CSA Newsletter // Week 13

Greetings All!

It's Fall! My favorite season of all time. The changing colors across the state and brisk mornings, sweatshirts and jeans weather. The critters are going into hibernation mode and moving slowly, from spiders, frogs & turtles, everything is starting to slow down. It's funny because in the fall, everything SPEEDS UP for us. Not a single thing slows down on the farm here; quite the opposite of the fall season.... it's chaos ;)

Harvesting fall crops and washing squash, digging potatoes and assessing the fields, looking at the end of the season crops we'll have to offer ya'll. We have 3 weeks left of CSA Shares and I think I mentioned this before but at this point in the season I make a list of everything that we want to get into the boxes before the end of the season. We're lucky we didn't get a frost last week, that was really close! Now it's in the high 80s and I think we'll even be pushing 90 tomorrow at the farm here.

Fall Shares are going out today!!! I will be sending an email to everyone who signed up for the Fall Shares that you'll be getting your first installment of your 2 part delivery this week. Next week (week 14) is Apple Shares, and then the last week of the season we'll be delivering the second installment of Fall Shares for those of you who ordered them. *I am still waiting on honey, but stay tuned! If you ordered it you will receive direct emails from me with notifications, above and beyond seeing it here in the blog too. Like I said, it's the craziest time of the year for us basically- and we're up for the challenge!! Everyone is out packing CSA Shares and harvesting right now (it's Monday morning). Things are looking really good and I'm excited to share with you what to expect this week!! This is the end of the tomatoes, a sad time on the farm that inevitably comes every season. We are done harvesting the big tomatoes and we have a couple on order for this week but that's about all we have! We waited to harvest grape tomatoes because they were slow to ripen, so now we've got plenty in from the field and we're sending some with your CSA Shares this week!!

FALL GOODIES *Updated in the Online Store

For those of you who wanted to get some extra produce to go into the winter, without committing to the Fall Shares, this is a great opportunity!! You can order online through the website and select which week you want to get your order (week 14 or 15, the last two weeks of the season).

Some folks order the Fall Share (which is no longer available as a package, that was the deadline you heard about the last few weeks). Some folks only want carrots to freeze or dried onions to put in the pantry, so we sell all those things separately now as well. The way it works is that it's all on the website and you can place your order online and then we'll deliver it with your regular CSAs!

So you can order one thing or 10 boxes, and we'll make sure to deliver it with your normally scheduled CSA!

One thing that I feel like we haven't talked about enough yet is storing the produce for long term storage or processing it for the freezer. Some of the produce varieties you can store in the basement, or in the pantry, some produce varieties you need to store in the fridge. Others, you might want to store in the freezer so you have them indefinitely. Personally we do a little of everything and I always keep fresh carrots in the crisper outside in the garage (they'll last for months in there!), or you can prep them for the freezer and blanch and freeze them. You can dry them (if you'll use dehydrated carrots)... ;)

I am going to attach the FALL STORAGE GUIDE here. This is what goes to all of our Fall Share Members, but I want to share it here with everyone so you guys have the condensed version of storage of the fall crops instead of having to look in the farm to table storage guide- the one at the bottom of all my emails.

Here is the screen shot from the website today- it's ready for you!!

There is an option for #2 apples as well. That means that there is a stem hole, funny shape, something that makes them imperfect. Anyone can order those at any point now, but keep in mind this is not the same quality as the Apple Shares (those are perfect apples).

SHOP | Brown Family Farm

The deadline for bulk sales will be the SUNDAY before the last CSA deliveries of the season- Sunday, September 28th. So we have some time but the sooner you submit your orders, the easiest it is for us to plan our harvesting :)

FALL SALE

We are also our annual sale at the farm on Saturday October 11th and Sunday October 12th! Both days we'll have the sale at the farm open from 9am-5pm. We take cash and checks; and new this season we're taking cards here too! We go out and glean the fields after our CSA commitments have been met. Gleaning is just a fancy way of saying "harvesting anything that's left"! We'll have plenty of bulk goods here too- but the point is we harvest anything out there that we don't want to get tilled under. We will also have a HUGE spread of heritage hog pork products and pastured chickens!! We're actually doing something new with our pork this season too- we're going to emphasize ordering bulk sausages, ground pork, breakfast sausage, italian, etc. Because that's what a lot of folks were asking for last season. Of course we'll still have brats, patties, snack sticks for your deer stand, etc. but I wanted to mention Ben and I are cooking an an idea for a special with mixing all the ground pork sausage options!

Please keep in mind this isn't a farm tour or event, as Ben & I will be busy at the top garage selling squash and root crops. We don't have a lot of parking which is really what prevents us from hosting events. We've got a spot where our employees park on our grass in our front yard, and then there's just the driveway by the house. So that's why it's all day long for a couple of days; steady and not everyone shows up at one time. This event is open to the public and will be posted to our FB page and social media too. I have a whole event page for this on FB and a web page devoted to it, as well.

