And so concludes Year Twelve of the Que Sehra CSA! Wait, actually is it Year Thirteen? So many years that we’ve lost track. This year was another good one.

Kristin, what about this season?

vocalizing enigmatically

nods. makes eye contact. takes a breath.

Furrows brow.

Laughs, and demands to know what I’m typing.

“Well, we never managed to get beets in the box; every year it gets worse. But we did manage garlic. And while we probably won’t ever try celery again, the celeriac was alright.”

Nods.

She realizes it’s all being written down, and refuses to say more.

Let’s let the veggies do the talking:

inside box Seventeen

• Tetsukabuto Squash – A delicious cross between butternut and buttercup styles, their flavor is quite good but will improve with age, so considering stashing it on the counter for a month or two. But keep an eye on it, and if anything starts to go toward bad, eat it promptly.
• Cabbage – is underrated.
• Red Potatoes
• Leeks – Last year we had no leeks at all. Next year may be a return to Large Leeks. Let’s predict it.
• Peppers
• Herb Bundle – parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme
• Celeriac aka Celery Root – cut off the outer part of the bulb and then roast it. Come people use the greens to make a tasty vegetable broth.
• Celery – it’s a marsh plant, so it’s a challenge growing it out in the sandy Barrens. You aren’t gonna eat it with peanut butter. Slice it against the grain, like a tough cut of meat, and use it in soups.
• Tomatoes – remember Ratty the chicken? She’s at it again, sneaking into the high tunnel through a side passage, to jump up and peck every darn tomato she can. We saved some from her this week for you.

We loved living the life we did, growing for you this year – and hope you loved living the life you did, while you ate what we grew. Hopefully we’ll see you at the party on Sunday – and grow for you again next year.

Nota Bene: It’s a chicken story newsletter

There’s this big bright white hen. Kristin says her name might be “The Colonel.” One morning the Colonel showed up for breakfast before I’d opened up the coop, and the next evening she wasn’t on a roost when I locked them up.

I’d recently realized that we had accidentally created a perfect secret nest sanctuary, when we hired a tree service to thwart a large looming pine that was showing a hunger for some of our rooftop infrastructure.), so I went looking there – but the thicket of branches was impenetrable as all get out and I saw no clear paths in, no feathers, no glittering eyes looking back at me.

Yesterday, when she came out of seemingly nowhere for breakfast, I decided it was stalking time.

But The Colonel didn’t want anyone to follow her and so it took some not inconsiderable time, patience, and stealth before she finally circled the fallen pine crown and in doing so, vanished.

As the song sayeth, she was in the pines, in the pines; where there stars, they never shine … deep beneath the layered canopies of thick pipe needle laden branches. I poked around until I finally spotted her – I could just barely see the bright white of her wing, and she didn’t move a feather or make a peep. Three times I tried crawling into the depths of the sideways canopy but ultimately retreated. I was in a bathrobe, after all. I went up the hill and fetched the electric chainsaw and started cutting. I was going down and into the pile, and it felt like I was carving myself a tunnel, boring into a bank vault perhaps.

Branch by branch, the way was cleared until I could crawl in and reach through and that’s when The Colonel finally make a break for it, revealing a cache of big clean eggs. It was a perfect spot, and I had to admire her skill in choosing an ideal location – secure and dry and comfortable – but winter is coming and chicks aren’t well equipped for it. I could tell she had just started to sit full time; the nest was full of eggs, as many as one hen could cover, but not yet filled with feathers – she was fixing to get it going, but her body hadn’t quite kicked into full broody mode.

So I piled 20 big eggs into a makeshift pouch of the front of my bathrobe, and went for egg crates, coffee, and breakfast. We had lots apples to juice, and tomorrow was the CSA harvest …

INSIDE THE BOX

• Winter squash lil’ butternuts 
• Fennel
• Carrot
• Brussels sprouts 
• Onion
• Kohlrabi 
• Radish daikon 
• Kale
• Pepper
• Eggplant
• Tomatoes

So we have a blind chicken this year. When Joan Jett lost her sight a couple of months back, it didn’t go well for her at first. She could find her way in and out of the coop, and maybe to the waterers, but she couldn’t get to the food before all the sighted members of the flock – and couldn’t navigate the social order.

Fortunately we humans eventually realized what was wrong, and isolated her in a private coop with her own water and food. She looked rough, and I thought she might falter and pass, but she grew stronger and seemed to thrive, even. She passed the summer regaining her luster, listening intently to the vibrant world around her, her sisters and daughters and rooster admirerers visiting through the chickenwire of her gated community of one.

She looked better, and I think I can tell that she doesn’t find her more limited lifestyle repressing. Last week, someone asked if she is still laying eggs – nope, I said – either the same illness that took our her optic nerves also messed up her reproductive system, or, well, stressed hens won’t lay eggs – so maybe it’s not easy for her being blind … which didn’t sit well with me, as I didn’t want to induce an existence of suffering, and it kinda-maybe-probably contradicted my just-stated subjective belief that she looked well in the way she held her head, the shine of her feathers, the way she looked around, sightlessly but still tuned in.

Yesterday, Otis announced that he’d noticed two eggs in her coop! I was … skeptical. I wanted to believe. But the eggs were strangely positioned, not in a depression but willy-nilly against the wall … the one with the access hatch. Which made me think that Otis might be playing a prank on me. When interrogated, he promised innocence … but sure acted guilty to my eyes. So I told him that I wasn’t sure what to think yet, but he remained my primary suspect….

