Boulder Belt Eco-Farm

 

Good morning,

It's the first day of the 2010 Boulder Belt Farm Share Initiative-Woo Hoo! This is the first in a weekly series of newsletter that only FSI member get, i.e. this is different than the quasi-weekly missive I send out year round to the hundreds of Boulder Belt Fans on my list.

As you know if you read the email that had the 2010 Farm Share Initiative Regulations and Musings for 2010 that pick up is every Wednesday after 4pm and any shares not picked up by 6:30am Saturday mornings will be taken to Oxford and donated to the Oxford First Choice Food Pantry. If you need to do a Saturday Pick-Up you must tell me in advance (like the week before you are scheduled to pick up, a simple email will do the trick).

Your shares will be in bags with your name on it. Last year I requested that members supply their own reusable bags and I am doing so again this season. I did think about buying a hundred or so (they are very cheap) but thought that all of us have a plethora of reusable tote bags around the house that we do not use so why should I waste more resources buying more bags when the members can supply such. So, if in the next week or so, you could bring 2 to 4  reusable shopping bags that would be wonderful. Otherwise, I will put your food into plastic shopping bags. Please take only the bag(s) with your name on it (plus the other members' bags, if you are picking up for other people). This is important as some times people will order extra stuff and I simply put that extra food into that person's share. And on occasion I may omit an item from a share at the member's request

The shares, unless otherwise noted, will be in the store fridge to your right as you come in the front door. Today they will be on the shelving near the fridge (unless I fire the fridge up than, in that case, they will be in the cool environment)

Okay one of the purposes of this news letter is to let you all know what is going on on the farm. I will continue to do this but if you are on Face Book and not already a Fan of Boulder Belt Eco-Farm sign up today. I am using the Boulder belt Fan page to be as they say these days, transparent about the farm. In other words, I am posting, usually several times a day what we are doing on the farm here is the link to the Fan page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boulder-Belt-Eco-Farm/368403976315?ref=sgm. I also have a blog that is usually about the farm (and is getting an increasing number of videos of the farm posted to it) though I will talk politics of food as well there http://www.boulderbelt.blogspot.com

But lessee, what's going on at Boulder Belt Eco-Farm? Lots of things. Mid spring means being very busy. We are getting beds to get ready to plant (and on the blog is a series of very short videos that show you just what we do to get a bed ready for seedlings), planting beds with both direct seeding and transplanting seedlings. We are still starting lots and lots of seedlings (we probably start 3000 of them annually, maybe more) to be transplanted into the garden over the next 6 to 8 weeks. Plus we are harvesting asparagus daily and with the start of the FSI and soon the Oxford Uptown farmers market will be weekly and we will have the farm store open 3 or 4 days a week we will be harvesting other things like lettuce, arugula, kale, etc., several times a week. And than there is maintenance-hoeing and other kinds of weeding (like hand pulling or digging the damned things out) puppy training (we have a rather large and growing 5 month old bitch pup, Betty, we rescued in late January) so that she will one day become a stellar market garden dog. Her training is coming along well so far. She is at least a year ahead of Nate, the other dog we have. It took him about 3 years to figure out what we meant with terms like "out of the garden". but it is possible that we will have a crop failure due to Betty's antics like trying to bury a bone in a flat of seedlings (fortunately they were flowers for our own enjoyment and not a commercial crop) but since we do not have eyes in the backs of our heads nor the ability to do farm work and closely monitor the puppy she gets opportunities to do mischief and right now she is in a bone burying phase and we have found her bones in some rather bad places (freshly tilled beds are favorite). All that said the market garden is big at close to 4 acres and there is no way she can do much damage other than destroying a bed or two (but likely all she would do is damage small parts of many beds which gets us mad at her but as far as the crop goes minimal loss). Now why do we have Betty as she has the potential to do a great deal of crop damage? Because her job that Nate (that's right we are using a dog to train another dog) is training her to do run the deer and kill rabbits and mice, all of which can and will do far more damage to the market garden than a hyper playful pup. Without the dogs doing this night time job we would likely lose around 75% of the crop to deer, bunnies and mice. But with the dogs we lose no more than 10% to the wild life. We found this out when we moved from the old farm to this farm in 2005. At the old farm we left a lot of crops in the field (we had planted them in June and July, before we knew we were buying an farm and moving in October). When the dogs were still around the crops were not touched but within 3 days of the dogs leaving that farm we noticed the deer had moved in and were happily eating the beets and strawberry plants, among other things and in one night destroyed about 50% of what we had left.

This farm has a much much higher deer population-we believe the herd is around 300 head-and yet we rarely lose anything to them because ever since we have been here we have had at least 2 dogs working all night to keep them away. It's that or investing around $50K in deer fencing around the perimeter of the farm. I'll take dogs over fencing every time.

Oh yeah, we encourage you to take advantage of the farm. feel free to walk around the farm. To get access to the farm walk between the barn and the store and there are two gates. the one to your right will open and allow you onto the farm. We have a pond that is stocked and fun to fish (and you can keep what you catch), we have about 2 miles of trails running all over the farm. We have a lot of beauty out here. use it if you wish.

 I would like to schedule a on farm pot luck and farm tour either the end of this month or sometime in May. I am thinking on a Sunday afternoon/evening. But I need input as to when this will work for everyone. Let me know sooner than later. Potlucks are BYOB, though we usually have some homemade wine and beer on hand. Plus you will need to bring a dish that can feed 6 to 8 and things to eat with (flatware, plat, cup). let me know sooner than later when you would like to do this.

Recipe
EZ Salad dressing
Salad dressing is one of the easiest things to make and there is absolutely no reason to go out and buy over priced, full of crap that you do not want in your body, salad dressing when you can make your own. I will endeavor during salad season to give out several different dressings. Here is what I have been using for several months

1/4 cup vinegar-I like to mix balsamic and rice vinegar
1/2 TSP salt
1/4 cup honey, more or less (usually more than less)
1 clove raw garlic either put through a garlic press (use two cloves if using a press as you lose so much) or grated on a micro-planer-if you don own one of these you can either go to a hardware store and pay about $8 for one or go to a cooking store (I know Jungle Jim;s has these in stock) and pay almost double for exactly the same thing. I am a huge advocate of the micro plane for cooking.
1 cup good olive oil.

In a small canning jar or salad dressing carafe  mix together the honey, salt and vinegars. Cover the jar and shake well to mix everything together (takes a good minute as the honey will not want to mix easily) when everything is uniform than add the oil and shake again. let this sit for at least an hour before using. this will last about 2 weeks sitting on the kitchen counter, it does not need to be refrigerated and if you do the oil will congeal making it necessary to warm it up so you can use it and not get big olive oil globs.

For variations on this you could add a 1/2 tsp of dried rosemary or perhaps the same amt each of dried basil and oregano. Or maybe finely chop some chives and put them in the mix. The amounts I am using for the dried herbs are only a guideline and, in fact, when I make dressing I never measure anything other than the salt so with the herbs do this to taste but know that 1/2 tsp is a good amount to start.

 
What's In the Share
Leeks-you get 2 leeks this week
Lettuce-you will get 5 heads of various heirloom lettuces. These will be from a bed of lettuce that was planted last year and over wintered in a hoop house.
Spinach-you get a bag that should be around 1/2 pound (but maybe less, I won't know until I bag the stuff later today
Chives-a big bunch of oniony chives to use raw on salads, potatoes, soups, dip, etc..
Asparagus-I did not think there would any of this for the first couple of week of the FSI but last week it started coming up. Still I figured that there would only be enough for 1/2 pound per share. I was wrong, you get a whole pound this week.
Potatoes-a 2 pound bag of French Fingerling taters. These are red on the outside with a golden flesh. very good for roasting, frying, in salads but not the best for mashed taters
Parsnips-These look like a white carrot but are much sweeter. These are great roasted, covered, for 30 minutes in a 350F oven. if you have not had a parsnip before this may become one of your favorite foods.
Garlic-we are at the end of the 2009 garlic (the 2010 garlic will not be harvested until early July) so you are getting what seems like an awful lot of garlic, it is not as at least half of the cloves will be unusable.
Dried Rosemary-a jar of dried rosemary-this is wonderful on potatoes and poultry
Spring Mix-a mix of baby arugula, tat soi, red mustard, mizuna and many different kinds of lettuce. Wash and eat.

