop" for the food you want this season, please go directly to our online "store" at: http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/catalog
PLEASE NOTE: This page is NOT viewable to the general public, nor is there a link to it on our homepage. Use THIS link provided to navigate there: http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/catalog

IF you are signing up for a Harvest Basket this season, you will be prompted for a password when you select that "product" from the catalog. The password is: veggies2012

Please do not share this password, to ensure that our sign-up process is fair to all of the people on our waiting list.

You are welcome to sign up for products in any combination (for instance, just a Salad Share, or just a Harvest Basket, or just an Egg Share...or all of them together!)

ALSO, please note that this email entitles you to priority sign-up with us. This priority sign-up period will last until MARCH 23rd, at which point we will begin inviting wait-listers to sign up.

As for payment, we accept check and cash only (we're not plumbed for credit cards). To reserve your spot, we must receive FULL payment for ALL items by May 1st, with the exception of Monthly Pay Plan Harvest Baskets, for which only the $185 deposit is due by May 1st.

Thanks so much!

Hello current and past members of the farm!

At long last, this is your invitation to sign-up with Valley Flora for the 2012 season!

This year, in addition to Harvest Baskets and Abby's Greens Salad Shares, we are also offering:

• Pastured, local eggs from Candace Carnahan on Floras Creek
• Artisan sourdough bread from Seth's Brick Oven Bakery in Bandon
• Homemade tamales from Juana Ferrer in Coquille

To "shop" for the food you want this season, please go directly to our online "store" at: http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/catalog
Please note, this page is not viewable to the general public, nor is there a link to it on our homepage. Use the link provided to navigate there: http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/catalog

IF you are signing up for a Harvest Basket this season, you will be prompted for a password. The password is: veggies2012

Please do not share this password, to ensure that our sign-up process is fair to all of the people on our waiting list.

You are welcome to sign up for products in any combination (for instance, just a Salad Share, or just a Harvest Basket, or just an Egg Share...or all of them together!)

ALSO, please note that this email entitles you to priority sign-up with us. This priority sign-up period will last until MARCH 23rd, at which point we will begin inviting wait-listers to sign up.

As for payment, we accept check and cash only (we're not plumbed for credit cards). To reserve your spot, we must receive FULL payment for all items by May 1st, with the exception of Monthly Pay Plan Harvest Baskets, for which only the $185 deposit is due by May 1st.

Okeedoke. I think that's it. Thanks in advance for being part of the farm in 2012. We wouldn't be here without you!
Don't hesitate to be in touch if you have questions. Email is always the best way to get me.
Cheers,
Zoë

The Last Week!

This is it: your last installment from Valley Flora for the season. This week’s basket is a true testament to the possibility for local, wintertime eating. We’re halfway through December, but there’s no lack of food in your totes. We filled them with over twenty pounds of veggies – most of it fresh-harvested from the field (all but the cabbage, squash and potatoes, which have been in storage).

And though it’s the last trusty-dusty Rubbermaid we will pack for you this year, the farm will continue to feed its farmers and farm-babies through the winter with greens, leftover storage crops, leeks, and even broccoli. We continue to glean for our own table, enjoying the sweetest of kale, Brussels sprouts, and roots. I can’t encourage you enough: if you have the slightest inclination to grow some of your own food, we live in the perfect place to have a winter garden. For those of you who dread the Valley Flora off-season, you could fill at least some of the January-thru-May produce gap with your own homegrown veggies. It’s too late to plant a winter garden for this year, but you might think about carving out a corner for at least a few kale plants next July when it’s time to plant for winter.

In the meantime, hopefully we’ve loaded you up with enough squash, spuds and roots – all of which have a great storage life – to see you into the New Year. 

From all of us at the farm, a hearty THANK YOU for your support this year!

Happy Holidays! Feast well with those you love!

Take Two (minutes): Please Fill Out the End-of-Season Survey!!!

Every year we ask our Harvest Basket members to fill out a short survey so we can get some structured feedback about the season. It’s short and quick, so please, if you’d be so kind: http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/2011-harvest-basket-member-survey

The Year in Review!

In order to help jog your memory about what we grew for you this year, here’s a crop-by-crop recap that summarizes what we projected we would put in your Harvest Basket, what we actually put in your Harvest Basket, and the total actual value of your Harvest Basket for the year, based on our farmstand prices. Green highlighting indicates crops that we gave significantly more of than planned. Yellow highlighting indicates crops that we came up significantly short on. A sneak peak: the total value of all the food we put in your Harvest Basket this season was equal to $810.70. You paid $760 for that food, for a bonus of $50.70 in extra produce this year, equal to a 6% discount.

CROP                            Projected Quantity         Actual Quantity

Leeks                               12 count                        14 count

Red Onion                        6 count                          6 count           

Scallions                        2 bunches                        1 bunch

Shallots                        4.5 pounds                        3 pounds

Purplettes                        3 pounds                        4.5 pounds

Walla Wallas                     6 count                          4 count

Yellow Onion                      8 count                         8 count

Artichokes                        2 pounds                        1.75 pounds

Asparagus                        1 pound                         2 pounds

Beets                            7.5 pounds                       12.75 pounds

Broccoli                        15 pounds                        15 pounds

Brussels sprouts               3 stalks                        3 stalks

Red Cabbage                   2 heads                        2 heads

Green Cabbage                1 head                          2 heads

Napa Cabbage                 1 head                           1 head

Savoy Cabbage                1 head                           1 head

Carrots                            23 pounds                      19 pounds

Cauliflower                       1 head                            1-2 heads

Romanesco                        1 head                          1 head

Celeriac                             5 bulbs                            4-5 bulbs

Celery                               12 stalks                        14 stalks

Corn                                  16 ears                           17 ears

Cucumbers                        12 count                        4-5 count

Escarole                        2 heads                              1 head

Fennel                                 6 bulbs                         6 bulbs

Arugula                               1 pound                        1 pound

Braising Mix                     0.5 pound                        0.5 pound

Chard                               5 bunches                        3 bunches

Kale                                  7 bunches                        7 bunches

Pac Choi                              6 heads                        5 heads

Spinach                             2 pounds                        2 pounds

Basil                                    5 ounces                        4 ounces

