Abbe Hills Farm CSA

Greetings shareholders,

This Saturday, we'll have beautiful potatoes (yippee!!!), Candy onions, beets, small turnips, lettuce, radishes, chilies, herbs, and lots of greens again.  I think we're going to run a little low on the big white bok choi, but there are two others that are smaller with dark green stems that are quite good.  There will be two kinds of Chinese cabbage if you can stand it again, and also some very nice beet tops, mustard greens, and arugula.  I'm going to give you several squash, including butternut, acorn, spaghetti, and buttercup, so bring a big bag.  The buttercups are orange and green.  They will be better if they sit around for another month or so.  Buttercups aren't as sweet as butternuts, and a little more dry and nutty tasting. 

I wanted to give you daikon radishes this week (the huge white ones), but the ground is so hard that I can't dig them!  We need some rain.  Rain would also cause the spinach to grow, which it needs to do quite badly.  I'll try to have a small bag of it for you for next week.  The lettuce, on the other hand, seems to be able to live without water.  I tried to grow iceberg lettuce this fall for the first time, and it looks pretty good, although I think it would have been nicer with some rain and cooler weather.  I'm looking forward to giving it to you.  We've also got lots of pretty mixed leaf lettuce which I'll cut for you tomorrow.

A group of Cornell students came last Sunday and dug the potatoes.  What a great day.  They are almost all out of the ground now, and we have enough to give you a big pile of them each of the next two Saturdays.    The next big thing to get out of the garden is the rest of the squash.  We'll be doing it Sunday afternoon from 1:00 until 5:00.  If you want to help, come by.  It's kind of fun to put zillions of squash into great big piles.

There are at least two kittens here who need homes, the gray and the gray and white spotted.  They're cute and they're free.  They need to live here until the last pickup day, Oct 23, but after that, they are going to want to live somewhere else.  Maybe your house?

Here is a link to a good new publication on organic food, "What is Organic Food and Why Should I Care".   It's just published from the University of Minnesota.  It looks like a useful resource for eaters.

Saturday, October 16, is World Food Day, a day devoted to concern about and action to alleviate hunger.  Here's some information about the day.  Two wonderful groups, Bread for the World, and Heifer International will be honored with the World Food Prize.  I'm honored that we get to have a vegetable pickup on this important day.

See you Saturday,

Laura