CSA Newsletter for Week 10 of the 2023 Season

  Farm Update

Hi everyone!  Hope you're doing well!  We've been busy at the farm this week bringing in the big potato harvest in the time that we're not getting everything ready for the CSA drop-offs.  Getting everything harvested, washed, and packed up for the drop-offs four days a week takes quite a lot of time on its own, and this week we've also been using every spare minute to get the potatoes out of the field.  At the farm, there is a right time for everything, and we're racing against the clock to get the potatoes safely in the cooler before they get burned by the sun, rotted by the rain, eaten by critters, or try to resprout.  So far we have 6,000 pounds stacked up in our walk-in cooler in the barn, and we have about 2,000 more pounds to bring in in the next few days.  Once the potatoes are all in the barn, the onions are waiting in the wings (or, in the ground) for their turn to be harvested.  That will also be a big job, but not nearly as big as the potatoes.  We are definitely in the harvest season now, with successive large harvests of potatoes, onions, winter squash, and sweet potatoes all occurring within a month or so.  And like all of our ancestors who spent this time of year preparing for leaner times in the winter, we'll be able to look into a barn packed with storage vegetables and be proud of a job well done.  Unlike our ancestors, we won't actually be storing all of that bounty to get us through the snowy months when nothing much grows; instead, we're bringing most of it to all of you.  (And just as well, because we do actually need to be able to move around in the barn, and that gets really hard to do with such a large volume of storage crops in there!)  But like those Michigan farmers who came before us, we will be storing a bunch of potatoes, beets, carrots, sweet potatoes, and winter squash to cook with in our own kitchen until the first spring veggies start coming out of the coldframes in March.  

But in the meantime, it is still very much summertime, even if it is the time of year I think of as "mature summer".  It's almost on the edge of fall, but still has those warm days and plentiful food coming out of the fields.  And right now, the tomatoes are the stars!  Late August is an amazing time to enjoy the sweetest, ripest tomatoes, and I hope you've been enjoying them as much as we have!  We'll have more tomatoes for you this week, along with a whole bunch of other delicious veggies to make wonderful summer food!

So welcome to week 10 of the CSA!  See you at the drop-offs!

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. 
 

• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Cherry tomatoes or spring mix
• Tomatoes
• Kale, chard, or leeks
• Basil, parsley, or microgreens
• Onion or cucumber

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:

• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Cherry tomatoes
• Slicing tomatoes
• Kale
• Basil
• Cucumber

Share B:

• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Spring mix
• Slicing tomatoes
• Leeks
• Microgreens
• Onion

Share C:

• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Cherry tomatoes
• Slicing tomatoes
• Chard
• Parsley
• Onion

Recipes

I absolutely love peak tomato season.  We eat a ton of tomatoes at our house this time of year, prepared all different ways, because they just have such a great flavor.  Tomatoes that you get at the grocery store, which generally have been picked green and unripe and shipped across the country, just can't compete with a late summer vine-ripened tomato.  And fortunately, we have a bunch of those ripe, red, delicious gems this week!  If you have already had your fill of Caprese salads and BLTs, and you're looking for something new to try, check out Chef John's Gazpacho!  This chilled Spanish-style soup starts with tomatoes and cucumbers, and features a number of the veggies that are in the shares this week!  Enjoy!

CSA Newsletter for Week 9 of the 2023 Season

 Farm Update

Hi everyone!  It's starting to feel a little bit like fall out there!  The weather is getting a little cooler, the days are getting a little shorter, the kids are going back to school, and the massive job of bringing in the potato harvest is underway.  It's that transitional period between summer and fall that makes me feel like the glass of summer is half empty, and I am preemptively mourning the end of Michigan summer, even though we have a few weeks left.  

But summer inevitably slides into fall, and the farm is naturally starting to orient itself more toward preparing for the cooler months.  As I mentioned, we are harvesting the rest of the potatoes this week to store for the fall and winter months.  Our winter squash are looking good out in the field, and they'll be ready to harvest in a few weeks.  They are especially large this year, probably because we had such a hot and wet summer, so expect an abundance of delicatas, acorns, and all your other favorite winter squashes once we get into mid-September.  Over the next few weeks, we'll be planting our leafy greens for the last few weeks of the CSA, including spinach, which feels distinctly autumnal.  Spinach is one of those crops that can't handle the heat, so we have to be sure it's going to stay cool enough before we can plant spinach for the mid-to-late fall.  In the next few weeks, we're going to hit that point in the year where the temperatures stay consistently lower, which is good news for spinach and other fall veggies, and bad news for those of us who don't feel like we've had nearly enough summer yet.  (I'm definitely talking about myself here.)

