FARM NEWSLETTER // WEEK 13

Greetings All!

I'd like to start my blog post today to recognize a disservice to society... I'm outraged. Have you seen, they already have the Halloween and Christmas decorations out at Sam's club?! What on earth are they thinking??! Quit rushing us ;P I mean Halloween is still a month and a half out and we don't even have our Christmas count down going yet.

All jokes aside, we're seeing the change in seasons and will be saying goodbye to some of our favorite summer varieties in the coming weeks.

This IS our last week of tomatoes for the season unfortunately. Two days ago Ben said that we wouldn't have any tomatoes for next week- which really caught me off guard! Then after picking all day Thursday we're reassured that we will have enough to get through one more week. These will not be as pretty as what you get in the beginning of the season. It's called weather checking. It's what happens when something has been out in the field for the whole season. We see it very often on the peppers too- little scars that looks like cracks but they're not. What I'm getting at is that there are generally blemishes on the later tomatoes of the season. We'll still be sorting the tomatoes and you'll still get the prettiest of our harvest!! <3

THE HONEY PLAN

This year our honey was foiled by a bear....

As many of you know, Anna (Ben's sister) and her husband Nick were keeping bees here on the property this season. In previous years we had a different beekeeper but they moved so it left a void for Anna & Nick to jump into bee keeping to see if it's something they want to pursue. They've already invested in all of the equipment and starter colonies and had a great crop going. Until the bears stopped by! They literally threw the frames and set up 15 feet from where it was at, tore the frames out of the boxes and broke a few of them to top it off.

The hives were ripped up pretty good and thrown about. Anna & Nick did put them all back together in hopes that the bees could recover. That being said, the bees need all the honey they can produce now. So we won't be able to sell their honey for them this season unfortunately.

The good news is that we have neighbors down the road that keep bees and they have honey and some products we're going to put together. I went over last night and visited with them, got to know them and their products and I'm really impressed with the creamed honey. We are going to put together a package with them and offer it to you as well! We (even Ben & I) are OUT of honey!! So this is in an effort to get all of us honey at a good price from a local source we can trust.

Ironically, they keep bees around the corner at our neighbors house, who is also our kids' baseball coach and also works with my sister, lol. Seriously, small world out there! We were joking about how this honey ACTUALLY came from our farm because their bees really are out there pollinating our produce for us (they're SO close) I could yell from my front porch and they'd hear me from the hives. Funny thing is that I reached out to them unknowing any of this- just a perfect coincidence!

I plan on getting enough honey for a set # of packages and I will put them together and post them as soon as we have them together. It'll be a first come first serve basis with the exception of a few of you who have reached out and asked about getting packages- I'll get back to you directly on those.

I plan on adding these to the blog post next week. We want to get this honey in all of our hands as soon as possible! (Did I mention, we're TOTALLY OUT at our house?! haha!) Details will be coming soon about those packages, if you're interested make sure you're reading the blog next week!

APPLES! These are giving us a hard time this season, where we have never had troubles in the past. As you know from the delay and extension of our own CSA, the farm season hasn't been too kind on many varieties. Our beans and pickles for example, had poor germination because of the cool nights and they never yielded. That's just the first one I can think of but there are many examples.

Honeycrisps are really, really late. Our current supplier, Apple Jacks' Orchard, said they won't have the yield for us this season to purchase as many as we need. They got hail and the cool weather is also holding them back. So I figured I would vet some more growers and see who else could help us get you the best apples- but we're still searching. We need over 100 bushels of apples. That's a lot of apples and the first problem is finding someone with enough apples to sell to us. Second problem we're running into is timing.

The orchards I have talked with that do have that yield to sell to us and the ability to sort and sell all these apples, have all told me that their honey crisps won't be harvested until the beginning to middle of October. So what I'm hearing right now is I have a bit of a challenge to get it figured out.

What you need to know: We're doing our best to get you the best quality apples at a good price and would like to assume we'll be able to fill all of your Apple Share orders before the season is out. I am not worried- which means you shouldn't be either. It might get a little choppy but you can count on us to get the job done! As we say with any problem around the farm (or life in general): One way or the other we'll make it work! We always do ;)

Another one of those side notes I'm known for, haha.

We have some grapes at the farm here. I wanted to try to save their seeds and plant more but we don't have time to deseed and dry them right now. I figure if I still want more next season I can take cuttings from the plants in the spring. For now, we have a lot of grapes and I've never actually made jelly so I will be experimenting with them. We chose to freeze them for now until we get time to experiment with them. Spoiler alert- that's after there is snow on the ground. Now that they're in the freezer I can focus on the things I need to process TODAY! :)

This week in your CSAs you can expect:

Jumbos/ Families: Butternut Squash, Acorn Squash, Broccoli or Green Cabbage (more on this below), Gypsy Peppers, Zucchini/ Summer Squash, Kale & Tomatoes.

Singles: Butternut Squash, Purple Cauliflower (for Wednesday and Thursday)/ Red Cabbage (for Monday and Tuesday), Gypsy Peppers, Kale & Tomatoes.

The reason you're seeing us break down the weekly varieties now is because we're getting to the end of these patches. This really only generally happens at this time of year when things are growing a little more sporadically, and we just don't want to leave what's out there so we break it down and make sure everyone is getting all of the varieties but they aren't necessarily on the same week. It looks like this week (week 13) and next week (week 14) and the only weeks we'll have to do this for but again, it's all in an effort to make sure you're getting even amounts of what we have planned for your harvest <3

For the Jumbos and Families- you'll either get broccoli or green cabbage and then next week (14) you'll get the opposite of what you got this week (13).