Welcome to the last farm share newsletter of 2009. This also means this is the last pick up for most of you (The members that are NOT going month to month have one last pick-up next Tuesday). It's been a wonderful season. We have had great growing conditions, few insect problems (too cool I think) and a lot of interest in the Farm Share Program. We will be doing the FSI again next year though there will be some changes that I will let you all know about when I have them finalized. If you have any input on the FSI let us know, especially negatives, as this will allow us to improve. Though the on farm pick-up will not change this coming year. We had bad experiences with delivery in the past. We want to know what kind of produce you would like us to grow, if the days/hours of pick up are okay or could be better, that sort of thing. A lot of CSA type farms send out a survey to find this kind of thing so consider this request a survey of sorts (a very badly written one)

Already we are thinking about what to plant next year and we will have our seed order finalized and in the mail before Christmas. This year and all the past years we have grown food for Farmers market sales (and other sales such as to restaurants and small natural food stores) and not foe CSA sales because in the past we either did not do a CSA or it was so small and weak it did not matter how we planted we almost always had more than enough food to supply that and all other markets. But interest in the FSI and the farmers markets we do is growing. Plus there should be a new co-op in Oxford, the MOON Co-op opening next summer that we will supply (we have been members of this yet to exist co-op for 6 years and have planned on selling some of our food there for as many years). So all this success means we have to rethink what we are growing as our markets are changing and we have to tweak things to keep up with the times. Oh, an as a side note if you are in the Oxford area or go to Oxford at all and you are not a member of the MOON CO-OP (I realize we have several incredibly hip members who are members already) You must join. This is an amazing group doing an amazing thing in Oxford that will be a huge support for the local foodies, farmers and food-shed. But they need more members to add to the almost 500 they have now. It costs $150 to join and they have flexible payment plans. More information at http://www.mooncoop.com. You know you will shop there when it opens as it sounds like it will be a mini Jungle Jim's (it will have everything) only with a lot more local foods and hipper people running the place.

Okay, back to future plans at Boulder Belt. Right now we are seriously thinking of dropping almost all the tomatoes-we grew something like 450 plants this year with over 21 varieties. We have found that there is a tomato glut at the farmers market from July through September so we are not selling as many as we have at the farmers market and I am guessing that you, our members, do not want 12 pounds of tomatoes a week for 8 to 10 weeks. We did donate hundreds of pounds of tomatoes to a food pantry in Oxford and chickens ate a lot of them but we still had too many. Next year we think it will be around 100 plants most of with will be grown for the farm share and our own use. These will be replaced by more alliums-onions, leeks, garlic, shallots, etc. We will also do more root crops of other kinds as well because they are food and they store well and we really want to do more winter share stuff and get our members more deeply entrenched in locavorism. Part of that is getting it through people's heads that it is possible to eat a nice variety in winter in Ohio from local sources (granted, it is far easier for omnivores than vegans to do so). So we have to grow for winter to do this.

We will be doing a lot more greens as well. This year we planted a lot but had several failures over the year. This is happening now which is why you are not getting spring mix and lettuce in your shares as often as I think you should. The stuff is spotty and growing slowly so we often can cut only 4 to 5 6 oz bags which will not cover all the members. So it goes to the farmers market. Of course every year brings different growing conditions and we may find we are way over planting next year if the conditions are perfect for greens

Of course we will not know what to grow until we have an idea of how many FSI members we will have next year. And you guys probably won't know if you will join until I figure out the dates, cost, etc.. I plan on finalizing the details before mid December and will post this on the Boulder Belt website as well as sending everyone who has been a Boulder Belt FSI member a notice

Recipe
Root Roast

Garlic
parsnips
potatoes
carrots
turnips
leeks
onions
etc..
Olive oil
Salt

Winter squash is also good in this as is celery and tomatoes. Pears and apples might also be good

Wash, peel and cut the roots into 1 to 2 inch chunks. The garlic you want to keep the corm whole and cut off the top 1/8 inch so that the tops of the cloves are just exposed. Toss everything into a roasting pan (or baking dish you cover with something like aluminum foil), drizzle the oil over top and salt to taste and put into a preheated 350F to 400F degree oven for about 30 to 40 minutes.

Okay on that note here is what you will get in your share this week:

Parsnips-You should have gotten these for the past couple of weeks but they never seemed to be dug in sufficient quantities  (and they are a bitch to get out of the dirt-it takes about 4 minutes to coax one out vs carrots which take about 15 seconds to dig up). But yesterday we went and got a bunch-about 15 pounds and it only took 1.5 hours with two of us digging. At any rate these are delish. they look like a white carrot and are related. best roasted with other root veggies
Tomatoes-the tomatoes plants died a couple of weeks back including the late crop we thought would do well in a hoop house but we were able to harvest a lot of green tomatoes and now have some ripening. You should get 3 to 4 maters in your share.
Kale-a big bunch of kale. It should be sweeter than last week as it has been hit by two frosts since Friday
Herbs-I have herbs that need to be used you will get a bag of one of them. There is tarragon, sage, dill, cilantro, parsley, rosemary and oregano to choose from. if you have preference tell me before  noon today (if you are picking up Tuesday), otherwise i will toss one at random in your share
Garlic-2 corms of garlic
Onions-about a pound of red and yellow onions. The yellow onions are best cooked as they are hot, hot. The reds have tended to be hot as well
Peppers-3 to 4  peppers, mostly green because that is what we have.
Leeks-a couple of Lincoln leeks
Red Turnips-around 3/4 of a pound of these turnips. Make a dish of mashed turnips for Breast cancer awareness month (they will be pink)
Mitsui Rose radish-AKA Red meat radish. This is a cooking radish but can be eaten raw if you like a pungent radish. More importantly they are beautiful
Pears-8 pears for eatin'. these are getting sweeter as they get older
Potatoes-You will get a variety of fingerlings this week-the red with gold flesh are French Fingerling and the white with yellow flesh are Russian Banana (I do not name these things). these are excellent for roasting or soups and stews but not good for mashed taters

Wow! We have one week and a half left in this farm share (the full season Tuesday folks go into November). Hopefully we will have October weather instead of the mid November weather we have "enjoyed" the past week. The prediction is for warm clear weather for the next 3 days than rain Friday and Saturday. This mens if you are picking up food you might want to give yourself an extra 30 minutes and take a walk around the farm. If you do so the entry is the red gate between the store and the barn. If there are dogs about they are friendly and like you (and your kids) already. The big guy is Nate and the smaller long haired dog is Danny.

We got our first freeze, finally. All the tomatoes, peppers and other summer produce that was not protected is done for the year. So now we have a market garden full of sorry looking dead plants. Over the next several weeks we will remove the plants and either burn them or compost them (some things got diseased and need to be burned and not composted.) Than we take up the ground covers and drip tapes and plant winter rye as a cover crop in some beds if it is not too late and other beds will be left open for late winter/ early spring plantings of things like spring mix, leeks, onions, scallions, parsnips, spinach, arugula, etc..

The freeze means it is finally time to plant garlic. We started the process yesterday by doing the final prep (raking for 4 and tilling for 3) on the 6 to 7 beds where the garlic will be planted. Than we counted just how many seed corms we have (okay, I did this several weeks ago. After all the garlic had been cleaned I than separated the big ones from the smaller ones) and than figured out how many cloves of each kind we should have. It turns out we have enough garlic to do 11 50' x 4' beds (450 garlic plants per bed). But we will do only 7 beds at most and 6 beds are more likely. The rest we sell as seed garlic at $3.50 a corm.

Okay, back to garlic planting prep. The next step is to separate the garlic cloves, thousands of them. Than when that is done it is planting time. Hopefully by mid afternoon today we will have several hundred garlics in the ground and by the end of the month we will have our 3000 or so cloves all tucked into the soil. than we wait for the greens to poke above the soil surface this fall. than they will die back over winter and in early spring the greens will reemerge and by late June we will start pulling green garlic and in July will harvest the crop, cure it and sell it all summer, fall and winter as we have done every year for the past 13 or so years.

Recipe
Pear Ginger Cobbler

(I take this from the New Basics Cookbook. If you do not have this cook book buy it!)

