The weather may be beautiful, and we’ll likely have plenty of warm and sunny days before Winter is here … but at this point, I think we all might need to face the fact that Summer is now past us.

There are sumacs and aspen and oaks starting their change into their autumn warm tones, and tonight we’re rushing home to cover the pepper plants … the low will possibly be dipping into the thirties on the farm!

This week, we built up the root cellar further (over half done with the walls!), and created fire cider (thanks for the horseradish, Russ!), corn relish, and more of our pinion pine hand salve.

 

Former WWOOFers Nora, B, and their cat Bucket returned for a visit, along with new members of their little tribe – their baby, Bear, and their Cat Windjah … with her 4 unnamed week-old kittens! (Hmmm, that’s three of the ladies from last year who are now mothers … something in the well water perhaps ….)

 

Lucky Box 13

• Watermelon – one of the 3 varieties – Crimson Sweet, Sugar Baby, and some yellow one who’s name escapes me right now. Consider making a watermelon salad – there are all kinds of recipes out there that would use your melon with fennel, tomatoes, cucumber, etc!
  
• Ground Cherries -Hey, these would go good in a fruit salad too! These are a big pain to harvest and sort, but so worth it! If any are unripe/green, avoid them … we tried to sort out all the chewed up and underripe ones, but a few no doubt slipped through.
  

• Fennel – this is the first year that we got our fennel to bulb! The greens and the bulb are all edible.

• assorted Sweet Peppers

• Cucumber -just one nice one!
  
• Zucchini – and just one zucchini (or two, if they’re small / you’re lucky)
  
• one Eggplant
• a big onion
  

• Heirloom Tomatoes –  the fall diseases have arrived, but our loyal tomatoes are still putting up a good fight in the field – and flourishing in the high tunnel.
• Swiss Chard –  stems and leaves are edible – just chop them up and sautee ’em!
• Thai Basil –  great with watermelon!

 

 

This week:

 

• The sun finally came out!
• the fall salad greens bed is looking good. Should be getting stuff out of it for y’all in a week or two
• we cut open an accidentally harvested watermelon, not expecting it to be ripe … but despite appearances, it was. A fluke, or are they ready after all? Stay tuned!
• The Boys laid the first course of block for the root cellar, and it looks good.

• Kristin swore at the unknown birds eating the final wave of sweet corn corn, and (very) briefly considered one of those devices that randomly noise-cannons to startle birds. We don’t want to live with random shotgun sound effects.
• There’s a gopher in the garden.
• “the squash is going apeshit”

• Azela was frightened by a the amazing mimicry of a harmless hognose snake that looked for all the world like a cobra about to strike.
• last season’s WWOOFer Grace came to visit with her new hubby Zach and baby bump Name TBD

• We harvested many buckets of organic delicious plums, devoured way too many plums, and preserved many plums for later.

• attended Bartender Beth’s hop picking party, which reminded us to pick our own hops
• And more!

The Contents of Your Box:

• Mount Royal Plums (< that’s a link)- These were too delicious not to share. Every one tastes a little bit different, making it hard to stop eating them. For your own good, we limited your quantity. Thanks to Russ Hanson for letting us pick 30 gallons of them from his one ridiculously prolific (and never-sprayed) tree!
• Peppers Both Hot and Sweet – Although I don’t think Kristin intended it to be, this is a test of your Newsletter Reading. … the only hot ones in the bunch are the yellow-colored Golden Cayennes. And they are quite hot indeed.

• Kick Butt Heirloom Tomatoes
  

• Shallots – It’s like an onion, but fancy! A little midler, so they’re good raw, and they have that garlic flavor too.

• All Blue Potatoes –  I say they’re purple but whatever, they’re darn good.  
• Cucumbers – Some of the last hurrah for the season

• Eggplant –  Certain of your fellow members would love to hear your eggplant success stories in he comments below.
• Tomatillos – These are good to seek out recipes for! Green enchilada sauce?
• Purple Basil – It’s pretty and it has good basil flavor, can’t be bad.

