End-of-Season Survey

Farm Update

When the weather turns cold, we
cover certain veggies with a layer
of plastic to insulate the plants and
keep them safe from wind.

 Hi everyone!  Even though the year is winding down, there is still plenty to do at the farm!  We’re taking our pigs in to get butchered this Wednesday, so it’s farewell to the piggies!  There is definitely some harsh weather on the way.  Many crops are still looking pretty good, but we’re starting to cover some things (like the arugula) to protect them from frost.  Usually the first of the cool season crops to look a little worse for wear is the lettuce, and we’re starting to notice that shift occurring.  But so far, this has been the nicest October we’ve had at the farm.  Normally by this time in the year, the drop-offs are pretty chilly, and we’re expecting a little of that this week.  We’re also getting the greenhouses ready to turn the heat back on, because it’s been off for several months now.  It’s definitely the time when things wind down, and little by little, we’re putting things to rest for the year.  Although the CSA is coming to an end, we’ll still have a few things available at Greentree Co-Op in Mt. Pleasant and LaLonde’s in Midland for a few weeks or so, so you can continue to get some awesome veggies there for a while.  And if you know you want to join the CSA for next year, just let me know and I’ll put you on the list!  The cost is going up by $10 next year, but if you sign up and put down at least a partial payment before the end of the year, you can get next year’s share at this year’s price, which is $290 for a half share of $540 for a full share.  We hope to see you all again next year! :-)

What to Expect in Your Share This Week

Brussels sprouts on the stalk

For the regular drop-offs:

Sweet Potatoes or Brussels Sprouts

Cabbage, Bok Choy, or Napa Cabbage

Lettuce, Arugula, or Spinach

Carrots

Kale or Cooking Greens

Apples or Potatoes

Baby Leeks, Green Onions, or Cilantro

For prepacked shares:

Share A:                                    Share B:

Sweet potatoes                          Brussels sprouts

Cabbage                                    Bok choy

Lettuce                                      Spinach

Carrots                                      Carrots

Kale                                           Cooking greens

Apples                                       Potatoes

Baby Leeks                               Green Onions

End-of-Season Survey

As we wrap up the 2016 season, it’s time to start planning for 2017, and we want your input!  We’ve got a lot of ideas we’re tossing around, and we’d love to know what you think, so if you could take five minutes or so to answer these questions in a quick reply, we’d really appreciate it!

1. What items in the shares did you like best this year?  What would you like to see more of?  What would you like to see less of?
2. We are always looking for ways to make picking up your share more convenient.  If we were to give people the option of picking up a prepacked share at a convenient partner site such as a co-op or food store so you’d have a larger window of time to pick it up, would that be something you’d be interested in?
3. For the Midland folks:  If we were to move the drop-off day from Wednesday to Thursday, would that still work for you?
4. Are there any other ideas you can think of that we should consider?

Recipes

There are few things more comforting than a warm soup on a chilly fall day, and this Potato Leek Soup is no exception.  Especially if you’re uncertain what to do with your leeks, this is a good place to start!

Fall Veggies: A Cast of Characters

Farm Update

The Swiss chard is liking the
comfortable environment in
the coldframe.

Hello everyone!  This week we had two frosts, and things survived very well for the most part.  The peppers died back, but that was to be expected and we had already harvested most of the remaining good ones.  All the cool weather crops seemed to get through just fine, except a lot of the lettuces are looking a little worse for wear, but that’s pretty normal around this time in October.  We’re still hoping to have some coldframe lettuce in the last share even after the field lettuce meets its end.   On Friday we harvested some apples up at the orchard! They weren’t the prettiest, but the flavor was outstanding.  Fred ate more apples at the orchard than his digestive system would have preferred, but he insisted that they were hard to resist. The apples are not perfect looking but we have decided to include more of them in the shares this year.  In previous years, we’ve just brought the ones that look nice, but we decided to include some of the uglier pie apples in the share. We find ourselves using a bunch because they are so good.  Also, apples grown without chemicals are harder to find locally. We also covered some of our newly seeded spinach, which will overwinter for an early spring crop.  Some Octobers have been a lot nastier to work in, but we couldn’t complain about the weather this week as it was still pretty warm.  Most things are still growing surprisingly well for this point in the fall!  Don’t be surprised if we add in a few items that aren’t actually on the choice list as we harvest some of the last small amounts of different veggies.