Cilantro                             3 bunches                        3 bunches

Dill                                    3 bunches                        3 bunches

Parsley                             3 bunches                        5 bunches

Kohlrabi                             5 bulbs                            5 bulbs           

Head Lettuce                     34 heads                        33 heads

Parsnips                             4 pounds                        7 pounds

Peas                                    3 pounds                        3 pounds

Hot Peppers                        12 count                        8 count

Sweet Peppers                   16 count                        22 count

Potatoes                           21 pounds                        43.75 pounds

Radishes                           5 bunches                        5 bunches

Raspberries                     4 pounds u-pick           

Rhubarb                               2 stalks                        2 stalks

Strawberries                        26 pints                        24 pints

Summer Squash                7.25 pounds                  6 pounds

Hakurei Turnips                  5 bunches                     5 bunches

Scarlet Queen Turnip        2 pounds                        1.75 pounds

Cherry Tomatoes               6 x ½ pint                        10 x ½ pint

Heirloom Tomatoes           3 pounds                        3 pounds

Red Tomatoes                  10 pounds                        10 pounds

Cherry Tomato Plant            1                                    1

Acorn Squash                      4 count                           3 count

Confection Squash              1 count                            1 count

Butternut Squash                 4 count                            4 count

Delicata Squash                   8 count                            7 count

Sunshine Squash                 2 count                            1 count

Spaghetti Squash                1 count                              2-3 count

Pie Pumpkin                        1 coun                               1 count

Total Value                        $784.85                              $810.70

Maybe this recap will inspire you to fill out the survey!  http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/2011-harvest-basket-member-survey

Thanks in advance for your always-valuable feedback!

Happy News re: Farm Theft

I just learned yesterday that our insurance company is coming through to partially cover the loss of our stolen tools from earlier this summer. Hooray! Just in time for project season! Our hugest thanks to all of you for your concern and support through that mid-summer challenge!

All about 2012 Harvest Basket Signups

Lots of you have been asking about next season and wondering if there’s anything you need to do to reserve your spot in the Harvest Basket program. The answer is no. Not to worry, all current Harvest Basket members get priority sign-up for 2012. We’ll probably begin the sign-up process in January or February, at which point you’ll receive an email from us inviting you to sign up. Once you’ve had first dibs, we’ll open it up to our waiting list. If your email address changes in the next couple of months, be sure to let us know so that we can update our database and make sure you get in on the first wave of sign-ups!

In your share this week:

• Leeks
• Carrots
• Green Cabbage
• Celeriace
• Yellow Finn Potatoes
• Brussels Sprouts
• Celery
• Confection Winter squash

Kitchen Tips

Don’t forget to visit the Recipe Wizard to find ingredient-specific recipes, or go to the Recipe Exchange if you have a recipe you’d like to share with everyone!

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

Confection Winter Squash

This is a new winter squash variety for us, and I confess, I hadn’t tasted it until last night. I’m delighted to report that it’s a winner, truly! On the drier, flakier side – like a Sunshine squash – and SWEET! All I did was cut one in half, scoop out the seeds, and then cut the halves into crescent-shaped slices about a ½ inch thick at the widest part. I tossed them liberally with olive oil and salt, put them on baking sheet, and cooked them at 400 degrees for about 20-30 minutes, until soft and slightly browned. DEE-LISH!

Farm Fact of the Week

This is our last week of harvest for 2011, which grants us a temporary reprieve from our day-in-day-out produce-wrangling schedule. But it doesn’t mean the work stops. Winter is certainly the slower, calmer side of our year, but it inevitably fills up with all kinds of tasks: crop planning, seed ordering, pruning, trellising, fencing, construction, and general improvement projects galore! I’m always amazed, year after year, at how busy we stay. And then, in early February, we fire up the propagation greenhouse, start planting seeds, and the madness starts all over again!

Three More Weeks of Food!

In years past, we have always ended our Harvest Basket season the week of Thanksgiving, and then offered optional December Shares to people who wanted to continue for another few weeks of produce. This year, by popular demand, we decided to extend the entire Harvest Basket season into December (an overwhelming majority of you said YES, feed us a few weeks longer, in our end-of-season survey last year).

As a result, there are THREE more weeks of produce coming your way: this week (11/28), next week (12/5), and the week after that (12/12). The LAST Harvest Basket delivery will be the week of December 12^th: 12/14 for the Farm and Coos Bay, 12/16 for Port Orford, and 12/17 for Bandon.

Please mark your calendars and enjoy the last few weeks of seasonal, hearty food!

In your share this week:

• Leeks
• Carrots
• Escarole
• Pac Choi
• Hakurei Turnips
• Beets
• Kohlrabi
• Spaghetti squash

Kitchen Tips

Don’t forget to visit the Recipe Wizard to find ingredient-specific recipes, or go to the Recipe Exchange if you have a recipe you’d like to share with everyone!

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

Escarole

The frilly lettuce-like head in your tote this week is escarole, a member of the chicory family (think radicchio, frisee, dandelions, etc.). They are a hardy green, but unfortunately took quite a beating in last week’s hail and rain. We have harvested the best of the lot for you this week, but you may have to trim off some leaves that are less lovely.

How to enjoy it? I like to use it just like lettuce, but be forewarned that it is slightly tougher and a bit more bitter than lettuce. Last night I made a salad with a head of escarole (washed and spun dry), fresh sliced pears, grated pecorino cheese, and a maple syrup vinaigrette. The semi-sweet of the pears and the dressing are a great compliment to the flavor of the escarole. Here’s my dressing recipe:

Into a blender:

½ cup olive oil

2 Tbs. red wine vinegar

1 heaping tsp. Dijon mustard

1 ½ Tbs. maple syrup

Blend until creamy and emulsified, then dress your escarole salad up. It’s fine to dress it 10 minutes in advance of dinner….the dressing helps soften the escarole to perfection.