• Sweet Corn
• Zucchini – can’t stop won’t stop

The weather this week was cloudy, except for when it was sunny.

 

The gray made the sunny days even more beautiful by contrast; it worked so well that in my memory, this whole week was marked by beautiful weather and warm blue skies. Although I think the facts may not support it, I’m gonna leave my impressions unrevised. It was a beautiful week, and today was a gorgeous harvest day – one of those idyllic summer weather days that we will fantasize about for all 15 months of winter weather, not humid, puffy towering clouds, warm but not baking sunshine, a gentle intermittent breeze. The kind of day that you call in sick to work to be outside in because life is short and our time in the sun so precious.

Yeah, I liked it. Harvest went nicely too, with a good crew and an increased collective understanding of how to get done what needs doing.  We’re getting better at a lot of this farming business, really – the field looks amazing, we’re getting wonderful yields from the notoriously sandy soil of the Barrens, we’ve been setting personal records at the farmers’ market … feels good, like we have our footing for the things coming next in our lives.

This week we lost Brooklyn (Baxter, Alexi, & Sean) as they departed for the rest of their year-long destination-less pilgrimage, and gained Mexico (Azela), as she begins her USA adventure with neither destination not duration determined.

We foraged feral apples and wild choke cherries,  saw the late season salad greens emerge and thinned them out, and began the annual tactical retreat from the rising tides of tomato blight.

We laid in the grass in the rain and witnessed the eclipse peeking out through the edges of the rainclouds, we preserved the fruit we’d foraged and the tomatoes too flawed to sell, we lived and we loved it and we hope you did too.

 

 

 

And now, a word from our sponsor:

BOX 11: the Stuff Inside

Tomatoes – the star of the show, the belle of the box. We are in prime tomato-time now; cherish them now for soon the ravages of entropy and time take their toll.

Carrots – Three colors, infinite shapes, many bites. We topped them so you wouldn’t have to (and so no one would forget and get the saggy carrots (also there was no room in the box for em)

Baby Broccoli – just a little bit of the side shoots that the early season crop is still producing (The fall crop is looking good, but still tiny and headless)

Beet Greens – Tasty and healthy, almost the same thing as Swiss chard. Best when cooked down a bit. Omelette or frittata? Juiced?

a Beet or Two –  we cut these off of the greens and included them. Did you know that the root of beet greens is edible? FACT!

Sweet Corn –  seems a little less sweet than the first batch, but still quite edible. Works well if cut off the cob and used in a fresh salsa, corn chowder, etc.

Eggplant – just one!?!  You guys are getting soft. Back in my day, we ate eggplant at and between every meal.

 

Zucchini – ONLY TWO zucchini!? I remember when even the CSA box itself was made out of zucchini.

Slicing Cucumbers – I blame the single digit cucumber content on The Millenials and their lack of discipline.

Sweet Pepper Medley – None of these are hot, despite appearances … we do have a lot of hot peppers starting to ripen; do you want hot peppers?!

 

 

 

 

Another beautiful week in the Barrens! Actually, the weather was pretty blah – lots of gray, lots of cool drizzle – but the people and the places and the things around us were just lovely.

Friends and family visited, helpers were pleasantly abundant, the biting bugs waned, and many good dogs partied hard.

We did a lot of foraging out in the Barrens , questing out randomly and finding some weedy logging road to crawl through in the Subaru, window shopping for fruits and fungi, then hopping out to pick here and there when good spots were found.

The haul this week was mainly chokecherries, which are having an abundant year – almost anywhere we stopped, we found little trees laden with clusters of them.

Eaten straight from the tree, they’ll make most anyone grimace. But the astringent aspect is tamed by processing their juice with sugar, and the resultant jelly is absolutely delicious. – especially when mixed with a bunch of blackberries, which are ripening all over our own woods this year.

