Week 14 CSA Newsletter (Sept 20-26, 2020)
This is Steph McBride, one of our regular pack volunteers! This week you’re getting some ginormous cauliflower greens! Use them like you would kale.
CSA Newsletter Week 14
September 20-26, 2020 | “B” Week
BABY BOK CHOY (from Wayward Seed Farm) ~ store in the fridge in a plastic bag, and use within 5 days. Try roasting or grilling these.
SALSA PACK ~ This will include Roma tomatoes, a jalapeno, onions, and come garlic. All you need is some fresh cilantro to make a beautiful salsa!
LEEKS ~ Store these in your refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. Cut the green tops off the stalk and save them to use in DIY broth. Wash the leeks well to remove any dirt that can hide in the crevices. Use the white section for cooking.
MIX OF BELL PEPPERS (4) ~ Sweet peppers are just green peppers that have stayed on the plant longer and turned color! They’re sweeter in taste. You’ll get some kind of mix of green, red or orange bells peppers. Store them in your fridge in a plastic bag. If you’re swimming in peppers, then chop them up and freeze in a Ziplock bag!
Why do some jalapenos have cracks in them? It’s a sign that they are more mature (aka: they’ve been on the plant longer). You’ll usually find them to be hotter.
ORANGE MINI SNACKING PEPPERS ~ These peppers are super popular with our CSA members. Snack size. Sweet. Store in the fridge in a Green bag. Use within 2 weeks. You can also easily flash freeze peppers whole or chop them first.
POTATOES (2 lb.) from MILE CREEK FARM ~ Store your potatoes away from onions and out of the light. Use within 4 weeks.
CAULIFLOWER GREENS ~ These are always fun for us to pass out! Many people don’t know they can eat the leaves of the cauliflower plant. The leaves are HUGE — and taste similar to dinosaur kale. You can blanch them, saute them, add them to stews or stir fry meals. You can add them to spaghetti sauce, make chips, or use them in wraps.
DELICATA WINTER SQUASH (Turnow Ventures Farm) ~ These are cylindrical winter squash with green and yellow markings. They will store for up to 2 months at room temperature. I like to steam them. Cut them in half and lay them face-side down in a sheet pan filled with a bit of water. Bake/steam at 400 for about 40 minutes until the inside is soft. Scoop out seeds. Serve in the skin with butter or brown sugar. You can also microwave winter squash.
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.
Is anyone else loving all these cocktail pictures? Many thanks to Danielle Kuhl who keeps us all drinking!
FRUIT SHARE – PS: It’s “B” Week!
NOTE: The final Fruit share week will be Week 17 of our season. That’s because the fruit share only runs 16 weeks, and we started it on week 2 of our regular veggie season. Since week B folks got their fruit share first, that means that “A week” members will get their final share on week 17. B week members get their final fruit share on week 16.
APPLES – store these in a bag in the fridge. We’ll post the variety when we know more
PEARS — from Quarry Hill Orchard – if they are still hard, you’ll need to leave them on the countertop for a few days to soften up. THEN put them in the fridge to slow the ripening.
MADDIE & BELLA COFFEE SHARE:
Sumatra Orang Utan — caramel / apple / dark chocolate <== Sounds super yum!
An annual tradition: Mike Metzer visits my house at 7 AM to share in our annual piece of spaghetti squash pie.
Howdy everyone! This week the pace has settled down to a steady hum. The frantic days of tomato and pepper picking are behind us. Although we still have peppers and tomatoes in abundance, they have peaked and we are now maintaining the harvest. I continue to move product at unprecedented rates to our growing wholesales accounts.
I planted chicory and dandelion greens with my boys and neighbors Molly/Mason. Hopefully those will be ready for the fall CSA boxes to give us some new variety. The crew pulled out the plastic mulch from our onions and cucumber fields. I also asked them to pull out the drip irrigation line. Our irrigating days are mostly behind us now, with the dropping of temperatures.
My boys help me plant dandelion greens and chicory.
Funny story: Last week I lost my pallet jack.
For a farm our size, losing a pallet jack is not a good thing. You’d be surprised how often we use a pallet jack — it makes relatively light work of moving pallets of sweet corn, melons, fruit share crates, and heavy onions and winter squash. I actually have TWO pallet jacks on the farm — that’s how important they are. But the other one is slightly broken — you have to constantly pump the jack up and down as you move it, or it slides to a halt. Anyone who has volunteered here knows exactly what I’m talking about. These jacks are pricey, so we’ve made do with what we have for the last few years.
But back to the story: How can you lose a pallet jack, you ask? Well, I was doing a wholesale drop-off run in Cleveland. This is one of those places where you pull in, and let the other guys do all the work offloading your produce bins. In fact, I’m not even allowed back there! So I left my pallet jack inside my box truck for them to use. In the crazy bustling and shuffling, and my rushing to get out of there and on my way to the next stop — I didn’t realize I’d left it behind on their loading dock until I got to Quarry Hill (where I then had to unload a bin of veggies without my pallet jack). I am crossing my fingers that the place in Cleveland held on to my pallet jack, since I haven’t yet had time to drive back to claim it.
