Maplewood Organics

If you haven’t taken our 2009 CSA Survey yet, please go to this link and take 5-10 minutes to complete our brief survey. It really helps us meet your needs better and improve from year to year. We want you to be happy with your share from week to week. We work hard to provide you with the freshest food possible and to grow a wide enough variety to make everyone happy.

We’re ending the season with lots of choices for you. As the weather gets cooler, the crops slow down in production…so there’s less of certain foods. This just means that you get to make more choices about what goes into your share. Let us know how you like this!

Local Harvest website blog (

Garden Progress

Lots of new crops are under cover. We use floating row cover to protect our early and late season crops from frost, but also to raise the temperature just a bit on cool and warm days to make everything grow a bit faster. Floating row cover can also protect against insect damage when set up at planting time. If taken care of well, the same row cover can be used for years. Every year I buy a few more rolls so I can cover a bit more in the spring and fall. A farmer friend of mine buys very wide rolls so he can cover many rows at once. I’d like to try some next year.

This week, We’re planting a small patch of spinach to see if we can get it started and over-winter it. Other than that, planting is done for the season. We move on to garden clean up and some winter rye cover crop. We plan to plow our big garden this fall and apply compost and manure. We’re going to build up some of the low, wetter areas with topsoil first. Then in the spring, we’re going to hire a rock crusher, then seed the whole field down in oats and clover to smother the weeds. We’ll mow the oats when the clover has a good hold and leave the clover as our paths all season. All of our earliest crops will go in the smaller garden behind the house.

Farm News

Thank you to everyone who has filled out our survey. It very helpful to know what everyone wants. We’re in the process of compiling the data to see what crops are most and least desirable. There are of course different people who want more and less of the same vegetable! For instance, many of you want lettuce for salads every week. Some of you were overwhelmed by the lettuce. We did a better job this year than ever before of planting crops multiple times to be able to offer them week after week. The best examples are peas, beans, yellow squash, and lettuce. We’ll keep at it and keep improving next year. We plan to get closer to having lettuce at least as a choice every week. We’ll plant our broccoli and bok choy in multiple plantings. We’ll also be returning all of our melons to the greenhouse. We had such great success for two years, followed by two years of disappointing results in the field. Back to the greenhouse we go!!!

Recipes of the Week

Potato Parsnip Latkes

8-10 ounces of potatoes

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 medium parsnips (1 lb total), peeled and coarsely grated (1 Maplewood bunch)
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh chives
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
3/4 cup vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 250°F.

Peel potato and coarsely grate into a bowl. Add lemon juice and toss to combine. Place potato on towel, then gather up corners to form a sack and twist tightly to wring out as much liquid as possible. Stir potato together with parsnips, flour, eggs, chives, salt, and pepper until combined well.

Heat oil in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over moderate heat until hot but not smoking. Fill a 1/4-cup measure three-fourths full with latke mixture and carefully spoon it into skillet, then flatten to 3 inches in diameter with a slotted spatula. Form 3 more latkes in skillet, then cook until golden, about 1 1/2 minutes on each side. Transfer latkes with spatula to paper towels to drain. Keep warm on a rack set in a shallow baking pan in oven. Make more latkes in same manner, in batches of 4, with remaining mixture.

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BAKED ACORN SQUASH WITH APPLE STUFFING from COOKS.COM

1 med. acorn squash

2 sm. apples, unpeeled, diced

2 tbsp. diced celery

2 tsp. minced onion

2 tsp. butter, melted

2 tbsp. water

Dash of salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Cut squash in half. Remove seeds. Place cut side down on baking sheet sprayed with vegetable pan spray.

Combine apples, celery, and onion. Add butter and water. Put in small baking dish. Cover.

Bake squash and apple stuffing for 45 minutes or until tender. Remove from oven.

Salt squash. Fill with apple mixture.

Serves 2.