A couple announcements, some farm news and what’s coming this week — all packed into one easy-to-read newsletter!
If you didn’t already know, we resell wild, Alaskan seafood caught by small boat fisherman and fisherwomen. This seafood comes from sustainable fisheries in southeast Alaska; it is an environmentally friendly way to enjoy delicious seafood. During the veggie season we offer SalmonShare and SeafoodShare which many of our members enjoy. In addition, during November and December we offer spot prawns and dungeness crab a la carte, two wonderfully tasty seafood items! The order window for each of these is closing fast so get your orders in quickly.
The spot prawns are the tastiest prawns I have ever eaten. Delicate yet flavorful. The perfect prawn for a post-Thanksgiving Day meal. And since they come in November it works out perfectly! They come in two-pound packages and can be ordered here or by sending me an email.
For many years when we lived in California we enjoyed dungeness crab for Christmas Eve dinner. It was a wonderful treat! But when we moved to Minnesota we couldn’t find good dungeness crab — until this year! We are carrying dungess crab for delivery in December. It is wonderfully sweet with a buttery flavor; I think it is better than lobster! The crab comes in five pound packages and can be ordered here or by sending me an email. As mentioned earlier, the window for ordering each of these is closing quickly (September 30th for the prawns, October 15th for the crab) so don’t delay!
Just another reminder about this year’s Garlic Planting Extravaganza! It will be held on Saturday October 8th from 2:00 until 5:00 with bonfire and potluck to follow. This is a wonderful way to meet your fellow CSA members and participate in all three components of CSA — Community, Support and Agriculture! Please let me know if you plan to lend a hand. All ages welcome.
Farm News
Sometimes I feel that in the newsletters I am always apologizing for things that go wrong here on the farm. But that is the nature of farming and I always believe that in CSA full disclosure is important. It is a partnership between the farm and its members. I want members to understand why something isn’t supermarket perfect. I believe there is value in knowing that looks aren’t everything — including vegetables. This is why I spend so much time educating people though this newsletter. So, with that said, here is this week’s apology.
I hate to say it but it has to be said, it has been a horrible broccoli year. Both our spring broccoli and now our fall broccoli leave much to be desired. Over the years we have tried dozens of different varieties. When we find one that works well we think we hit on a solution, but then the next season it doesn’t do so well. This has happened enough times to make me realize it isn’t the variety, it is a combination of the variety and the weather. If we pick the right variety for the weather, we do well. If not, we get less than ideal broccoli. The problem this year was the heat in the early part of the season and the wet weather the rest of the season.
When I started farming and looked at seed catalogs many years ago I recall broccoli descriptions stating “well domed”. I didn’t understand at the time why one would want well domed broccoli. Well this season the reason became quite evident (though by now I already knew). When broccoli gets and stays wet it starts to deteriorate. With a well domed head the water runs off. With a flatter head it puddles and creates a great environment for broccoli pathogens. This year the rain has been so frequent that the heads don’t dry and any area that isn’t well domed goes bad. Plus with the frequent rain our organic pesticide just washes off so we have an infestation of cabbage worms. Anyway, to make a long story short, growing broccoli this season has been a struggle.
Another area of difficulty this year is the carrots. Though we have good success growing them, trying to get them clean is another matter. Our soil is great at retaining moisture — and sticking to produce. After spending four person hours scrubbing the carrots with a brush for Wednesday’s pick-up and another four hours cleaning Friday’s carrots we decided this is too much time to spend on cleaning one crop. So I did the best I could to clean them with the hose-end sprayer. Sorry if they are a bit dirty when you get them. A good scrub brush will do wonders. I am looking for a solution for next season. There are machines and devices to make the job faster, they just cost money and I wonder how well they would work with our soil. But until then invest in a scrub brush.
Enough apologies for this newsletter. What veggies will we have this week? Well, I’m glad you asked. If all goes as planned we will start harvesting the winter squash this week. We usually wait until there is a frost but with the wet weather I feel it is better to get them into dry storage than risk losing them to diseases. You never know how good the crop is until you go out and pick them. Hopefully we have a good crop. Other than winter squash we will have our usual onions, garlic, peppers, and potatoes. New this week will be leeks — gigantic leeks (might not fit into the delivery boxes). We will also have some beans, some broccoli, some cherry tomatoes (though these are just about done for the season), some carrots, the last of the watermelons, the last of the cucumbers, the eggplants that just won’t quit, same with the okra, a few tomatillos though these seem to be slowing down, and maybe some other things I am forgetting. Still to come someday are rutabagas, lots of popcorn, watermelon radishes, daikon radishes, pie pumpkins, small Brussels sprouts (they didn’t do so well either [hey, no more apologizing; save something for next week!]), maybe kale, maybe Swiss chard, kohlrabi and salad mix.
Seafood and Salmon come this week.
Bread is this week (as it is every week).
Flowers are still going on though mostly zinnias.
No fruit, cheese, ice cream, coffee, meat or eggs.
For those who made it to the end of the newsletter here are some of those dirty carrots I was apologizing for earlier in the newsletter.