There is still one more pig left if you’re interested in a half or whole pig!  They go to the butcher at the very end of October, and they’ll be ready to pick up in mid-November.  A whole pig usually provides an average of 140 pounds of meat, and a half pig usually renders about 70.  The cost is a straight $6.75 per pound of meat, and we cover all of the butchering costs, so there are no hidden fees.  Just let me know if you’re interested!  Also, if you want to sign up for another season of great veggies, we can put you on the list for next year!  An easy way is to write us a check for a full or partial payment at the drop-off and lock in your spot for the season before the slight price increase after New Year’s.  We are very interested in everyone’s input, feelings, and suggestions for next season.  We will start the planning process/seed purchases/etc. in a month or so, and would love to have your feedback beforehand to help guide that process.  I’ll be sending out an email soon with a few short survey questions that will hopefully help us better tailor the CSA to everyone’s needs for next season. 

What to Expect in Your Share

At the regular drop-off:

Carrots

Sweet Potatoes

Apples or Brussels sprouts

Baby arugula, broccoli leaf, or bok choy

Kale, cabbage, or pie apples

Parsley, green onions, or cilantro

Pick two of green peppers, onions, kohlrabi

For prepacked shares:

Share A:                                    Share B:

Onion                                         Kohlrabi

Green pepper                             Green pepper

Parsley                                       Green onions

Kale                                            Cabbage

Broccoli leaf                              Bok choy

Apples                                       Brussels sprouts

Sweet potatoes                          Sweet potatoes

Carrots                                       Carrots

Fall Veggies: A Cast of Characters

Sweet potatoes as they are being
dug out of the ground.

With two weeks of CSA still to go, we have some great cool season veggies that are really nice! It’s such a relief for us to see growing so nicely after the cool season crops really struggled for most of this hot and dry season.  Here are some of the things to expect in the next couple weeks and how we use them at our house.

Young Leeks:  We love leeks at our house, because they add a rich and mild flavor to whatever dish we are making.  In the fall we love to chop them up and add them to roasted or fried root crop dishes, often adding them closer to the end so they cook but don’t scorch.  Also, one of our favorites is to add them to scrambled eggs or omelets.  The best part to use is the whitish green shaft, but the young leeks are tender enough to use the leaves if finely chopped as well.  Expect some in the final share.

Cabbage:  The cabbage right now is really great because these cool days and nights really help the cabbage to have a sweet and pleasant flavor. Expect the flat head Tendersweet cabbage, a round green savoy, and a few red ones over the next two weeks.  We usually fry up half cabbage and half kale in a pan with rendered bacon at a higher heat while continuously stirring so as not to scorch.  Then turn the burner off and add Parmesan cheese and maybe some Sriracha sauce while still continuously stirring so that the mixture is not watery but still not scorched.

Apples:  I did not know how great apples could taste until we started taking care of some trees on the old McIntosh Orchard up in Mt. Pleasant.  We will have mostly Ida Reds, but also some Yellow Delicious over the next two weeks.  The Ida Reds have a more complex and rich sweet/tart taste that is my favorite type of apple.  While fine for eating raw (especially in salads) they are typically used in cooking and baking because their stronger flavor really comes through nicely.  We usually make fried apples and sometimes cook up apple slices along with sausage from our pigs, Brussels sprouts, and Butternut squash for a rich fall dish.

