What's in the box?  

Medium Share

• bell peppers
• onions
• potatoes
• vitamin green
• salad or scarlet turnips (medium and large)
• cauliflower or broccoli
• musk melon or cantaloupe
• lacinato kale
• sweet dumpling winter squash (large and medium)
• acorn winter squash (large and medium)
• delicata winter squash (small)
• sage

Small Share

Notes on the box.  

More of the likely underripe melons.  If they don't smell ripe yet, allow them to sit on your counter until it smells sweet and fruity.  Or you can try them in a more savory recipe like the Cantaloupe, lime, chili salad below.  Or in a recipe that adds more sweetner, like a sorbet or a smoothie.  

You may have quite a pile of potatoes adding up.  My favorite way to cook them is to cut into large dice, par-boil them until just fork tender, drain them, put them into a cast iron skillet with lots of butter and salt, and roast until browned in a 450 degree oven.  If they don't al get eaten at dinner, they are great added to scrambled eggs in the morning.

Vitamin green is also known as choy sum.  It's good added at the very end of a stirfry or added to soups.  

Winter Squash season has begun!  Your squash does not need to be stored in the fridge.  You can set out and start making a festive fall arrangement as you work your way through these beauties.  We will be giving Winter Squash through the remainder of the season and we have several different types.  But the cooking of any of them is pretty much the same idea...  Carefully cut the squash in half from stem to end.  Scoop out seeds.  Place cut side down onto a greased or oiled baking dish.  Add a little water to the bottom of the pan (about 1/4 to 1/2 inch deep water).  Bake at 400 until you can easily stick a fork into the squash through the skin (20- 40 min depending on the squash).  Serve with butter.  All of the squash this week (sweet dumpling, acorn, and delicata) have skin that is edible, though the acorn skin can be tough.  Squash with edible skin are great for slicing into thin cresent shapes, coating with spices (chili powder, curry, cumin, or whatever you feel like) and roasting.  I'll link a recipe below.

Cheese Shares.

This week we have a young jack style cheese we are calling Aquila.  It tastes clean, milky, and grassy with a creamy paste.  It's very easy to eat!  

the glow

Want to try our cheese at an exciting spot in Minneapolis?  GYST fermentation bar just got a couple of wheels from us to add to their amazingly gorgeous cheese plates.  Yay!  

Recipes.

After School Cantaloupe Smoothie by Otto

Remove seeds and skin from 1/2 a cantaloupe.  Chop and put in blender (you may chop and freeze and then use frozen for an icy cold smoothie).  Add a scoop of honey or vanilla yogurt, or plain yogurt and add honey to taste.  A pinch of cinnamon or cardamom (optional).  Add milk.  Debate adding peanut butter, but decide against it.  Blend until smooth.  Yum!  

Chili Lime Cantaloupe

•  medium cantaloupe
• 2 Tbsp fresh lime juice (about ½ lime) 
• 1 Tbsp honey 
• salt to taste 
• crushed red pepper to taste

1. Cut the cantaloupe in half and scrape out the seeds with a spoon. Cut off the rind. Once the rind is removed, slice the melon into thin pieces.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the lime juice, honey, salt, and crushed red pepper. Stir until the honey is dissolved.
3. Add the sliced cantaloupe and toss to coat the melon in the dressing. Serve immediately, or chill until ready to eat. Give the melon a brief stir before serving.

Cheesey Baked Cauliflower Tots

Roasted Salt and Pepper Delicata Squash (you can also use sweet dumpling or acorn)

On the farm.

Ahhh, transitions.  We are transitioning into fall, and the weather has been all over the place.  It was so hot and humid, then suddenly cold and super rainy, then warm again...  We have had plenty of rough Springs, but this season, Fall seems to be hitting us with some disease, crops lost due to too much rain or overtaken by weeds when it was too wet to cultivate,  and uneven ripening.  This morning, we've had close to 2 inches of rain since 2 AM already, so things aren't looking good for our already waterlogged spinach.  During the thunderstorms last night, there was also some hail.  We haven't been out to the field yet to see the damage, but hopefully it's not too bad...  we have spinach, lettuce and salad mix, radishes, cauliflower, greens, broccoli and cabbage out in the field that we are hoping didn't get too beat up.  In the coming weeks we will also Winter Squash, onions, garlic, potatoes, greens, and peppers for as long as the frost holds off.  I think in the blog last week I said there were 4 weeks left, but it's actually 4 more after this weeks delivery.  Still plenty of veggies to come!  

The farm party will be next week, September 26th.  We really hope you can make it!  We will provide meat and cheese and ask that you bring a side or desert to share.  Feel free to BYOB.  Kids and guests are welcome!  Unfortunately, our dogs aren't friendly with other dogs, so we ask that you leave your fur family at home.  

Gold and orange on the farm this week...