Farm Fact of the Week

Strawberries might be the farthest thing from your mind right now, but they are forefront for us. This week we started planting the 4,000+ strawberry crowns that will be producing fruit for you by June of next year. We plant Seascapes, a variety that bears fruit all summer long, and unlike most berry growers in Oregon, we plant our new crowns in November/December (California-style!). I’ve found that our winters are mild enough that the new plants can get established during our winter and will start producing at least a month sooner, compared to spring-planted crowns. We are putting in another 9 beds of strawberries, which means there will be ample fruit in your Harvest Basket next year, and for U-pick and for special orders.

We are infinitely grateful for the week of sun that is coming our way; it will make the planting a whole lot easier and less muddy!

Thanksgiving Harvest Basket Details – PLEASE READ!!

Here are the VERY important details about next week’s Thanksgiving Harvest Basket, once again:

Q: WHEN will I get my Thanksgiving basket?

A: Please MARK your calendars, because the week of Thanksgiving will be different: For the week of November 21^st, we will be delivering ALL Harvest Baskets on Wednesday, November 23^rd to ensure that everyone gets their produce BEFORE Thanksgiving. That means that folks who pick up in Port Orford or Bandon will get their tote on WEDNESDAY the 23^rd INSTEAD OF the following FRIDAY or SATURDAY. Please note: Port Orford and Bandon totes for the prior week (week of November 14^th) will be delivered on their normal schedule (November 18^th for P.O. and November 19^th for Bandon).

Pickup Hours on Wednesday, November 23^rd will be as follows:

• Coos Bay: Normal hours, Wednesday from 12-3 pm
• Valley Flora: Normal hours, Wednesday from 9-4 pm
• Port Orford: WEDNESDAY, starting at 11 am (pick up anytime after 11 am)
• Bandon: WEDNESDAY, starting at 12 pm (pick up anytime after 12 pm)

Just to reiterate, there will be NO HARVEST BASKET DELIVERY on FRIDAY, November 25^th to Port Orford or SATURDAY, November 26^th to Bandon. We will resume our regular delivery schedule the week of November 28^th, a few pounds heavier. Our last and final Harvest Basket delivery will be the week of December 12^th, so there are still 3 weeks of food coming your way AFTER Thanksgiving!

Q: WHAT will be in my basket, so I can plan my Thanksgiving menu accordingly?

A: You can tentatively expect: 1+ pound of shallots, 2 stalks of Brussels sprouts, 1 pound of carrots, 2 celeriac, a few pounds of parsnips, one head of lettuce, 5 pounds of yellow finn potatoes, and a sunshine winter squash (great for stuffing and baking, or mashing, or making pie).

Q: WHAT IF I won’t be able to pick up my basket that week?

A: No problem. Lots of folks are out of town the week of Thanksgiving. If that’s the case for you, PLEASE let us know so your food doesn’t go to waste. You have two options:

1. We can store your share for you in our walk-in cooler and you can pick it up at the farm upon your return, OR
2. We can donate your share to a local foodbank.

Either way, PLEASE let us know if you will not be able to pick up your share and we can make arrangements.

The LAST Farmstand of the Year, This Saturday!

What a season it’s been at the Valley Flora Farmstand! From quiet little farm entrance to bustling hub frequented faithfully by local produce enthusiasts - we are so grateful for everyone’s patronage! This Saturday, November 19^th, will be the final farmstand of the year. We’ll be open 10 am to 2 pm, and will do our best to stock the stand mightily to ensure that everyone can take home all the goodies they want – especially storage crops like winter squash, potatoes, beets, carrots, and other roots. Seth will be there with his bread, and there will be eggs as well.

A very special THANK YOU to Aro, who has tended the stand all season, through sun and rain. And a huge THANK YOU to all of our loyal customers who have made the pilgrimage up Floras Creek each week to get their produce. Our heartfelt thanks!

In your share this week:

• Head Lettuce
• Carrots
• Leeks
• Pink Beauty radishes
• Red Ursa Kale
• Delicata Squash
• Red Cabbage
• Red Potatoes

Kitchen Tips

Don’t forget to visit the Recipe Wizard to find ingredient-specific recipes, or go to the Recipe Exchange if you have a recipe you’d like to share with everyone!

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

Delicata Winter Sqash

This is our all-time favorite winter squash, the one I will reach for again and again without fail. We love Delicatas above all for a few reasons:

1. They are perhaps the sweetest squash of all with a smooth, creamy texture.
2. They are the easiest to cook: cut ‘em in half, put them face down on a pan with a little water to steam, and bake at 375 until soft - about 30 minutes depending on the size of your squash.
3. They are the easiest to eat. Skin and all, every part of this squash goes down easily. Naked, or with a little butter. (You really can eat the skin!)
4. They are great stuffed. I sautéed up some local Oregon Grassfed hamburger the other night, mixed it with sautéed fennel, red pepper, chanterelles, and onion, heaped it onto baked Delicata halves, grated some pecorino cheese on top, and broiled them. So easy and so good!

Farm Fact of the Week

This is the third year of the Harvest Basket program, and each year the season has gotten longer. We started by offering 25 weeks of produce and are now offering 28. Every year we’ve figured out how to eek more food out of the tial end of the growing season, through a combination of storage crops and by choosing varieties that tolerate wet, cold conditions in the field. For instance, I’ve figured out which lettuce varieties will grow late into the fall, thanks to their disease resistance and cold hardiness, and have learned that we can push the autumn broccoli season into November. Little things like that add up to Harvest Basket abundance all the way into December!

A quick addendum to this week's Beet Box newsletter:

I'm a great sleeper at night (that's the beauty of hard manual labor), but this week I've been losing sleep. Not because Cleo is teething, or because the dog is barking at deer outside the window. It's because I discovered this week that our storage onion saga continues: our yellow onions are not keeping the way they should. I encountered a few soft ones while sorting them for your Harvest Baskets this week, and when I cut into a handful of suspects, I found the beginnings of rot at the top of the onions.

