Week 23

Hi All,

Holy Moly, next week is the last week! Can't believe it. What a weird growing season this year, but more on that next week. I just picked up rye seed that we will grow as a cover crop this year on most of our fields. I say most because we will leave the field with the lettuces, turnips, radishes and cauliflower alone and see how long the stuff will continue to grow. It's a very in depth scientific experiment....not really, we also have planted some garlic in that field for next year so we thought we will let the others veggies continue to grow and if you want any after the the CSA is done for the year, you can come over and grab some. I don't think the cauliflower will be ready for next week so that's something you may want to have. They look beautiful. Why rye for a cover crop you may ask, rye will actually germinate in very chilly weather and it's root system grows very deep, that will help with the tilth of the soil and it will add wonderfully to the organic matter in our soil when we till it in next spring. A cover crop will help with water and wind erosion during the colder months as well.

In your crates this week:

Green Cabbage
Butternut Squash
Mild Salad Mix
Spicy Salad Mix
Radishes (french breakfast and cherry belles)
Kale
Turnips
Basil
Chives
Broccoli (your choice)
Sweet Peppers
Eggplant
Yukon Gold Potatoes
Garlic

See you Wednesday!

Steve and Vicky

Week 22

Hi Everyone,

Some real nice Fall weather the last few days. It makes it nice on the farm cleaning up and bringing the season to a close when your able to be outside on days like this! Some of the frustration of this growing season continues this week with the broccoli. The broccoli is beautiful and tastes awesome, but....each head is the home to a few cabbage worms. A good way to get rid of them is to totally submerge your broccoli under heavily salted water, you may have to put a plate on it or something heavy because it will want to float, some even add some vinegar to the water. This will, at least, detach the worms from the the underside of the heads and kill most. At least they come off and you can catch them in your strainer and send them on their way. I'm going to leave it up to you whether you want to mess with this process or not. The broccoli will be here if you want it.

On the plus side, the eggplant still is coming which seems a little unusual for this time of year, peppers too! The lettuces and root veggies are doing pretty well and the hens continue to be happy! As we get close to the end of the CSA think about egg delivery and whether you will want to continue it or, if you never had delivery, if you'll want to start it.

In your crates this week:


Garlic
Eggplant
Basil
Yukon Gold Potatoes
Romaine Lettuce
Spicy Salad Mix (arugula and red mustard greens)
Sweet Peppers
Radishes
Turnips
Broccoli
Kabocha Winter Squash

See you Wednesday.

Steve and Vicky

Week 21

Howdy folks,

I was just out pulling radishes and some are the size of a banana. I couldn't remember what type they were so I came back in the house to check it out. They are a Chinese radish called Shunkyo, but the funny thing about it, the seed package said Shunkyo "semi-long"..not really.

We have got all the chickens from the back barn up in the new coop inside the front barn. They seem to like their new digs. There's been no drop in egg production at all and that usually happens when you disturb their schedule. Just a reminder that the chicken fence is close to the drive now and it's electric! (tell the truth, when you read "It's Electric" you thought of your favorite dance)

Just a reminder for you Fall soup makers, we have chicken necks, backs and feet to make your stock.

Went through all the bee hives today and there will be no Fall honey this year. A couple of hives had some excess frames of honey, but unfortunately a couple of hives didn't have enough for them to make it through the winter so I had to give them the frames full of honey. I just think that the incredibly wet end of summer didn't help.

In your crates this week:

Acorn Squash
Yukon Gold Potatoes
Spicy Salad Mix
Mild Salad Mix
Chives
Garlic
Sweet Peppers
Radishes
Turnips
Beets

See you Wednesday

Steve and Vicky

Week 20

Hi Everyone,

The temp is 47 as I write this message and sure feels like fall around the farm. A fire is in the woodstove keeping us toasty and I love smelling the smoke from the fire when we go out. We are working hard at keeping things growing, even though it refuses to stop raining. This time of year we are also trying to clean things up and get things put away so when the CSA is over on 11/2 we are ready to till and plant our cover crop and hopefully we have enough time for the seed to germinate and grab hold. We will be planting rye on the fields this year and till it back in the spring to give us some nice organic matter in the soil.

We are building another large chicken coop in the front barn so we can move the hens that are out back in the back barn up front. That way we will have all the layers together and it will make things easier for the daily chores. It will also free up some space out back for the meat chickens. It seems that the extra light we are giving the hens is working so far, egg production really hasn't dropped off as it normally would as the days get shorter.

We finally will have some salad mix for you this week. The arugula and red mustard greens should make a nice combo for a tender salad with some kick to it. The radishes this week are what we call watermelon radishes. They are greenish on the outside and red on the inside. They are actually called Red Meat.

In your crates this week:

Napa Cabbage
Radishes
Spicy Salad Mix
Spinach
Butternut Squash
Turnips
Basil
Garlic
Potatoes

See you Wednesday,

Steve and Vicky

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