CSA Newsletter Week 9 (August 14-20, 2022)
Farm Newsletter Week 9
August 14-20, 2022 | “A” Week
What’s in the Box this Week?
DINOSAUR KALE ~ To store: Place kale unwashed, wrapped in a sealed plastic bag in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator. Best used very fresh, but may last for a week. To prep: Wash leaves in basin of lukewarm water to remove grit. If your greens have thick stems, you must remove them. Fold each leaf in half and slice out the stem. Then stack the leaves up and slice them diagonally into 1-inch-wide strips. To use: Saute in olive oil. Use in soups, spaghetti sauce, pesto, quiche, or kale chips. You can also eat the stems. To freeze: Blanch washed greens for 2-3 minutes. Rinse in cold ice water to stop the cooking process, drain, and pack into airtight containers. Stems can also be frozen.
GLOBE & HEIRLOOM TOMATOES (7) ~ You will receive two heirloom and 5 globe tomatoes. Heirloom tomatoes will have cracks and weird shapes to them. They should be eaten on the first or second day, as they have a very low shelf life — but incredible flavor!! To store: Do not refrigerate tomatoes. Store them at room temperature out of the sun stem side down. Putting them in a paper bag will accelerate the ripening process. Heirloom tomatoes will have strange shapes and cracks. These are highly perishable and should be eaten within 1-2 days.
CHERRY TOMATOES (1 pint) ~ Store these at room temperature on your counter. Wash before eating. Eat them out of hand or try roasting them.
HEAD LETTUCE ~ Store this unwashed in a Debbie Meyer Green bag in your fridge (or in a plastic baggie) and eat within 5 days. Before eating, wash well and dry in a salad spinner or old towel.
FRESH CELERY ~ 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.
The Week 8 box last week was gorgeous! This picture was taken by Kate Lynn
JALAPENO PEPPERS (2) ~ These are hot! You may want to use gloves when handling them. To remove some of the heat of the pepper, cut out the ribs and seeds from inside before using. To store: Refrigerate peppers unwashed in a sealed plastic bag in the crisper drawer for 1-2 weeks. You can also dehydrate peppers for long-term. To freeze: Wash and dry. Keep whole, or cut into bite-size pieces and place in Ziplock freezer bag.
GREEN BELL PEPPERS (4) ~ 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.
EGGPLANT (1) ~ 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. 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.
Grab my Eggplant E-Book here for other suggestions for recipes using eggplant.
Stuffed banana peppers shared by Marissa Burkhardt
CARROTS (1 bunch, from Wayward Seed Farm) ~ Remove the tops from the carrots and store in a bag separately to keep the roots from getting soft. Try using the tops for making carrot top pesto or dehydrating them as an herb. Store the roots in a bag in the fridge. Wash well before using. Peeling is not necessary with organic carrots. Chop off the tops and the tip before using.
ONIONS (3) ~ Store these cured onions in a cool, dark place — not the fridge. And keep them away from potatoes. You can freeze onions simply by chopping to size and then throwing them into a Ziploc bag!
SWEET CORN (6) (not organic, non-GMO) ~ 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.
WEEK #9 ADD-ON SHARES: 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.”
WEEK 9 FRUIT SHARE:
APPLES (Quarry Hill Orchard) ~ Store in a plastic bag in the fridge. Since these are early season apples, they are best eaten within 4 weeks.
TABLE GRAPES (Quarry Hill Orchard) ~ Store in the refrigerator wrapped in paper towels in a vented plastic bag for up to 2 weeks. To prep: Wash. Pick off the stem. Remove seeds. To freeze: Wash seedless grapes, then place in sealable plastic bags and store in the freezer. Eat them straightaway, still frozen, as a healthy snack.
ICEBOX MELON: (Bench Farms, St. Rte 2) To store: Refrigerate right away. They do not ripen off the vine or emanate a ripe smell. Cut melon should be covered in plastic wrap, and chunks or slices should be kept in an air-tight container. Eat melons within a week. To prep: Using a big knife, cut melon t in half, then cut into quarters or slices. To use: Use in salads, or eat it raw in slices. Blend watermelon, water, and sugar or honey for a refreshing aqua fresca.
