Tewksbury Grace Farm

Hi Friends,

This is the final delivery of the season (sniff, sob); we have seen a fine fall harvest for our CSA family, and hope you have enjoyed all the many types of fruits, vegetables, and shiitake we’ve grown for you! When you pick up your share, please be sure to get both of your bags, which will be labeled with your name.  Please pick up your delivery as soon as possible, because we will have frozen blackberries in the bag!

We spent the last two weeks covering our vegetables with double and triple row covers to keep them alive during the cold nights.  Nature was cooperative, and we will be bringing you some wonderful, fresh produce this week.  Although the cold weather was challenging for some of our crops, for others, it was a benefit.  Our carrots have sweetened in the cold weather, with their starches turning to sugars. Our cabbages have hardly noticed the lower temperatures.  We’re sure you’ll enjoy the harvest this week, and we hope you can feature some of our items in your Thanksgiving dinner.   This week’s bags will include…

• Green Cabbage (a nice juicy, crunchy slaw style)
• Purple Savoy Cabbage (a beautifully colored crinkle head)
• Potatoes (a mix of purple and yellow. Purple sweet potato in same bag.)
• Red Onions
• Small Garlic (in onion bag)
• Spinach (a dark green trophy! We rinsed the bunch once, but you will need to rinse again. VERY tasty just wilted, with a drizzle of sesame oil and seasoning. Powerhouse of vitamins.)
• Winter Squashes (one acorn, one sweet dumpling – we like these best just cut in half, roasted in the oven with a dollop of butter and drizzle of maple syrup. Don’t let these become counter ornaments! East soon – these varieties do not store well.)
• Mixed Daikon Radish and Turnip bag (cut these roots mandolin thin, and marinate them in a sweet vinegar sauce in the fridge. Eat as a salad condiment.)
• Dried Heirloom Tomatoes (we dehydrated these heirloom tomatoes just as soon as we brought them in warm and sun-kissed from the field…VERY sweet. You can eat these as they are, or rehydrate in warm water. Excellent on pizza and lasagna.)
• Frozen Blackberries (plan to put these in the freezer asap unless you eat them over the weekend. Perfect blended with Greek yogurt.)
• Strawberry Jam (we had only a small batch of this delicious spread made, so you all are the happy recipients!)
• Carrots (a taste of rainbow colored fall carrots. Quite sweet.)
• Kohlrabi (1 large, 1 small)
• Korean Purple Sweet Potato (inside top of potato bag…hmmmm?, you might be saying about this unusual tuber. This is an interesting, very pretty –inside -- heirloom Asian sweet potato cultivar that we trialed this year. Slice thinly and fry quickly with a few bread crumbs, olive oil, and seasoning until lightly crisped. Unique!)

Best wishes and aloha until the 2014 farm season!

Johnny and Leah