Week 9 CSA Newsletter 2020 (Aug. 16-22)
The Week 9 CSA Box
CSA Newsletter Week 9
August 16-22, 2020 | “A” Week
RED POTATOES (2 LB.) ~ Store these in a cool, dark place away from onions (which will make the sprout). Light will your potatoes green so avoid light exposure. These come from Mile Creek Farm — one of our partner farms.
ZOEY SWEET ONIONS ~ These are cured, so they should be stored on the counter.
CHERRY TOMATOES ~ You can store them on the countertop if you plan to eat them within a few days. For longer storage, put them in your fridge in a plastic bag. You should try to eat these within a week. They can be roasted or turned into sauce too!
YELLOW SWEET CUBANELLE PEPPERS (2) ~ These are long-shaped peppers with a lime green color. They LOOK like a hot pepper, but they are NOT. Use like a sweet pepper. Store in the fridge in a Green bag. Use within 2 weeks.
GREEN BELL PEPPERS (2) ~ The peppers are starting to come on strong! Get ready for an onslaught of them over the next few weeks! Store in the fridge in a Green bag. Use within 2 weeks. You can also easily flash freeze peppers whole or chop them first.
JALAPENOS (2) ~ Be careful when slicing these, as some people react strongly to their spiciness. Consider wearing gloves OR wash your hands as soon as you are done. The heat of the pepper resides in the seeds and the lining of the pepper, so if you want less heat, just remove those. Store in the fridge in a Green bag. Use within 2 weeks. You can also easily flash freeze peppers whole or chop them first.
EGGPLANT ~ Store in the fridge in a Green bag. Use within 7 days. Cut the skin off and chop into rounds or cubes.
SWEET CORN (NOT ORGANIC) ~ These will be passed out as an “extra” in a special plastic bag along with your bin. Store sweet corn in its husk in the fridge. Corn will turn starchier the longer you store it, so try to enjoy it in the first 3-5 days.
GROUND CHERRIES ~ Store in the fridge, and try to eat within a week. Before eating, remove the papery husk surrounding the fruit. These are often eaten out of hand as a snack, or on a salad. But you can also try them in a cocktail. They have a cross between a tomato and a pineapple.
CELERY ~ Store in the fridge, in a jar of water to keep the celery stalks crisp. You should try to use this within a week. Our fresh celery has thinner stalks, so it will have a concentrated celery taste.
Val Washeck shared this great tip last year for freezing jalapenos. Pull them out as needed and GRATE THEM on a box grater. Put the unused portion back into the freezer.
FRUIT SHARE – PS: It’s “A” Week!
BLUEBERRIES – store these in their plastic containers in the fridge or in a Fridgesmart container.
PEACHES — from Quarry Hll Orchard
SPECIALTY MELON: LAMBKIN — from Bench Farms, Cut these down the middle, scoop out the seeds, and slice into the creamy interior. These would make a great cocktail too.
This week’s cheese share features a new cheese: Seville Spread. Tell us what you think!
CHEESE SHARE
MADDIE & BELLA COFFEE SHARE
Ethiopia Yirgacheffe – clean, flowery, deep citrus
Farmer Kurt was up all Friday night filling out our organic certification application — also called the OSP.
Pulling the All-Nighter: Filling Out the “OSP”
When you went to school, were you one of those people that waited until the last minute and pulled an all-nighter to write their research paper?
Yeah, so was Farmer Kurt… Every year, on August 15, the “OSP” certification application is due to our organic certifier agency. And every year, I end up Fedex-ing it with overnight mail to make the deadline.
(One year, we missed the deadline by 2 days, and paid a $1000 late fee. NEVER AGAIN! I said.)
To be fair, this document is a BEAST, and I would procrastinate too.
OSP stands for “Organic System Plan,” and it is the official documentation required to maintain our organic certification.
The OSP is reviewed by our certifier agency (OEFFA), and later in the year, when we are inspected, they will compare our actual practices to what we report on the OSP. If they don’t match up, we can receive a “non-compliance” charge or (worst case) lose our certification.
The OSP contains details like:
- field maps for the entire past season, so an inspector can make sure we haven’t been planting the same crop in the same place year after year.
- detailed organic seed documentation — we must show all our seed sources for every packet of seed planted in the field. An inspector must be able to trace which seed packet ended up in which bed in the field on a specific week of the year. We also have to show that if we couldn’t find organic seed, that we tried to find it from 3 companies.