Broccoli Leaf:  We eat a lot of greens, and broccoli leaf is one of my fall favorites.  The very smooth, tender texture and mild flavor are excellent, and Fred often will make a fried apple and Butternut squash fry with broccoli leaf thrown in at the end.  We also use broccoli leaf like kale in many ways, and my guess is that broccoli leaf is one of the healthiest greens, because usually the darker green leaves of leafy vegetables tend to pack in more nutrition per serving. 

Kale:  There is probably no other vegetable we have more consistently at our house than kale, and our kale fried in bacon is a regular breakfast staple.  The fall is really when kale takes on its best flavor and fall kale usually last much longer in the fridge as well.  At home we usually fry bacon, either our own or the Walsh bacon from Lalonde’s (if you haven’t tried it, you need to!) and then keep the rendered fat at about medium heat, throwing in the chopped kale adding salt and a little brown sugar and stirring the mixture consistently for usually no more than 2 minutes. 

Sweet Potatoes:  So the truth is that Michigan is not a great state in which to grow sweet potatoes, and so far only about 1 out of 3 years do we have a truly profitable crop, but this is one of those years! The sweet potatoes we grow are way better tasting, and we are big sweet potato fans and eat them consistently through the winter. They are healthier than regular potatoes, and we add them to a lot of roasted root vegetable mixes, or mashed and mixed with butter and brown sugar with a piece of Brie, or cubed and fried in butter with a little brown sugar and salt for a hearty winter side dish. Sweet potatoes need not be refrigerated and the best way to store them is to take them out of the bag and leave them somewhere at room temperature.  This year’s variety is called Orleans, and it has really smooth flesh and great flavor.

Carrots:  Fall carrots are by far the best carrots of the season.  Their tenderness and sweetness really come out as they have more ideal soil temperatures and moisture to develop.  At our house we eat plenty raw, but also fry them in olive oil at a medium high heat with salt so that some of the sides of the carrots brown.  This simple dish can be served for breakfast or as a side to any other fall or winter meal, and these carrots will last for a while in the fridge as long as they are kept in the bag.  The variety we grow is an orange Nantes type carrot that is a little smaller than most, but extremely crisp and tender with no hint of stringiness or dry texture. 

Spinach:  The long hot summer delayed our fall spinach, but for the last week of the CSA we will have spinach.  This fall spinach is usually a little stronger in texture and flavor than the spring spinach, and lends itself really well to being lightly cooked in fresh pasta dishes at our house.  Sometimes we also make a fresh salad with apples and chopped spinach with a heavy dressing that is packed with flavor and plenty of nutrients.  We have used several varieties this season and are still experimenting with what we like best.  Next week will be a kind called Emperor.

Arugula:  There are few people who straddle the fence on liking arugula.  People either really like it or really don’t, with a few undecided voters.  We grow arugula very early and very late to avoid flea beetle pressure, which we find hard to control on this crop since we don’t use chemical sprays.  A common dish is a goat cheese, beet, and arugula salad or what I like to do is add it to sandwiches with Brie and salami.  If you have never tried it before you might want to take a leaf at the drop off and see which party you fall into.  We should have arugula for both weeks of the CSA, and our field arugula is usually a little richer and stronger than the arugula you get at the store. 

There are many other things you will see at the drop-offs as well, like potatoes, bok choy, kohlrabi, cilantro, parsley, etc. but we thought we would just highlight a few and let you know a little bit more about the many things we grow.  As the fall weather comes, so come some of the best flavors of veggies for the season. we hope you enjoy them over the next couple weeks! 

Fall Hoophouse Plantings

Farm Update

Aren't those the most gorgeous baby carrots you've
ever seen?