What's in the box?  

medium share (potatoes not pictured)

• Braising mix
• bok choi
• sweet and bell peppers
• hot peppers
• onions
• tomatoes
• broccoli or cauliflower
• green top beets
• potatoes (large and medium)
• cantaloupe or musk melon

Some of our "eat like a farmer" members got nasturtiums.  They are edible floweres with a peppery flavor.   A perfect garnish for salads or to fancy up a plate.  If you didn't get them this week, hopefully next week if it's not raining at harvest time!  These are very limited and will only make it to the eat like a farmer share members.  

Notes on the box.

This is the last week for tomatoes.  We had another succession planted but tomatoes don't like the wet weather and we have had quite a lot of that lately.  Disease spread quickly and the second succession died.  It was a pretty good run anyway, we think.  We are sorry that we ran out of time before getting to pick the cherry tomatoes.  Next season!  

Cantaloupe may be under-ripe.  That moisture and the cool temps do not bode well for ripening in the field without going bad, so we made the call to send them your way even though they are aren't quite ready yet.  They should be stored on your counter, not in the fridge.  We are bummed that the flavor of the melons is underwhelming this season.  We are guessing it's because of the extreme amount of rain and cool temps are both things that don't lend well to sweetness and ripening of these crops which originate in desert climates.  When Michael Pollen was on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me; Paula Poundstone had this to say about cantaloupe "I try to teach my kids to eat healthy food, but you get a cantaloupe, and you don't know when it's going to come of age. You have no idea - that period between when it's like, hard as a rock to when it's smushy inside, is about 10 minutes...And sometimes you got to wake the kids in the middle of the night because the cantaloupe's ready."  Pretty spot on for this season!  Let them hangout on your counter until they smell like ripe cantaloupe and then have at it. Hope it goes well! We have about a 50% success rate here at the farm.  The sweetness and flavor will be better if they are eaten at room temp, not cold from the fridge.  

The greens of the beets are edible and nice on these bunches.   You can add the beet greens to the braising mix  for a big serving of greens.  The beets will store longer if you remove the greens from the beet roots.  Both should be stored in plastic bag in the fridge.  

Please check your peppers to see if they are spicy or sweet before cooking with them.  Slice off a tiny piece and taste.  The spicy peppers are hungarian hot wax or jalapeno. The hot wax peppers are generally smaller, smoother and taper to a shareper point than the sweet peppers.  They start as a lime green pepper and ripen to orange and then bright red.  They have only two lobes, where the sweet peppers have 3 or 4.  See the photos below

Cheese shares.

Ricotta this week and a youngish Asiago style of cheese.  Some members got wedges from smaller wheels that are drier and others got wedges from a lager wheel with a more elastic texture.  This cheese was made in the Spring when the cows were on the Rye grass.  It is about 5 months old, which is still young for a grana style of cheese.  There are a lot of flavors going on in this one!    The rind of this cheese can be cut off and saved to use in a soup stock or to enhance the flavor of sauces.  Here's more about how to do that.  This cheese isn't named yet.  We are waiting to see which cheeses we like the most so that we can focus on perfecting them.  The names for cheeses that we are coming up with are generally related to the night sky and the constillations that your farmer/cheese maker, Rama, sees when she goes out at 4 AM to the aging room, or to cut and wrap cheese, or to make cheese.  A lot of cheese work gets done while kids are asleep and fieldwork is waiting.  Walking from the house to the make room or the aging cave, the night sky is observed and the constillations or stars that are prominent suggest that cheeses should be named after them. Let us know when a cheese stands out to you as one that you like.  We get a lot of feedback at the farmers market and we would love to hear more from our CSA members as well.  

The ricotta looks like a tub of butter.  Gotta love that 100% grass-fed cows milk!  

Recipes.

Beet and Ricotta Terrine with Arugula Salad looks like quite an undertaking.  But maybe worth it if you have time for a project!

Grape, Avocado, and Arugula Salad

Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Bisque

 On the farm.   

It's raining a lot!  And the forecast has some cooler temps, so we are pulling things out of the field as quickly as we can.  We have (literal) tons of potatoes to dig, but have not had any dry days to get it done.  We have been sad to see a beautiful stand of spinach wilt and die in the low spots of the field as it drowns in rain.  This seems to be the norm for the fall for the last few seasons.  We are trying to get potatoes out and winter squash harvested.  They will do better out of the field than in the field at this point.  We could really use a week without torrential downpours.  Think dry thoughts for us, please!  

We are so grateful to our crew for allowing us to get off the farm this past weekend to head to a wedding in Iowa.  It's the first weekend since early May that we have gotten to spend together as a family.  We listened to podcasts about farming on the car ride down and gleaned a lot of great information.  Then we had a great time at a water park and got to spend time with family.  We saw some beautiful sunsets and some really amazing spiders that we had never seen before.  It was fun and so valuable to be able to spend some time together.  

