CSA Newsletter for Week 16

Farm Update

The pie pumpkins we had in the shares last week are a sure
sign of fall!  

Hi everyone!  We are entering the home stretch of the CSA season, with 15 weeks down and 5 more to go!  The weather has definitely shifted to be fully autumnal, and those hot summer days are a mere memory now.  A lot of the insane workload of summer has passed too, and most of our work in a given week revolves around harvesting, washing, packing, and delivering the vegetables.  We're still doing a little planting, but that has definitely decreased as well now that the remaining months of production are dwindling.  We finally finished up our massive sweet potato harvest this week, which is a huge thing we can cross off the to-do list, and we also finished up our various inspections for the year.  So the farm is starting to wind down for the season, which is somewhat bittersweet. On one hand, it is nice not to have to work at such a frantic pace, but on the other hand, I always miss the sheer vitality and alive-ness of summer when it passes.  But as Thoreau said, we should live in each season as it passes, and the nice thing about seasons is that they all come back around again.  So now is the time to settle into fall and all that it entails, and summer will be back soon enough. 

In other news, if you get a prepacked share delivered to your home, or you pick up at our Lansing, Okemos, or St. Johns drop-offs, I wanted to let you know that we do have eggs available!  Normally we have them for sale on the side at our regular drop-offs, but I wanted to let you guys know about them too, in case you wanted to set up a weekly egg order, or just order some every once in a while.  They're $4 per dozen from our very own free-range, happy hens.  So just let me know if you want to try some out! :-)

What to Expect in This Week's Share

If you are picking up at one of our traditional style drop-offs (Alma, Mt. Pleasant, or Midland), here’s what the options will be at the different stations.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item at each station, and if you have a full share, you choose two items at each station.

• Sweet potatoes
• Tomatoes or potatoes
• Lettuce, arugula, or eggplant
• Squash
• Radishes, leeks, or a bag of small/medium onions
• Bell pepper or onion
• Kale, cilantro, or microgreens

If you have a prepacked share (Midland hospital, St. Johns, Lansing, Okemos, or home delivery), here are your options.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose either share A or share B, and if you have a full share, you can choose two of them.

Share A:                               Share B:

Sweet potatoes                     Sweet potatoes
Tomatoes                              Potatoes
Lettuce                                  Arugula
Butternut squash                   Butternut squash
Radishes                               Leeks
Bell pepper                           Bell pepper
Green kale                            Red kale

Recipes

Our two newest additions to the roster this week are arugula (also called rocket, which is kind of fun!) and radishes, which are finally back in season!  If you're not quite sure what to do with these new veggies, here are 31 Arugula Recipes so You Can Eat It All the Time from Bon Appetit, and Radish Recipes from the kitchen queen herself, Martha Stewart!  There are a ton of ideas that range from pretty basic to fancy and complicated, so you're sure to find something that's right up your alley!  

CSA Newsletter for Week 15

Farm Update

The sweet potato harvest continues!  Danny and Ben harvested
a whole bunch of them on Wednesday!

Hi everyone!  We are officially into fall now, and the weather definitely reflects that.  Another sure sign of fall is the massive harvests of sweet potatoes we've been doing lately!  So far we've gotten about 7,000 pounds of sweet potatoes out of the ground, and we have another 2,500 or so to go.  Harvesting is definitely our most time-consuming project these days, as the time spent weeding and irrigating (our other two major time-consuming tasks at the farm) are less important this time of year than they were a few months ago.  In other news, we had our inspection for our organic certification yesterday, and it went really well!  So that's out of the way, and now we just have our food safety inspection on Monday, and then we're set for the year.  Another fun thing is that on Wednesday, we had a photojournalism student from Central Michigan University come out to the farm and take some pictures for a class project she's doing.  She has been assigned to shadow and photograph a farm family so she can tell our story in pictures.  So Wednesday she came out and got pictures of Fred and me packing up the shares for our Lansing area drop-offs, and she's going to come to our house tomorrow evening and take pictures of the whole family.

I've also had a lot of people ask when the final drop-off will be, so just in case you're wondering, the last week of October is our final CSA week.  The last Alma drop-off will be October 29, Mt. Pleasant will be October 30, Lansing will be October 31, and Midland will be November 1.  But we still have six weeks of veggies left until then, so get ready for a bunch of seasonal fall goodies coming your way!

What to Expect in This Week's Share

If you are picking up at one of our traditional style drop-offs (Alma, Mt. Pleasant, or Midland), here’s what the options will be at the different stations.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item at each station, and if you have a full share, you choose two items at each station.

• Sweet potatoes

  

  Carson pints cherry tomatoes in preparation for
  Tuesday's drop-offs.

