CSA Notes on this week's share. Reminder:No Hill Pickup Scheduled for next week

[Scott Hertzberg]

With fall here, your shares this week included a lot of greens. The pac choy, arugula and greens mix were grown organically by us. Ronald Zimmerman grew the kale, radishes and butternut squash, none of which he had to spray. The garlic, thai basil and all the sweet potatoes were from our farm. Ronald orders apples from an orchard in Pennsylvania every fall so we got some of them to include in your shares.   The greens mix consists of baby tat soy, mizuna, arugula and red giant mustard. A simple oil and vinegar dressing is all it needs. I also like them with a dressing of olive oil and soy sauce.             So far, we are happy with how our fall greens are growing. We’ve gotten enough rain and pretty much the right temperatures for them to grow well. Next time we harvest the arugula we’ll wash and spin it before pickup. We decided not wash the arugula this time because washing and handling tends to mess up the tender leaves somewhat but considering how much grit has been splashed on it during some of the heavy rains, we’ll give it a good wash next time. With the arugula you got Monday be sure to give it a good soak to let grit settle to the bottom than give it a good spin in a salad spinner.   We are growing the greens in two radically different ways. Some are planted in neat rows which we weed with tractor and hand tools. Others are planted in thick mats of densely broadcasted seeds. When sowed right on well prepared ground, the thickly sowed greens grow quick and block out most weeds.  Some years, one method works better than the other depending on the weather and weed pressure. This year both are doing well.    You can cook the sweet potatoes right away but they will be sweeter if you cure them for at least two weeks. Keeping them at room temperature in a dry spot out of direct light is adequate. If you want to get fancy, you can put them atop the fridge or another hot spot for a week as they cure better at 80 degrees followed by weeks around 60. We have a lot more sweet potatoes to give out. We’ve harvested over 30 bushels already and have a lot more to harvest. We are going to start curing them so the next batch you receive from us should already gone thru the hot first week of curing and you will just need to keep them dry and at room temperature.   I should remind Hill folks that we are skipping next week as scheduled. We’ll have the final two pickups on October the 19th and 26th.  I’d like to have another Wednesday pickup just for people who pickup on the farm if there are not too many objections to that. We have quite a few plantings that should be harvested and thinned out some next week so harvesting on Wednesday morning would be good. We’ll send out reminders about all this.   I know the fall schedule gets a little confusing with us skipping weeks. However, this was the first year we put out a schedule early for the fall and actually stuck to it. I really like skipping weeks in the fall and am going to make an institution of it. Judaism pretty much happens for a three week period in early fall and takes much of rest of year off, fall crops don’t like to be rushed and we have a lot of other work to this time of year such as planting strawberries and garlic for next year.   Right now we are in the week long holiday of Sukkot, the last week much goes on with our agrarian religion until the grain harvest holiday of Shavuot in spring. Everything in between is hokum spun by idle clerics during our days off the land. Any how, Sukkot in Hebrew means “huts”. Back in ancient Israel, farmers at this time had to both harvest and plant winter grains ahead of the rainy season. They lived in walled cities and worked fields far from home. Too busy to commute back home by foot or donkey, they set up temporary huts in their fields to sleep in until all the work was complete. There are many differences between farming today in America and back in ancient Israel but one similarity is that we are also busy at this time harvesting and planting cover crops and food crops for next year. The harvest moon comes on the first night of Sukkot. Seeing it Friday made me think of those mediterranean dirt farmers of 2500 seasons ago working to get everything done in the moonlight before the rains set in.     We hope you enjoy your shares, Scott and Tanya