8 ripe pears, peeled and cut into 1/4" slices
11/2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons white sugar (I accidently used a cup of sugar the last time i made this and it was just fine-and i generally cut 1/3 to 1/2 the sugar in recipes)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice (i.e 1 medium lemon)
finely grated zest of 1/2 lemon
pinch of salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup vegetable shortening (I use organic lard from Morning Sun farms in W. Alexandria, OH. Crisco and all other vegetable shortenings are the dreaded hydrogenated fats so avoid. Since I am out of the loop as far as vegetable fats perhaps there is a non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening out there if not use all butter)
1 egg
1/3 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 425F. Butter a large (14" long) baking dish or casserole or a 21/2 to 3 quart souffle dish

Combine pears, ginger, lemon juice, lemon zest and the sugar (except the the 3 tablespoons) in a large bowl and toss well to combine. Put this into the prepared baking vessel

In another bowl combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and 1 TBL of the sugar. That add the butter/shortening and start cutting the fat into the flour mixture with either 2 forks or a pastry cutter until the mixture resembles corse crumbs-do not over do this. Lightly beat the egg and milk together and slowly add this to the dry ingredients. Lightly kneed the dough adding more flour if needed to make a smooth not sticky dough

break off portions and place them on top of the fruit pressing lightly and flattening the dough. Cover entire surface with dough pieces to give a "cobbled" effect

Sprinkle the remaining sugar over the dough and bake until well browned 35 to 45 minutes (set your timer to 35 mins as 45 mins is usually way too long)

What's in the Share this Week

Beets-mainly red beets but you might get some golden beets in your bunch as well. the beets are on the small size but tender and sweet
Radishes-a nice bunch of either Easter Egg or D'Avignon radishes
Garlic-2 corms of garlic
Carrots-a pound or so of orange carrots. These will be much nicer that previous carrots as we are now harvesting the fall carrots and they are the best carrots of the year for us.
Celery-more celery this week. I was going to do celeriac this week but since we had to harvest all the celery before the freeze we have a lot and it will not keep for weeks and weeks like the celeriac. So into the shares it goes
Leeks-2 leeks
Spring Mix-a 6 oz bag of our spring mix. Make a salad this week
Kale-a half pound or more of kale. Since we have had a freeze this should be really sweet and yummy
Ginger-yes ginger! We tried to see if we could grow it and had some success. This is the tropical looking item with the skinny greens and the knobby roots. You can do one of two things with this-eat it (remove the leaves and peel and use as you would any ginger) or plant it and get more ginger next summer (it takes 10 to 12 months to get a crop. The plant wants temps above 60, full sun in the winter and morning sun in the summer. Put it in a larger pot that you think it needs so it has room to expand)
Pears-2 pounds of our Kieffer pears
Winter Squash-2 to 3 pounds of squash, probably a mix like last week. Acorn is dark green, butternut is beige and delicata is yellowish with green or orange stripes. All cook the same way-350F over. Cut in half, remove the seeds and cook face down on a cookie sheet 20 to 35 minutes.
Peppers-several red/orange/yellow/green peppers from the great pepper stash

Shares will be ready for pick-up after 4pm Tuesday and Thursday and any time Friday. We will likely be gone after 4pm Tuesday (today) to run errands so if you need us that will be a problem. The shares will be on the table by the refrigerator as they usually are.

Lucy Goodman
Boulder Belt Eco-Farm
Eaton, OH
http://boulderbelt.blogspot.com

We are firmly into autumn. The trees are turning, the summer birds have either left or are now leaving (though, for some reason, the red winged black birds are back after leaving in September). We have had our first frost warning which came to nothing but did cause us to work 12 hours this past Saturday (see http://boulderbelt.blogspot.com/2009/10/frost-warning.html for my take on that). I do not know why I still believe the weather people when they predict anything. They get things wrong far more often than they get things right. Still it is always a good idea this time of year to get one's market garden buttoned up for the cold weather and now we are ready so when the next frost warning comes we are ready.

This means we have really shifted away from summer fare. You will continue to see peppers in your share, hopefully, through the end of this month and into the first couple of pick-ups for the winter share. You may even see some ripening tomatoes in your shares through mid November. Like the peppers we had to pull a lot of green tomatoes off the plants so they would not freeze and get ruined. We found out years ago that tomatoes ripened off the vine do not suffer in the flavor realm. Good flavor is caused by good soils rich in clay and loam. Florida, Arizona and California, where most of the tasteless red orbs come from all have sandy soils, not good for great tomato flavor. That said, because these maters matured in September/October they will not have the flavor of a mater that matured in July/August but they will have far better flavor than grocery store maters. And you will not see tomatoes this week.

One thing you will see are melons. We had watermelon plants set a second round of fruit back in August. We have never had this happen before so we let the fruits stay on and mature to see what we would get. And what we now have are small melons with decent flavor. They need 14 hours of  daylight and heat to get great flavor. In the fall they get under 12 hours and down right chilly conditions. So we get small melons. Not all of you will see water melons (I believe we have a total of 9 and there are 11 members), some of you will get charantais melons/cantaloupes that did the same thing-set fruit a second time. Cantaloupes will do this second setting thing much more commonly than watermelon. And cantaloupes are more forgiving of low light and colder conditions. Thus the loupes are pretty darned good tasting, even if they are small. And if you are doing the winter share expect to see melons the first couple of pick-ups as we are growing them in a hoop house and they have set fruit which gets bigger daily. So barring an attack from the local mice and vole population (which, unfortunately, is likely, even with traps all over the place) we should have a late crop of melons in early November.

The fall crops are doing decently. The fall planted broccoli is beginning to make heads. The fall planted cabbage got attacked by green caterpillars and most of the heads are not forming well at all so we may not get a fall crop at all. The fall rutabagas are looking fabulous. The 'bagas, because they will store for months, would have traditionally been a very important crop to our ancestors. These would have been one of the few veggies available come Feb. (along with leeks and a few other things). The fall carrots are also very nice-sweet, on the large side and pretty much free of maggot damage (which we get a lot of in the summer crop). We have a lot of spring mix planted. The mix I am currently cutting is not growing well. But we had a nice rain the end of last week that seemed to help it a lot. But because it is not growing well you won't see it this week but should next week and on into winter. Strangely the arugula bed that is just a few feet from the spring mix is doing well (and the spring mix beds do have arugula in them that is only so so). I dunno if we have a soil problem that is very localized (we have noticed this phenomena on our farm-little areas of either  great soil or horrible soil that snake through the top and bottom areas). We have several other later plantings that are coming along well so far. but they will not be ready to cut for several more weeks at the earliest.

The parsnips are looking great. We dug a few last Friday to see how they are and they are nicer than last year ( they were spectacular last year). I expect that parsnips will start showing up in your shares in the next couple of weeks and will be a staple of the winter shares. If you have never had a parsnip you are missing out. They look like a white carrot (they are a relative) and are quite sweet. Not many people grow them because they take about 7 months to grow and must be planted in late winter or very early spring because the seeds need cold soils to germinate. We plant them in March for October/November harvests.

We can use any and all clean plastic or paper shopping bags you no longer need. In a week we can go through several hundred. pick up is after 4pm-if you come earlier you may have to wait. of course that is a wonderful excuse to wander around the farm. Remember access to the farm is one of the unique perks of being a Boulder belt FSI member. We may not be having an October potluck/farm tour but you can still walk about the farm. And there really is no better time of year to do so. It is pretty much drop dead gorgeous out here right now. You really should take advantage before the weather gets nasty and the prettiness goes away.