• Butternut squash or cherry tomatoes
• Roma tomatoes, potatoes, or eggplant
• Slicing tomatoes or lettuce
• Pie pumpkin, delicata squash, or 2 bell peppers
• Kale, cilantro, or microgreens
• Large onion

If you have a prepacked share (Midland hospital, St. Johns, Lansing, Okemos, or home delivery), here are your options.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose either share A or share B, and if you have a full share, you can choose two of them.

Share A:                               Share B:

Sweet potatoes                     Sweet potatoes
Butternut squash                  Cherry tomatoes
Roma tomatoes                    Potatoes
Lettuce                                 Lettuce
2 bell peppers                       Pie pumpkin
Cilantro                                Kale
Onion                                   Onion

Recipes

There are a lot of tomato options in the shares this week!  So if you are as much of a tomato lover as we are, you really could get a ridiculous number of them if you so choose.  If you're reading this and thinking, "That's an awesome idea!  I think I'll do that!", here are some great tomato recipes to help you on your way, from Chili-Lime Shrimp Fajitas to Heirloom Tomato and Onion Quiche.  Enjoy!

CSA Newsletter for Week 14

Farm Update

Fred takes a break from the sweet potato
harvest to strike a pose for the camera.

Hi everyone!  Even though we have one more week of summer on the calendar, fall is definitely upon us!  The traditional fall veggies are starting to make their appearance in the CSA shares, and we were thrilled to add sweet potatoes and butternut squash to the roster last week!  In fact, last week and this week, harvesting as many sweet potatoes and winter squash as possible (as well as the other veggies in the shares) is the name of the game.  Another thing we spent way more time on this week than we would have liked was avoiding the mosquitos!  They were just ridiculous this week!  Did you guys notice that too?  Another big deal around the farm this week is our upcoming annual inspections.  Next week (not this week, but the following one), we’ll have both our organic certification inspection and our GAP (food safety) certification inspection, so there is always a flurry of activity surrounding those.  Both certifications involve a massive amount of paperwork, so Fred and I will spend the next week making sure our I’s are dotted and our T’s are crossed in preparation for the arrival of those inspectors.  There will be a lot of making sure our harvest logs are up to date, that all of our seed purchases are recorded and verified, and making the farm as shiny and sparkly as you can get a place that is, by definition, covered in dirt.  So wish us luck with that all the preparations, and we’ll see you this week for week 14!

What to Expect in This Week's Share

If you are picking up at one of our traditional style drop-offs (Alma, Mt. Pleasant, or Midland), here’s what the options will be at the different stations.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item at each station, and if you have a full share, you choose two items at each station.

• Sweet potatoes

  

  The beets are growing up quite nicely in the coldframe.

• Cherry tomatoes or slicing tomatoes
• Butternut squash
• Potatoes or lettuce
• Basil, microgreens, or kale
• Delicata squash, leeks, or a bag of small/medium onions
• Bell pepper or large onion

If you have a prepacked share (Midland hospital, St. Johns, Lansing, Okemos, or home delivery), here are your options.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose either share A or share B, and if you have a full share, you can choose two of them.

Share A:                               Share B:

Sweet potatoes                     Sweet potatoes
Cherry tomatoes                   Slicing tomatoes
Butternut squash                  Butternut squash
Potatoes                                Lettuce
Kale                                      Basil
Delicata squash                    Leeks
Large onion                          Bell pepper

Recipes

When I was a kid, I thought I didn't like sweet potatoes.  That's because we only ever had them on Thanksgiving, and my wonderful aunt who brought them was fond of mashed sweet potatoes with those little marshmallows on top, which is probably my least-favorite preparation.  So I was very surprised to learn as a pseudo-adult how much I actually love them!  So if like me, you prefer your sweet potatoes unmashed and unmarshmallowed, try out this awesome recipe for Oven Roasted Sweet Potatoes.  Or if this fall weather is making you feel like baking a pie, here is my go-to Sweet Potato Pie Recipe!

CSA Newsletter for Week 13

Farm Update

Our chicken girls have definitely been enjoying how fast
the grass has grown since it's been so warm and rainy!
They've shown their appreciation by finally transitioning to
almost all full-size eggs, rather than the medium-sized pullet
eggs a lot of them had been previously laying. (I don't know if
the grass actually had anything to do with it, but the timing
was pretty spot-on!)