For the Singles: Monday & Tuesday you'll get Red Cabbage (because you did get purple cauliflower last week) and then Wednesday & Thursday CSAs will get Purple Cauliflower because you didn't get them this past week (we subbed out with white cauliflower). If we need to vary from this course at all you know we'll document it ;)

OH BOY, it seems so complicated, right? Well, a few well planned excel documents and my colored printer paper later and we've got ourselves a roadmap to success: evening it all out! :) Don't forget the felt pens. I'm a sucker for colored organization and often channel my inner Elle Woods (hahaha!) when it comes to documentation.

OK SO ONTO YOUR PRODUCE----

Butternut squash is coming in all of your CSAs! If you're interested in making baby food, this is the squash I'd choose. It blends so nice and smooth- which is also why it's almost always the base for squash soups. It's famous of course, for butternut squash soup though you can use any kind of squash in that soup and it'd be similar. This is just the smoothest squash.

It's long and a lighter tan color on the outside. It can have some discoloration on the outside especially if it's been wet outside (spoiler alert- it's raining all weekend!). The seed cavity is at the very base of the squash, whereas almost every other variety has the seed cavity right in the middle. When you're cutting your squash in half to take the seeds out, for goodness sakes be careful! Using that big knife to cut it in half when sometimes they're super hard can be dangerous. The only time a squash won't be really hard is if it's gone soft, which is not good. We'd never sell a soft squash, in your CSA or the farm stand, soft squash go straight to the pigs and honestly it doesn't happen often because our season is so short there is no time to really over ripen.

Word to the wise- If you microwave your squash for even just a few minutes it'll soften just enough where the knife is a tad easier to cut it.

Also- this time of year is SQUASH SEASON! They each have their own traits and are equally as valuable in showing you what sort of squashes grow in MN. You'll also see pie pumpkins this fall too (which are basically a variety of squash, more on that later!)

I'd suggest keeping ahead of your squash at this time of year. Try to make a plan to use the squash you're getting now so that this fall you're not looking at a big pile. Even though they do make fabulous table decorations! We even have people buy hundreds of dollars worth of squash just for adding to centerpieces.

Acorn squash is coming in the Jumbo & Families. That squash went home with the Single shares a few weeks ago too. This is one of the most common squash that folks ask us for. They are fabulous for stuffing, and they do have a great (a little more dry) flesh that has a good soft sweetness. Great shelf life! Side note- I'm proud to say that we ate our last squash from 2021 in April of 2022...

Like all the others, cut it in half and take the seeds out. Wrap in tin foil, face down, and bake on a cookie sheet for a half hour or longer. The way I test to see when they're done is by using a fork, just like a potato! The fork should pierce the skin fairly easily. I have a recipe for squash seeds on the blog this week too! If you click blog above it'll be right at the top.

Kale! It's been forever since we've added kale to our CSAs! Usually at this time of year we would have had it into your CSA multiple times but we've only added it once. We had some insect issues early on this season and had to mow it down and basically start over. We'll have it in your CSA this week and if we time it right, also in the last week of the season (mid-October) as it's one of the only greens that'll last that long into the fall!

Remember to wash it thoroughly. Use your thumb and forefinger to rub along the ridges at the edges of the leaves so there isn't any surprise dirt in your salads, soups, stir fry's, egg bakes, sandwiches, you get the idea!

Gypsy peppers! These have been left on the plant for a very long time in hopes that they'll be very colorful and sweet for you! As peppers ripen, they produce more sugars and eventually turn red and ripen fully. You'll notice the awesome colors from last week, right?? :D The gypsy peppers are so colorful as well- they're BRIGHT red! And we still have some nice yellow ones too- we'll do our best to mix them together in your CSAs this week because, you know, you eat with your eyes first. Aesthetics in the kitchen are SO important!

These gypsy peppers have a fairly thick flesh (compared to their close relative the banana pepper), and they're a bit sweeter in my opinion. We use these for stuffing a lot because the pepper itself is thinner so it's a taller & narrow stuffed pepper which I prefer over a bell pepper. Don't get me wrong though, I'll never pass up a stuffed pepper no matter what variety!!

This weekend is another big weekend for canning in the Brown household! I've got a lot of my corn salsa supplies prepped and I'm working on my pasta sauce recipes too. I put up a lot of salsa last weekend and Ben's already asking me to make more so we have some around for the end of the season to sell. This weekend though, is for us. I'm planning on canning the rest of the tomato products we're going to need for the season. Either that or prepping tomatoes and popping them in the freezer so I can take them out when I have time this winter. Freezing tomatoes is awesome, I just core them, cut them in half and pop them in the freezer. When I take them out the skins come right off- no more blanching tomatoes ;)

More peppers today too!! Gotta get them done before they're gone for the season!!

Fall clean up around the farm here is on the horizon. All season long we play hard and make messes everywhere we go, I swear, uggh!! It's like a massage for my anxiety when I actually get a moment to catch up and clean. Mop some floors, which I (embarrassingly) can't even remember the last time I did that. Side note- the kids are fed, clothed and they're happy!

PS. Don't fall subject to the pressures of Halloween decorations and Christmas snack packages that are already out!! Why do they rush us?! We've still got plenty of this fall left!! I promise!!!

Stay well Friends,

~The Farmer's Wife