CSA Farm Newsletter Week 9 (August 20-27, 2023)
Farm Newsletter Week 9
August 20-27, 2023 | “A” Week
Fresh celery bunches will be in this week’s box
What’s in the Box this Week?
FRESH CELERY (1 bunch) ~ Farm-fresh celery often includes skinnier stalks than what you’d find at the grocery stores. They are celery flavor bombs! To store: You can wrap your celery tightly in foil and place it in the fridge. This will keep it crisp for weeks. If you don’t want to use foil, try chopping the celery into smaller stalks and putting them in a bowl of water in the fridge. To prep: Rinse well. Cut a half-inch off the base. Cut the tops off the celery. Save these for your freezer scrap bag and make broth later! You can also save the tops and use them for salads, for dried herbs, or DIY celery salt. To freeze: Freezing celery is not recommended.
CHERRY TOMATOES (pint) ~ To store: We store our cherry tomatoes in the fridge for longer shelf life, but bring them to room temperature before eating. Wash well. Tomatoes can be frozen whole with the skin on. The skins will slide right off when they thaw. Simply pop the washed tomatoes whole into a Ziplock bag. Thawed tomatoes are appropriate only for cooking sauces, salsas, or purees.
HEIRLOOM TOMATO (2) ~ Heirlooms are known for their flavor, but they have a VERY small shelf life, so eat them on the first day. You’ll also see cracks and scarring on these tomatoes. This is normal. To store: Do not refrigerate tomatoes. Store them at room temperature out of the sun stem side down.
SWEET CORN (6 ears) ~ (not organic, non-GMO, from David Bench Farms) ~ To store: Refrigerate sweet corn as soon as possible with husks on. The longer you wait to eat it, the more sugar will turn into starch, and the corn will lose its \ sweetness. To prep: You can eat corn raw or cook it in the husks. Shuck the cob by pulling the husks down the ear and snapping off the stem. The silks will fall off as you cook the corn. Rinse under cold water. If you see a green worm, just cut out the damaged section — the rest of the cob is still edible! To cut the kernels off the cob, stand the cob upright on its base and run a sharp knife from the tip of the ear down to the base. To cook: Steam corn in 1-2 inches of water for 6-10 minutes, or drop ears into boiling water for 3-6 minutes. Season with butter or salt. You can also grill corn in the husk — place the corn in its husk in water for 10 minutes — then place on grill for 15 minutes. To freeze: Blanch on the cob for 3-5 minutes, rinse under cold water, and drain. Cut off the kernels with a knife, and then pack it into airtight freezer containers.
Teresa Harder went on a freezer soup kit making craze this week as part of the challenge! Winner will be announced Monday.
PARSLEY ~ To store: For short-term storage, stand upright in a container with an inch of water. Then cover the herbs loosely with a plastic bag and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks. To prep: Chop the leaves and stem before cooking. The stem can be used to flavor soups and stews too. To dry: Place a piece of paper towel on a glass plate. Layer the parsley evenly around the plate being sure not to overlap. Cover with another piece of paper towel. Microwave on high for 1 minute. Leaves will be dry. Crinkle them with your finger and place them in a dry container, such as a Mason jar with a lid. To freeze: Chop parsley finely and freeze in ice cube trays with water. Pop out frozen cubes and freeze in a freezer bag.
HEAD LETTUCE (CRISP HEAD) ~ To store: Store unwashed lettuce in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. To store lettuce that you have already washed and dried with a spinner, place back in a plastic bag with a dry paper towel in the bag, and place the package in the vegetable crisper bin. Use within 4 days. To prep: Slice the head at its base with a knife and let the leaves fall open. Discard any damaged or leathery outer leaves and tear large leaves into bite-size pieces. Wash leaves in a basin of cold water. Dry in a salad spinner.