Hi everyone!  It definitely feels like fall out there today!  We’ll likely get the last of the warm temperatures this week, then it will truly transition away from summer for good.  And like the weather, the vegetables are also in transition.  Yesterday we started our large sweet potato harvest, which is a sure sign of fall!  We were pleased to see that many of the sweet potatoes look like they’re a good size, because you can never tell what they look like under the soil until you dig them up.  Some years they’re just kind of spindly and disappointing, but this year they look nice!  We’re also continuing to plant our hearty fall greens outside, because they can withstand the cooler temperatures that we’ll be getting over the next few months.  We actually transplanted the last of the outdoor lettuce yesterday, and then the next planting will be in the greenhouse, because by the time that will be ready, it will just be too cold, windy, and damp in the open air for lettuces to do well.  Some of you were able to get the first of the winter squashes in your shares last week, and this week we’ll be doing a major winter squash harvest, so there will be more coming!  We’ve been doing a little weeding this week, but the weed pressure this time of year is a lot less forceful than in early- and mid-summer, so it’s a lot easier to keep up with now.  The pace of the work at the farm is starting to slow, which it does every year as nature starts its slow wind-down to winter.  So let’s all enjoy this last warm week, and the last few weeks of true summer veggies!  Here we go into week 13!

What to Expect in This Week's Share

If you are picking up at one of our traditional style drop-offs (Alma, Mt. Pleasant, or Midland), here’s what the options will be at the different stations.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item at each station, and if you have a full share, you choose two items at each station.

• Cherry tomatoes or spring mix

  

  Ben harvests cherry tomatoes in the coldframe.
  Bless that boy for putting up with me randomly
  taking pictures of him working when I happen
  to be walking by! 

• Basil or kale
• Potatoes
• Bag of small/medium onions, leeks, or microgreens
• Green pepper or large onion
• Sweet potatoes or butternut squash
• Pears, apples, or tomatoes

If you have a prepacked share (Midland hospital, St. Johns, Lansing, Okemos, or home delivery), here are your options.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose either share A or share B, and if you have a full share, you can choose two of them.

Share A:                               Share B:

Cherry tomatoes                  Spring mix
Kale                                     Basil
Potatoes                               Potatoes
Bag of smallish onions        Leeks
Green pepper                       Large onion
Butternut squash                 Sweet potatoes
Pears                                   Tomatoes

Recipes

It doesn't happen all the time that I get super excited about a recipe idea, but I have to admit, scrolling through these 26 Easy Butternut Squash Recipes from Good Housekeeping, my eyes were getting wide and I decided I have to make each and every one of these before squash season is over.  Butternut squash, leek, and goat cheese galette!  Butternut squash pancakes!  Spice-Roasted Butternut Squash with Cider Vinaigrette!  There are so many amazing recipes here, we'll all be going happily squash-crazy until there isn't a single one left in the field! :-)

CSA Newsletter for Week 12

Farm Update

All those lovely pears, just waiting to be harvested!

Hi everyone!  We finally have enough rain at the farm, that’s for sure!  We needed more rain for most of the season, but it can definitely stop now!  This week has been a fairly smooth transition from summer into fall as most of our employees went back to school.  Mary, Jewel, and Daniel all left this week to pursue their educational ambitions, so we’re down to Ben, Carson, and Danny.  Given that we’re down to half of our workforce, things were less crazy this week than we expected, so we’re super grateful for that. Weeding and harvesting definitely were the most time-consuming projects this week, but Fred was also able to put in a big planting of carrots, radishes, lettuce, spinach, and arugula this morning before more rain comes.  We were also pleased to have some surprise pears this last week!  Our orchard is extremely old, and most years it doesn’t actually do very well because such old trees aren’t well-suited to organic production.  Most years, we’re able to get just a few crates of apples and no pears, but this year, the apples have done better than I’ve ever seen them do.  The pears were quite a surprise to us last week, because we never expected to get any! We also weren’t sure about the corn, because the raccoons took out most of our first planting, but the second planting turned out really well!  We’re likely to have more pears and corn this week too, but they’ll be in smaller quantities in the surprise veggie category.

Just a reminder that Monday is Labor Day, and we are having the Alma drop-off as usual, but if you’re unable to make it to the drop-off Monday, please just let me know by Sunday so I can adjust the harvest list.  Then, you can either arrange to get a double share next week, or pick up Tuesday at our Mt. Pleasant drop-off instead, whatever works best for you.  We hope you all have an awesome holiday, and we’ll see you next week!

What to Expect in This Week's Share

If you are picking up at one of our traditional style drop-offs (Alma, Mt. Pleasant, or Midland), here’s what the options will be at the different stations.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item at each station, and if you have a full share, you choose two items at each station.