Hello everyone!  It’s been a much colder weekend than we have had for a long time.  Looks like we will be having some frost this week, which will kill a few types of veggies, but hopefully not much at this point.  We are hoping that the frost won’t hurt the tender cool season crops like the lettuce, but we’ll see over the next couple days.  Before the frost we harvested the remaining sweet potatoes and winter squash, and put them into the greenhouse to help cure the skins.  Sweet potatoes were a good crop this year as the really hot summer weather helped the potatoes to size up nicely.  The greenhouse and hoophouse plantings of greens are doing very well and the carrots are really thriving, so expect plenty of carrots for the rest of the CSA season.  Weeds are of minimal concern now, and the frost this week should kill off a lot of the warm weather weeds like the pigweed that is still hanging around. Deer have also been less of an issue, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that trend will continue for the rest of the year.  We still have one pig available if anyone is interested in getting a half or a whole pig.  Also if you already know that you will want to be a member again for the 2017 season, we can absolutely put you on the list!  The cost is going to be going up to $300 for a half share or $550 for a full share, but you can give a full or partial payment to us at any of the remaining drop-offs (or up to the end of the year) and get your share next year for this year’s price ($290 for a half share or $540 for a whole share).  We hope you have enjoyed this season, and that you have been able to enjoy all the great seasonal flavors and good nourishing food that comes out of our small farm.  If you have any suggestions for what would give you an even better experience with our CSA or things you would like to see in the shares, let us know!

What to Expect in Your Share

At the regular drop-off:

Cabbage, bok choy, or kohlrabi with greens

Lettuce, Brussels sprouts, or baby arugula

Kale, cooking greens, or cilantro

Onions or sweet pepper

Surprise veggie

Sweet potatoes

Carrots

For prepacked shares:

Share A:                         Share B:

Cabbage                         Bok choy

Lettuce                           Brussels sprouts

Kale                               Cooking greens

Onion                             Sweet pepper

Surprise veggie              Surprise veggie

Sweet potatoes               Sweet potatoes

Carrots                           Carrots

Fall Hoophouse Plantings

Little lettuces growing in the
coldframes.

It’s getting to be that time of year when summer veggies in the field start to die out, but fall greens like the kale often last long into the season even out in the field.  With last year’s very mild fall we were harvesting the last of the kale well up into December!  However, eventually the temperatures dip down and then we run out of even the hardiest greens as they get killed or damaged in the winter.  To keep our family supplied with greens, supply our restaurants and stores, and ensure that we have some greens for the last CSA drop-off we start planting into our hoophouses (also called coldframes or high tunnels) and greenhouse.  We start planting in August after our early zucchini and cucumber plants are spent for the season.  These new plants are mostly chard and kale that we transplant into a black plastic mulch in the hoophouses with drip irrigation. As we go later into the fall these plants flourish, becoming very tall with the higher temperatures in the hoophouses.   Then later in September and October we transplant lettuces and seed spinach as well.  These lettuce transplants will usually be harvested in November and the protection in the hoophouses not only protects them from wind and low temps but also from disease that is usually an issue on lettuces in the field in October and November.  The spinach is seeded after the tomatoes are taken out of the houses, and these spinach plants will not only give us some later December spinach but also will overwinter in the greenhouse to give us some really awesome spinach starting in March of the next season.  We usually have a second covering over the spinach to get it growing as early in the spring as possible.  These cold hardy crops all freeze during the winter since we do not provide supplemental heat in the hoophouses, but they continue to survive and thrive under the protection of the tunnel.  This is because for spinach and kale it is less about the low temperatures and more about how much they get moved around while frozen.  This movement (usually from the wind) while frozen is what causes most of the damage for these hardy crops.  Also, the wind easily wicks away moisture from the frozen cells of the plant, drying it out beyond repair in the field.  Our four unheated hoophouses have provided us with a lot of great greens over the last few years, and the fact that this can be done using just the energy from the sun is great.  This allows us to have fresh greens earlier and later than would otherwise grow in our climate.  We hope you enjoy the fall bounty that is to come!

Recipes

Carrots are one of those things that most people know and love, but just in case you are looking to try a new way with an old favorite, here are 20 Carrot Recipes from Rachael Ray!

Veggie Spotlight: Sweet Potatoes

Farm Update

We're back into carrots for the fall!
Look at these gorgeous tricolor
baby carrots!