Recipe
Oven fries

A pound or so of taters, julienned
salt
olive oil

You will need a roasting pan with a lid or cover with aluminum foil. take the julianned taters and cover them lightly with oil (do not use too much) and than salt lightly. put into a preheated 350F oven and cook for about 15 minutes. Take out and stir (some will stick, that is all right) and put back into over this time with cover off. Stir again in another 10 minutes and cook another 5 to 10 minutes after that until the fries are nice and crispy. If you like your fries less crispy than cook for less time

What's in this Week's Share

Radishes-a nice bunch of mixed D'Avignon (long red and white) and Easter Egg (round purple, white and red/pink)
Winter squash-either one largish squash or a couple of small ones. This will be either butternut, delicata or Acorn (or some of each)
Chard-This past weekend we got had a message left on our answering machine from a long time very dedicated customer raving about the beauty of our chard. She went on for at least 2 minutes about how wonderful the chard is. I have no idea if she got past the beauty of the chard in order to cook and eat it. For those of you who may be new to chard, we grow a mix called Bright Lights which has 5 to 7 different colors and can be quite spectacular looking. this is easy to cook-wash, chop and steam in about 1 to 2 inches of water. the left over water will turn purple and is tasty and full of nutrients.
Arugula-this is usually used as a salad green though Italians love to put this on pizza (it is not cooked with the 'za, but rather, put on right before eating). We grow some of the best Arugula in the USA according to people who would know so enjoy.
Cilantro or parsley-I plan on putting a nice bunch of Cilantro in every share but frankly I do not know if  I have enough. If I don't you will get parsley. If you have a preference (I know some hate cilantro) let me know before 11 today/Thursday so you can get your choice
Peppers-a couple of ripe peppers and perhaps a green or purple one as well
Garlic-2 corms of garlic
Carrots-you will get a 1 pound bag of either orange carrots or our rainbow mix of red/purple, yellow and orange carrots
Celery-we grow celery, it is not like grocery store celery in that it is smaller and stronger. Very good for cooking, not so great, IMO, for raw munching
Shallots-shallots for fancy cooking (okay for ANY cooking)
Melon-as mentioned either a watermelon or cantaloupe-our choice
Potatoes-I do not know what kind of taters you will get this week but they will be new potatoes. FYI new potatoes has nothing to do with size. What most people think of as new potatoes are actually "B" potatoes meaning they are small in size. A true new potato is one that is freshly dug. It can be any size and any color/variety. You find such taters have brighter flavor and are crisp as they are full of moisture. The "new" taters you find at the store have been cured which changes everything and that means they are certainly not "new". You may have noticed this over the months we have put taters in shares as I don't believe you guys have gotten potatoes that had been allowed to cure for more than a couple of days (taters need about a month to cure properly). So really, all your potatoes have been new.

Lucy Goodman
Boulder Belt Eco-Farm
Eaton, OH
http://boulderbelt.blogspot.com

It the first full week in October and we have a couple of returning members and a couple of members who have left leaving us about at the same place as last month member-wise. It seems all things, including Farm Share initiatives, seek equilibrium.

We have one month left in this 31+ plus week affair. That is a long stretch of time for local foods To all you members who signed up for the entire season congratulate yourselves. Most CSA members do not make it so long. As a matter of fact, we had several members who signed up in April drop out, I believe because they were burned out. CSA can be a lot like joining a gym. It is good for you and in the beginning you are very enthusiastic but after months and months of the grind that enthusiasm flags and you look for a way out.

Sometimes I wish we farmers had an easy out. I know getting, often, strange foods weekly in amounts that may be more than you can easily handle gets old. But imagine doing the farming 7 days a week March through November. We have to deal with tons of food-harvest, cleaning, storing and sorting daily. Plus planning, planting, weeding, bug patrolling, feeding, tilling, etc.. farm work tends to be pretty relentless especially may through September. And this leads to farmer burn out. This year is not so bad but in past years we would be so toasty by this time of year that we could barely function well enough to get crops out of the field for marketing, much less being able to think about the next season and get things other than garlic planted in the fall for the following season. This year we are in good shape. Perhaps because Eugene has starting fishing on a daily basis (we have a well stocked pond that we have pretty much ignored for a couple of years). At any rate, he is on top of getting crops in the ground for fall winter and early spring and even planning out where things should go next year.

We still have the massive job of putting the garden to bed for the winter. Thousands of plants need to be ripped out of the ground, fabric mulches need to be taken up, cleaned a bit and stored and than cover crops planted. The plants are piled into what will become compost piles. After the market garden is cleaned up, most of the plants will be run through a chipper shredder so they will compost in 6 months instead of 2 years. Often this job is done in Winter when there is not much else to do. So far about 15% of the beds have been cleaned up (around 45% have active crops in them still and cannot be touched yet). Fortunately, this work can be done between now and when the ground freezes up (usually Late November/early December).

The other fall thing we do is put up hoop houses. If you are picking up this week you will see that 3 have been erected. These will protect various crops through the fall and winter. Right now they are protecting strawberries, zucchini, galia melons, green beans and tomatoes. Later some will be moved over to the leeks and winter greens. Others will stay where they are and we will rip up most of the current crops in them in November/December and plant things like lettuce and spring mix in them to be harvested in March and April of 2010.

Once things are all put to bed in November we can almost take a break-we won't be doing much in the market garden other than harvesting fall/winter greens and leeks for winter markets and the Winter Share members and making sure the weather does not destroy the hoop houses (we generally have 1 or 2 come down during winter due to heavy snow loads or high winds or major ice). But by late December we will have to have our seed orders sent in or else risk either seeds being put on back order or finding they are sold out and by early January (like the second) we will start onion and leek seeds indoors and start the season again.

No recipe this week

What's in the Share
Look for two bags per share this week. Both will be on the table and available for pick up after 4pm

Peppers-This week you get a whole bag of sweet bell peppers. Expect more than 6. I have heard that some peppers are rotting - This happens, I do try to select only peppers that show no signs of damage but my eyes are not the best and sometimes I miss things.
Haricot verts-Pronounced airy coe ver. Real French beans. I snap off the stem end and cook for 10 to 13 minutes in about 1 inch of boiling water.
Beets-You will get a nice bunch of both red and golden beets with greens. the easiest way to cook these is to boil cut up beets in water for about 10 minutes or until soft
Celeriac-AKA Celery root. You get two of 'em this week. This is the ugliest thing we grow (they are the knobby root like things) but really really tasty. Peel off the outer skin and either eat raw or roast, use in a soup or stew like you would use a turnip or potato. They taste like sweet celery. the greens taste like really strong parsley and can be used in soup/ soup stock
Leeks-you get 2 leeks this week.
Kale-A 3/4 pound bag of Kale. Most likely Russian White but I may mix in some Dinosaur and/or Winterbor
Pears-2 pounds of kieffer pears, yum.
Potatoes-At least a pound of mixed taters. Long skinny ones are the fingerlings-bad for mashing great for roasting and frying. The round ones will be either white, red or gold and good for boiling and mashing, among other things.
Red turnips-around 1/2 pound of red turnips. these are actually good raw in salads but also good cooked in things or mashed.
Cayenne peppers-15+ peppers to heat up your life. I find these have a really nice heat and add good flavor to chili, salsa and curries. these may not be hot enough for some of you but should suffice for most.
Garlic-two corms of our hardneck garlic
Spring Mix-A 6oz bag of salad. Please wash before using

Lucy Goodman
Boulder Belt Eco-Farm
Eaton, OH
http://boulderbelt.blogspot.com

The first and last newsletter of the month. Weird, but true because the month of October starts mid week. To all of you who have done this all season, congrats, you have made it almost all the way. In my experience as a CSA farmer this is somewhat rare. In past years we have had up to 50% of our full season members drop out by now. This would start by a few missed share usually in July and by mid September the member(s) would pretty much quit coming to farm (or when we did drop points, the drop point) to get their food. Sometimes they would would let me know what was going on but most of the time they did not. This meant we were making shares that would not be used by the intended people. Very frustrating. I am so happy this has not been the case at all this season. On that note I need to hear from the following people ASAP about next month; Kristan/Earlham, Heather Kardeen and Bea, -Are you in or out for October? Let me know no later than this evening (Tuesday).                       

Life of the farm just keeps going and going. We put up the first of several hoop houses yesterday. It will start out life protecting tomatoes and green beans but by December it will be too cold for those crops and they will be cleared out and something will go in probably in late winter as it is about impossible to get a crop started in an unheated hoop house in December, unless it is warmish and sunny during December. Than we can start spinach or spring mix for March/April harvests. Those maters in that hoophouse should be ready to harvest the end of October and definitely by November, same with the green beans.

The summer season is pretty much over for us-we still have peppers and eggplant in the ground and producing but the melons and tomatoes are pretty much over (except for the maters in the hoop house which have yet to produce anything. Oh, and the tomato volunteers that are covered with green and just now ripening fruits but may not make it through a 36 degree night). I suspect the basil will be gone after a night in the mid 30's (the prediction for Wednesday night/Thursday morning). But cold weather is fine with us as we have shifted to crops that can take the cold and still produce well (as a matter of fact most of the leafy greens prefer cold nights). And if it gets a bit too nippy we have frost protection for the more tender crops still in the ground. the mid 30's will be hard of the peppers which are too numerous to put hoop houses over and too large for row cover so I believe the plan there will be to harvest as many peppers as possible and hope for the best. in past years the peppers have been able to deal with some near freezing temps without too much damage and it may not get nearly as cold as they predict. I note that this morning it is is the low 50's and it is supposed to be in the low 40's so they were off by about 10 degrees (in our favor).