POTATOES (1 heaping quart ) from Mile Creek Farm ~ Keep unwashed potatoes in a cool, dark, dry place, such as a loosely closed paper bag in a cupboard. They will keep for two weeks at room temperature. Light turns them green, and proximity to onions causes them to sprout. Don’t put them in the refrigerator, as low temperatures convert the starch to sugars. To prep: Scrub well and cut off any sprouts or green skin. Peeling is a matter of preference. In soups, the skins may separate from the flesh and float in the broth, but when baked, pan- fried or roasted, the skins acquire a crisp, crunchy texture. To cook: Boil potatoes in water for 20-30 minutes until tender. If desired, mash them. Use potatoes in soups, hash browns, and salads. Roast sliced or whole small potatoes with fresh herbs, salt, and olive oil at 400 degrees until tender, about 20 minutes.
Have you jumped on the beet bagel bandwagon yet? Tammy Koepfler made these using golden beets.
FLAVOR BURST BELL PEPPERS (4) ~ an early variety of bells, with a striking lime green skin. To store: Refrigerate peppers unwashed in a sealed plastic bag in the crisper drawer for 1-2 weeks. To prep: Cut in half and remove the seeds from the inside. Slice, chop or mince. Try making stuffed peppers! (These can also be frozen). To freeze: Wash and dry peppers. Freeze whole or cut into bite-size pieces and place in Ziplock freezer bag, removing as much air as possible.
SWISS CHARD (1 bunch) ~ Swiss chard has expansive, pocketed leaves with stems in a spectrum of colors: red, white, green, yellow. It is actually in the beet family but doesn’t develop a bulb. Its leaves are more tender and delicate than other greens. Eat small leaves raw in salads and blanch or steam larger leaves. You can freeze chard for recipes later. To store: Keep dry, unwashed greens in a sealed plastic bag in the refrigerator up to 2 weeks. To prep: Wash leaves in basin of lukewarm water to remove grit. Remove the thicker stems by folding the leaves down the center and cutting out the stem. Stack several leaves on top of each other and slice into 1-inch wide ribbons. To use: Add uncooked greens to a mixed green salad. Steam stem pieces 8-10 minutes, and leaves 4-6 minutes. Or sauté greens until tender in a large sauté pan with olive oil, a pinch of salt, and garlic or onion. Watch for color to brighten as this signals they are done. Serve cooked chard alone as a side dish or use them in soup or with pasta, beans, rice, or potatoes. Chard also goes great in stir-fries or in any recipe calling for spinach. To freeze: Blanch washed greens for 2-3 minutes. Rinse in cold ice water to stop the cooking. Drain and freeze.
Marissa Burkhardt dehydrated her summer squash and eggplant cubes. She can then add them to sauces later where they will rehydrate.
SWEET BANANA PEPPERS (3) ~ These are yellow skinned with an elongated shape. To store: Refrigerate peppers unwashed in a sealed plastic bag in the crisper drawer for 1-2 weeks. To prep: Cut in half and remove the seeds from the inside. Slice, chop or mince. To freeze: Wash and dry peppers. Freeze whole or cut into bite-size pieces and place in Ziplock freezer bag, removing as much air as possible.
EGGPLANT ~ 1 piece (Thursday sites only) ~ To store: Wrap unwashed eggplant in a towel (not plastic) to absorb any moisture, and keep it in the veggie drawer of your refrigerator. Or store unrefrigerated at a cool room temperature. Use within a week and it should still be fresh and mild. To prep: Eggplant is usually peeled. The flesh will brown when exposed to air. To prevent browning, coat in lemon juice or keep submerged in water. To use: Brush 1/2-inch to 1-inch slices of eggplant with olive oil or melted butter and broil or grill until brown. It also makes an excellent baba-ganoush dip. Casserole: chop eggplant into cubes. Layer in a pyrex dish with tomatoes, onions, mozzarella, and basil. Sprinkle with olive oil and salt and bake at 400 F for 25 minutes. To freeze: Peel and cut into slices 1/3-inch thick. Blanch for 2 minutes in steam. Cool immediately in cold water. Package in layers with each slice separated with two pieces of wrap.
