Monroe Family Organics CSA Newsletter for Week 15

 Farm Update

Arugula is here!  I actually had a picture in last week's newsletter if this same bed of arugula, and look how much it's grown!  These little guys will be at the CSA drop-off this week, so get ready for some yummy salads! 

Hi everyone!  Hope you're doing well!  This is actually going to be a shorter newsletter this week, because Fred and I are actually on the road to Detroit for a much-needed day away from the farm!  But I wanted to get this out to you early so you could have plenty of time to choose your shares and/or do your menu planning, and I'll catch you next week with are more involved look at what we're up to at the farm!  Have an awesome weekend, and I'll see you at the drop-off for week 15!

What to Expect in the Shares this Week

 

If you pick up at our Alma, Mt. Pleasant, or Midland drop-off, here are the options for your shares!  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item from each choice category, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.  And if there is something you don’t like or can’t eat, you can bring it to the trading station at the end and trade it for something you like better. 

• Spring mix, romaine lettuce, or arugula
• Carrots or Brussels sprouts
• Cherry tomatoes or potatoes
• Butternut squash or green beans
• Kale or delicata squash
• Microgreens, radishes, or cilantro
• Green pepper, slicing tomato, or onion

 

If you pick up at our Lansing, Okemos, St. Johns, Midland hospital, or Alma hospital drop-off, or if you have home or workplace delivery, here are your options!  We have three different prepacked shares, and you can let me know which one you want by filling out this quick form by lunchtime the day before your drop-off.  If you have a half share, you can choose one of these options, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.

Share A:

• Spring mix
• Green beans
• Delicata
• Radishes
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Slicing tomato

 

Share B:

• Romaine lettuce
• Green beans
• Kale
• Cilantro
• Carrots
• Cherry tomatoes
• Green pepper

 

Share C:

• Romaine lettuce
• Butternut squash
• Delicata squash
• Microgreens
• Brussels sprouts
• Potatoes
• Onion

 

Recipes

I love all kinds of squash, but delicata squash is my particular favorite.  It has a delicious sweet flavor and a thin skin, which means that you don't have to peel it before you use it.  There are all sorts of great things you can do with it (like cutting it lengthwise, baking it, and covering it with butter and brown sugar), and it is also great for roasting!  Check out this great recipe for Roasted Delicata Squash for an easy and delicious side dish! 

CSA Newsletter for Week 14

 Farm Update

This recent planting of radishes and arugula is coming along nicely!  Even though they're tiny now, they'll be the right size to harvest in a few weeks.

Hi everyone!  The CSA shares are looking distinctly autumnal this week!  I was looking over the list of what will be in the shares for the upcoming week, and the plethora of root veggies (carrots, potatoes, and beets), cold-hardy greens (kale and cooking greens mix) and winter squashes and pumpkins, are a sure sign that fall is here.  And indeed, the calendar will be in agreement soon with what we are already seeing outside, because the autumnal equinox is on Thursday of this week.  That is one of two days of the year that we have an equal number of dark and light hours in the day, and it is also the official first day of fall on the calendar!

So if you're one of the many people who go crazy over fall stuff, you'll be excited about our new item this week, pie pumpkins!  What better way to celebrate the official changing of the seasons than by making a pumpkin pie, or even a DIY pumpkin spice latte?  Another thing I always get excited about is our cooking greens mix, which is a fall staple around our house.  It's a mix of kale, swiss chard, and whatever hearty leafy greens are ready around the farm.  Sometimes we have the leaves of the Brussels sprouts plant in there, or sometimes there's broccoli leaf, but it's always great in a stir-fry or just as a quick sautéed side dish with garlic and onions.  And fortunately, we still have a bunch of summer favorites in the shares this week!  There are still lots of tomatoes and peppers, and there will be odds and ends of green beans and okra in the surprise veggie category.  Some items around the farm are on their way out for the season (just as the heat and intense sun of summer seem to be), but also like the summer weather, we'll be seeing smaller amounts of many of these veggies for a while to come.  

So here we go into week 14 of the CSA!  See you all at the drop-off! :-)

What to Expect in the Shares this Week

 

If you pick up at our Alma, Mt. Pleasant, or Midland drop-off, here are the options for your shares!  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item from each choice category, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.  And if there is something you don’t like or can’t eat, you can bring it to the trading station at the end and trade it for something you like better. 