Yesterday evening we spent time digging taters. We got in Pontiac Reds (the potatoes you guys have been getting most weeks for a couple of months, now), Russian banana, a yellow fingerling spud, great for roasting or salads. not great for mashed taters. And German Butterball. The Butterballs are a wonderfully round yellow spud that is a nice all purpose potato. It also is a potato we have grown for only 2 years now and have discovered that if you do not get these spuds out in a timely manner they decide to put out roots and leaves and make more taters. This would be wonderful if we had another 3 months of frost free weather ahead of us but now that is is firmly autumn and winter is on it's way these taters don't stand of chance of producing a crop (actually they do as Eugene has collected all the sprouting butterballs and will plant them in a hoop house where they just might be able to over winter). At any rate, this has never happened to us with any other variety of potato we have grown (and we have grown around 10 to 15 different varieties over the past 15 years) and I guess in the future we will have to remember to get these tubers out of the ground ASAP after they are ready. You see with potatoes, most can be left in the ground for weeks after the plants die back. As long as the ground does not freeze or get water logged (flooded) the taters should be alright (grubs are another factor-they will eat any and all taters they can get too). but we find the butterballs if left in the ground for more than a couple of weeks after the plants die back will try to make babies. All potatoes will eventually do this but most need to be left in the ground for several months or over winter to go into the reproduction mode. Actually the second reproduction mode as the plants make seed balls during the summer that will also turn into potato plants if planted. It is through the seed balls we get new varieties of potatoes. Yukon Gold was developed this way. Some day Boulder Belt may come up with a new variety of spud that is commercially viable as we do plant the seed balls to see what we get. So far we have gotten nothing new or unique. But we keep trying because we find plant breeding fascinating.

We still have a few openings (5/five) for the winter share. Let me know ASAP if you want to keep getting local food through January. Cost is $300, payable by Halloween for food every other week. I wanna give you members first crack at this offer before allowing non members to sign up. Thanks to those of you who have already let me know, yes or no, about the Winter Share Program

We can always use you clean, not full of rips and holes, plastic and paper shopping bags-got a big wad of them taking up space in your home and you don't want to landfill them? We will happily take them off your hands. Other things we are looking far are pint and quart canning jars (no lids needed). If you have any that are just taking up space bring 'em to the farm. If you can and need the jars keep them-oh and on that note if you do can and ever need widemouth lids (no rings) we can supply you with 'em for free as we have about 1500 new unused lids we got from a friend (and there is more where those came from). Anyhoo, if want some let me know and I will toss some in your share. And the final thing we are looking for are dogs and cats-we have lost one old dog and have another close to death and we really need a minimum of 3 dogs to keep the crops safe from deer, groundhogs and other critters. We also need a good mouser or two. If you know of any medium to large breed (mutts are best but preferably no Chow or Pitbull mixes) puppies up to 6 months old that need a good home let us know. Same with kittens.

                                           
Dressing/Stuffing
1 loaf of bread cubed and allowed to go stale over night. If you did not give yourself enough time pop the cubed bread (put it on a baking sheet) into a 350F oven for 10 minutes to dry out. It will take more than 10 minutes to dry the bread but it should be stirred every 10 minutes until it gets to where you want it.
1 quart chicken or vegetable stock or water
1 medium yellow onion chopped
3 (or more) ribs of celery chopped
2 to 3 apples chopped
1 or 2 pears chopped
1 cup of nuts, chopped (walnuts are best but any will do)
1/2 cup of raisins
2 cloves of garlic minced (more or less-to taste)
1/2 pound mushrooms sliced
1 tsp fresh sage (can use dried)
1 tsp fresh rosemary (can use dried)
1/4 cup fresh Italian/flat leaf parsley
1/2 cup melted butter or olive oil
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste

In a large frying pan melt 1/2 the butter (or oil) and saute the onion, mushrooms, garlic and celery until tender. In a large mixing bowl put together the bread, cooked veggies, herbs, salt and pepper, fruit,  melted butter/oil and liquid and mix together. At this point you can either stuff your holiday bird or pork chops or put the dressing into a greased baking dish, cover and bake for about 45 minutes and than serve

What's in the Share this Week
Blue Lake Green Beans-these will be on the big side but will still be tender and delicious
Butterball potatoes-expect about a pound of these plus Russian banana fingerlings (the not round taters).                                                                                               should be good mashed or boiled. I really have not used a lot of these as we are just now doing a real harvest and last year was the year to build up seed stock so I did not get a chance to cook any. not to mention it was a really bad year for them last year so... The Fingerlings are another one that we have grown for only a couple of years but these i know about because we have grown another type of fingerling, French Fingerling, for over 10 years and all fingerling taters have a waxy flesh that is perfect for roasting and boiling for salads.
Spring mix-This is the crop that got me into market farming. I was looking for a decent salad mix after using a local organic mix at a restaurant where I cooked for several years. I could not find a commercial salad mix that was at all decent (not even the organic mixes) so I decided to develop my own spring mix 15 years ago and I gotta say you will find none better. if it were not for spring mix I would not have become the locavore farmer I am today. Enjoy.
Kale-a nice 3/4 pound bag of White Russian Kale (there seems to be a Russian Theme developing with this share)
Radishes-A small bunch of D'avignon (long red and white) and Easter Egg (round red, white or purple) radishes. perfect for your salad
Red Onion-a couple of medium red onions. These are a beautiful all purpose onion.
Sage-herb of the week is sage. This is great for poultry dishes as well as pork. It is a strong herb so use it sparingly and unlike many much more delicate fresh herbs it can be used at the beginning of cooking and hold up. It is also good in herbed bread and biscuits.
Peppers-Last week I warned you all that there will be a future pepper explosion. that time has come. Expect a minimum of 4 huge ripe peppers in your share this week. Perhaps more. Remember these are super easy to freeze and would be great for stuffing.
Eggplant-I expect this to be the last week for eggplant. Aubergines do not like cold weather at all and will either die outright when temps get into the 30's or at the very least pout and refuse to produce more fruit.
Pears-2 to 3 pounds of Kieffer pears, yum yum.
Garlic-I dunno what kind will be in your share, one of the 3 kinds we grow, but it will be good as always.
Winter Squash-You will get 1 to 2 winter squashes in you share. I am not sure what kind at this point but it will either be Butternut (beige) Acorn (dark green), Delicata (oblong, ivory white with green or orange stripes) Sunshine (round and orange) or Cushaw (large, white with green stripes. All of them cook the same way-cut in half                                                         lengthwise, remove the seeds (which are wonderful roasted) and bake on a baking sheet in a 350 oven for 20 to 45 minutes depending on the squash and its size. Squash is done when it is no longer hard to the touch.

Lucy Goodman
Boulder Belt Eco-Farm
Eaton, OH
http://www.boulderbeltfarm.com

 

It's the first day of fall-we have made it through spring and summer and for us farmers it is all down hill from here. Most of the fall planting is done. Next we start cleaning up the market garden so it can be put to bed for winter. This means ripping out old spent plants and making several compost piles with their corpses, taking up the landscape cloth we use for mulch and storing it for the winter than putting in cover crops of annual rye or oats to feed the soil. Cover crops are often problematic for us as they go in late (we still have a lot of crops that won't be ready to take out until after frost) and more often than not we do not get adequate rainfall in the fall (which seems to be happening this year) to get the seeds to germinate and grow a bit before they go into winter dormancy.

The other big job we have is erecting hoop houses over the beds that have our winter crops. We will put up at least 3 this fall and we may have to build a 4th from scratch so we can get everything covered that needs it. In the past we have made do with less but have found that crops protected with just row cover rarely make it past December no matter how hardy they are. Leeks are an exception to this-they will make it through winter but they look bad and are hard to harvest when the ground is frozen. Leeks in a hoop house do much, much better over winter.

This past week we started harvesting dried beans and peas. These will mainly go for seed purposes, though we think the Blanton's peas (more like a black eyed pea than a garden or English pea) will make great soup and we do have a lot of these. Now all we have to do is thresh them and clean them up so they can be used. years ago we grew dried beans as an actual crop but found that they took up an awful lot of space for low yields and we could buy certified organic beans for less than what it cost to raise them so we pretty much quit growing them. You really need to grow acres and acres of them to make it worth the time and effort involved. But growing so many means there is no way they can be harvested and threshed by hand so that means we would have to invest about $50K in a combine (and that would be a used combine, a new one cost $1/2 million) and buy more acreage. So we have decided not to do that as it would bankrupt us.