One of the good things that happens at this transitional period of the year is that the weeds start to slow their growth.  We were able to get those extraordinarily large weeds in the back field back under control this week, and since the weather is starting to turn, we won't have to work so hard to stay on top of them from here on out.  Now we just have smaller, more manageable weeds in some of the newer plantings to take care of, and now that the kids are going back to school this week, I'll be able to spend some more time out in the fields working on keeping those weeds under control.

In the meantime, there is still the normal harvesting, washing, bagging, and delivering of the vegetables to keep us outside, so I intend to really soak up the rest of summer before the weather turns.  So let's all lean into late summer, enjoy the last summer veggies to the fullest, and when fall comes, we'll be ready to fully enjoy the new season in its turn.

So that's it!  See you at the drop-offs!

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. 
 

• Carrots or beets
• Potatoes
• Slicing tomatoes or cucumbers
• Kale, chard, or leeks
• Cherry tomatoes or green beans
• Basil, microgreens, or baby frisée
• Onion, zucchini, or shallot

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:

• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Slicing tomatoes
• Cherry tomatoes
• Basil
• Kale
• Zucchini

Share B:

• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Slicing tomatoes
• Green beans
• Microgreens
• Leeks
• Onion

Share C:

• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Cucumbers
• Green beans
• Baby frisée
• Chard
• Shallot

Recipes

Late summer is the perfect time for tomatoes and basil, and we have been eating a startling number of Caprese salads lately!  They are so simple, and with flavorful, fresh ingredients, you really don't need to do anything fancy to have a spectacular meal.  This particular Easy Caprese Salad recipe uses a balsamic reduction, but you can make it even easier by just sprinkling olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette on your lovely Caprese salad, no reducing necessary.  So make up a delicious, easy Caprese salad and enjoy it outdoors to celebrate late summer goodness!

CSA Newsletter for Week 8 of the 2023 Season

 Farm Update

Hi everyone!  Hope you're doing well!  Unlike much of modern life, which mostly moves ahead in straight line with one thing leading to another, the farm is cyclical in nature.  While no month in any farm season is the same as the last month, from year to year, most Aprils are similar to the other Aprils, most Junes are similar to other Junes, and October will almost always find us harvesting leafy greens in the rain and handing out bags of root vegetables at the CSA drop-offs.  There is something beautiful about that cycle; while it's not fun to be overrun with gigantic weeds in August or harvest in a chilly October rain, there is comfort in knowing what to expect from each month, year after year.  And this year is no different.

Like most Augusts, the weeds are making a really valiant attempt to swallow up everything at the farm, and until this week, it was starting to look like they might win.  In every crop bed, there is a best time to weed, when the weeds are small and can be taken out easily.  In a perfect world, we'd be able to weed each bed at the right time, and then pass back through every few weeks to keep everything looking tidy.  Even if you've never gardened before, you probably have heard that weeds are the bad guys when you're trying to grow food or flowers, but you may not know why.  For one thing, they compete with the plants we want for scarce soil nutrients and water.  For another thing, if they get too tall, they can shade out the crops and keep them from getting all the sunlight they need to grow.  They also make it a lot harder to harvest the veggies.  Since we harvest everything by hand, it's hard to see what we're doing if the weeds are in the way, and it also makes it harder to keep weeds out of the spring mix.  Weeds are just generally a nuisance, and this year, we had a lot of weeds in the back field get away from us.  We weren't able to get back there to weed at the right time because we were too busy with other things around the farm.  And then it got really hot and really wet, and the weeds just took off in those tropical rainforest conditions.  So last week, we spent every spare moment trying to hack down the weeds so we don't loose a bunch of plantings.  We plant everything in long, straight beds that vary from 200 to 600 feet long, with a few feet of soil in between each bed.  Well, the weeds in between the beds got so large that some of them towered over me and looked like mini trees.  They were smaller and more manageable in the onion beds (you can see the difference in the picture above between what I had already weeded and what I hadn't gotten to yet), but they got really out of control around the peppers and Brussel sprouts.  So we got the heaviest duty weed whacker the tractor supply store had to offer, and went to town hacking down the insanely large weeds.  It took a lot of time and a lot of strength, and truth be told, my whole body was pretty sore by Friday.  But the back field is looking a lot better, and we've rescued the onions, peppers, and Brussels sprouts... for now.