Well, he was telling the truth.

Today while we harvested your veggies, she laid another, back in the far side of her coop. So Joan Jett’s recovery is official, Otis’s word can be trusted, my bullshit detector can’t, and if anyone wants to adopt a blind hen before winter, let me know. She’s a survivor, a good listener, and will make someone a lovely animal friend.

I didn’t get any updated photos of her this week, all glossy and iridescent, but I did get these:

inside box Fifteen

• Broccoli – hydrocooled for freshness!
• Hakurei Salad Turnips
• Red Potatoes – best for uses where they need to hold their shape, such as potato salad, roasting, boiling, and soups, because their waxy, low-starch texture prevents them from becoming mushy. They also make great smashed (not mashed) potatoes, adding color and a satisfying crispness.
  

• Onions
• Sweet Peppers – still mostly green, this is a year that peppers refuse to ripen it seems
• Thyme

• Tomatoes
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Eggplant

• Zucchini
• Bok Choi – Kristin is considering the stems as a celery substitute for ants on a log. Or dipping them into the oddly compelling fruity Mexican hot sauce we have.
• Winter Squash – You got one of these pictured, can you find yours?

Oh, and I was also wrong about the whippoorwills – they’re still here, and back to their nightly serenading.

The high tunnel chicken fence has successfully repelled the barbarian bawk bawk horde, but the tomato plants have definitely taken some damage from the cold nights this week – we went down into the lower thirties. That also killed the melon vines, scorched the zucchini leaves, and very nearly got us to fire up the wood stove. But not quite. Maybe next time.

For now, warmer air has returned, although without any of the sticky heat of late August. The leaves have started to shift into the yellow side of the green spectrum, the whippoorwills have headed South, and the mice that Ranger hasn’t consumed are busy building nests in every dang thing.

inside box Fourteen

• Oregano – pizza sauce? Dry it for later? Roasted tomatoes? Repels shape-shifters and kobolds.
• Kohlrabi – edible greens on a delicious … bulb thing. Peel and slice and ingest with or without salt and such. Or you could roast it, stir fry it, or feed to a tortoise.
• Brussels Sprouts & Tops – the leaves can be chopped and added to the kohlrabi greens. Or if you’re roasting or sauteeing the sprouts, you can just chop and add them toward the end of the cooking
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Spaghetti Squash – eat this soon, because something has gone grossly awry with some of them in the field, and we fear the same might go down if you don’t use yours sooner than later. Here’s a recipe that could use yours with the tomatoes, oregano, and garlic.
• Garlic
• Onions
• Sweet Peppers
• Zucchini
• Zero Cucumbers
• Tomatoes
• Eggplant

Just three boxes left to go for the year!

A new, terrible predator has been stalking our land. In broad daylight, when no humans are round to witness the carnage, something has been roaming through the high tunnel and destroying our beautiful tomatoes – when they are ripe and ready to harvest, they are devoured, their carcasses often left hanging on the plants. When they’re not quite ripe, the beast takes only a nibble – ruining the entire fruit before moving along in search of sweeter prey.

The single, neat triangular holes left behind in the unripe fruits told me what we were dealing with – a free range chicken had discovered the promised land. We tried chasing them away when we saw crews come clucking around, but the damages continued, and escalated. One particular hen – a ratty little grayish yellow hen, was our main suspect.

A live trap was set for her, baited with the tomatoes already torn asunder. And when we came home from our travels that afternoon, the hen we’d suspected was, indeed, indignantly captured inside of the greenhouse, in a cage full of maters.

I made plans to rehome her – but put her in solitary confinement in the nursery coop for a day first … to see if the problem was solved with her on lockdown.

No.

It was too late. Perhaps she’d been the pioneer, but in the recent days she had taught the others. A dozen more tomatoes fell to their rapacious beaks before sundown.

So, Ratty gets to stay. And today after the harvest was done, I fought the vines that covered up some coils of fencing, so we could create a barrier, in the hope that our vine-ripened tomatoes and our free-range chickens can peacefully coexist once more ….

(that’s it up top, with pieces of thorny vines lying about ^ )

inside box Thirteen

We didn’t expect to be harvesting in the rain today, but the morning brought a whole lot of surprise moisture, making us run out to harvest the cherry tomatoes before the plants sucked up the water and split all the ripe fruits open. And then I got to balance in the rain on a ridiculously unstable ladder surrounded by poison ivy, to harvest the apples for today’s box. And I laughed aloud up there, realizing just how happy I am that this is my life, my work, my struggle. It was a joy to harvest the box today – I hope it tastes as good as it felt.

• Red Baron Apples – the regular rainfalls have made for happy apple trees
• Tomatoes That the Chickens Spared
• Chicken of the Woods – you will get haunted, most likely, if you let this sit in your fridge until they go bad. They’re very, very good! Our friend Mark found this in Interstate Park and traded them for some tomatoes and eggs … anyway, you can find recipes online or just tear or slice them up, then sautee them in butter – cover and simmer in oil/butter for ten minutes, on low. Pairs well with pasta, or risotto, or put it in a soup. Mushroom things.
• Cherry Tomatoes Saved from the Rain
• Cucumbers of the non-pickling kind
• Zucchinis of Tender Size
• Red Potatoes
• Kohlrabi – eat the greens too! Can cook em with your kale perhaps
• Kale
• Shallots
• Parsley
• a Melon of Some Sort or Another