2016 was our best year yet, and to cap it off we threw a party for our CSA members and friends of the farm. Our friend and CSA Alumnus Maaren runs an awesome catering business – “A Wandering Fire,” featuring wood-fired pizza, baked on site with a mobile pizza oven trailer – and she was kind enough to donate her services for the day.

The day we chose could not have been more lovely – sunny and 60 degrees, with fall colors exploding all around us throughout the Saint Croix River valley. (And since it was 30 degrees cooler and a week earlier than last year, there was no insane swarm of Asian lady beetles to contend with this time!)

We prepared a variety of farm-grown toppings – Que Sehra leeks, tomatoes, beets, potatoes, tomatillos, onions, chives, kale, arugula, eggplant, peppers,  squash, and more topped the pizzas that came out in rapid succession, disappearing into our guests as fast as they emerged from the blazing hot oven … which took only about a minute to go from doughy to crispy. Combined with farm-fresh salad mix and a smorgsaborg of potluck dessert options, everyone ate until happily stuffed, as the platoon of friendly dogs romped around us, bocce balls rolled, the bonfire crackled, and Jim’s vintage tractors gave rides.

It was great party – not only giving a beautiful year a fitting close, but making us excited for next year’s beginning!

We can hear new things in the night, now. Far-away humming grain dryers, loud music from a house on the other side of the woods, distant barking dogs and bellowing midnight cows – from directions where no such sounds had been heard for months.

I remember now that early Spring had been similar – but I’d told myself it was because the trees were all still bare – assuming that in greener months their leaves subdue sounds. But the woods now are still pretty leafy, requiring a new explanatory theory: it’s the lack of crickets. And the absence of frog choruses and screeching beetles.  When the chill-bringing winds of autumn cease shaking the trees, the evenings and nights are just so quiet now. It’s the Silence of the Bugs. The Hush Before the Snow.

And so I guess it makes sense that this is Week 18, even though it feels impossible that another season has gone by some quickly, even while it all feels so epic and new. I can see how I will in a few moments or so be looking back at decades of change and growth, seasonal cycles pulsing like single day and nights.

I don’t want to go on; you know exactly what I mean. Pretty fascinating ride we’re on here – I wish I could explain how grateful I am, we are, for every person who has been part of the journey. You. You were an inextricable piece, and that’s awesome.

This year has been our best yet – I dare believe that the trend is likely to continue. So much has been built, so many systems refined, so many realizations made and connections forged and possibilities opened.

We’ll continue the CSA, at about the size it is –so that we can manage it without sacrificing our sanity or the quality of what we’re putting out into the world. It will also leave us some time and energy to explore possibilities.  We’ll probably do more “value-added” food production, using what we grow as the raw materials. We’ve talked about doing two weekly Farmer’s Markets instead of just the one. Stagger plantings more. Feed bugs and disease and critters less, and feed and water plants more.  Plant more spinach. You know.

We  still don’t know where all this may take us, what we will do, how we will be – no more, really, than we did when we set out. And, we still don’t mind that; thanks to an abiding hunch that we’re doing what we want to be doing, and what we’re meant to be doing.

2016 was a beautiful year and we will miss it – even as we look ahead to the all the interesting, delicious, and challenging beauty still to come.

It was wonderful to grow for you, and with you.

• the Sehrs

PS – oh yeah I forgot to talk about the box!

 

Box 18 – The End Again

Popcorn – hang your cobs in a dry place to finish curing before you make homemade farmgrown organicmagic superpopcorn.  After a couple weeks, the moisture levels should be getting to the right levels for popping (try a couple of test kernels before you commit it all). To use, shuck the corn off of the cob by hand – it seems hard at first but it gets easier as you go. Put some oil and salt in a heavy pan with a lid (like a dutch oven). Warm it up before adding your seeds and covering it up. Wait until they start popping, then lower the heat slightly so they don’t burn. Remove from heat when the pops get infrequent. You can probably use a microwave or a popcorn maker if you’ve got such things.

Brussels Sprouts –After several attempts, this was our first year successfully growing these things. Now that we know the secrets, we’ll grow more of them next year …

Butternut Squash – one of the tastiest and most versatile of the winter squash – and the seeds, roasted, make a wonderful garnish for salads or soups.