• Cherry tomatoes
• Potatoes or carrots
• Surprise veggie
• Tomatoes, pie pumpkin, or delicata squash
• Fennel bulb, basil, cilantro, or microgreens
• Kale, cooking greens, parsley, or bag of small onions
• Green pepper, poblano pepper, onion, or garlic

 

If you pick up at our Lansing, Okemos, St. Johns, Midland hospital, or Alma hospital drop-off, or if you have home or workplace delivery, here are your options!  We have three different prepacked shares, and you can let me know which one you want by filling out this quick form by lunchtime the day before your drop-off.  If you have a half share, you can choose one of these options, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.

Share A:

• Cherry tomatoes
• Carrots
• Surprise veggie
• Tomato
• Basil
• Bag of small onions
• Poblano pepper

 

Share B:

• Cherry tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Surprise veggie
• Pie Pumpkin
• Cilantro
• Kale
• Onion

 

Share C:

• Cherry tomatoes
• Carrots
• Surprise veggie
• Delicata squash
• Microgreens
• Cooking greens mix
• Green pepper

 

Recipes

It's pumpkin season!  If you're going to be getting a pie pumpkin this week, the first step is to make it into a pumpkin puree.  Here is a fantastic tutorial on how to do that from Inspired Taste, and it also has links to their recipes for Pumpkin Pancakes, Pumpkin Pie, and Pumpkin Spice Latte from Scratch!  They also show how you can make a puree from your winter squashes as well, so definitely check this out!

And if you're wanting to try out a hearty, filling, earthy cooking greens side dish this week, here is my favorite way to cook them!  Start with some olive oil in a pan, and thinly chop a clove or two of garlic, and some onion if that's your jam.  Cook the garlic and onion until they're starting to look a little brown around the edges, and while you're waiting for that to happen, chop up your cooking greens. I generally discard my kale stems, but you can just grab the leaves and strip them off the stems pretty easily with your hands.  You can use the stems of your chard (and they look so pretty in the finished product with their pretty colors, so I definitely recommend it).  Just chop all of your greens up so that they're a size that will fit easily in your mouth once they're cooked, and throw them in your pan with the garlic and onion.  Cook them in the pan for a few minutes until they're wilted but not mushy, add salt or soy sauce to taste, and serve them warm.  Or, if you'd rather cook them in bacon grease than olive oil, they are really good that way with just some salt and pepper at the end.  Play around with what works best for you, and enjoy! :-)

Monroe Family Organics CSA Newsletter for Week 13

Farm Update

Hi everyone!  September is a very transitional time of year at the farm, just as it is in the rest of nature.  Even if you don't work outside most of the day, you've likely noticed that the mornings are chillier and darker than they have been, and your yard isn't as crispy as it probably was for most of the summer.  We are definitely moving into cooler weather, and that means that we are moving into our cool-weather crops at the farm.  Indeed, we have finished harvesting from some of our older plantings of lettuce and green beans (among other things), so Fred went through and mowed them down with the tractor the other day.  This allows the remaining plant matter to make its way into the ground and add nutrients to the soil for future crops that will be planted in the same space.  While some of the summer veggies are on their way out for the year, plenty of new fall fare is coming in!  We've been spending time this week cultivating some newer plantings of arugula, radishes, spring mix, spinach, and cilantro that will be making their way into the shares in a few weeks.  In general discourse, the word "cultivating" means something like, "intentionally putting in effort to support and promote a particular outcome", such as signing your child up for an activity they seem to gravitate to so they can continue to develop their skills in that arena.  But in agriculture, cultivating has a very specific meaning that is not the same as the general usage.  In farming, to cultivate means to go through with implements and take out the weeds growing between rows of crops.  There are various types of cultivators, from small ones you can manually push down a row of crops, to larger implements you attach to the back of a tractor and pull over a bed of plants.  This year, we bought a new tractor specifically designed for cultivating, and we love it!  It has allowed us to stay on top of the weeds better than we ever have in the past.  That's not to say that the farm doesn't still get overrun with weeds in June and July, but it's so much better than it was, and it reduces the number of man hours we spend on weeding, thus freeing up time to do the myriad other things that need to happen to keep the farm going.