When we got back it was time for Otto to begin his first year of school!  We know that some of our members remember pictures of him still in the belly.  How amazing to be able to share the progress of our family and family farm with our CSA members.  The community part of CSA feels very real as we share these milestones and we see yours as well.  We are full of awe and gratitude.

And then we saw some red and yellow leaves on the trees.  We aren't quite ready for it, but it seems that fall is coming anyway!  Don't worry, though.  There's still 4 weeks left of the regular CSA season.  We are looking forward to more broccoli, cabbage, Winter squash, leeks, carrots, and frost sweetened greens.  Soups and roasted veggies.  Yum yum yum.  We also have 4 weeks after the regular CSA ends for our optional season extention share.  Lots of storage veggies to look forward to for those that don't want to stop eating local foods just yet.  We will provide more information about the season extention in the coming weeks.  

Don't forget that we will be having our harvest party on September 26! We really hope that you can make it out.

bunching braising mix

beautiful and delicious braising mix

Otto is practicing making bunches.  

Tooya and the crew

The gang's all here!  Whitman comes to say hello.  

Nasturtiums for our "eat like a farmer" members

long hops

any brewers out there?  come get some hops!  They are the longest ones we've ever seen!

beauty and the beast in the flower garden

the moon, stars, and barn making their own constellation 

What's in the box? 

medium share

• Sweet corn
• tomatoes
• arugula
• onions
• Potatoes
• bell peppers
• broccoli
• brussel sprout tops
• pac choi (large and medium)
• carrots  
• beets (large)

Notes on the box.

This is the last of the sweet corn!  It was harvested in the pouring rain, so the silks may be limp and wet.  You may want to pull them off before they go in your fridge to avoid spoilage.  Get the last of your favorite sweet corn recipes made.  Until next year...

We've had quite a lot of rain in the last few weeks.  Our tomatoes have succumbed to disease (they don't like all that moisture).  We might have another week with them, but they are dropping off, for sure. 

Brussel sprout tops?  These are the bunch of greens that look like smallish collards.  They are very nice and tender and cook down quite a lot.  They taste like brussel sprouts and you can use them as you would kale or swiss chard.  We take the tops off the plants to encourage the sprouts to form on the stalks.  In the past we just dropped them on the ground, but then saw the tops being sold at the farmers market and decided to try them out.  We were skeptical, but they are really nice greens and we enjoyed them.  Hope you like them, too! 

Pac Choi (aka bok choy) may be new to our peak season members.  Enjoy it in a stir fry.  You can use it as a substitute for cabbage in cooked dishes.  It's so delicious! 

Take the tops off the carrots before you put them in your fridge for storage!

Cheese shares.

This week is a washed curd cheese (different than a washed rind) that is similar to a Gouda type of cheese.  Not sure if this will be one that we make regularly in the future, but it's tasty!  A nice cheese for cooking or snacking.  Cheese soufflé?  Yum.  

Dutch Baby Pancake with Gouda, Crispy Bacon, and a Fried Egg

Recipes.

Corn Chowder Salad from Smitten Kitchen

Sesame Salmon Fillets with Bok Choy

• 1/2 cup sesame seeds
• 1/2 Tbsp. garted fresh ginger
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1 pound salmon fillets
• 1 tbsp oil
• 4 cups or more thinly sliced bok choy
• 1/2 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
• 1 tsp. rice vinegar
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp sesame oil

In a shallow dish combine the sesame seeds, ginger, black pepper, and salt stirring together until the mixture resembles wet sand.  In another dish, lightly beat the egg.  Dip each salmon fillet into the egg, letting the excess drip off.  Gently press the fillets into the sesame mixture, turning to coat both sides (if the fillet has skin, only coat the skinless side). 

In a large nonstick skillet, heat the vegetable oil over medium high heat. Cook the salmon, turning once, for 4-8 minutes, or until cooked to your preferred doneness.  Transfer to a plate. 

increase the heat to high.  Add the bok choy, bell pepper, vinegar, soy saice, and sesame oil to the skillet.  Cook stirring often, for 2-3 minutes or until the bok choy is wilted.  Arrange the bok choy on plates and top with the salmon.  Serve with wasabi mashed potatoes or rice. 

On the farm.

More variety in the box this week.  Greens again.  Color on the bell peppers.  Picking tomatoes green.  It means Summer is just about over.  Sigh.  It's been a good one.  This week looks like it will stay fairly warm, but next weeks forecast is looking down right chilly.  We are keeping fingers crossed the the cantaloupe and musk melon can ripen before the frost hits. 
 

Here's Otto pretending to be a vegetable that wouldn't fit into the CSA box

Otto is a little bummed that he wasn't allowed to take bites out of these big beautiful peppers. 

Photo by Dana.  Thanks to all the beneficial insects (and frogs and birds) that have done a great job keeping the pests under control this season!