Kristin was busy with all kinds of preservation projects, actually, from the “Barrensberry” jelly, to wild cherry extract, to pickles and relish, to dehydrated kale chips.  The Brooklynites Sean & Alexi helped her out, as they were interested to learn how these things work.

In the field, we worked on getting some of the last fall planting done; already, the radishes, turnips, lettuce planted earlier in the week are now coming up, tiny green stalks questing  up into the sunlight.

Speaking of life, we went in to the doctor and found out that our baby is perfectly in sync with the CSA – both are 10 weeks along!

And speaking of that, here’s …

the Week 10 Box:

A great box to make ratatouille or moussaka with!!

Tomatoes – the plants in the high tunnel are looking good, but the field are struggling a bit right now – the voles have decided that tomato plant roots are a delicacy, and they’re slowly messing them up but good.

Mild Pepper Medley  –(green bell, sweet banana, purple bell, frying varieties) – you may get some or all of the above, but regardless, none will burn your face off.

Shallots – often described as “the flavor of garlic and onion combined,” we decided to grow this since we have such trouble growing garlic (it must be planted in the fall, and then the voles like to feed on the bulbs underground all winter). Use like an extra-tasty onion!

Cucumbers

White Onions – weren’t planning on including these in this week’s box, but some were starting to flower so we pulled em, before they started turning their bulb energy into flower energy …

Zucchini

Eggplant – Eggplants are going strong! There will be more … be ready! They are underrated in our culture, but very versatile and, when done right, absolutely delicious …. Kristin’s advice is not to try to make them healthy, cook them with lots of oil! Or, simmer them in a tasty sauce – they absorb flavors nicely after awhile.

Beans –  the bean plants are FINALLY slowing down production, thank the gods.

Rutabagas & Rutabaga Greens – the greens can be cooked in a recipe and used anyplace that collards or turnip greens are called for. The rutabagas root have cosmetic damage from Cabbage Root Worms – not sure why the critters like them so much this year, but que sera sera – this is what you must sometimes face when you grow organically, without pesticides! We pulled the entire row up and gave you the least damaged ones – just carve or peel off the outside damage, and chop up, avoiding any ugly spots if you’d like.

Herb Mix – parsley, sage, savory, Mexican tarragon, purple basil

 

 

 

This was the week where we all realized that winter will happen. The nights have been cool, and the mornings sometimes downright chilly. We had just enough summer heat to adapt to it, and now 50 degrees brings the brrrrs. Bonfires were had, and the canning of dilly beans and the baking of chicken and chocolate beet cake were done in the inside kitchen, in order to trap some heat for the nights.

I turned 40 on Thursday, and it was not only chilly but it rained all day long, dashing plans for a day of waterfall frolicking. It would have been a bummer, except we were pretty excited for the rain – it had been awhile, and the field really needed it. So we rejoiced, indoorstyle.

When the sun returned to the land, we started testing out the new solar dehydrator, and found it quite serviceable, turning batches of kale leaves into crispy kale chips within hours.

We’re also using it to infuse jars of sunflower oil with pinion pine resin (which we’d collected in New Mexico two winters ago … once done, this will be used to make a rejuvenative salve for dry skin).

We also got some foraging in – as a birthday present, Kristin let me skip the farmer’s market and go mushroom hunting with Sean & Alexis, the Brooklynites.

We came away with a good haul, and enjoyed a delicious mushroom dinner the next night.

And then we all went out picking wild chokecherries for preserves, and some prickly ash berries for a toothache tincture.

Box 9

• Sweet Corn – eat it soon for maximum sweetness! I enjoy it fresh and raw, but it’s also good grilled & buttered.
• Heirloom Tomatoes –  everything is either ripe or close to it – even the green, orange, and yellow ones. If it is slightly giving to a gentle squeeze, it’s good to go. Let us know if you have a favorite!
  
• Potatoes (Purple or Yukon)
• Tomatillos & Jalepenos –  salsa time!
• Slicing Cucumbers
• Zucchini
• Beets
  
• Eggplant
• Beans (Purple, Green, & Yellow)