GROUND CHERRIES (Tuesday sites only), 1 pint. Husk cherries, also commonly referred to as ground cherries or husk tomatoes, are small pale orange fruits wrapped in a crinkly, paper-like husk. They look a little bit like small tomatillos. Their flavor is a cross between a tomato and a pineapple. To store: Store in their husks in a paper bag in the refrigerator for seven days. To prep: Remove the husks and rinse the fruits before preparing. To use: Mixed with berries, they make a great addition to desserts. You can also make a preserve out of them. Add with jalapenos and cilantro for a great salsa variation. And you can always just throw them into a salad. To freeze: Remove husk. Throw the cherries into a Ziplock bag or Mason jar and freeze.
CUSTOMER PHOTO OF THE WEEK!
This week’s photo goes to Jean Modene for her Corn and Maple Bacon Fritters. This idea garnished a lot of comments and praise. CSA Coach Cadie included it in this week’s Recipe Block which you can print out below. She used it for the bread of a breakfast egg sandwich.
WEEK 9 ADD-ON SHARES: We are Week “A”
Odd-numbered weeks of our CSA season (week 1,3,5) are called “A” weeks. And even-numbered weeks (week 2,4,6) are called “B” weeks. If you have any kind of non-veggie, bi-weekly share, you have been assigned to either “A” or “B” week for the season. If you get a cheese share, it always comes on Week “A.”
Fruit Share (not organic):
ZESTAR APPLES ~ (via Eshleman Orchard) – Store your apples in your fridge. This is an eating apple — one of our favorites! Wash well before eating. Not organic.
YELLOW PEACHES ~ (via Quarry Hill Orchard) Store these on the counter until they are no longer hard. Then put in a bag in your fridge. Remove pit before eating, or eat out of hand.
CANARY MELON (Bench Farms) ~ This will have a yellow skin with manilla-colored flesh. It’s Josiah’s favorite melon. Store in your fridge. Wash the outer rind, and cut the fruit in half. Remove the seeds. Then cut into slices and eat out of hand. OR remove the rind and chunk up the fruit for your next fruit salad or dessert!
Artisan Cheese Share:
Sweet Fire Chevre: from MacKenzie Creamery. Black Raspberries meet habanero pepper! This original flavor brings the concept of pepper jam & cheese to our fresh chèvre. While habanero brings the heat, our creamy goat cheese calms it down – all in one bite. Simply open and unmold the cup upside down to let the blackberry habanero syrup coat the goat cheese.
Knueven Creamery: Swiss Cheese; Feta Cheese
Ice Cream Flavor of the Week:
from Knueven Creamery. Note: be sure to stop and pick up your ice cream from the Knueven milk truck at your pickup site! They will be located either right before or after your veggie pickup. Your farmers will not be passing this out in their delivery line.
Coffee Flavor of the Week:
Nicaragua Cafe Diego: Maddie & Bella Coffee Company Smooth, creamy, sweet caramel
FARMER KURT’S FIELD NOTES
This week has been swamped with harvesting. The watermelons are coming on full force. In fact, I don’t have a home for all of them yet — still working on that. But we have to take them off the vine when they’re ready, or the melons behind them will be stunted. The boys are often asked to drive the tractor with Grandpa and the guys. They like to turn it into a game by throwing the rotten melons at each other (or trying to hit the tractor so it splashes up on the driver). I remember doing this as a kid, and it makes me smile — even though it makes Grandpa mad if he gets splooshed.
The crew picks tomatoes twice a week on a schedule now. Cherry tomatoes are finally coming on strong. The heirlooms have been doing great, too. It’s the globes and romas that I’m still waiting on. My plants are loaded, but they just won’t turn green. So for all of you itching to do your canning tomatoes and sauces, just sit tight. We’ll have them eventually! My swiss chard is beautiful this year. You’ll be getting it again in your box. I’m not sure what I did differently — I’m thinking it was the perfect growing conditions (and less rain) while they were young that kept the disease down. They look like massive flower bouquets.