Hello everyone! It's been a cool and rainy week at the farm, and it looks like more of the same for next week.  It's been nice to have cooler weather in which to work, but keeping the veggies clean has taken a lot more effort in all this mud.  There is less work to do in general at the farm; we're doing a lot less planting, a lot less weeding, and a lot less irrigating.  It's part of the seasonal ebb and flow at the farm, and the timing actually works out, because for the last few weeks, we've been down to just our three-person crew (Fred, Phal, and me), with a contract crew coming in every once in a while to help out with a huge harvest when we're in a time crunch.  We'll be having less of some things (tomatoes) and more of some other things (lettuce), and some new fall things in this week's shares (sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts!).  As the season shifts from summer to fall, people are reminded that the growing season can't last forever, and I often get asked how much longer the CSA will last.  So in case you were wondering, the final week is the week of October 24.  In the meantime, we still have four weeks of wonderful veggies ahead!

What to Expect in Your Share

If you are at the regular drop-offs, here are your options for this week.  If you have a full share, choose two, and if you have a half share, choose one in each category.

Sweet potatoes
Carrots or butternut squash
Delicata squash, cilantro, or bok choy
Surprise veggie
Bunched greens or cooking greens mix
Lettuce or Brussels sprouts
Sweet pepper or onion

If you get one of the prebagged shares, here are the A and B options for this week:

Share A:                       Share B:

Sweet potatoes             Sweet potatoes
Carrots                         Butternut squash
Delicata squash            Bok choy
Surprise veggie            Surprise veggie
Kale                             Cooking greens mix
Lettuce                         Brussels sprouts
Sweet pepper               Onion

Veggie Spotlight: Sweet Potatoes

The first sweet potatoes of the year, harvested and about
to get washed.

Oh, sweet potatoes!  Beloved by pretty much everyone, and greatly anticipated as soon as the weather starts to get chilly and damp.  Well, now is that time, so in celebration of this lovely vegetable, here is everything you ever wanted to know about sweet potatoes!

Sweet potatoes are thought to have originated long ago in Central America, spreading throughout the centuries to most of the world's warm climates.  It is recorded as existing in Polynesia around 1000 AD, which leads historians to believe that there must have been some contact between those two distant parts of the world even back then.  Sweet potatoes flourish wherever there is heat and humidity, and their sweet flavor, nutrient density, and ability to thrive in marginal soils has made them a very valuable food source for many populations.  Around here, they are primarily considered a fall food because they require the whole summer to grow to maturity before we can harvest them.  But in many tropical parts of the world, they are available year-round because the vines can just keep growing for years, making newly-formed tubers as needed.

The sweet potatoes we grow at the farm actually start their time with us as bunched stems that arrive in the mail.  We usually order 1000 stems, but the number that arrives is more like 1200-1500.  We plant these stems in raised beds topped with black plastic.  The black plastic insulates the ground, helping the sweet potato plant to get the heat it needs, and it also keeps the soil loose for the developing tubers.  We water these stems with our drip irrigation system, which runs underneath the black plastic.  Then the stems form roots, some of which actually become sweet potatoes, and over the next few weeks, the plant will shoot up a stem that will run about seven feet in either direction.  Just before the first frost, we harvest all of the sweet potatoes and put them in the greenhouse to cure.  This allows them to last much longer in storage than they would otherwise.

This year, we're growing a new variety called Orleans.  We chose it because it has larger sized tubers and a really gorgeous color.  And in a warm year like this, our sweet potatoes seem to have done really well!  We just ate the first one in our own kitchen, and it was fantastic.  We hope you enjoy them as much as we have!

Recipes

Fred made this Sweet Potato Pie for the first time last year, and it was amazing!  I can't wait to make it again this year!  Or try out these Barbecue Chicken Sweet Potatoes (think baked potato, but it's a sweet potato, stuffed with barbecue chicken and other goodies).  Or here's something I did not know you could do:  Sweet Potato Toast.  Apparently, you can toast sweet potatoes in the toaster like you would do with bread, and top it with whatever you want!  Who knew?