CANARY MELON (Bench Farms, St. Rte. 2) ~ Once the melon ripens, then store it in the refrigerator. Cut melon should be covered in plastic wrap. To prep: A big knife and cutting board are helpful. Cut in half, scoop out the seeds, then cut into quarters or slices. Remove the rind.
Ice Cream Flavor of the Week:
Meyer Lemon 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.
CHEESE SHARE:
Honey Chevre, Mackenzie Creamery
Colby, and Fresh Gouda from Knueven Creamery
Coffee Flavor of the Week:
Monsooned Malabar: Maddie & Bella Coffee Company ~ aromatic, exotic, spicy sweet
FARMER KURT’S FIELD NOTES
How’s everyone doing!?? Wow! We have hit the half-way mark for the CSA. Where is the time going, right? Jed starts high school a week from Monday. Our lives are about to become very full.
Boy, last Monday was a hot one. I can’t remember the last time it felt like that. I think I changed my clothes 3 times that day. Major kudos to my packing crew and harvesters who rushed to get it all done in time for the CSA pack night. We are looking for a few more volunteers to come out and pack sweet corn for us on Monday evenings around 5-6:30 PM. It’s about a 90 minute job, and if I can find a family of 2-3 who can make that “their thing” for the night, it helps the rest of my crew get out on time by 8 PM. Email Corinna if you can help this Monday. I think she has 3 other spots open for the rest of the summer.
Most of the week was spent harvesting — our new rhythm of sweet corn, melons, tomatoes, peppers. Rinse and repeat. With mid-August coming on, we are now switching to tomato, eggplant, corn and pepper-pa-looza! Are you ready? I told Corinna we’ll need to start filling bulk tomato orders slowly but surely, just so I don’t get slammed all at once like last year! So if you’re wanting tomatoes from us, look for that post in this newsletter.
Garlic and onions are now curing inside the “cool room” or “bonus room” as I like to call it. In a few weeks I’ll begin the process of cleaning the garlic. For now, the focus is on keeping up with tomatoes. My parents run a road-side stand, and we grow the vegetables they sell there. So trying to keep that pipeline full is also a big task. Seems like the harvest never stops.
In other news, I have a serious cooler storage problem. With so many peppers, sweet corn, melons, and tomatoes coming on, I’m running out of room to put everything. Many of those items live in giant boxes that can only be moved via pallet jack, too. I end up wasting a lot of time simply moving things out of the way, in and out of the cooler, so I can get to things that are sitting in the back end. Corinna and I will need to address this for next year for sure.
The Prucnal family volunteered last weekend at the farm bagging 210 bags of CSA corn. You can sign up for a 90 minute work session to help us bag corn too! Just reach out to Corinna.
We got some rain this week — about two inches fell in a quick storm that blew over us. My crew cleaned out some weedy purslane garden beds that had overrun my cilantro planting. Cucumbers and summer squash are on the decline. Powdery mildew is starting to hit my tomatoes and basil. It’s one of the reasons I’m scheduling a Pesto Fest next weekend, while the basil still looks good.
I’ve been watching all your Shishito Pepper videos! I laughed out loud when I saw Dianna Randolph get a hot one! We keep looking for a moment to do it as a family. But first Josiah got sick. Then Corinna got sick this weekend. Still waiting.
On a personal note, we went to the Combine Demolition Derby at the Wood County Fair last weekend with the boys and Grandpa. And we completed the signing of our “Bench Family Trust” — a big project we’ve been wanting to finish for a while now. (A big shout out to Rich from the Chamberlain Law Group, one of our CSA members, for arranging all that. He did a top-notch job). We had sickness pass through the farm this week — first Josiah, then Corinna caught it on Friday. Both had a fever and tummy cramping. I forget how much things fall apart when my partner goes down!