Cucumbers are done. I’ve got just a few of the pickles left, but this will probably be the last week for them. The plants have gotten powdery mildew pretty bad, and they’re just shutting down. Such a shame, especially given all the work that went into trellising them. Every year, it’s something. Speaking of trellising, John and Noah have a fun pole bean project going in the other tunnel. They’re climbing up the twine, looking really good. My boys planted some flint corn (for cornmeal) and popcorn in our personal garden. The stalks are around 16 feet tall at least. They almost touch the electric lines. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like Jack and the beanstalk!
John and Noah have been working on a pole bean project in the back tunnel.
I did LOTS of cultivating (aka weeding) this week. I knew with rain in the forecast that we’d have a lot of weeds popping up, so it’s important to get on the tractor and cultivate as much as I can before the rain event. Weeds have taken over the amaranth summer greens and cut lettuce beds. That will make harvest VERY time-consuming because we have to pull out all the weeds before we can bunch or bag them. In situations like that, it’s almost not worth harvesting. I cut my losses, disk the bed up and try again (or something else).
I’ve got a dilemma brewing with my garlic. The garlic has been cured and cleaned. The yield this year wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. I am torn over what to do. Normally I would be putting these into the CSA boxes, because I know you love them so much. However, I also always save a portion of the cloves to be my seed for next year’s harvest. (We plant them around Halloween). I do this to save money. Garlic seed is a whopping $26/pound!!! Go weigh a pound of garlic and see how many bulbs that is. It will cost me $5500 just to buy enough garlic seed to replenish (if I give it to the CSA), which would be around 40% of my ENTIRE seed budget. Corinna suggested I keep most of it and build up my seed inventory. That would mean the CSA wouldn’t benefit. What do you think I should do? It’s just crazy how much garlic seed is!! People often wonder why I charge $4/bulb, and it’s because I have to make my money back! LOL. The stuff you get at the grocery store (at 50 cents a piece) is coming from California or China, and they are using large scale mechanization at all levels to be able to get the price down.
Thinking about growing LOTS of strawberries next year. Chef Nixon from Element 112 (now Madeleine’s Bakery) met up with me to talk future plans. His bakery is going to be baking croissants for Delta, Disney, and more, so he’s looking for me to grow FRUIT now. I have half a mind to try a U-Pick strawberry patch on 1 acre next year, and give him whatever extra I have. We’ll see. I’m excited for Chris — he’s making a big change in his business, and following the market. Good for him.
I went to the Beach Boys Concert this Wednesday with my dad and sister. (Corinna didn’t want to go). Were you there, too? It was awesome. This weekend is my mom’s birthday, so we’ll be heading to her house tonight for pizza and cake. Corinna always makes an angel food cake for the event. But THIS year, Jed wanted to do it. He’s here in the kitchen right now beating the egg whites. My boys are turning into quite the chefs lately.
Jed made his first angel food cake from scratch for Grandma’s birthday.
Speaking of chefs, we’ve got a really cool idea germinating over here at SLF. Corinna and I want to partner with Cork and Knife Provisions and offer a “Chopped” competition at their venue sometime this season. We’re still working out the details, but the idea is that CSA members could apply to be the contestants. We choose a final 4-5 people who will then compete at Cork and Knife’s outdoor venue, in two rounds of competition. We’d sell tickets to the rest of you to come out and watch the competition live — enjoy appetizer food prepped by Chef Joseph, wine, etc. We’d have a judging round(s) and some other activities to keep everyone interested. A winner would be announced (with a cool prize). What do you think?!…
Glen is our jack-of-all-trades mechanic on the farm, and he does a lot of the field tractor work.
Glen, our resident mechanic on the payroll (and my cousin), has been busy this week. He disked my rye field next to the house. (He does a lot of my field tractor work). He also finished buildlng a new wagon for me, and fixed some cultivator parts. I used to have to find time to do all that equipment maintenance in the summer. His help is a godsend. I also had him pull out ALL the equipment from the tan barn and reorganize it so we could access the stuff we need faster.