This is also the part of the year that starts what most people think of as "the harvest season".  While we actually started the earliest harvests of overwintered leafy greens back in March, and have been harvesting four days a week since June, now is when we start to bring in the large harvests of storage vegetables that will last through the fall and winter.  This week, we will be bringing in thousands of pounds of potatoes in the margins of time around harvesting for the CSA, washing and packing the veggies, and bringing all of the veggies to you all at the drop-offs.  If you've ever seen those huge potato harvesters driving around in large fields, bringing in thousands of pounds of potatoes may not seem like a big deal to you.  However, we are a much smaller farm, and we don't have that kind of equipment, so it's actually a much more daunting task.  Fortunately, we have our handy dandy potato digger, which makes harvesting potatoes a much easier and more efficient process than digging them up by hand.

Basically, the potato digger is a contraption that we hook onto the back of the tractor (you can see it in the picture to the right), and it has a metal plate that digs into the soil and loosens up about the top foot of earth.  Then the potatoes and dirt are propelled up a series of metal grates and fall out the back of the machine, where they lay on top of the soil and wait for us to pick them up.  Then we collect them by hand and put them in large wooden bins in our walk-in cooler in the barn with the dirt still on them, and then wash them up as needed when it's time to bring them to the CSA.  Leaving the dirt on until we are ready to distribute them helps them stay in peak condition for longer because it acts as a protective barrier from the air, which would begin to dry out the potatoes if they were left exposed to the air for a long period of time.  

Speaking of protective barriers for your veggies, I had some folks recently ask me about the best way to store everything from the CSA so it will last as long as possible.  So here's a quick tutorial on how to store your CSA haul when you get home from the drop-off!

The first thing to know is that we do clean your produce up at the farm before we bring it to you.  There are regulations about calling produce pre-washed, so we can't label them as such or tell you that you don't have to rewash your veggies when you bring them home.  But I can say that whenever I bring things into my own kitchen, I don't rewash them.  If you do want to rewash the items, do it right before you use them, because if you do it as soon as you bring your veggies home, you'll really decrease their lifespan.  

The next thing to know is what to keep out on the counter and what to put in the fridge.   It's generally best to store things like tomatoes, onions, and garlic that has the papery skin out on the counter.  If you get tomatoes that come in a plastic bag, it's best to take them out and just leave them in the open on the counter.  People are often surprised to learn that basil does much better at room temperature as well, and that if you put it in the fridge, it might get blackish after a few days.  I usually just leave it in the bag it came in out on my counter, and it usually lasts up to a week that way.  I store other fresh herbs in bags in the fridge, but I know plenty of people leave them in a cup of water on the counter, so play around with what works best for you when it comes to dill, parsley, and cilantro.

Most everything else, like root vegetables and leafy stuff, does best in the refrigerator.  And you know how I mentioned that leaving the dirt on the potatoes acts as a protective barrier between the potato and the air?  Leaving your veggies in the bags they came in will do the same thing, and they'll last a lot longer than if you take them out of the bag.  And if it's a leafy item and it doesn't come in a bag from the CSA, like kale or chard, I'd put it in a plastic grocery bag when you put it in the fridge.  If your leafy veggies get exposed to that dry refrigerated air, they'll get wilty a lot faster, but if they're in a bag, they'll last about a week and a half in the fridge.  Root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, and beets will last a really long time, like several months, if you leave them in the bag.  If you have any other questions about how to store your veggies, just let me know!  

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. 
 