Aside from mowing down old crops and cultivating more recent plantings, Fred is also making a big push to get in a much-needed planting of spinach before we get rained on for most of the week.  He's out there as I write this, preparing a bed for the new spinach, and then he'll actually get the seeds in the ground this evening.  As much as I am going to miss the heat and sun of summer, I do really look forward to spinach every fall, and alas, spinach doesn't do well in hot, dry summer conditions.  So even as we move out of the vibrancy and abundance of full summer, there are also some very good things about fall that we can lean into.  Like spinach, and warm soups, and cute boots, and a cozy fire on a rainy afternoon.  Although I am already feeling preemptively nostalgic for summer, there is nothing we can do to stop the year from rolling into fall, so I'm going to follow Henry David Thoreau's advice to "Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each."  Right now, I'm going to truly relish the last weeks of summer.  I am going to eat all the basil, tomatoes, and peppers that I can, sit in the sun on my deck, and really enjoy mowing my lawn for the last few times this year.  And then when that's over, it will be time to lean into spinach, cider, roasted root vegetables, and fuzzy throw blankets, and resign myself to the influence of fall.  

So that's it for this week!  See you at the drop-offs for week 13!

What to Expect in the Shares this Week

 

If you pick up at our Alma, Mt. Pleasant, or Midland drop-off, here are the options for your shares!  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item from each choice category, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.  And if there is something you don’t like or can’t eat, you can bring it to the trading station at the end and trade it for something you like better. 

• Cherry tomatoes or fennel
• Potatoes or beets
• Carrots or green beans
• Tomatoes or winter squash
• Kale, bag of onions, or spaghetti squash
• Basil, parsley, cilantro, or microgreens
• Green pepper, onion, or garlic

 

If you pick up at our Lansing, Okemos, St. Johns, Midland hospital, or Alma hospital drop-off, or if you have home or workplace delivery, here are your options!  We have three different prepacked shares, and you can let me know which one you want by filling out this quick form by lunchtime the day before your drop-off.  If you have a half share, you can choose one of these options, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.

Share A:

• Cherry tomatoes
• Beets
• Green beans
• Tomatoes
• Bag of onions
• Basil
• Green pepper

 

Share B:

• Cherry tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Green beans
• Butternut squash
• Bag of onions
• Microgreens
• Garlic

 

Share C:

• Cherry tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Tomatoes
• Kale
• Cilantro
• Onion

 

Recipes

Minestrone is perhaps the perfect recipe for this transitional time of year, because it uses the abundance of summer veggies we have coming out of the fields right now, and being a soup, it will also keep you warm on the chillier, rainier evenings.  This particular minestrone recipe calls for a bunch of stuff that we have in the shares this week (yay!), but the great thing about minestrone is that you can substitute many veggie ingredients for different veggies if you happen to have different things on hand.  So this recipe will carry you through the transition from summer to fall, and help you use up any veggies that might be building up in your fridge! 

Monroe Family Organics CSA Newsletter for Week 12

   Farm Update

After being pulled out of the ground, these onions were waiting to be collected into our black crates, spread out as thin as possible on an open trailer, and pulled into the hoophouse that until recently housed a planting of zucchini.  There they will stay, safe and dry, until we bring them to you at the drop-offs!

Hi everyone!  Hope you're all doing well and getting ready to enjoy a long weekend!  For us, it's still work as usual, because there are very few times when we can actually take a full day off during the CSA season.  However, we're planning to work only a half day on Saturday so we can spend some time playing in the pool with our kids, which feels like a big deal.  Then it's back out to the fields on Sunday to get ready for our early deliveries on Monday morning.  Once the delivery van and I are on the road to Ann Arbor Monday morning, Fred and the crew will start harvesting, washing, and packing up the veggies for Monday's CSA drop-off.  So just in case you missed the reminder last week, we will still be having our Alma drop-off on Monday as usual!  If you have plans and can't make it, we totally understand, and you have a few options.  You can have a friend pick up your share for you (you don't have to let me know beforehand; your friend can just initial for you on the sign-in sheet).  Or if you let me know by Sunday, I can plan on postponing your share and getting you a double share next week, or you can pick up your share at one of our other drop-offs this week.  When Monday falls on a holiday, plenty of folks opt to pick up their shares on Tuesday in Mt. Pleasant instead, so if you'd like to do that, just let me know! 