I just love looking at those endless rows of different
colored lettuce for our spring mix!  They seem
especially long when it's weeding time, but they
certainly look pretty! :-)

• Potatoes
• Cherry tomatoes or slicing tomatoes
• Snap beans or lettuce
• Surprise veggie
• Kale or a bag of small/medium onions
• Zucchini, leeks, or microgreens
• Green pepper

If you have a prepacked share (Midland hospital, St. Johns, Lansing, Okemos, or home delivery), here are your options.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose either share A or share B, and if you have a full share, you can choose two of them.

Share A:                               Share B:

Potatoes                                Potatoes
Cherry tomatoes                   Slicing tomatoes
Snap beans                           Lettuce
Surprise veggie                    Surprise veggie
Kale                                     Bag of onions
Zucchini                               Leeks
Green pepper                       Green pepper

Recipes

For us, breakfast is definitely a big deal!  Since farm work is so physically demanding, our habit is to power up with a hearty and healthy breakfast that will last us until lunchtime.  So Fred (who is definitely the chef at our house) always makes up something filling and delicious. Even if you're usually a piece-of-toast-while-you're-running-out-the-door type person, with the long weekend, you'll hopefully have time for an extra delicious breakfast!  To take advantage of the potatoes and green peppers in your share, try out this recipe for the Best Breakfast Potatoes Ever from Ree Drummond, and maybe even linger over a second cup of coffee. :-)

CSA Newsletter for Week 11

Farm Update

Fred harvesting apples on Monday night.  We
were able to get 14 crates full before we ran
out of light!

Hi everyone!  We are now officially halfway through CSA season, having finished up week 10 this last week!  Just a reminder that Labor Day is coming up next week on Monday, September 3.  We will still be having the Alma drop-off as usual, so if you have other holiday plans and can’t make it to the drop-off, just let me know!  If you let me know by the day before the drop-off, I can postpone your share and get you a double share the following week, or you can pick up your share on Tuesday the 4^th in Mt. Pleasant instead.  Now that school is starting and people are less likely to be on vacation, my guess is that we’re going to have a lot more people at the drop-offs!  Most days, we have several people who don’t make it, so we often have a few shares left over at the end.  That works out pretty well, because then people who forgot to come the previous week are often able to get some extra veggies.  But with fewer people missing the drop-offs, just make sure to check in with me first before you grab an extra share if you had an unplanned absence from a previous drop-off.  If you arranged with me beforehand to hold your share, then you should be on the list for an extra share, and you can go right ahead and grab that.  But if you accidentally miss a week, just check in with me before you grab double the following week, because that allows me to monitor our stock of veggies and make sure we have enough for everyone!

In other news, we finally got some good rain!  We are so thrilled that we didn’t have to irrigate at all this week, and the plants are definitely happy too!  On Monday night, Fred and I went out and harvested a whole bunch of our Paula Red apples.  There is a peculiarity about that variety that causes them to often drop from the trees even before they’re fully ripe, and once an apple hits the ground, we can’t give it out due to regulations.  Since we knew that they would probably all drop as soon as the storm blew through, we hurried out on Monday night and harvested as many apples as we could until we ran out of light, and we ended up with fourteen of our black crates full of apples.  So now that they’ve had some time to ripen, we’ll be bringing them to the drop-off this week!  They are delicious for pies, sauce, or fresh eating, and I’m pretty sure my kids have already eaten about half a bushel.  Also on Monday, Fred put in the first fall planting of spinach!  It won’t be ready to harvest for a while yet, but that will be the spinach that appears in your CSA shares in October.  We’re also wrapping up our huge onion harvest this weekend!  We planted a ridiculous volume of onions this year, and now that we have our wonderful barn, we have enough space to bring all the onions inside where they can wait, safe and dry, until we bring them to the CSA drop-offs.  So the last of the onions are coming out of the fields and into the barn this weekend.  That’s how I know that fall is coming; if there can be said to be a “harvest season” in our type of farming, this is probably the beginning of it.  We’ve brought in all the potatoes, we’re bringing in the last of the onions, and in the next month, we’ll do large harvests of beets and other root vegetables for the fall.  If the CSA season could be represented by a bell curve, then we’re just to the right of the apex, where the line starts to dip toward the bottom.  But we still have 10 more weeks of veggies to go, so here we go into week 11!

What to Expect in This Week's Share

If you are picking up at one of our traditional style drop-offs (Alma, Mt. Pleasant, or Midland), here’s what the options will be at the different stations.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item at each station, and if you have a full share, you choose two items at each station.