I continue to be grateful to all of you for supporting us. Fifteen years already in business! We have truly built a special community of farm-lovers. Thank you for not only having MY back, but also for caring about each other. That is what makes this farm so special. You’re helping me change lives. I thank you for that.
~Your Farmer, Kurt
Karen Ayers Famous CSA Freezer Marinara
Adapted from our CSA Facebook Group
Our lovely CSA member Karen Ayers posted this a few years ago and since so many of you have posted that you’re LOVING it. What a great way to enjoy all these veggies in the winter months, and its pretty EASY!
Ingredients:
This is what Karen used, although she does mention you can “adapt” as needed. You could include squashes, more or less of things, etc.
- 6# mixed tomatoes
- 4 onions
- 3 carrots
- 2 peppers
- 2 whole heads of garlic (roasted in foil)
- Lots of basil (Karen used ~60 leaves)
Directions:
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Roast all veggies with olive oil, salt and pepper at 400 for 60-70 minutes. If you’re including summer squash you would want to add it towards the end.
Cool slightly and then puree in food processor in batches, adding lots of basil leaves and squeezing the roasted garlic into each batch.
Salt to taste. Karen mixed all the batches together and then salted.
Freeze in Ziplocks or mason jars or even ice cube trays. If you don’t have a lot you can use this as a booster to other sauces.
Order Your Field to Table Dinner Tickets
Date is Sept. 10th at the farm
You can now place your reservations for our final Field to Table dinner, to be held on Sept. 10. You may arrive at 5 PM to stroll our fields and take one of our 3 scheduled tractor hay ride tours. Dinner begins at 6 PM. Dress comfortably — it may get a bit chilly when the sun sets. This event will be catered by Cork and Knife Provisions (Chef Joseph Jacobsen –formerly of Degage Jazz Cafe), and will be held outside in the middle of our field. It will be a sit-down meal, served by a wait staff.
The menu include 5 courses, which you can see below. Fizzitap Vintage Beverage Truck will also be in attendance, ready to serve you 2 fun mocktails from 5-8 PM at no extra charge. No alcohol will be served. However, you are encouraged to bring your own beer or wine. Tickets are $75/person. To place your reservation, head to this link to pre-pay. You may at that time also request a vegetarian option if needed. Tickets are first-come, first-serve. You are welcome to invite friends who are not in the CSA.
View the menu at this link.
To place your reservation, head to this link to pre-pay.
Pre-Order Your Bulk Tomato Canners
If you want to order 25 lb. bulk tomatoes for canning this year, it’s now time to do so. I explain how to do it below.
Because there will be so many of you wanting to order these (and because we have limited space on the truck), we will be doling out the bulk tomatoes in waves over the next few weeks as they become available.
To place your pre-order, please drop a comment into the pinned post in our Facebook group, or email me. Tell me how many 25 lb. orders you want and what type (Roma or Globe), and what your pickup site is. I will do my best to fill those orders as soon as possible. You may have to wait 2 weeks before you get it. I’ll send out an email a few days before your pickup to let you know they are coming. .
Payment is expected at the time of pickup.
You can choose from these two tomato canner products:
ROMA TOMATOES — you’ll get 25 lbs of these classic, oval-shaped, paste tomatoes. These are best used for sauce and salsa, since they have a lower water content. Price: $30
GLOBE TOMATOES – you’ll get 25 lbs. of the classic round tomato. These are best used for canning whole tomatoes. This will be enough to can 7-8 quarts (or 16 pints) in your canner. Price: $30
If you’d like a special order of Golden Romas for $35, please contact us directly via email.
PESTO MAKING PARTY
Make a ton of pesto on our farm to take home and freeze
RSVP HERE.
Date: August 20, 2-4:30 PM. FREE EVENT for CSA members and Sampler members.