In the meantime, wouldn’t you know it…? I happened to see an extra one sitting around at ANOTHER wholesale outlet. I casually asked if I could have it for $100 (a wickedly good price), and somehow scored a third pallet jack. We have been on the hunt for an affordable pallet jack to replace the bad one for a LOONG time. I find it kinda funny that I find one at the exact moment I lose the other one. The sad part to this story is that I likely have to keep the dysfunctional jack after all — as I’m not so sure I’ll find my other one when I go back to Cleveland.
CSA member Susan Jambor shared this gorgeous photo of her canning exploits this week!
Our CSA members have been canning like crazy! It’s fun watching all of you post pictures of what you’re making with my tomatoes. It’s a lot of work making sauce, isn’t it? I know Corinna is often up late this time of year on weekends, trying to squeeze in time to preserve corn, tomatoes, salsa, pizza sauce, pickles, grape juice, and tomato juice. That’s a lot to do!
Jed spend about an hour every day on his favorite subject: Maker Space. He builds all kinds of electronics.
Homeschooling update: the boys built models of atoms last week using jelly beans (Josiah liked this activity), and they learned all about the Boston Tea Party and Stamp Act. If you ask them whether they like homeschooling so far, the answer is yes, although they are missing the social interaction. For engineering class, they also helped put together the headboard for my bed (a birthday present from Corinna) — which was quite a project since it had a few imperfections in the wood. They also constructed a giant roller coaster made out of K’nex, which was gifted to them by one of our CSA members — Elizabeth Tore. (Thank you, E! They were done in 3 hours!)
My buddy Mike stopped by this week to have some spaghetti squash pie. Mike used to be my assistant grower in the early days of our farm, and so we go way back. One of our CSA customers, Tanya Thorbahn, started making us a pie every year with her squash, because she didn’t like it herself. The tradition has continued, and so this Wednesday, Mike arrived at 7 AM to claim his piece of Tanya’s coveted pie.
We celebrated my birthday this weekend with a homemade dinner of fried bologna, potatoes, and cabbage. My wife bought me a new headboard for our bed. We’ve been married for 13 years, and are just now getting a headboard! I slept so good that night. No more pillows falling into the crack! We’ll be going out to eat at Souk’s in Toledo to celebrate later this week. And my boys made me peanut butter cookies (one of my favorites). My mom always bakes me a Black Walnut cake for my birthday. Lucky for me, no one else likes it in my family, so I usually get the whole thing!
~Your Farmer, Kurt
It’s time for another contest!! Do you use your cast iron pan? Show me how!
WEEK 14 ANNOUNCEMENTS
- NEW! CAST IRON COOKING CONTEST – Beginning this Monday, September 21, 2020, through October 3, we’ll be running a 14 Day Cast Iron Cooking contest. We want to see how you use your cast iron skillet in every day life! Share your tips and delicious meals! At the end of the contest, I’ll be picking out my favorite entries and awarding them with a fun prize! The Grand Prize will receive $100 off next year’s CSA membership! Winner will be announced on October 4th. To enter you must:
- Share 3 different pictures over the course of 14 days of you using your cast iron skillet.
- Explain in the post what vegetables you used from your CSA share
- Hashtag it #castiron2020 and post it in our private FACEBOOK GROUP. If you aren’t on Facebook, you can email me your 3 photo entries to sharedlegacyfarms@gmail.com.
- When can I sign up for next season? If you’ve seen posts on Facebook or Instagram about “getting on a wait list for next year,” then you know that we are starting to gear up the “outside world” for early CSA signups. With COVID-19 we’ve had a surge of interest in next year’s membership. But don’t worry though! We hold your spot for you until October 25th. We give YOU guys FIRST DIBS on all the spots for next year. We will run a special “early bird” renewal registration the last 2 weeks of our CSA season. During those 2 weeks, you have the chance to renew your spot/share at a special rate and offer. You can also sign up for NEW share types. Then… on November 1st, after early bird period ends, we then open up our spots to the public (and our pre-paid wait list). In the meantime, do NOT sign up for the wait list if you see it advertised on Facebook. Just sit tight a few more weeks. I’ll make sure you know all about how to renew for next year. It’s our ONE time each year that we do a big marketing/sales push.
- 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 2 days before your site. I reload the store and set new pickup dates on Sunday afternoon.
This is how okra grows on a plant. We only have a row of this vegetable on the farm — we grow it mainly for our parents who sell it at their roadside stand.
WEEK 14 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:
Potato Leek Soup with Toasted Nuts and Seeds
Cast Iron Roast Chicken with Caramelized Leeks
Cauliflower Noodle Stir Fry
Cauliflower Leaf Pesto
Slow Cooked Stuffed Pepper Stew
Lemon Garlic Sauteed Bok Choy
Stir-Fried Sesame Baby Bok Choy
Crispy Breakfast Hash
Simple Stuffed Delicata Squash
Easy Roasted Delicata
Roasted Delicata Squash and Tomatoes
Crispy Corn Fritters
Hearty Corn Chowder
Apple Spice Waffles
Fresh Pear Bread
Caramelized Pear Steel Cut Oats