• Leeks or tomatoes
• Potatoes or beets
• Carrots or cabbage
• Green beans, spring mix, or cherry tomatoes
• Kale, chard, or cucumber
• Basil, cilantro, or parsley
• Onion 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:

• Leeks
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Cherry tomatoes
• Kale
• Basil
• Microgreens

Share B:

• Tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Green beans
• Cucumber
• Basil
• Onion

Share C:

• Tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Spring mix
• Chard
• Parsley
• Onion

Recipes

I love pretty much all veggies, and when people ask me what my favorites are, I never know how to answer.  It usually comes down to what I haven't yet had ample opportunity to eat this season.  So I was pretty excited when Fred said we were going to be able to bring leeks to the CSA this week, because I definitely haven't had enough leeks yet.  If you've never worked with leeks before, they are delicious and oniony, and they are great sautéed, grilled, in soups... there are so many delicious ways you can cook leeks!  This Vegetarian White Pizza with Shaved Vegetables and Pesto recipe caught my eye, both because of the leeks and also the basil... and because pizza.  Some of the veggies on the pizza are no longer in season, but you can switch out the asparagus and peas for things you do have on hand, like tomatoes or even microgreens.  That is the beauty of pizza; it is endlessly customizable!  Another super customizable and delicious idea for your leeks is this Farro and White Bean Salad with Seasonal Vegetables.  You can include any veggies you have on hand if you have something you want to use up, and you can even change up what types of beans or grains you use.  But really, anything you make is bound to be great with the bounty of late summer! Enjoy!

CSA Newsletter for Week 7 of the 2023 Season

Farm Update

Our basil is looking bright and strong out in 
the fields!  We have had a bunch of it lately!

Hi everyone!  It feels like we are finally into the height of summer now, and it is super busy at the farm!  We are harvesting massive quantities of food each week, planting fall crops every chance we get, and trying to get out from under the mountain of weeds that have taken over the farm in the past few weeks.  That's pretty much going to be the name of the game next week too, and probably the week after that.  This will likely be a shorter-than-usual newsletter, partly because we don't have anything new and fascinating going on at the farm, and because partly because there is just so much work to be done.  So keep your fingers crossed, and send out all the thoughts, prayers, and good vibes so that we can keep our heads above water and stay out in front of everything that needs to be done to keep the farm running.  Each farm season is a crazy adventure, and this is no exception.  Thank you all for coming along for the ride with us and helping make the farm what it is!  See you this week at the drop-offs! 😀

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. 
 

• Potatoes
• Carrots or Swiss Chard
• Surprise veggie!  (This could be green beans, spring mix, slicing tomatoes, blueberries, or okra. Basically, we have a lot of things that are right on the edge of availability right now, so there might be different things in this station throughout the week.)
• Kale, beets, or cabbage
• Zucchini, cucumbers, or green onions
• Basil, parsley, or microgreens
• 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.

Our next variety of cherry tomatoes is
almost ready!  Our previous variety,
Golden Nugget, is on its way out, and you'll
start seeing these Yellow Minis in the shares
soon.  This variety is indeterminate, so 
they will have a much longer season, and
their vines will get much longer (about eight
feet) by the time they stop growing.

Share A:

• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Beets
• Surprise veggie
• Zucchini
• Basil
• Onion

Share B:

• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Kale
• Surprise veggie
• Cucumbers
• Parsley
• Onion

Share C:

• Potatoes
• Swiss chard
• Cabbage
• Surprise veggie
• Green onions
• Microgreens
• Garlic

Recipes

During the long, dark, cold winters when pretty much nothing is growing, it is so great to pull something out of the freezer or pantry that we preserved when the getting was good.  And that's right now!  The height of summer is here folks, and now is the time to make zucchini bread for the freezer, can those pickles, and freeze those stray green beans for soups in January.  I especially love pickled veggies, because they are delightfully tangy and crunchy, and they are great as a side dish, on a sandwich or salad, or just to snack on and remember summer once the snow starts flying.  If you have a few bags of carrots in your fridge, what better way to put them to good use than by pickling them!  Then you can pull them out in February and remember when the days were long, the sun was hot, and you could go outside without having to put on five extra layers first.  If you've never made pickled carrots before, here is a good recipe for Quick Pickled Carrots to get you started!  I'm planning on making some in the next few weeks, because even though every day is just packed, I know that February Me will really appreciate that August Me took the time to leave myself and my family the gift of pickled carrot goodness.  

And speaking of pickles, if you are wanting to make pickles with your cucumbers, here is my very favorite pickle recipe!  I've been making this recipe for years, and you can't go wrong with Pop's Dill Pickles!