Week 18

Hi Everyone,

Week 18 is upon us and wow, has it ever cooled off! I'm always anxious to get the first fire of the Fall going in one of the woodstoves, but Vicky suggested a sweatshirt and a quilt. I shot back with a couple of other ways we could heat things up if she didn't want me to build a fire and she asked where she could find the kindling, some paper and a match. Speaking of fire...I know we have had a good crop of hot peppers this year and they'll be some more this week. You will get a mixture this week of reds and greens. I would suggest sorting out the red ones and drying them for use this winter in some dishes that need a little spice. There are some nice sites on line that can help with that. Also, we have found a lot of different recipes for the jalapenos. You'll be getting some padron peppers too. The most popular recipe for those seems to be putting them in a fry pan with olive oil and your best sea salt, blister them and then eat them as an appetizer with a beer or glass of wine. If you can't find any recipes for them on our recipe page, you certainly can on line. I'm going to try to remember to save one of each kind out Wednesday so you know what you're looking at.

All the crops in the ground right now love the cooler temps, although all the rain seemed to slow down the salad greens. We will get them, it just may be a little longer than hoped.

The sweet potatoes were dug this past weekend, you may want to let them cure a bit in a warm dry area to let a little more sweetness build up.

The lights in the chicken coops seem to be helping so far. The girl's are still popping out the eggs at a good pace even with the days getting shorter.


This week in your crates:

Hot peppers
Bok choy
Sweet potatoes
Onions
Garlic
Kabocha Squash-from elm tree organics
Baby blue hubbard Squash from railroad organics
Chives
Beans

See you Wednesday!

Steve and Vicky

Week 17

Hi All,

As we move into the last third of the CSA year, we just want to thank all of our farm hands that have helped so much this year and have gone back to their real jobs. Liz has taken a job teaching at Montessori Manor. Barb has gone back to her teaching job at Youth's Benefit. Lydia and Blanca have decided their job at the nursery is way to busy to come here as well after work. So that leaves Tina and Maggie who are still plugging away picking veggies, getting crates ready, putting on row covers, weeding and now beginning to do Fall clean up. Daughter Chelsea has been helping as well cleaning eggs and other must do chores around the farm.

Just to give you an idea on the rain we've received recently, as of last Friday we had 20.5 inches of rain in the previous 13 days. That's a lot and it keeps raining a little each day it seems. It makes it wet enough so we can't get some Fall things in that we were hoping to plant. Hopefully it will dry out enough in the next couple of days so we can till some ground.

We've installed some lights on timers in the hen houses to expand daylight hours for the birds that should keep them laying better as we get into the shorter days. Last Winter was crazy, we went from getting 10 dozen eggs a day to 3 on some occasions. We hope the light trick works! The only trouble with this plan is that we here the rooster in the back barn crowing at 4 in the morning!

I think we will take our final hundred incredible edibles (chickens) to the processor on 9/27 which means we will have them back on 9/29. We are keeping this group a bit longer than normal to get a little bigger bird. Hopefully we will have some 5-6 pounders in this group.

In your crates this week:

Green beans
Eggplant-both from here and Farmdale Organics
Green tomatoes
Yellow Squash-Outback Farm
Onions
Garlic
Zucchini-Windy Hollow Organics
Sweet peppers
Pumpkin
Basil
Bok Choy

See you Wednesday.

Steve and Vicky

Week 16

Hi Everyone,

Hope you all had a nice Labor Day Weekend! We've been getting some nice rain for our Fall crops and everything seems to be doing quite well. I think the bok choy will be ready for harvesting for week 17! That really came on like gangbusters. Wait until you see the sweet potatoes this week. Some are huge! We had one, which would feed a family of six, and it was delicious. We should probably call week 16 "orange week", not for Syracuse fans, but rather a lot of orange in the crates this week. We do get back to a delicious green, though, the young turnip greens are tender and tasty. With all the splash up from the rain today, you'll probably have to clean them real well.

Do to various crop failures this season we will be supplementing your crates the next few weeks with some items from a Pennsylvania coop of organic farms. Everything is certified organic and we will make a notation of the items and the farms they came from on your weekly list. It's been a strange year starting with the bad corn seed, the inability to grow many squash, cukes, eggplant, or sweet peppers and the tomatoes have just stopped after a few 50 degree nights and the hurricane. I looked on some old posts from last year and we had tomatoes until October 16. It's amazing how much we take for granted until we actually are involved in the growing of food.

In your crates this week:

Sweet Potatoes
Pie Pumpkin
Winter Squash- butternut and acorn(the white acorn is from Liberty Branch Farm)
Green Beans
Green Tomatoes
Cucumber (Elm Tree Organics)
Turnip Greens
Onions
Garlic
Beets(Farmdale Organics)
Rosemary

See you Wednesday!

Steve and Vicky