Here’s how it works: You bring a food processor, olive oil, nuts, cutting board, lemon juice, salt, Ziplock baggies, and chef’s knife. We provide the basil, “B-grade” garlic, tables, power strips and electric. You come out to the farm at 2:30 PM. We take you out to the basil patch to harvest your own basil. Take as much as you need, and come back to the packing shed area, where we set up tables (and electric outlets) for you to make your pesto. It’s a loud, garlicky fragrant time! When you’re done, you pack up and head home! Typically this takes a person about an hour and 30 minutes to complete.
This year, we will not be offering the pasta dinner afterwards to sample everyone’s pesto. But feel free to bring some crackers and wine to share or enjoy yourself as you batch your pesto.
SYLVANIA PICKUP SITE CHANGES THIS WEEK ONLY
Meet us at Five Lakes Church Parking lot, 4765 N. McCord Road, Sylvania
Sylvania customers should pick up their box at Five lakes Church instead this Tuesday. Here’s the map. Address: 4765 N. McCord Road, Sylvania
Meet the Garlic “Grader”
The garlic we harvested weeks ago has been sitting inside our “cool room” curing. Pretty soon, it will be time to start “cleaning” this high-value crop before we pass it out in your boxes. This involves checking each individual bulb to see if it “passes grade.” We check to see if it’s soft (we toss those), yellowing, or has missing cloves or dark spots and discoloration. These are set aside into a “B” grade pile — meaning we don’t sell those at a premium.
However, we don’t throw them away! Just because the tip of a clove may have some damage, doesn’t mean the whole bulb does! It can be cut off and the rest eaten. We’ll offer these for our Pesto Making Party at the farm this weekend, and eventually offer it for sale in our online store.
Once the “good” garlic has been sorted from the bad, we sort it AGAIN. This time by size. There is a wide range of size for garlic bulbs. Some will be HUGE with large individual cloves. Others will develop much smaller. We use a tool Kurt made called a Garlic Grader to help us grade the garlic by size. Here’s a video that shows you how it works:
The largest bulbs are set aside and re-used for seed. In a few weeks, we will begin to “crack” these garlic bulbs — meaning we remove the individual cloves from the bulb. Each clove will be planted around Halloween for next year’s crop. We use the biggest and best cloves we have in order to pass on this healthy gene stock to the future. In this way, we “naturally select” for the strongest plants. The rest we give to our CSA shares or sell.
WEEK 9 ANNOUNCEMENTS
- SYLVANIA CUSTOMERS PICKUP SITE CHANGE: PICK UP YOUR BOX THIS WEEK AT FIVE LAKES CHURCH INSTEAD OF THE TEMPLE! Due to a scheduling conflict, the parking lot will be in use at the temple this Tuesday. So we had to find a different site for this week. We will meet you at Five Lakes Church parking lot on Address: 4765 N. McCord Road, Sylvania.
- Sweet corn is now available to buy in bulk in our online store! A bushel bag goes for $35 and includes 64 ears. We encourage you to buy your bulk corn in August, because the ears are bigger then. 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.
- 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, bulk sweet corn, jalapenos, Shishito peppers, red or yellow seedless watermelons, nectarines, cutting celery herb, parsley, celery, sweet banana peppers, blonde pickling cucumbers by the quart, cherry tomatoes by the pint, basil, local maple syrup, and a few extra eggs from Jed/Josiah.
These carrot-zucchini muffins were made by Teri Thomas!
WEEK 9 CSA RECIPES
Members: You can download these recipes as a PDF. 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!
Eggplant Polpettes
Sausage Jambalaya with Celery and Bell Peppers
Roasted Eggplant and Crispy Kale with Yogurt (and tomatoes)
Avocado Salad with Bell Peppers and Tomatoes
Heirloom Tomato Confit
Tomatoes with Crisp Fried Eggplant
Yellow Pepper and Corn Salad with Turmeric Dressing
Grilled Vegetable Stuffed Bell Peppers
Ratatouille Baked Chicken
Celery Soup
Celery Spiked Guacamole with Chiles
Karen Ayers Famous Freezer Marinara Sauce
Apple Muffins
Minty Watermelon Cucumber Salad
Watermelon Caprese