The Winter Share program will start Nov 11th. I need to know if you are in or out ASAP. Just a simple yes or no will suffice. I have heard from several members already so you guys do not need to respond again.

Pick-up is after 4pm. As there are tomatoes on the list there will be two bags this week. One on the table by the fridge and the other in the fridge with your name on both.

Recipe

Roasted Peppers

You will need a grill (wood is best but propane or charcoal will do the job) a paper grocery bag (do NOT use plastic for this) and as many whole peppers as you can find. get the grill going and when it is hot with some flame put the peppers on. Cook them over the flame turning occasionally until the fruit is blackened and the skin is flaking off, about 10-to 15 minutes. remove from heat and put into the paper bag ASAP. Let the hot and charred peppers sit in the bag for about 15 minutes than take them out of the bag and remove the blackened skin from the peppers. I find it is best to do this over a sink as you will need to rinse them off. Also remove the seeds at this time. now you can either use these smoky tasting peppers right away in your favorite dish or on their own as a side dish/appetizer. or you can cut them into strips, put them on a cooking sheet and freeze them for later use. When the peppers are fully frozen put them into a plastic freezer bag and back into the freezer. These are great in salsa and chili, among other things.

What's In the Share this Week

Mistui Rose radish-AKA water melon radish because it is green on the outside and red inside. These are best used for cooking but can also be eaten raw, though I find them a bit on the fibrous side. I have not had the greens but they are quite edible and i am sure like most greens this is where most of the nutrition is. I would treat them like chard or spinach if you cook them. You get a bunch of three
Tomatoes-likely the last week for these. A few pounds of mix maters, many of which may not be in the best shape. late tomatoes are full of cracks, dings and late blight. Just cut around anything that looks bad.
Dill-an herb we should have had months ago but are just now able to harvest. Dill is a versatile herb that goes well with most veggie, cheese and fish dishes.
Parsley-a nice bunch of Italian Flat leaf parsley
Raspberries-a 1/2 pint box of raspberries this week. they just get better and better.
Red Turnips-a bunch of red salad turnips. these are meant to be eaten raw in salad, like radishes. That's right I am sending you radishes that need cooking and turnips that are best raw, confusing, huh?. The greens are also excellent (I like these and dislike all other kinds of turnip greens).
Potatoes-a couple of pounds of mixed taters. I do not know what we have harvested but there should be red, white and some different fingerlings.
Sweet Peppers-Some purple peppers and at least one red or orange ripe pepper. there would be more ripe ones but once a year Miami University (my Alma Mater) does a local foods dinner for the students and they ordered red peppers and pears for us so I have to make sure I can fill their order. seeing as how we have over 150 peppers plants full of ripening peppers this should not be an issue. But the peppers are ripening sloooowly and unevenly so it has become a small issue. In the coming weeks I will likely overload you guys to some extent with ripe peppers. These are super easy to freeze. Just cut them open, take out the seeds and cut off the white ribs and than cut the peppers into the shapes you want (I dice them) and put into a freezer bag (be sure to get out all the air) and into the freezer for winter/spring use. I suggest you do this with them when you get an overload.
Beets-The beets are back for fall. You will get a bunch of red beets with greens. Like the other root crops with greens this week, these too are edible and tasty and where all the nutrients are.
Green Beans-You will get a pound of either the Haricot verts (long and skinny) or Blue Lake (not so long or skinny) depending on what is producing today and Thursday. It looked like on Saturday that there would be a lot of Haricot verts Tuesday and lots of Blue Lake by Thursday. Of course we were also expecting a couple of inches of rain and not the drizzle we got most of Sunday that resulted in about 1/2" of rainfall. At any rate these beans will be far better looking than the beans you guys have been getting as we have switched from picking old beds to brand new beds.
Copra Onions-These are the best yellow cooking onions ever and that is why we grow them (I am a bit of an onion fanatic). If you want to use them raw just know that they will burn your guts. These do not need to be refrigerated
Garlic-a couple of corms of garlic. I believe you will get Chesnok Red (AKA Shivlisi) this week. This is our strongest garlic and originates in Georgia (Russian GA, not US GA)

Lucy Goodman
Boulder Belt Eco-Farm
Eaton, OH
http://boulderbelt.blogspot.com

We have reached week 24. You will notice that there are changes in your share as we go from summer items into more fall like items. The main crop of tomatoes are about over for the year. We still have some but the yield is way down. On Friday it took me about 20 minutes to harvest tomatoes for market. The week before it took about 1.5 hours and the week before that about 4 hours. This is what happens in September. We did plant a fall crop of maters back in early July and the small plants do have small green fruits on them. We expect that this crop will be ready in mid October through mid November. We will put a hoop house over the beds in a week or two to keep the tomatoes reasonably warm and happy. I have been busy putting up tomato juice, tomato sauce and salsa for use this winter and next spring. I hope you all are not disappointed about not getting 10+ pounds of maters in your share (okay, those of you who started this month may miss 'em but the members who have been with us all summer or the entire season have to be sick of the maters. It was a bit of overkill, but I could have easily distributed 3x to 4x as much some weeks)

We are in the thick of winter squash harvest. It has been a good year for acorn, butternut and sunshine squashes. back in July the butternut looked really bad. The beds got fairly weedy and the weeds hid the developing squashes. So for several weeks it looked like we would get nothing. Than it seemed like over night that the squash foliage died back revealing lots and lots of medium sized squashes. You will not see any butternuts for several weeks in your share as these must cure for 3 to 5 weeks to bring out the sugars in the flesh. Newly harvested butternuts (and this is true of all winter squashes) will have a rather insipid taste. The other reason you won't see a lot of winter squashes in shares (there will be some) is because these are grown for winter markets and shares. Marketing the produce we grow in winter has become a bit of a specialty for us. We do both season extension using row covers and hoop houses and we grow for root cellaring

As has been mentioned several times in past newsletters we are offering a winter share (which has 7 openings, down from 9 last week-if you want our food this winter I suggest you tell us sooner than later) and we got to most of the monthly winter markets in Oxford (3rd Saturday of the month starting in December). Selling at an outdoor market in the depths of winter is pretty hard core (we have sold in ice storms, heavy snow, sub zero temps and, a couple of times, spring like conditions in January). Our goal is to eventually have the winter share program replace the winter farmers markets as there are some down sides to selling outdoors in winter. If the temps are below 25F we cannot take squash or potatoes as they will freeze in about 2 hours. Interestingly, though, greens such as kale and arugula seem to do okay as do parsnips and carrots. So because of past learning experiences such as freezing over 100 pounds of  taters at a subzero market coming home and tossing them in the compost, we know our limitations at such markets. The winter share program has no such limits because the produce stays indoors where it will not freeze and be ruined until members come to get it. And we don't have to stand around for 3 hours in the cold and wind selling (this is not nearly as glamorous as it sounds)

Hey! We have a Pot luck dinner and farm tour THIS Sunday. I have heard from only 4 members out of 13 about this. I need to know ASAP (like today) if you are coming to this event of not. Just reply to this email with a simple yes or no-it's that easy. The festivities will start around 6ish. Meet at the store.

Your shares will be ready after 4pm. It looks like there will be one bag per share this week and they will be in the fridge. Oh and speaking of bags if you have a lot of plastic grocery bags taking up room in your abode we will take them and reuse them (as long as they are clean-absolutely no dirty bags). just bring them with you and leave them on the table where I have been putting the tomatoes all summer.