- soil tests results and recommendations
- receipts that show our field amendments — what did we add to the soil — compost, organic supplements, what concentrations, cover crops, timing
- a complete “field history” showing what each section of our acreage has been used for over the last 3 years
By the time we’re all done, our OSP is around 75 pages long. It feels a lot like a tax form, but it also includes our own documents we’ve built on Excel — like seed spreadsheets, field maps, and receipts we’ve filed away. It costs around $1000 each year to apply for recertification, although much of that is covered by a grant. The cost of certification isn’t what deters many farmers… It’s the challenge of creating systems for logging and documenting everything, so you can fill out this OSP every year!
This is what the OSP file looks like.
Lucky for us, Kurt is really good at keeping track of his data. But it still takes a good 8 hours for us to get everything together. Kurt and I feel it’s important to support the “organic certification” movement, and put a stake in the ground to say, “this seal needs to be championed!” So although we don’t NEED to get certified each year, we choose to do so for transparency and to do our small part of supporting the bigger movement.
The first of the tomatoes come in on a wagon. We picked these a bit green so we could clear the plants of their fruit, and spur the tomatoes coming behind them to grow!
Howdy everyone! This week we hit the half-way point in the CSA! Hard to believe, but I actually have to start thinking about NEXT year already! Corinna and I always do “early bird” registration in October, which means we need to sit down and make some tough decisions about next year, to see if we want to make any changes. As you may have heard, the Webers informed us that they will not be able to do our egg share next year, so we are putting together an alternate solution to provide eggs for 2021. We’re also taking a hard look at some of our pickup sites, to see how we can build in more white space for myself on the farm. We’ll keep you posted over the next few weeks. And if you see any Facebook posts about “getting on a wait list for 2021,” don’t worry! That doesn’t apply to you. You’ll get first dibs on next year’s spots in October.
Onto the field report! We are moving into tomato and pepper season! Our pepper crop is out of this world! I’m pretty excited about it. We should have plenty of product for you over the next few weeks. Onions are officially done and pulled. I’ve got the crew on a regular routine of picking tomatoes and sweet corn almost every day now. I had them pull all the remaining beets in the field this weekend too. I’ve got about 50 pounds left which I’ll try to move through bulk orders.
Jed pulls down one of the outer stalks of celery. This is how we harvest it — from the outside in.
Celery is in the box this week — don’t be alarmed by its thinner stalks. If you’re a newbie, this is not like the celery they grow in Celeryville where they pump them full of water (no joke, that’s the name of the town). This variety gets harvested stalk by stalk, so that it can grow back form the inner core, and I can get multiple cuttings off of it. The stalks have a concentrated celery flavor. I hope you like it.
You’ll notice that the zucchini is no longer in the CSA boxes. Although I still have a few plants producing, it’s not enough for everyone to get some in their shares. I do have a second big planting in the works so that we can hopefully have another run of summer squash in the later part of the season. I REALLY enjoyed your wacky carrot photos. People have been asking me what causes that to happen to the carrots? When it’s really dry out, the carrots may hit a hard piece of ground that causes them to fork into weird shapes or spiral around each other.
But I like to tell people I’m a carrot artist.
If you all recall the 90 plus heat wave we had the end June through much of July. During that time period we were not able to plant anything because we had to prioritize irrigation water to already established plantings. So you all will feel this these next couple of weeks with box diversity. Brussels sprouts, summer greens and late summer carrots and beets didn’t make it. But there is always a bright spot in every story; temps are cooling, and we are in the process of seeding and transplanting for fall as the CSA season changes.
We planted the fall crops on Monday — kohlrabi, cabbage, broccoli…
I pulled a late night on Friday after harvesting for Toledo — filling out my OSP application (Organic System Plan). I’m not gonna lie — I dread doing it every year. It’s not that it’s hard to do. It’s just tedious, filling out the same form fields as last year, tracking down all the documentation. I told myself the first of the year that I would have this done by May… Ha Ha. I did get half way through it by the 15th of May but then it fell off the priority list. Add to that, the fact that I now need cheater glasses to read the darn forms. I was relieved to pass the pile to Corinna this morning and say, “Scan it and send it.” Just under the wire, as always.