Not every onion is going bad, but the problem is that it's hard to tell which are fine and which aren't. I gave each and every onion the squeeze test and a visual inspection today, but there's a chance that when you cut into your onions you may find that they are not perfect inside. Most of the damage seems to be at the top of the onion and is easily cut off by taking a wider cut with your knife. But shy of peeling every single onion, there's no way for us to know the ultimate quality of the onions we're giving you. Which drives me absolutely crazy.

SO, two things:

1) I am SO sorry if you get a bad onion. We are putting an extra in every tote this week to make up for any icky ones you might encounter.

2) PLEASE let me know if you get a bad one (or three). I'm trying to gauge the extent of the problem, and your feedback will help! Send me an email and describe the state of your onions once you cut into them, if you have a chance.

Thanks for your help and your understanding! Now let's see if I can get some sleep!

-Zoë

Ugly Butternuts!

By now some of you have opened up this week’s tote to encounter some beets, carrots, leeks, lettuce, celery, broccoli, a psychedelic head of romanesco, and yes, some very ugly butternut squash. For some mysterious reason this year, most of our butternut squash developed a bizarre skin blemish while they were curing in the barn. It appears as dark brown splotches, some with concentric rings that are reminiscent of a topographic map. We often see this blemish on a small percentage of our butternuts at harvest, and we carefully sort out the ugly ones for our own consumption. All the pretty, perfect squash are saved for you.

But I was shocked to discover last week that after 10 days of curing in our barn, all of the pretty, perfect squash were no longer so pretty. It would be absolutely heartbreaking if all those butternuts were destined for stores or restaurants (we couldn’t sell something that looked like that!), BUT I quickly realized that if the eating quality of the squash was  good, we could still put the butternuts in your shares this week and explain the problem to all of you in this newsletter. One more reason to extoll the virtues of community supported agriculture: it gives us the chance to communicate with you about farm realities and surprises like this one. And hopefully convince you that this week’s squash is not too ugly to eat!

We’ve cut into dozens of the blemished squash, targeting the worst, and so far it seems like the problem is only skin deep. At least for now. That said, I doubt this crop of butternuts is going to store for very long, so I’d encourage you to cook them sooner than later. Also, if you do get a butternut that is bad inside, PLEASE tell us! Not only do we want to know, but we will replace it for you – either with another butternut, or another kind of squash.

As for enjoying your butternuts, they are the go-to squash for soup-making, due to their smooth texture and wonderful flavor. They’re also the easiest to peel and have a small seed cavity – meaning it’s mostly all squash meat in there. Best to peel your squash either with a knife or a sharp, heavy peeler; cube it up; then either roast or steam it. If you’re making soup, you can go ahead and cook it directly in a pot of stock or water. Cooked butternut squash – whether roasted or steamed – is a great thing to put in your freezer. If you don’t think you’ll be able to eat your butternuts in the next couple of weeks, I’d suggest you do this. We roasted all the uglies last winter, froze them in ziplocs, and then had roasted butternut puree on hand all year for soup, and more recently, baby food! I froze a bunch of roasted butternut in ice cube trays, then popped them into a freezer bag. We thaw out a couple of cubes every few days for Cleo’s lunch.

I am sorry that you’re not getting perfect beautiful, butternuts this year. We have a little mantra on the farm: that everything we do has to be at least 51% art. Aesthetics matter to us, and these butternuts don’t make the grade in our book. But they do taste good.

And I suppose after all, real beauty if more than skin deep…

In your share this week:

• Head Lettuce
• Carrots
• Leeks
• Broccoli
• Beets
• Romanesco
• Celery
• Butternut Squash

Kitchen Tips

Don’t forget to visit the Recipe Wizard to find ingredient-specific recipes, or go to the Recipe Exchange if you have a recipe you’d like to share with everyone!

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

Romanesco

For many CSA members, this is the vegetable they wait all year for. Neon green, spiraled minarets, an amazing example of fractals in nature. It’s basically a cauliflower on acid. It has a wonderful, nutty flavor, great steamed or sautéed or roasted in the oven with olive oil and sea salt. I’ve had people tell me that they never actually ate their romanesco; instead they kept it on the counter and took photographs of it. I’d say, do both!

Farm Fact of the Week

Frost! Our lower pasture was nipped with white this morning, right on time! We typically expect the first frost sometime around Halloween and it’s great when it actually comes. A frost works wonders to bring out the sweetness in fall crops like kale, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and root crops. Freezing temperatures signal these plants to start producing more sugars, which act like antifreeze in the cells of the plant. For the plants it’s a winter survival mechanism. For us, it’s a lovely bonus as we head into the months when kale is our staple green.

Broccoli is Back!

We’re back in broccoli business! The fall variety you’re receiving is called Marathon, and it’s aptly named: last year we were still harvesting broccoli sideshoots for our own dinners until March! The onset of fall broccoli also marks the beginning of other fall Brassica harvests. In the coming weeks you can look forward to Romanesco (the lime green spiraled minaret cauliflower that so many of you love), Brussels sprouts, cabbage, giant kohlrabi, turnips, radishes, and pac choi. Fall food is here!

Bread!

Seth will be at the Coos Bay, Bandon and Port Orford pickup sites this week to sample and sell bread. For folks who pick up at the farm, Seth can’t be at the Coos Bay site and the farm site at the same time, so he’ll catch you next week – or come to the farmstand on Saturday. He’ll be there.

Red Onion Upset, Winter Squash Breakthrough

Storage crops like onions and squash can be tricky. They mature at the onset of Fall, right when the weather starts to get iffy. The problem is that they need good stretches of warm, dry weather to cure properly – usually in late September and early October. Some years we get lucky and the sun shines for us right when we need it to. This year has been a different story, with ample rain the past few weeks literally dampening our efforts to get critical storage crops out of the field. It can be a stressful time, with so much invested in thousands of feet of winter squash and onions.

