Phew, I’m glad 2021 is finally over however I’m not sure if it was an improvement over 2020. Let’s hope 2022 has fewer pandemics and insurrections.
Here are a bunch of things that may or may not interest you. Hopefully if you read it all there will be something worthwhile. I’ll bold some words so you can decide whether to read each paragraph.
I sent out one email to everyone who has (re)joined for 2022 and a separate email to those who have not yet rejoined. If you did not receive one of these emails or received the wrong one let me know and I can resend it. Thanks you to everyone who rejoined and I hope the rest of you can join us as well!
We haven’t yet received all our seed catalogs for 2022 so we don’t know what our costs will be. One catalog we did receive — from which we order quite a few seeds — had an across the board 9% increase. That seemed excessive to me especially since they always raise their prices every year. In fact all seed companies do. But typically it isn’t an almost 10% increase. Usually we see a few percent increase. We’ve managed to hold our prices down for the last many years with increased efficiency. I’m not sure we can find another 9% in efficiency but as of now we are holding to last season’s price. So far our resale products have kept their 2021 prices for 2022 as well. We don’t know yet about fruit, which tends to have the most price volatility due to many factors. But it was nice to see our partners holding back on price increases.
Speaking of partners and pricing: you can now order everything we sell except for FruitShare. All items are in our online store and ready for purchase. Feel free to do so at your earliest convenience. Also let me know if you have any issues with ordering. The service that runs the software behind the online store has had a few outages the last month so if it appears down send me an email and I will see if it is their problem or my problem. I guess in either case it is my problem but for one of the two I may be able to resolve it.
I think the web site modifications are mostly complete — unless we find something wrong or need to tweak it a bit. I’ve added a nice recipe plug-in that will allow me to easily add recipes to the weekly newsletters (I’ve added one below to give you an idea of what they look like). I have a bunch of recipes in the current system that are just text based that I need to move over to the new system. If anyone is overwhelmed with free time and is looking for something to do let me know and I can figure out how to assign you a few recipes to transcribe. If you have any recipes you like and want to share them please send them my way. Fast, simple and delicious are my favorite recipes!
Speaking of problems, as you may recall from the last newsletter I’ve been struggling a bit to get past a few unresolved issues with the new website and the internet in general. Feel free to refresh your memory by reading the “Technical Section” at the end of the last newsletter. Here is the current status:
1 – Importing media files from the old website to the new website. No progress. It still fails with a supposed expired SSL certificate. Rumors on the internet seem to indicate this will be resolved if/when WordPress has a new release.
2 – I could not get the old website accessible again but I was able to save the recipes. I had exported the entire old system prior to any monkeying around so I was able to import the whole system into a dummy website then export out just the recipes. I didn’t want to load the whole old system into the new website since there would be a lot of unnecessary stuff. This approach solved the problem. However any media associated with the recipes was lost due to #1 above.
3 – My problem accessing Facebooks CDN (that’s the place they store all the pictures and videos) is still ongoing however with a bit of progress. I tried using Centurylink’s chat feature instead of their highly unreliable phone network to try to get a resolution. (As you recall two of my phone calls to support were mysteriously dropped). During the automated part of the chat where they test my connection the chatbot said, “Uh-oh. I’ve detected a problem that requires a technician. Shall we setup a time for one to come out?” So I now have a technician coming out a week from today. They must be very bury. I’m curious what could be wrong that requires a technician. I figured since the connection to the internet works that the problem is software or specifically some DNS issue. But I’m just a farmer so I’ll let them figure it out.
Here is a recipe in the new recipe format. Let me know what you think!
Kung Pao Chicken
Ingredients
Main Ingredients
- 2 lbs boneless chicken breasts cut into bite size pieces
- 2 zucchini cut into bite size pieces
- 1 bell pepper cut into bite size pieces
- 3 green onions sliced thinly with green and white parts separated
- ½ c unsalted peanuts or cashews
- 5 Tbs sunflower or other cooking oil
- 1-many Thai peppers depending on heat level desired
For Marinade
- ¼ c low sodium soy sauce or tamari
- 2 Tbs rice vinegar
- 1 Tbs sesame oil
- 1 Tbs corn starch
For Kung Pao sauce
- ¼ c low sodium soy sauce or tamari
- 2 Tbs sugar or honey
- 4-6 cloves garlic crushed
- 1 Tbs corn starch
- 1 tsp powdered ginger
Instructions
- Whisk together all marinade ingredients.
- Cut-up chicken and add it to marinade. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- While chicken marinates, cut up remaining ingredients.
- Whisk together Kung Pao sauce ingredients and set aside.
- Once chicken has marinated, heat oil in wok until hot.
- Add chicken and stir fry until just cooked.
- Remove chicken from wok and set aside.
- Add more oil to wok and heat.
- Add zucchini and Thai peppers to wok. Cook for 2-3 minutes.
- Add bell pepper to wok and cook for another 2-3 minutes.
- Add white part of onion to wok and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add a small amount of water if vegetables start to stick or burn. Don't overcook vegetables. They should remain firm.
- Add nuts and heat through.
- Add chicken and Kung Pao sauce. Heat through until sauce thickens.
- For thicker sauce, whisk together 1 Tbs corn starch and 2 Tbs water or soy sauce and stir into wok ingredients.
- Remove from heat and toss with the green parts of onions.
- Serve with cooked rice.
Notes
I timed it and you should have been able to read this whole newsletter in less than one minute if you only read the bold words.
Finally, Susan bought me a book of Dad Jokes for Christmas so feel free to express your (dis)pleasure to her for what I may use in this and future newsletters.
What do you call a cow with with two legs? Lean beef.
What do you call a cow with no legs? Ground beef.
As always do not hesitate to contact me with questions, comments, suggestions, jokes, stock tips for 2022 or any other items you feel would be of interest. And thank you for your support in 2021!