The boys tore apart their swingset and filled in the sandbox hole this week. Our backyard is now empty. We were ready to see it go, but it still makes me realize how fast the time goes. Jed goes back to ANSAT aviation school starting next Tuesday. Corinna and I will begin sharing the commute twice a day to the airport — until Jed can get his license (next April). Jed gets out 45 minutes later than last year now — which is creating a bit of a time crunch for us on our Tuesday/Thursday pickup days — since the truck has to depart the farm by 4 PM.
Still don’t have electric for the pack shed. I’m going to have to run some extension cords for Pesto Fest this Sunday to accommodate all the food processors! Or maybe do some hot-wiring. Everyone’s just so dang busy.
I’m living the dream. Thank you for believing in me.
~Your Farmer, Kurt
Kurt and Corinna took the boys tubing last week (and to Zingermans) with our friends the Markleys.
WEEK 9 ANNOUNCEMENTS
- BULK CORN can be ordered in our online store. We’ll have this for the next 4 weeks. The best time to buy bulk corn is in August, when the ears are largest. A bushel bag goes for $35 and includes 64 ears. We only have a limited amount of space on our trucks, so if we sell out, just hang on tight and be ready to order next week. If you want to learn how to freeze sweet corn, watch our video tutorial here. I recommend the Corn Cutter from Pampered Chef (affiliate link) to make it a whole lot easier, as well as an angel food cake pan or bundt pan.
- You can order additional items from the Shared Legacy Farms online store. Our store link is super easy to remember: www.sharedlegacyfarms.com/store. 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 36 hours before your site. We harvest the product on Monday and Wednesday mornings — early. This week, the store will have: sweet corn (by the bushel, or half dozen, not organic); carrots (no tops); head lettuce, kohlrabi, red beets (bulk or by the quart), golden beets, bulls-eye beets, tomatillos, shishito peppers (10 count); Passion Amaranth (Greens); Cut lettuce, jalapanos (4-pack); fresh celery; swiss chard; yellow sweet onions, yellow Zephyr summer squash, patty pan summer squash (last week); blonde cucumbers (last week); starburst plums (not organic), aronia berries, nectarines (not organic); canary melon (not organic), red icebox watermelon (not organic); cantaloupe (not organic); yellow peaches (not organic); honey, garlic infused olive oil, extra flower bouquets.
- Can you volunteer to pack corn for us on a Monday or Wednesday evening for 2 hours this September? I’m currently looking for 3 more slots to fill. This involves bagging about 200 bags of corn (6 ears each) and placing them into a bin. It’s a good workout towards the end, and does involve reaching down into a bin repeatedly. Please let me know if you can help! This shaves about an hour of time off our packing crew’s job and gets them out on time!
- Want a one-time flower bouquet from Clay Hill Farm? Christy has some extra to sell us. So I’m loading in a few extra one-time bouquets into the online store this week. Grab a bonus bouquet for yourself or a friend! www.sharedlegacyfarms.com
WEEK 9 CSA RECIPES
Members: You can download these recipes as a PDF here. These recipes are designed to inspire you to use your box this week! Please check inside our private Facebook group to find your fellow members sharing ideas for what to make with their box! Share a photo and you might be featured in next week’s newsletter!
BLT Corn Fritter Stacks
Tuscan White Bean and Swiss Chard Soup
Sheet Pan Honey Garlic Chicken and Feta Potatoes
Garlic Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
Sausage Jambalaya with Celery and Bell Peppers
Pasta with 15-minute Burst Cherry Tomato Sauce
Creamy Potato Salad with Fresh Herbs
Potato Hash with Bell Peppers and Onions
Avocado Salad with Bell Peppers and Tomatoes
Heirloom Tomato Confit
Pepper and Corn Salad with Turmeric Dressing
Grilled Vegetable Stuffed Bell Peppers
Celery Spiked Guacamole with Chiles
Baked Orzo with Eggplant and Mozzarella
Apple Muffins
Iced Melon Soup with Jalapeno and Basil
Spicy Honey Glazed Pork Chops with Peach Pico De Gallo
Ground Cherry Salsa