A week ago it became very clear that the weather was not going to cooperate for squash harvest, so we improvised. Fortunately, I had purchased 200 stacking harvest bins from a winery earlier in the summer, which turned out to be the perfect container for indoor curing of squash (as opposed to curing them in the field). The sun broke through last Monday, and again on Thursday, enabling us to harvest three of our seven winter squash varieties. We loaded them into the totes, drove them to town, and unloaded them in tall stacks into the insulated shop at our house. I plugged in an oil heater and we suddenly had the 80 degree, dry conditions that we needed to properly cure the squash. Who knows what our electric bill is going to be this month, but hopefully it’ll be a small price to pay for a winter’s worth of squash for everyone. It was a relief to realize that we had back-up options, for those years when the weather doesn’t do our bidding.

The red onions are not such a happy story. They like to dry for up to 3 weeks with their tops and roots on before getting cleaned. We don’t have enough covered space to keep them, so we usually spread the harvest out on pallets in the shade of one of our big myrtle trees. This season they only got a week of curing time before we cleaned them, due to a threatening forecast. As a result, they didn’t dry 100% and we’re now seeing extensive mold and rot at the base and tops of the onions. We’ve been sorting them for the past two weeks and donating boxloads of them to the foodbank. I fear they won’t last many more weeks. This is why you’re seeing red onions again this week, instead of yellow onions or shallots (both of which seem to be storing better than the reds). I decided it was better to give out the red onions quickly and then switch to the better-keeping varieties later in the fall.

The long-term solution to our onion challenge is going to take the form of stacking drying racks. Once I replace my stolen tools, we’re going to build a bunch so that next season we can cure the onions under cover, in vertical stacks that won’t take up as much of a footprint in our limited shed space. Losing a whole crop like this is motivation to invest in a drying system that will help stave off future storage crop disappointments.

In your share this week:

• Head Lettuce
• Carrots
• Red Onions
• Parsley
• Sweet Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Lacinato Kale
• Potatoes
• Broccoli

Kitchen Tips

Don’t forget to visit the Recipe Wizard to find ingredient-specific recipes, or go to the Recipe Exchange if you have a recipe you’d like to share with everyone!

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

Lacinato Kale

A beauty of a kale, and the most beloved in Italy, lacinato kale carries many different names: dinosaur kale, cavalo nero, black tuscan kale, and more. But what's in a name? That which we call lacinato kale by any other name would taste as sweet.

And sweet this kale can be, especially after a frost. It hasn’t gotten cold enough yet for the sugars to fully develop in the kales, but the flavor is excellent nevertheless. One of my favorite combos using lacinato is this: sautee onion or leek in butter or olive oil until soft and caramelized; add chanterelles (or other mushrooms) and slices of beets and cook until soft; then add sliced red peppers and ribbons of lacinato. Sautee until everything is tender. It’s simple and exquisite. Great on pasta, or with rice, or as a spread on Seth’s bread. Or all on it’s own.

Storage: in a plastic bag in the fridge. Will hold for a week or two. Or, put it in a vase of water and let your kale do double duty as décor and dinner.

Rain!

This week’s storm delivered a full inch of precipitation to the farm along with some fierce wind. It’s the first rainfall we’ve had since July 14^th and it was enough to allow us to turn off all our irrigation for the week (a lovely reprieve from the usual schedule). The wind snapped branches, knocked over dahlia plants, and sent our floating row cover flying – but it was worth it: the sun rose over a sparkly-clean farm this morning. It was high time for a good, soaking rain.

We paid a small price in the form of some ruined berries and split cherry tomatoes, but the damage wasn’t terrible. If you come to u-pick at the farm this week, you’ll want to be selective in your raspberry harvest; there is still lots of good fruit, but the ripest berries got a beating in the storm. Same goes for the strawberries: beware of water damage, especially where the berries are in contact with the ground. The strawberries and cherry tomatoes in your share this week were picked carefully, but nonetheless you may want to eat them quickly – or sort through them - in case they have a shorter shelf life.

We are grateful for a little rain, but of course are now hoping that it stays sunny for a spell – at least long enough that we can get our winter squash harvested and cured in the field! Ideally we need about a week of dry, 70 degree weather to pull it off perfectly.

Not-So-Pretty Carrots

This was a sad week of reckoning in the carrot field. We encountered our first damaged carrots of the season, due to a difficult pest called carrot rust fly. We’ve battled carrot rust fly in years past, mostly in the fall. The damage looks like little rust-colored tunnels just under the surface of the carrot skin. The tunnels are caused by the larvae of the carrot rust fly, which feede on the carrot taproot before pupating and hatching into a fly. Usually the larva do only localized damage to a carrot, so it’s easy enough to cut around the imperfections. But the cosmetic blemish they leave makes it difficult to commercially market the carrots. That means that when we bunch carrots for the farmstand or local stores we have to painstakingly pull all the carrots, lug them to the farm road, rinse them off with the hose, check each and every one for damage, and then make our bunches (versus simply pulling carrots and bunching them on the spot in the field). At least half of our harvest finds its way into a “cull” bucket, destined either for the horses’ trough or the compost.

There are ways to prevent carrot rust fly infestations, and in fact, last year we did. We carefully covered every single carrot bed with floating row cover. It prevented the flies from laying their eggs in the soil near the carrots, and as a result we had mostly clean carrots all fall. So why didn’t we do it again this year? The primary reason was weed control. Unfortunately, the row cover has a certain psychological effect on a farmer: if you can’t see what’s under it, then everything must be fine! The reality, however, is that the weeds grow like crazy under the row cover. Which means that to grow a weed-free bed of carrots under row cover, we have to take the row cover off of each bed every week, hand and tractor cultivate it, and then put the row cover back on, adding hours of extra work to what is otherwise a relatively quick weekly zip-zip with the tractor and a hoe.

So, we hoped that maybe the flies wouldn’t find us this summer – since we didn’t have any last summer - and we left the carrots uncovered. In July it seemed like the only way to keep our crop weed-free. Of course now that it’s nearly October and our carrots are coming up ugly, I wish we had covered them. Next year I’m sure we will. I’m always learning. Always.

