Happy Labor Day!!!
We are not delivering CSAs today. It's in your handbook if you're ever wondering about dates. Anything and everything important is in your handbook for the season :) We want to make all of this info readily available for you so we make sure to get that to you before the season ever starts :)
We want to make sure everyone gets their veggies this week so we never deliver on Labor Day, but we will redistribute the sites throughout the week to make sure everyone gets their goodies :) If you are out of town and unable to get your CSA, please let me know so we can donate your share. If you're gifting your CSA to someone else please make sure they know to grab the box with your name on it. If they take the wrong box you are liable for a fee to cover the stolen produce, the special deliveries but that doesn't even cover our time or gas. Please tell them to grab your box. We have your schedule below:
I just got back inside from tending to the pigs. We've got 3 pens now with pigs so 3x the water, food, and general maintenance as usual. On a regular day it takes a bit over an hour to make sure all our critters have what they need. (Not to mention my chickens and kitties!)
We also spent a bit of extra time giving all the pigs the extra goodies like (favorite!) over ripe melons, damaged broccoli or cauliflower etc. They love the extra goodies!! We're approaching a healthy 250# with the majority of our pigs. A handful are smaller because we strategically buy pigs at different times so they're not all ready for butcher at once.
I need to touch on the frost because it's something Ben and I have been worrying about a lot. With the late spring, we had to push back the CSA start date by a week. We have all intentions of fulfilling our CSA season and continuing through the middle of October (a week later than usual)! We seeded extra produce so we'd be able to plant more so we could harvest farther into the fall. We also plan on having lots of root crops for you towards the end of the season (potatoes, dried onions, carrots, beets etc. are all things that tolerate a frost).
The first frost of the season is almost always correlated to the full moon. I'm not sure about the exact science behind it, but if it's a clear night and a full moon, you're basically guaranteed to get the first frost. If it's cloudy, it might frost, but that also depends on when it is. This months' full moon is the 10th. So literally 5 days from now. It better not frost, lol! If it was later in the month like the 20th or later, I would say we'd be guaranteed to have the first frost. With it being so early we are really lucky because this season has been very very cold so far!! My point is- I think we're in the clear!
Last week we were supposed to have the red cabbage in the CSAs. We tried our darndest, but it just didn't fit. With the corn, muskmelons, tomatoes and cauliflower, the Jumbo & Family Shares were FULL. Don't forget the watermelons on the side!! The only way we could have fit the cabbage was maybe cutting it in quarters and putting it in strategic places... but that's not legal to sell like that lol. So we didn't add the red cabbage in there. THIS week we will for sure have red cabbage in the Jumbo & Family CSAs! So it just got a chance to grow a little bigger for this week's CSAs :)
This week in your CSAs you can expect: Jumbos/ Families: Purple Cauliflower, red cabbage, Yukon gold potatoes, zucchini, anaheim peppers, banana peppers, and tomatoes!
Singles: White Cauliflower, Yukon gold potatoes, summer squash, anaheim peppers, banana peppers and tomatoes!
Summer squash is a broad general category for all summer squashes that include the zucchini and crook neck summer squash, among many others.
This is our first week harvesting the crook neck summer squash! This squash has a VERY thin skin and if you look at it the wrong way it'll bruise lol. Literally, even the spines on the plants are enough to damage this squash. Pictured here is the jungle of crook neck summer squash. You can even see the "twin" in there!!
To store: Store squash unwashed in a perforated plastic bag in the vegetable bin. In the refrigerator they keep for about a week and a half. If the ends get soft before you can use it, cut the blossom end off and you can still use the rest of the zucchini/ squash. If it’s getting soft and you know that you won’t be able to use it before the whole thing will be soft, considering cutting off the blossom end and grating the rest of the zucchini/squash to freeze and save for baking.
Handling: Rinse under water to remove the dirt or prickles and slice off the stem and blossom ends. Then slice or chop. Scrape out seeds from baseball bat sized zucchinis before using them to bake. It is unnecessary to remove seeds from the smaller squash.
All summer squash can be used interchangeably but if you ask the squash connoisseurs these smaller crook neck squashes are a treat on a salad or in other raw forms. They're slightly sweeter and very tender because they're picked so small.
Tomatoes!!
We're really getting down there to the end of the tomatoes. We probably have a week maybe two left to get them into the CSAs. Please enjoy them while we have them! You'll notice they come every week until they're done-for. That's because they're tomatoes!! These are one of those varieties that never tastes the same during the off season. We hope you're enjoying them, we know we are!! Pico de gallo is a staple in our house at this time of year <3 My favorite!!!
Short and sweet this week..
I have a LOT of emails to get to today. This weekend we worked 12–16-hour days. Everyone is off because of the long holiday but there is still as much work to be done as every other day. So Ben & I work double overtime, lol. I apologize for my tardiness and look forward to getting in touch with all of your emails very soon.
Kids start school tomorrow too- lots and LOTS to do today!!
Stay well Friends! ~The Farmer's Wife