• Sweet corn for everyone!
• Potatoes or carrots
• Cherry tomatoes or slicing tomatoes
• Lettuce or apples
• Kale, microgreens, or zucchini
• Basil, cabbage, or green pepper
• Onion

If you have a prepacked share (Midland hospital, St. Johns, Lansing, Okemos, or home delivery), here are your options.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose either share A or share B, and if you have a full share, you can choose two of them.

Share A:                               Share B:

Sweet corn                           Sweet corn
Potatoes                                Carrot
Cherry tomatoes                  Slicing tomatoes
Lettuce                                 Apples
Zucchini                               Kale
Green pepper                       Cabbage
Onion                                  Onion

Recipes

It's starting to look like fall out there!  With both apples and kale in the shares this week, it's time to bring out a great fall dish, Kale, Avocado, Apple, and Bacon Salad!  Doesn't that name just sound like autumn?  Especially with the maple syrup in the dressing, this is the perfect salad to bring out on  one of the upcoming slightly less balmy evenings.  Enjoy! :-)

CSA Newsletter for Week 10

Farm Update

We brought in a major part of the potato
 harvest this week!  Fred drives over the row
of potatoes with our old-school potato digger,
which picks up the soil the potatoes are in.
Then the potatoes and soil roll down a series of
rollers, where the soils fall through the spaces
between the rollers, and the potatoes are
deposited on the ground for us to follow behind
and pick up.

Hi everyone!  Hope you're all doing well!  We're just about halfway through the season, and it's already starting to feel like summer is winding down!  Maybe it's all the school supplies in the stores, and maybe it's the fact that in a few weeks, most of our employees are going back to school, but it feels like a distinct shift in the season.  August is kind of the golden age of summer for us, because most of the planting is done for the year, and there isn't the sheer insane volume of work that is characteristic of June and July.  There is still quite a lot of work to do, but if we're going to sneak away from the farm for a day or two, now is the time to do it, because we still have plenty of help.  In September and October, our constant presence at the farm is pretty much a necessity, because we'll have about a third of the available labor that we have right now.  So with that in mind, Fred took off yesterday afternoon to go camping and hiking at the Nordhaus Dunes near Ludington, and I took the kids down to the Midland Farmer's Market.  It's always so much fun to meet other local growers and producers, and I really appreciate the awesome community of small farmers here in mid-Michigan!  It really is an increasingly unusual life we've chosen, full of long hours of work in the summer and near hibernation in the winter, where your income is uncertain and success is far too dependant on the whims of the weather, and yet there is such an inexplicable richness to it.

In other news, things are going pretty well at the farm.  Fred actually took Thursday off from the Midland drop-off to speak at a soil seminar up at Morgan's Composting, which is where we have our custom organic soil fertility mixes made up each year.  As always, we could definitely use more rain (I think that is pretty much the running theme of this season), but we've got plenty of great summer veggies coming up in the shares!  There might even be a few more items that aren't on the list that will make an appearance at the drop-offs, depending on when things become ready, so don't be surprised if you see a few more veggies on the tables that weren't listed in the newsletter.  See you all this week! :-)

What to Expect in This Week's Share

These little lettuces in the greenhouse
will be transplanted into the field soon.

If you are picking up at one of our traditional style drop-offs (Alma, Mt. Pleasant, or Midland), here’s what the options will be at the different stations.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item at each station, and if you have a full share, you choose two items at each station.

• Potatoes
• Onion
• Carrots or sweet potato greens
• Cherry tomatoes
• Lettuce or tomatoes
• Zucchini, kale, or basil
• Leeks or delicata squash

If you have a prepacked share (Midland hospital, St. Johns, Lansing, Okemos, or home delivery), here are your options.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose either share A or share B, and if you have a full share, you can choose two of them.

Share A:                               Share B:

Potatoes                                Potatoes
Carrots                                  Carrots
Onion                                    Onion
Cherry tomatoes                   Cherry tomatoes
Lettuce                                  Tomatoes
Zucchini                                Kale
Leeks                                     Delicata squash

Recipes

If you're a stranger to delicata squash, you've got an exciting treat coming up!  This is my absolute favorite of the winter squashes, with it's thin skin and wonderful texture!  You can prepare it the same way you would any other winter squash, or you could try out this recipe for Maple-Roasted Delicata Squash with Red Onions from Epicurious.  Also new on the CSA list this week is sweet potato greens, which is exactly what it sounds like.  It's the leaves of the sweet potato plant, and they're awesome!  You can cook them in a similar way to kale or chard, but they're so much more tender.  We actually had no idea you could eat them until a CSA member picked some up at a farmer's market in Minneapolis on vacation and told us about them, and we were shocked at how good they are!  So try out this recipe for Stir-Fried Sweet Potato Leaves, or just saute them in coconut oil for a fantastic side dish.