Thursday, December 8, 2011

CSA Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden! This box has squash, onions, garlic, shallots, beets, carrots, black radishes, potatoes, celery root, and maybe greens.

Field Notes. Ken is quite excited about our pulling the plastic on the new mobile high tunnel - he has been working on soil and getting beds ready for early planting. The weather was with us and we are grateful.

We took some time off, left town to visit my parents, and have not been home to monitor the weather. Our faithful farm sitter has kept the hoopettes closed. We left with many greens in the hoopettes, but the December harvest is dependent on the weather. Last year we got early snow and that acted as a blanket to keep soil temperatures and the produce warm enough to survive through December. We have seen both snow and cold temperatures (usually under 15 without snow cover signals the end), but we will see on Tuesday. If we have greens, you will get them!

And now I move to tax prep and seed orders. I will be sending out an evaluation and request for deposit. We continue to work hard to plant only what we can sell - less waste as far as seed, effort, etc. We want to improve our winter offerings and serve our faithful members better next season. Thank you for all your input and support.
From the Kitchen. It is cook stove and oven weather now. Ken often gets up and bakes squash in the morning. We eat some and he makes soup or pie from the leftovers. We also bake apples and make apple crisp. We focus on warming soups and stews with root vegetables. At my parents' Ken made some cream soups, lamb stew, apple crisp, and I made my first batch of kale chips. They were really quite good -

During the winter Ken starts micro greens and those will appear in next month's box. We also start sprouts and add grated carrots and grated black radishes and celery root to sprout slaw salads.

Celery root is a winter favorite. I scrub. peel, and add a piece to whatever I am cooking - soup, stir fry, steamed vegetables- like I would add celery or celery leaves- a small amount goes a long way.

Kale Chips


For years people have raved about kale chips. I had my doubts. Well, while visiting my parents, we went to their favorite natural food store and kale was on sale - why not. So, after Ken had baked an apple crisp, I cranked up the oven to 400 and took washed dried kale that I had ripped into large pieces without the spines, and mixed with olive oil and a bit of salt. Then I placed them on a cookie sheet, popped into the oven. I checked and once they were crisp, removed to a rack to cool. They WERE good. And my mom thinks they would be great as a soup garnish - great color and texture.