First of all I want to thank everyone for their support of the farm this past season. Without your support our business would not succeed. Our farm survives on the personal connections we strive to have with each of our members. It is more difficult to have this connection with our delivery customers but we do our best to be available and accessible to everyone. I hope you enjoyed the season as much as I’ve enjoyed getting to know you. I look forward to another successful season with all of you next year! And if you this isn’t clear, last week was the final week of this season.
Second, we are doing Winter FruitShare again this year! What is winter FruitShare? It is like summer FruitShare except it is in the winter with fruit that is available in the winter! It is approximately every other week (with exceptions around the holidays). We have three locations for picking up the fruit: here at the farm, a drop site near 94 and Dale St. and St. Paul’s Monastery near Larpenteur and Century Ave. Pick-up days will be on Wednesdays again this season. You can order online or by emailing me then follow up with payment. You are also welcome to use a payment plan; no need to pay it all upfront. Winter FruitShare starts November 15th so get your order in ASAP. Let me know if you have any questions.
Third, we are taking orders for 2018! We have had a great response so far but would love to get everyone signed up before the holidays hit and it gets forgotten. The store has been updated for those who like to purchase online. You can also just send in a check for $100 to reserve your spot. A third option is if you have a PayPal account you can send a $100 deposit using their “Friends & Family” service; use my email address as the recipient. It is free if your PayPal account has money or is linked to your bank account. There is a fee if you use a credit or debit card. Let me know if you have any questions!
Farm News
Here are a couple of things I should have mentioned in the last newsletter:
You should let the sweet potatoes sit for a few weeks before eating them. Sweet potatoes when first harvested are not as sweet as you’d think. It takes a bit of time for them to develop the sweetness. I suggest you save them until Thanksgiving. This gives them time to sweeten up a bit more.
The popcorn we sent out last week may not be fully dry yet. Then again it may be. The only way to tell is to test a few of the kernels. If they pop the way you like then the rest should pop. If not, wait a few more weeks. Pro Tip: if the kernels are hard to get off the cob it is probably not dry enough. I will test some in a few weeks and publish my results.
We did our best to get the carrots clean in the time available. We felt it was more important to get you an abundance of somewhat dirty carrots than to get fewer cleaner carrots. Hopefully this is your preference as well. Speaking of carrots, this variety stores pretty well. Keep it in the coldest part of your fridge. And if you want to ensure they keep well put them in damp sand (sure Chris, I’m going to fill up my crisper drawer with damp sand). The goal is to keep them cold and damp but not wet. Cold to preserve them. Damp to prevent dehydration.
The most crucial activity at this time is to find a way to get the garlic planted. We’d typically have it done by now but with the wet October and the amount of work we still had we did not find a time to get it done. If we can’t plant it this fall we may not have garlic next year. Not good. Plus we’d have to buy new garlic seed for 2019 at a cost of $1,000 or more. Definitely not good. I’ve done a bit of research and we still have a chance to make it work — as long as the weather cooperates. But looking at the forecast I don’t see a whole lot of cooperation. We’d prefer a week of warm, dry weather. I’m seeing nothing but cool and damp. One strategy may be to plant it in the hoop house. If we can figure out a way to do this yet still have space for the tomatoes this may be our only option. Otherwise we make the choice between garlic and no indoor tomatoes or no garlic and indoor tomatoes. Neither is our preference.
Carrot Soup!
Speaking of an abundance of carrots, this past weekend we made carrot soup! It was delicious and easy to make. There are a lot of carrot soup recipes out there; here is the one I made. It was easy and tasty. I’ve seen others using peanut butter, interesting. If you have a good recipe for using a lot of carrots send them my way!
And for those of you who have read all the way to the end I have a whole bunch of under-ripe tomatoes. If you are interested in getting some please contact me and we can schedule a time for you to stop by.
I think this newsletter is plenty long enough. But before I go here is a use for romaine lettuce. Might come in handy next season (plus it looks warm)!
As always, if you have any questions do not hesitate to contact me!