Recipe
Lamb or Beef stew (if vegetarian leave out the meat). This is a family recipe I learned from my father. He always made beef stew but in recent years I got turned onto stewing lamb and find it is better than beef.

a couple of medium yellow cooking onions, diced
several stalks of celery, diced
4+ carrots (med to large), diced
1/2 pound potatoes diced
1 medium rutabaga peeled and diced
1 large pepper (green, purple or red) diced
1/8 cup fresh sage (or 1-tsp dried)
several sprigs of rosemary (if doing lamb)
1/4 cup of fresh parsley
1TBL dried basil (fresh will not work with this recipe)
2 tsp dried oregano
several cloves of garlic peeled and chopped
salt to taste (at least 1TBL)
2+ quarts of water or meat or veggie stock
Any other veggies you desire such as parsnip, winter squash, zucchini, tomato, leeks, mushrooms, green beans, daikons, etc..
1+ pounds of stew meat (We get ours from Morning Sun Farms which sells it's pastured meat at Oxford, Yellow Springs and West Chester farmers markets)

In a large heated pot (at least 3 gallons) cook the meat until brown (vegetarians skip this step). When the meat is brown remove it from the pot add some butter or oil to the brown bits left by the meat cooking  (vegetarian style will have no brown bits and that's okay) and  add the veggies, salt, herbs and water/stock. On medium high heat bring to a simmering boil. Once simmering turn heat down to medium low, add the cooked meat cover and let cook for at least 2 hours, checking and stirring every so often. You may have to add an additional quart of so of water during cooking. When the contents are soft (especially the meat-you are using stew meat which takes several hours of stewing to be right) grab a blender and puree about 1/3 of the stew (you may have to add some water). Put the puree back into the stew, check seasonings and adjust if needed and you are ready to serve. This is great with a good bread, cornbread  or homemade biscuits.

What's In the Share

Green beans-big beans from an early planting of beans we though was dead and gone but instead has been silently producing beans. These beans look tough but in reality are sweet and tender despite their robust size
Eggplant-at least a pound of neon (purple) and Nadia (black) eggplant. The 3" rain last week got the plants to start producing something other than micro aubergines
Celery-this is a fall vegetable that could use a bit more time to get a bit bigger. This is best used for cooking as it tends to be stronger than what we are used to getting at the store. Celery is hard to grow around here because it is very susceptible to fusarium, a soil fungi endemic to the midwest. Michigan was the #1 producer of celery until the mid 1950's when fusarium destroyed the industry.
Peppers-Several peppers. Some should be ripe and some will be purple and/or green
Cayenne Peppers-several cayennes. These have a nice heat but are not too hot. For some members, I suppose, they will not be hot enough. We had a great deal of trouble getting the hot peppers to germinate this past spring and had planned on several other types but this is what worked. We did get 6 Jalapeno plants to survive in pots on the back deck but they are not producing enough (we have picked 6 so far) for the farm share so I have been using them for our own salsa.
Garlic-A couple of corms of our hardneck garlic
Sage-a nice bunch of fresh sage
Kale-this is the only green we have going right now and because Eugene direct seeded the kale (usually we start seeds indoors under lights than transplant the seedlings out) we have a lot of thinning to do so the kale plants have enough space between them for proper growth this fall and winter. And you get the bounty. I have noticed a lot of the plants have aphids. I do wash the kale before it is put into shares and that does get about 90% of the aphids off the leaves but some stay on so be sure to inspect and wash the care carefully before using (unless you like a bit of extra protein with your greens)
Leeks-a couple of leeks this week
Pears-2+ pounds of our Keiffer pears. this harvest comes from just one tree that for the past 4 years has reliably produced 15 bushels a years. yesterday Eugene harvested 3.5 bushels just to keep major limbs from breaking off under the weight of the fruit
Rutabaga-a couple of medium or one large 'baga (for the stew recipe)
Carrots-You are getting less than perfect carrots. Since we have lost a good dog and a mousing cat in the past year we are getting more and more damage to the carrots from mice and voles (and likely rabbits). They like to eat the top 5% of the roots and leave the rest. These are perfectly good carrots but they do need a bit of work. Mostly cutting off the top of the roots but there may also be carrot maggot damage towards the middle of the carrot. Either cut that out or use a peeler and peel it away. You will get at least 1 pound, probably more.

Lucy Goodman
Boulder Belt Eco-Farm
Eaton, OH
http://boulderbelt.blogspot.com

Greetings Farm Share Members

It is week 23 for some of you and week 2 for others-it's a crazy farm share program we run. Almost no one else in the country will let new members in monthly. That makes us special. But it also makes it very hard to plan out the market garden for the farm share when we do not have a head count of members for the season. I do realize it makes it (somewhat more) convenient for members to be able to drop in and out of the farm share but I am finding that there is an inherent unfairness for the members that paid for a full season (or partial season). The full season members are taking the full risk of being a farm share member. If they go out of town they do not get to make up their missed week(s), for example. So things will change next year. I have not hammered out how they will change other than full season members will get a discount and I don't believe there will be a monthly option. I think monthly option will change to seasonal option where I split the season into 3 or 4 sections and people have the choice of either buying a full season share or a 2 or 3 month seasonal share. Full season people will have the option of a payment plan. seasonal members will have to pay in full. I will likely keep the cost about the same as this year. This is just a heads up for all you members who are planning on joining us in 2010.

Oh and don't forget we will be doing a Winter Share. There are still about 9 spaces left for that. Here are the details:
We will do on farm pick up twice a month, cost will be $100 a month ($50 a share). The shares will be larger than a summer share and will mainly be food that can store for months like taters, winter squash, onions, carrots, parsnips, a few canned goods, garlic, pears, dried herbs, leeks, etc.. If the weather is good to us, leafy greens (arugula, kale, spring mix, lettuce) and other things from the hoop houses will also be included throughout the season (we will certainly have them the first 2 or 3 pick-ups). This will start Wednesday November 11  and go through Wednesday January 20 for 3 months/6 pick-ups. Unlike the summer shares, we require people to pay the $300 for the entire winter share upfront, no month to month shares. We will have 12 shares available this year.

I was going to write bout how dry the farm is getting  and if we don't get rain soon the yields will start dropping a lot and the fall stuff will be spotty. But we got over 2" of rain Monday and the market garden is much much happier. This means no more hand watering-literally taking 2 gallon watering cans out to the newly seeded beds and watering the seeds to get germination. Just like home gardeners do, only our garden is around 100x bigger. As I have mentioned in earlier newsletters, we do use drip irrigation but drip irrigation will not do for starting seeds. It cannot get the soil surface damp enough to ensure good germination. So we are forced to water by hand if it is dry.

As I mentioned, it rained and as long as it doesn't continue to rain non stop through the rest of the month we will be in great shape. If it decides to rain the rest of the month it will be tricky, if not impossible to get beds tilled for the rest of the late fall and winter crops (and even early spring crops like spinach) and seeds planted in the ground. I do not see that happening as September is our driest month of the year. Not to mention we have about 70% of these crops in the ground. So far for fall, we have planted arugula, spring mix, beets, green beans, carrots, radishes, red turnips, fall maters, fall zucchini, fall cukes, snow peas, sugar snap peas, kale, cilantro, cabbage, broccoli, daikon, and likely some other things. Plus we are harvesting a lot of winter squashes (butternut, delicata, acorn, etc..) and soon will be harvesting popcorn, parsnips, celeriac, celery for late summer through winter use. this week you will start to see the winter squashes, and while we do have hundreds harvested most still need to cure for another 3 to 4 weeks before they will be ready to eat. An uncured winter squash has no sugar development so the flavors tend to be dull and a bit off. But wait 3 to 5 weeks and that same squash will be fabulous.

What I want you all to come away with from reading this is just because the "Official" close to summer has happened i.e. Labor Day. This does not mean that us farmers and our farms have suddenly stopped producing. No, and in fact, fall is the best time of year for produce as it all comes in-both cold and warm weather items from mid September until frost when we lose the summer crops like tomatoes and peppers. It is a shame that a lot of non farmer managed/run farmers market close down after Labor Day as this just reinforces this myth on the non farmers of our country. But one of the things we at Boulder Belt Eco-Farm do is educate the general public on the fact that CSA's, Farm Stands and Farmers Markets (if they are still open) are at their best from now through frost. That there is a lot more going on than Corn mazes, Indian corn and pumpkins. That now is the time to buy in bulk so you can put up food for winter

Hey! There is a pot luck dinner/farm tour coming up Sept 20th. That is a Sunday. Please RSVP yes or no ASAP. We will be preparing roasted chicken that we raised for the meal (I can promise you that you will never have a better chicken). We may also offer some home brewed beer and home made wine to drink along with distilled water (this is very pure and excellent). You bring a dish that can feed 6+ people plus things to eat from (plates, cups, flatware). Meet at the store around 6ish and we will do a walk about around the market garden and explain what we do and take any and all questions, than we will eat like royalty.

No recipe this week, sorry.