Pie Pumpkin – Cute and decorative, sure – but also quite edible … sweet and perfect for bread, smoothies, soup, or pie.

Salad Mix – red & green lettuce, arugula, spinach, mizuna, tat soi, bok choy, pea tips, pea flowers

Parsnips – Those aren’t white carrots in with the carrots! These add a great flavor to roasted vegetable mixes. Or could be cooked and pureed with your squash soup. Or your carrot soup!

Carrots – the giant mutant super carrots’ reign of terror now comes to a close – for you. We still have to survive the rest of the season without being consumed by them … next year, we’ll be putting them in less rich soil so that they grow a little less wild ….

Broccoli – more beautiful heads from the second planting

Cucumbers 

Herbs: Parsley, Sage, & Chives – Sage pairs great with winter squash, and dries well for later use. Chives and parsley would be good to sprinkle on roasted vegetables, or use in a salad dressing.

That’s all for this year – unless you come to the Pizza Party on Sunday – we’ll be making toppings from things we’ve grown! Thanks again, hope you’ll join us for another season!

We’re almost to the end of the season now, and it feels like it. It’s been so cloudy that we’ve been running on generator power a lot, and the wind has barely stopped to catch its breath for three or four  days.

It’s been all week, really – after we delivered boxes, we spent Wednesday afternoon harvesting apples down in Lakeville (thanks Lizzy and yer folks!) – then we drove north through the crazy flooding lightning party that welcomed a week of indisputable autumnal air, bringing with it the reassessment of wardrobes. The mice invasion reached a fever pitch, with multiple invaders introduced to their mortality nightly. The well water graduated from chilly to painful for the heroes that wash your produce, and the window directly over our bed was closed in a hardfought concession to the reality of the coming coldness.

In other news, I fell out of an apple tree and then the ladder fell on my head.

Week 17 Box:

It was a race against the forecasted rain today, so we harvested as much as we could as soon as it was light enough to see, and packed the boxes up under a canopy as the drops came down –  a week that began and ended with cold rains!

• Celery – couldn’t fit inside the box, so you get it on the side … which worked out since they barely closed as it was. This stuff was hard to grow in the sand barrens, being a marshland plant – so it may be a little tougher than what you’re used to. But it’s good! I like the more concentrated celery flavor. The tops and leaves are good for making broth, and the stalks are good for soup (try Cream of Celery perhaps) or stuffing or pot pies or termites-on-a-stick.

• Apples – enjoy a few pounds of delicious Haralson Apples, courtesy of CSA Alumni Lizzy and the Abbey Road Orchard! The apples in your box cost me my life in several alternate realities, so please enjoy them lots.

• Carrots – Believe it or not, the ones in your box are the little ones – the true monsters are being sold to a cafeteria this week. The sandy soil, regular rain, careful weeding, and good spacing really let these guys get incredibly large this season, which is awesome – none of them had started to flower, so they aren’t woody … just jumbo-sized.

• Napa Cabbage – I have found that I quite like cabbage.

• Tomatoes – From little cherries to hulking heirlooms, a nice selection of the high tunnel tomatoes.
• Potatoes – Depending on how you have moved through the pages of the Choose Your Own Adventure Book of your life, you are now blessed with either Yukon Gold, Russet, or Red potatoes this week, or perhaps even a mix of the three.
• Hot & Sweet Peppers – hot peppers are bagged in with your radishes, the sweet mild peppers are running loose in the box. Mix them up if you enjoy playing Pepper Roulette!
• Eggplant – Italian and Asian varietiesLast eggplant of the season … unless you come to the pizza party on the 9th. Which we assume you are.
• Broccoli – Not baby brocolli – full heads; the second planting has cometh!
• French Breakfast Radishes & Baby Crimson Giant – tender little radishes.
• Savory herb – Great with soup, and potatoes, and potato soup!

 

The windows and screen doors on the Farm remain open throughout the nights, which means it’s still some kind of summer, or at least not into true autumn yet.