Toledo Farmer’s Market felt too early to me this week — probably because I pulled an all-nighter filling out that form! LOL. I’m in sore need of a day off. I spread about 4 loads of cow manure on our fields today from one of our neighbors, who is offering me free manure. (Never say no to free organic matter). We are still dry out here in Elmore so my boys and I are still on irrigation duty. We had to move irrigation pipe Thursday night to the sweet corn patch and the three of us were in a zone. Bye the time the the sun set we had all the pipe set and flushed with the quiet ticking of the big irrigation gun and the generator humming in the distance (mission complete).
~Your Farmer, Kurt
Next week, we begin our 2 week Air Fryer Challenge! Want to practice using this tool? Join us for the challenge and you could win a prize!
WEEK 9 ANNOUNCEMENTS
- The winner of the Wacky Carrot Contest is LINDSEY SIMPSON: Congratulations! You will win a fun gift package for your entry of “Edward Carrothands.” There were SO many other good pictures shared! Thank you for playing and adding some fun energy to our group this week.
- Beginning NEXT week, August 23rd through Sept. 6th, we are running the Air Fryer Challenge! I bought an Air Fryer last year based on the recommendations of members of this group, and I have yet to really master it. So I wanted to run a 14 day challenge to help myself (and you) learn how to use this machine. The goal is to try and make something with your air fryer 4-5 times a week, and to experiment with it — even if it means a failure! I will choose ONE person at random to be our champion at the end of the challenge, who will win a fabulous foodie gift package that I get to put together for you! So if you don’t have an air fryer yet, and you want to learn how to use one, join us and go grab yourself an appliance before August 23rd! I’m counting on all of you to help teach our tribe the ropes! So if you have an air fryer and you have a clue… please participate and teach us all!!
- To be eligible for the prize, you must post at least 3 pictures of meals you’ve made in your air fryer in our private Facebook group. You must be either a full-season or Sampler veggie member of our CSA.
- They must include some element of fruit or veggies to “count” towards the challenge. Be sure to tell us in the post what the veggies are, and help us out by teaching us how you cooked it. (setting, minutes cooked, prep, etc)
- Hashtag your entry #slfarmsairfryer so I can find it in the Facebook group. You can also send me 3 pictures via email if you do not use Facebook.
The winner of the Wacky Carrot Contest is Lindsey Simpson, who submitted this “Edward Scissorhands” photo. LOVED IT!
BULK PEACHES FOR PRE-ORDER. if you want a half bushel box of peaches (25 lbs) for $36, you should place your order in the Facebook post or via email before Monday night. These are free-stone peaches, meaning the pit is not attached to the flesh. They are great for freezing or canning. This is a PRE-ORDER, and not guaranteed! I will email you if I can fill the order. There is a run on peaches at Ben’s orchard, so we have had to source these from Eshleman’s Orchard in Clyde instead.
- You can order additional items from the Shared Legacy Farms online store. Our store link is super easy to remember: www.sharedlegacyfarms.com/store ==> we’ve got celery, carrots, red beets, sweet corn, and rye flour this week. Just be sure to select the right pickup site that coincides with your pickup location. If the pickup option is greyed out or not available, it means you missed the window to order. You need to place your order 2 days before your site. I reload the store and set new pickup dates on Sunday afternoon.
- TRYING TO GET SOME BULK CORN? We sell our sweet corn by the 5 dozen bushel for $30. We can only put in about 15 orders per week right now, due to space limits on the truck. Just keep trying each Sunday/Monday to order in the online store. Don’t worry! We’ll have corn for a while!
Bulk corn comes in a bag like this of 5 dozen ears for $30
WEEK 9 CSA RECIPES
Members: To save time each week, I’m now publishing the recipes only as a PDF. You can download these recipes here. This week’s recipes are:
- Baked Orzo with Eggplant and Mozzarella
- Ratatouille Baked Chicken
- Creamy Potato Salad with Lemon and Fresh Herbs
- Potato Hash with Bell Peppers and Onions
- Pasta with 15-minute Burst Cherry Tomato Sauce
- Sausage Jambalaya with Celery and Bell Peppers
- Fresh Corn Sauté with Bell Pepper and Onions
- Chili Lime Corn
- Easy One-Pan Eggplant Chicken Dinner
- Pickled Cubanelle Peppers
- Grilled Parmesan, Garlic and Basil Corn on the Cob
- Grilled Vegetable Stuffed Peppers
- Ground Cherry Salsa
- Grilled Peaches and Berries
- Iced Melon Moroccan Mint Tea