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!