FALL SALE AT THE FARM

Something worth noting, the LARGEST CORN MAZE IN THE WORLD is a few short miles from our farm here. They also have food trucks there so if you want you could do lunch over there at Stony Brook Farm! So maybe you want to come visit the farm sale, go to that corn maze & get some food; you could make a whole day of the trip north! Also- I'd suggest taking highway 10 and getting on County Road 5 in Big Lake (right by kwik trip) because that road if you drive north goes right through the Sherburne National Wildlife refuge and offers a ton of trails and the fall colors at this time of year... my goodness it's beautiful!!

Farm Sales, hiking, corn mazes... It doesn't get much better than that! Just a few weeks away!! :) I'll be sending out some more info as it approaches too. It'll be separate from my weekly newsletters, as we have enough to fit in here already ;)

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT IN YOUR CSAs THIS WEEK: Jumbo & Family Shares: Butternut Squash, Acorn Squash, Yukon Gold Potatoes, Dried Onions, Sweet Peppers & Grape Tomatoes! Single Shares: Butternut Squash, Yukon Gold Potatoes, Broccoli, Sweet Peppers & Grape Tomatoes!

We are going to be mixing all of our sweet peppers this week!! We're going to try and get Gypsy Peppers into the Single Shares since you guys haven't had those yet, we lost a lot of that patch due to flooding early on so there aren't a ton out there but we're going to do our best to make sure everyone gets to try those. They're sweeter than regular bells, but we are picking plenty of ripe peppers for ya'll this week! We finally have some COLOR out there!! So green bells grow green but they ripen and turn red. Same thing with the purple bells, too. They turn these brilliant colors and none of them are exactly alike. They're like a rainbow! I'm excited for ya'll to see those this week!!

Butternut squash are one of the best out there. They're unique in that they're so smooth. Ever wonder why it's always "butternut squash soup" on the menu at your favorite local diners? Because it's famous for a good reason!! These are super creamy and are the only ones I ever used to make baby food out of. If you cook it and take the flesh out of the shell you can freeze it in ice cube trays for your little ones, individual servings. When we first started giving it to our kiddos we added a little water to it anyways, to make it a little runny.

These are also the best squash dollar for dollar. Look at my pic above, you can see that the seed cavity is right at the bottom and it provides a good value for the size of the squash. This is unique to this variety- none of the other ones look like peanuts or have the seed cavity right at the bottom.

ACORN SQUASH- these are the classic, well known variety that have the fun shape and they're dark green in color. If you cut them in half they make two "flowers" I like to call them. I'll add a recipe for a stuffed squash for those this week- it's such a fun way to enjoy them! They're a little more of a dry squash but that's why so many people like them too, quite a bit different from the buttercups you guys got last week. They're the same as most other squashes though, cut it in half and scoop out the seeds. Cook at 350 until fork tender, and remove from the oven and scoop out the flesh.

YUKON GOLDS Ya'll have already had these this season once but I'll say it again- these are my favorite potatoes!! They're a medium starch potato and can be used in just about any recipe. I like using them to make mashed potatoes because they're so creamy and buttery tasting. These are also available in the bulk store online.

Kelsi with her new recipe- coating an apple in fresh honey from Grandpa John. It's a sticky mess but if they're 'cooking' we try to embrace whatever they're making. She's eating healthy at least! Her last "new recipe" was marshmallows melted with fresh strawberries on top for a dessert, haha!! Whatever, as long as she's experimenting in the kitchen, I'm happy!!

WRAPPING IT UP Something I wanted to mention though is that the brussel sprouts look really great! Last season we had a complete crop failure on those so this season we're extra excited to have these for you!!! We'll have some more fun squash for ya'll to try in the coming weeks too- but if you get overwhelmed just remember that you can grab a bowl and put them on the table as a decoration in the meantime ;) Not to mention they last months if properly stored!

I gotta get back outside and help pack some CSA Shares so I can come out and deliver to your Shares later today ;)

APPLES are being delivered within the next 20 minutes. We're bummed because we planned on getting them last week and they weren't able to get them to us fast enough to get into the CSAs this week/ pack apple shares. So you'll get honey crisps IN your CSAs next week and for those who ordered the Apple Shares you'll also get a box full alongside your CSA.

We have to load hogs today too- holy crap! We have 7 going into the butcher shop that we're getting processed USDA for the Fall Sale. So we'll have a great variety of our Heritage Hog Pork Products for the Fall Sale!!

We're unloading apples with the help of our neighbor Dean, who will come over with his bobcat to move the bins. These apple bins are so heavy that Ben's tractor can't do it! So we're thankful we've got awesome neighbors close by who are willing to come help us with these. Then finishing CSAs and the Fall Shares for today, then I leave to deliver and Ben gets geared up to load hogs.... there is something else I'm forgetting about today too (like we could fit any more into our days lol).

XO ~The Farmer's Wife