The long and short of it is that there are some not-so-perfect carrots in your totes this week. I am grateful that the bulk of our farming efforts are on behalf of you, our Harvest Basketeers, because I can explain issues like carrot rust fly damage and hope that you won’t mind cutting around those ugly tunnels in your carrots. I also did a quick assay of all the upcoming carrot beds still to be harvested and didn’t find much damage – yet. There are multiple hatches of larva throughout the summer, so we most likely will see more rust fly damage even if it’s not apparent right now. That said, I haven’t given up on this year’s crop; I’m doing a little detective work today to figure out if it’s still worth covering our youngest beds of carrots. The carrots represent a huge investment of time and money, so if we still have a chance we’ll try to outsmart the rust fly yet.

Bulk Sweet Peppers Available!

They just keep coming!

Roasters (the kind you've been getting in your tote the past few weeks):

·      5 pound minimum order (that's about 20 peppers)

·      Cost is $20

·      Primarily red in color

OR, get a color mix - red, yellow, orange, purple, white, green:

·      5 pound minimum order

·      Cost is $20

Reply to this email with your name, phone number and pickup location if you'd like to order. We'll deliver to your pick-up site.

In your share this week:

• Head Lettuce
• Strawberries
• Carrots
• Red Onions
• Dill
• Yellow Finn Potatoes
• Sweet Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Celery

Kitchen Tips

Don’t forget to visit the Recipe Wizard to find ingredient-specific recipes, or go to the Recipe Exchange if you have a recipe you’d like to share with everyone!

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

Celery

Last year we asked all of you this simple question: would you rather receive a big head of celery once in the season, or a handful of celery stalks multiple times throughout the Fall? The response was overwhelmingly in favor of stalks. So stalks it is, just in time for the onset of Soup Season!

Our celery this year seems to be especially pumped up: it’s big, juicy, sweet and tender - worthy of a snack of “ants on a log” or a slather of cream cheese, if you opt to eat it fresh instead of as a seasoning for soups or sautees. You might get a stalk or two that have some scars on the rib. It appears that the celery has been playing host to some resident garden slugs who have done some opportunistic nibbling in a few places. Just cut around the defects if you encounter any.

Storage: in a plastic bag in the fridge. Will hold for a week or two.

Farm Fact of the Week:

In our little world, food preservation madness has begun. We don’t do a lot of canning in the summer (aka “swimming season”), but once the weather turns towards autumn and the creek is chilly we start to spend a lot of Sundays in the kitchen shoving food into jars. Dilly beans, tomatoes, salsa, applesauce, canned pears, dried plums, frozen berries, jam, hot sauce, pickles. We use up all the culls and seconds – the split tomatoes and deformed peppers and blemished berries – in what is an ongoing, breathless obsession to make all the food disappear. This past Sunday was a marathon of salsa-making at my house. Twenty-four pints and 10 hours later, there is a part of me that asks, “is it really worth it?” My mom spent her entire Sunday picking, packing and pickling to make a case of dilly beans. She emerged from the kitchen with this to say: “Damn country living!!”

It’s a lot to be the farmer and the food preserver (and it’s why my mom, sister and I all wish we had wives). But come January when the nights are long and the woodstove is warm we’ll crack into a jar of homegrown tomatoes and be assured that yes, without a doubt, it was worth it.

The sweet peppers are at their peak! Now's your chance to get a bulk quantity, either to indulge in fresh like candy apples or to preserve for later. They're easy and quick to put up. Simply:

• Dice up and freeze in a ziploc. Add them to winter dishes for some bright confetti color and flavor!
• Put in salsa and can for later.
• Make sweet pepper relish or sweet pepper jelly.
• Roast, peel, freeze on a cookie sheet, and then store frozen in ziplocs. These slabs thaw quickly for sandwiches, pizza, pasta, or any dish.

Here's the scoop if you want to order:

Roasters (the kind you've been getting in your tote the past few weeks):

• 5 pound minimum order (that's about 20 peppers)
• Cost is $20
• Primarily red in color

OR, get a color mix - red, yellow, orange, purple, white, green:

• 5 pound minimum order
• Cost is $20

Reply to this email if you'd like to order. We'll deliver to your pick-up site.

Yum. :)

Potato the size of Baby’s Head!

The headline reads something like that, and no, it isn’t a story from the tabloids. This is unbiased, verifiable news from the fields of Valley Flora where Roberto, Cleo and I spent part of Monday digging potatoes for your shares. We pulled over 700 pounds of potatoes from one bed in less than an hour and a half (breaking all records). A number of the spuds were as big as Cleo’s 7-month old head and weighed in at upwards of 2 pounds apiece (also breaking all records)!

The potato yield has been unbelievable so far this year, averaging over 3 pounds per bed foot. To give you some context: last year (which was a horrible potato year for us) we got about 0.5 pounds per bed foot. A normal year might be 1.5 pounds per bed food. This year it’s 3 pounds. I’ve never seen anything like it.

I’m not entirely sure why we’re seeing such extraordinary yields, especially because we accidentally under-fertilized the spuds this spring. But if I were to wager a guess, I’d say it has to do with two main things: 1) an overall lovely growing season since we planted our seed potatoes in mid-May, and 2) routine hilling with our electric cultivating tractor. Until this year, we’d never had the capacity to hill a half-mile of potatoes. But with a new set of hilling discs mounted on Allis the tractor, Roberto was able to hill and cultivate the potato patch every week until the plants were too bushy and tall to pass through. The job took a quick 20 minutes each week, the spud patch stayed 100% weed-free, the hills grew to be almost knee-high, and the plants thrived. As a result, we’re seeing little-to-no greening of the potatoes (because they were happily covered with soil and shaded by robust plant growth instead of popping through the surface and getting exposed to light). It is, hands-down, the healthiest, happiest potato patch we’ve ever grown.