The very first hints of change are showing in the tree canopy that borders our field now and the hens are laying less eggs, as the Sun’s arc overhead grows shorter and more oblique.

Another clear sign of the season is where Kristin has been spending her hours – less and less in the Field, as she transforms into a mad scientist, surrounded by steaming and bubbling vessels, working the magical alchemy of food preservation.

 

 

This happens every year around this time, but this cycle is more intense than others. Normally, we can food primarily for ourselves – this helps sustain us throughout our winter travels, and into the early spring, as we work to get things started in a field where nothing is yet producing. This year, we’re canning a greater variety and a greater amount, as we gear up to try selling some of our canned goods for the first time.

 

 

We’ll bring the first batch to our farm stand this Saturday, as part of the annual “River Road Ramble,” which loops right through our neighborhood – check out the event details and map here, if you’re interested in checking it out and saying hello!

 

Week 16 Box:

• Salad mix – Red & green lettuce, green and red mizuna, red mustard greens, arugula, pea tips
• Winter squash – Each box has one of the most-ready of our winter squash arsenal – a Pie Pumpkin, Butternut, Buttercup, Hubbard, or Red Kuri squash. Future boxes will contain more sweet & mature specimens great for eating straight – this week’s squash, while certainly delicious on its own, could also be used well in a squash soup or a pie!
• Onions
• Beets – if you don’t love beets, you’re doing it wrong. Try again.
• Cucumbers – the field cukes are mostly nuked, but in the high tunnel the late season plants are looking pretty pleased with themselves.
• Sweet Peppers

• Radishes – Watermelon, Black Spanish Round, and/or Daikon
• Bok choi – This is the nicest Bok Choi we’ve ever managed to grow! Crunchy stalks and tasty mild leaves, delicious even raw – or perhaps separate the stems from the leaves, stir fry the stems and then at the end, after turning off the heat, quickly toss and wilt the leaves a bit. “The ‘butteryest’ green there is,” says Kristin.
• Sage – Good with meatloaf, squash soup, or on its own, fried or used as a garnish.
• Tomato – As warned, the tomatoes have slowed with the season’s shift. Enjoy some of the final salutations from these beautiful creatures as their thoughts turn from production to reincarnation.

Tonight the low on the farm is predicted to get down to 39 degrees. I guess this season-changing thing is really happening. Other than the basil (which we harvested a ton of today), this chill shouldn’t harm much, but is sure feels like a shot across the bow. Less direct reminders have been coming from all sides this week, as cooler temps and shorter daylight hours have slowed down growth and production, and the well water is numbing rather than refreshing when we’re washing veggies off.

It’s getting into that time of season when we start harvesting things to salvage them from the cold, deciding what to let the cold finish off and what to cover at nights to keep alive just a little bit longer.

We tore the field tomato plants all down this week – although many still had fruits in various stages of ripeness, the plants were mostly bare of leaves, and this seemed to make for increasingly bland flavor. (Fortunately, the high tunnel tomatoes are faring better and still producing, although even there blight is popping up and starting to spread.)

Even as the days darken and the temperatures dip, the Farm will continue to produce – we have planted plenty of cold-hardy plants to carry us through these last few weeks of the season and beyond … for now, there’s all this:

Box 15:

• Celeriac – We cut off the greens so it would fit into your boxes. All of it is edible, although often the stems are used for flavoring soup broth, since they’re sorta chewy. Slicing them up finely avoids that problem though, if you’d like to include them in a dish. The bulbs are often used in soups and stews, as well as salads. It can be eaten fresh or cooked, Google around and find a recipe that sounds interesting!

• Watermelon Radish – This is our first year growing these interesting radishes; we ate one last night, sliced up and raw. Findings: the thick skin is extremely spicy, while the pink interior is totally mild – it would make a nice salad topping, or sliced up and dipped in hummus or dressing, with or without the skin as your tastebuds prefer.
• Leeks
• Tomatoes

• Salad Mix – red & green lettuce, green and red mizuna, red mustard greens, arugula, pea tips, baby bok choi

• Spaghetti Squash
• Sweet Pepper mix
• Eggplant (Asian and Italian)
• Zucchini
• Cucumber
• Basil (both Thai & Italian)