In other news, the main theme at the farm right now is harvesting, harvesting, and more harvesting!  We've been harvesting all season, but now is the time when we bring in larger amounts of storage crops, like potatoes, onions, and beets.  Fred's brother Charlie (who worked at the farm for several summers when he was in college) came up on Thursday to help us bring in the big onion harvest.  Once the onions are ready we have a limited window of time to bring them in, because if they get rained on out in the field, they can start to rot, and then we would lose a significant portion of the harvest.  So when they're ready, they're ready, and we were really glad Charlie wanted to come help.  For a lot of people who have worked for us at the farm, even when they move on (into their grownup careers like Charlie, or out of state like our friend Lindy), they still want to come back and get their hands dirty when they can.  The farm kind of gets into your soul, and you can take the person away from the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the person.  

I've definitely found that myself.  Many of you don't know that in my life before the farm and the kids, I was a high school French teacher.  It was so much fun, and I truly loved everything about it.  We always knew that eventually we would move back to one of our hometowns and start our farm (which would be mostly Fred's gig, because I was going to stay home with our kids), so when we found out we were expecting our first child, we started looking for farmland and a home in Fred's hometown of Alma and started that transition.  For the first year of the farm, I was a lot less involved in the farm operations, mostly just making the harvest lists, communicating with CSA members, and helping out at the CSA drop-offs.  Back then we had barely any infrastructure, which meant that Fred was working insanely hard and basically running himself into the ground, and I found that staying home with one baby wasn't nearly as hard as everyone had told me it would be.  It felt really lopsided, so for the second year, I took on pretty much the whole office administrative side of the farm as well as the CSA.  We also had another baby that summer, so between two babies, the CSA, and doing all the farm books, payroll, etc, I had quite a lot on my plate.  That held steady for the next few years, then one year we had a really hard time finding good employees, and there was more work than Fred could handle with the people we had available.  So I jumped in doing more field work, harvesting, washing, and packing, and it just kept going from there.  Now we have three kids, a way bigger CSA, more crops, more drop-offs, and just a lot more going on at the farm, and I can barely remember a time when I wasn't involved in day-to-day production operations.  So basically, I kind of fell into it on accident.  But now the farm is in my soul, and there's no getting me away from it.

So this Labor Day, we'll be out there doing what the name implies: laboring.  But it's the best kind of work, a true labor of love.  We do it for the love of the work itself and the food that we grow, for the love of our land, and our family, and our community that we serve.  And we are so grateful that you all come along with us on this adventure we call the farm, and use your food dollars to allow us to have this intense, crazy, full life.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.  :-)

And I guess I'll end with that!  See you all at the drop-off!

What to Expect in the Shares this Week

 

If you pick up at our Alma, Mt. Pleasant, or Midland drop-off, here are the options for your shares!  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item from each choice category, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.  And if there is something you don’t like or can’t eat, you can bring it to the trading station at the end and trade it for something you like better. 

• Fennel Bulbs or onion
• Cherry tomatoes
• Tomatoes or winter squash
• Potatoes or beets
• Spring mix or carrots
• Kale, cabbage, or 2 green peppers
• Basil, cilantro, or microgreens

 

If you pick up at our Lansing, Okemos, St. Johns, Midland hospital, or Alma hospital drop-off, or if you have home or workplace delivery, here are your options!  We have three different prepacked shares, and you can let me know which one you want by filling out this quick form by lunchtime the day before your drop-off.  If you have a half share, you can choose one of these options, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.

Share A:

• Cherry tomatoes
• Winter squash
• Potatoes
• Spring mix
• 2 green peppers
• Microgreens
• Onion

 

Share B:

• Cherry tomatoes
• Tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Kale
• Basil
• Onion

 

Share C:

• Cherry tomatoes
• Tomatoes
• Beets
• Spring mix
• 2 green peppers
• Cilantro
• Fennel bulb

 

Recipes

I adore bell peppers chopped up on top of a salad, in a stir fry, in burritos, and a bunch of other ways.  But one of my favorite ways to make an easy breakfast that feels fancy is these Bell Pepper Eggs-in-a-Hole!  They're super simple, but they feel like something you'd have with a cappuccino at a nice brunch place.  Enjoy!