It means that your potato share this week is extra hefty, with everyone receiving a pound more than we had forecasted. This variety is called Desiree. I’d suggest keeping them in the fridge, as some of the potatoes are still “new,” meaning their skin hasn’t totally cured yet. If you leave them in the fridge for a few weeks you’ll notice that they get remarkably sweeter. As it turns out, in cold storage potatoes actually convert their starches to sugars so spuds get sweeter after a stint in the fridge.

In your share this week:

• Head Lettuce
• Strawberries
• Red Storage Onions           
• Carrots
• Summer Squash
• Dill
• Tomatoes
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Sweet Peppers
• Hot Peppers

On Rotation:

• Sweet Corn

Kitchen Tips

Don’t forget to visit the Recipe Wizard to find ingredient-specific recipes, or go to the Recipe Exchange if you have a recipe you’d like to share with everyone!

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

Red Storage Onions

I am thrilled to report that I think I’ve discovered a red onion variety that is well-suited to our not-so-hot growing season! It’s called Cabernet and it matures at least two weeks earlier than the others I’ve grown. Last year’s red onions never fully ripened or cured (a wonderful but late variety called Redwing that requires 120 days, at least - too long for our climate). Cabernet, however, has sized up and cured in a timely fashion and the flavor is great: mild and tasty.

Storage: These onions have already cured, so you can leave them on the counter or in a cool dry place. They should keep for a month or two.

Sweet Corn

Where there is success (potatoes!) in any given farm season, there is also failure (corn). This year, every possible thing that could have gone wrong with the corn, did. It’s been a sad saga, especially since it began with such youthful optimism. I was especially excited about corn this year, given last year’s unlikely success (a bumper crop in spite of our cold, wet spring and slow growing season). This spring was gentler, and June proffered forth four perfect weeks of weather for four successive corn plantings – one block to be seeded each week, with the hope of harvesting more corn than ever come August and September.

Well, the long and short of it is that of the four intended blocks, only two are likely to yield. Why? You name it, it happened: Birds ate the sowed seed. I re-seeded. Nothing came up. A new seeder I bought this year malfunctioned and didn’t drop enough seed. I started over and re-seeded. The planting germinated beautifully (ah, victory!)) and then crows came back and overnight plucked all the freshly germinated corn seedlings from the ground. I re-seeded again, covered the beds with row cover to protect from birds. Mysteriously nothing ever germinated. An irrigation valve malfunctioned and unbeknownst to me one block of newly-seeded corn irrigated non-stop for a full week. A lot of the seed rotted in the ground. The plants that did survive were consumed by a crazy grass that looks identical to corn but isn’t. We weeded our hearts out and saved the planting, but too much water might mean we don’t get many ears. It goes on and on, the setbacks. Eventually, June was over and it was too late in the summer to seed any more corn. Honestly, it was kind of a relief to have to give up trying, to turn the page on the calendar and leave June, the month of Corn Seeding Wars, behind. 

All things considered, then, I was amazed this week to pull over 200 ears of corn off of the few corn plants that survived in our first planting: enough to put corn in all the totes destined for Coos Bay and the Farm. I tried not to dwell on how huge the harvest MIGHT have been, if only….

Bandon and Port Orford members will have to wait until our next planting is ready, but should see corn in a week or so. It won’t be a huge harvest this year, but hopefully scarcity will make it all the sweeter.

Storage: Unlike potatoes, corn turns it’s sugars into starches over time. Best to refrigerate your corn to slow the process down, or better yet, eat it right away for the best flavor and sweetness!

Farm Fact of the Week:

September is the month of squirreling away. It’s when we begin to bring in most of our storage crops: onions, shallots, winter squash, potatoes, etc. We cut off the water to these crops and cross our fingers for clear, dry days so they’ll cure properly in the field. September also marks the beginning of awkward heavy lifting (everything suddenly seems to be a 30 pound bin of something…), and we do our best not to hurt our backs (with varying degrees of success). This season, it’s just nice not to be pregnant - negotiating a basket-ball belly and a full bin of potatoes had its challenges! This year, Cleo is riding on my back instead – heavier for sure, and also a whole lot of fun…

Do the Salsa!

What do you get when you put tomatoes, jalapeños, cilantro and onions in the same Rubbermaid tote? A really good reason to make homemade pico de gallo! Chop it all up, add some salt, a squeeze of lime, and get yourself some tortillas chips! Salsa season is here!

Strawberries Available by the Flat

The strawberries are making their usual late summer comeback and we’re starting to have extra flats again, $35 each. There’s still time to make some jam or stock your freezer! If you’d like to order, email us: your name, pick-up location, and the number of flats you’d like. We can deliver to your pick-up site, or you can pick up at the farmstand on Wednesday or Saturday.

Raspberries about to go BOOM!

The fall-bearing raspberries are heading towards happy ripe-titude! I walked through yesterday, and while the fruit is still mostly green, there are some red berries coming on. My experience in years past is that the patch goes from zero to sixty almost overnight, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the picking starts to get good next week. Definitely by the first week of September.

If you haven’t cashed in on your 4 free u-pick pounds yet, this will be a fun time to do it. The fall-bearers are usually easy picking, with most of the fruit visible and big! The only glitch on our end is that the sheet that had a record of everyone’s already-picked poundage got stolen with our farmstand scale last week. Which means we have no idea who has picked what towards their 4 pound credit. We ask, as a result, that you please abide by the honor system – if you know you’ve already met your 4-pound quota, please pay for any other berries that you pick. If you’re not sure how much you’ve picked, but know that you’ve gotten some, just use your best judgement. We will trust your word, and I’ll tell Aro at the farmstand to do the same. We will have a new list at the farmstand so that your raspberry harvest can be recorded there. Just give Aro your name, or your share partner’s name so she can write down your harvest

Thanks for your cooperation on this one!

Farm Theft Update

In the wake of last week’s burglary, the response from our farm members has been amazing; I am awed by the care and concern so many of you have shown. Your kind emails and letters have meant the world as we try to make sense of it.

I’ve spent the past week taking stock of what’s missing from the barn, as well as replacing the critical things that we can’t farm without right now: scales, harvest knives, the battery charger for the electric tractor, etc. We’re looking into the possibility of an insurance settlement and have just begun what might be a long process. A number of you have generously offered to lend tools, start a tool-replacement fund drive, and even write checks. I have been stunned by your thoughtfulness. For now, I’d like to see what comes of the insurance process before accepting your offers of help. We can get by without many of our hand and power tools for now while we are so absorbed with harvest, and hopefully we’ll have an insurance settlement before Fall when we begin to need our quiver of hand and power tools for off-season farm improvement projects.

I will certainly keep you all posted as things unfold. In the meantime, an enormous thank you for bringing to life the “community-supported” aspect of community supported agriculture (CSA). I am deeply grateful.

In your share this week:

• Head Lettuce
• Strawberries
• Walla Walla Sweet Onions           
• Carrots
• Summer Squash
• Cilantro
• Tomatoes
• Hot peppers

Kitchen Tips

Don’t forget to visit the Recipe Wizard to find ingredient-specific recipes, or go to the Recipe Exchange if you have a recipe you’d like to share with everyone!

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

Walla Walla Sweet Onions

No need to grab a hanky when you go to cut these onions up – they are sweet and tear-free! A special summer treat, Walla Wallas are the juiciest, mildest, and biggest onion we grow. Some of them get bigger than softballs. No matter the size, the Walla Walla harvest inevitably gets me salivating about one thing: onion rings. They are the perfect onion for the job: big and sweet with thick rings. Our favorite batter is simple: 1 part beer to 1 part flour. Mix it up. Cut your onions into full, fat rings. Dredge though the batter and drop into a pot of hot oil. Fry until golden brown, a few minutes. Pull out the cooked rings with a pair of tongs, sprinkle with salt, and let them drain on a paper towel or paper bag. You know how to finish the job.

Also great in salsa or carmelized (slow-sauteed in a pan until they are golden brown and greatly reduced in volume). These are fresh onions, not suited for long-term storage. They’ll keep in your fridge for a few weeks in a plastic bag, but don’t try to store them on the countertop like cured onions.

Hot Peppers

The little green peppers in your tote are either jalapeños or serranos this week, depending on which pick-up site you go to. Either way, they’ve got some kick to spice up your homemade salsa. The seeds in a hot pepper are always the spiciest part, so if you want to tone it down, de-seed your peppers before chopping them into a dish. If you like it hot – some do – chop up your peppers, seeds and all.

Storage: in the fridge in a bag, will hold for at least a week.

Farm Fact of the Week

Our main harvest days – Tuesday and Friday - are like a choreographed dance on the farm. We hustle to get lettuce and leafy greens out of the field before it heats up in the morning, then move on to roots and onions, and finally berries. We try to have all the produce in the barn by lunchtime (anywhere between noon and 3 pm), at which point we start washing and packing out everything. We create an assembly-line to pack your harvest baskets by setting up a horseshoe of folding tables. We station the heaviest stuff at the head (potatoes, cabbage, carrots, etc) and light and delicate things at the end (herbs, lettuce, tomatoes). We count out the right number of totes and lids for each pick-up site, turn up some good music, and start packing! We slide the totes along the table, putting the same quantity of each item in every tote: a pound of that, 2 pints of this, 3 of that, 1 each of this….until every tote is full and in the cooler!

Tomatoes!

Jump for joy, tomato season is early this year!!! We didn’t anticipate having enough tomatoes to put into your totes until the last week of August, but they have come on strong – 2 weeks earlier than expected. My mom, Betsy, is the tomato queen and she cultivates a myriad of varieties in her greenhouses. You can expect to see plenty of red slicers in the coming weeks, as well as an assortment of heirlooms later on (they usually peak in the first half of September).

The Sad Demise of the Cucumbers…

Our excitement about the early arrival of the tomatoes is partly tempered by the untimely croaking of the cucumbers. They are another greenhouse crop. Sadly this year the moles have done them in by tunneling under the plants. Moles love to burrow under drip-irrigated crops because the ground is moist and soft – making it easy digging for them. The moles themselves are carnivorous, feeding largely on worms and other insects underground. But their subterranean swimming habit creates hollows in the ground; when plant roots hit these hollows tunnels, they can’t grow beyond or through them, which means they can’t take up water or nutrients. Sometimes no amount of stomping down tunnels or trapping actual moles can beat ‘em. This year the moles seem to have won. We had hoped cucumbers would see us into September, but it looks like they are pretty much over. Hopefully early tomatoes will help make up for it!

Bulk Basil Available

There is still plenty of basil available if you want to place a bulk order and make some pesto! $14 a pound for luscious tops - all leaf, no stem. Send us an email with your name, phone number, pickup location, and the amount you want in one pound increments.

Farm Burglarized on Tuesday Night

On Wednesday morning we were shocked to discover that our barn had been burglarized overnight. Sadly, it was a pretty clean sweep: all of my hand tools, power tools, harvest tools and knives, scales, handtrucks, carts, walkie-talkies, coolers, deep-cycle battery chargers for the electric tractor, and more. We are trying to regroup today and figure how to at least get through the rest of the week without our usual quiver of tools. I am scrambling to immediately replace the things we can’t live without at the peak of harvest – specialty harvest knives, scales, etc. I imagine that many of the other tools will take some time to replace, as we can afford them or if an insurance settlement can be worked out. We will cross our fingers.

In all the 36 years that my mom has owned the farm, we’ve never had an incident like this, which is reason to be grateful. It’s hard times for so many folks; I can only hope that whoever stole these things needed them more than us right now.

Please forgive the brevity of the newsletter this week; I have to get back to the farm to try to put things back in order for tomorrow’s harvest.

In your share this week:

• Head Lettuce
• Strawberries
• Purplette Onions           
• Carrots
• Zucchini
• Green Cabbage
• Parsley – Italian or Curley
• Tomatoes
• Yellow Finn Potatoes

Kitchen Tips

Don’t forget to visit the Recipe Wizard to find ingredient-specific recipes, or go to the Recipe Exchange if you have a recipe you’d like to share with everyone!

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.