What's in the Share

Tomatoes-several kinds of heirlooms and a mix of cherry maters. probably around 5 pounds, maybe a more, maybe less. The big reds are GL-18, the pale yellow are great White (one of our favorites), the  big round yellow orange fruits are Sun ray, the orange not so round and flatter fruits are Dr. Wyche's yellow, the small greens are green grape (excellent taste, don't let the color put you off), the smallish browns (black, actually) are Nyagous, the smallish reds are a saladette and some should be Green Zebra but are not. The more oblong big reds are Amish paste and excellent for canning, making salsa or fresh tomato sauce
Kale-a nice bag of White russian kale. this is a brand new bed of kale that needs thinning badly so you will get baby to adolescent kale. this should be tender and yummy
Scallions-a bunch on big scallions. I notice when i slice these they make me cry and yet the scallions themselves are not hot at all, despite being huge and about ready to split into 3 or more little scallions. Scallions, unlike green onions, never make a bulb. they instead divide into several new plants. green Onions, on the other hand are actual onions and if left in the ground will make a bulb and eventually the greens will die back.
Basil-a big bag of basil for using fresh or drying or freezing (see http://www.localharvest.org/blog/330 for old newsletters that tell you how to do these things if you are new or missed that week)
Leeks-a couple of lincoln leeks. These are good fresh or cooked.
Raspberries-2 boxes of berries. These are getting sweeter as the days get shorter.
Pears-heirloom Keiffer pears. These are hard and green but quite sweet and edible. If you want them a bit softer (they never get really soft until they start to rot) put them in a paper bag and wait a week and they should get a lot riper.
Peppers-still green and purple peppers but you may get one close to all ripe this week. Next week you will certainly start to see ripe peppers in your share as the peppers are beginning to turn from green (or purple) to red, yellow and orange. ripe peppers are sweeter and higher in Vitamin C and other nutrients than green. They are also a lot harder to raise as it is in the last 3 weeks of ripening that all the pests and diseases attack the peppers. This is why ripe peppers cost twice as much as green peppers at the market
Acorn squash-the first of the winter squashes. You get 2 medium or 3 small ones. We harvested these about 3 weeks ago so they should be perfect. To prepare cut in half, remove the seeds (which are excellent roasted, like pumpkin seeds so don't throw them out!). place flesh side down on a baking sheet and put into a preheated 350F oven and bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Slather with butter and honey and you have a real treat.
Garlic-3 corms of garlic
Ailsa Craig onion-a pound of so of sweet onions
Potatoes-a couple of pounds of a mix of potatoes. likely White, red and Yukon golds though you may find some fingerlings this week.

Lucy Goodman
Boulder Belt Eco-Farm
Eaton, OH
http://boulderbelt.blogspot.com

Greetings,

I am up extra early because today is the day we take our chickens in for processing. I will miss the birds but I will not miss the extra work they demanded, at least 2 hours a day that could have been spent mowing, cleaning garlic and onions, weeding, etc.. After today we will have more time to devote to the produce AND we will have sublime poultry to eat for the next 12 months or so. The chickens were useful for eating all the damaged and beginning to rot produce we had-they went through a lot of melons and tomatoes for us that would have ended up on the compost. Composting that sort of stuff is not a bad thing at all. bad produce makes up at least 50% of our compost. But allowing the chickens to eat that stuff  turned it into chicken poop which is very valuable stuff for our compost piles. I have also noticed things are a lot cleaner, compost material wise, when we have chickens. I guess because it is a lot more entertaining to feed the chickens than a compost pile.

You guys missed a great farm tour we had around 25 people from around Ohio attended and we talked strawberries and raspberries for a couple of hours. Unlike the casual farm tours we dour with you farm share members monthly this one had a moderator who formally introduced us, kept us from straying too far off topic and kept us on time during the tour. We gotten nothing but very positive feed back from the participants. I will admit we give good farm tour. I believe this is the 10th time we have done an official farm tour. There are some photos of the event on our blog http://boulderbelt.blogspot.com and even more on my facebook account-if you do facebook and are not already my FB friend become my FB friend today and take a gander at all the farm tour photos (and lots of other farm photos and video).

The cold weather we are having this week does have have an effect on the crops. We re covering a lot of the warm weather crops and may be out of basil after 3 nights in the 40's. the basil has a double cover on it but I have not looked at it since the cold has arrived and it likely will have black spots all over. All we can do is hope for warmer nights (like in the 60's at the lowest) and cut back the plants and hope they can grow out of it. We may be in luck and find there has been very little damage done because they have been protected but in the past 48F has brought on damage to even protected plants. Now while the warm loving crops are not all that happy with this cool weather the cold loving crops are quite happy (though they would like some rain instead of irrigated well water)

It's a new month and we do have some new members and some old members that have decided to drop out. Reminder that pick-up is after 4pm on whichever day you opted to use (Tuesday or Thursday) in the store. the food will be in the fridge and/or on the table by the fridge (sometimes there are bags of things like tomatoes which should never be refrigerated).

The monthly potluck dinner and farm tour will be Sunday, Sept 20th starting at 6ish. RSVP about this (yes or no) in the next two weeks so we have a head count.

If you have not brought us some reusable bags it is by no means too late. If you are new to this we ask members to drop off at least 2 reusable shopping bags (bigger is better) so we can pack your shares into something other than plastic shopping bags. Please write your name on the bags.  Oh, and if you have a pile of such not very reusable plastic shopping bags sitting around your house or dorm we will take them as long as they are clean and reuse them at the farmers market and in our store for customers that do not bring their own.

Recipe
Potato and Leek Soup

2 leeks cut into 1/2" rounds
1 pound taters cut into small pieces
1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme
1 or 2 cloves of garlic either put through a press or chopped very fine
2 cups milk ( you can replace this with water if you are a non dairy drinker or use soy milk)
5 strips of bacon (vegetarians omit this ingredient and replace with a tablespoon of olive oil)
salt to taste

In a large pot (at least 3 gallons) put on med heat and let it heat up. When hot add the bacon and cook until crisp. when bacon is done remove it and drain it on paper and add the leeks and cook those in the bacon grease over medium heat. If using olive oil than put the oil into a hot pan and cook the leeks in that fat. While the leeks are cooking boil the potatoes in a separate pot. the taters need to simmer for about 10 minutes, which is about how long the leeks have to cook to get soft. When the potatoes are soft add them AND their cooking water to the pot that has the cooking leeks. About 3 minutes before this happens add the garlic to the leeks.

Let the leeks and potatoes cook for about 10 minutes than add the milk, thyme and salt and cook another 15 minutes. For a nice thick soup I put about 1/3 of the soup through a blender or food processor right before serving.

What's in the Share This Week

Potatoes-around a 1.5 pounds of mixed taters
Eggplant-black and purple and probably some of the mini white and purple striped aubergines
Green beans-about a pound of blue lake green beans
Tomatoes-a pound of mixed cherry types and fewer than 4 pounds of the big maters. I am giving you guys a break from tomato overwhelmation.
Leeks-2 leeks this week. the leeks are huge and wonderful, the best fall leeks we have ever grown.
Onion-two pounds of a mix of red onions and sweet onions.
Raspberries-A 1/2 pint of yummy red raspberries from our everbearing heritage plants, as opposed to the summer bearing latham plants that gave us such abundance in June and July
Mystery Greens-these are coming up in the fall white Russian kale. We have no idea what they are or where they came from but they are tasty-they seem to be a very mild mustard and would good either raw or lightly steamed
Thyme-a small bunch of thyme
Arugula-at least 1/4 pound of arugula this week, probably more as we have two beds producing it at the moment.
Garlic-3 corms of our hard necked garlic
Peppers-mostly purple peppers this week as the green peppers are beginning to ripen and I want to leave as many on the plants to get ripe as possible

Greetings,

It's Tuesday once again-time to begin another farm share cycle-week 21.

It's busy here at at the farm-lots of harvesting, weeding, tilling and planting going on to get ready for fall/winter growing/sales. I have had several folks ask what we will have this fall. it seems way too many people assume once school starts (which is now the start of autumn, even though school starts earlier and earlier each year and is actually starting in late summer-Fall comes the last 10 days of September) that we small farmers stop producing and roll up our fields and go somewhere for the winter. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is come fall we have more food than at any other time of the year. Not only will we have all the summer items until the first frosts of the season kill them (and even than we should have tomatoes, peppers and a few other warm weather crops thriving in our hoop houses until November or even December-season extension is one of our specialties, after all) but we will add to that all the things we had in spring plus winter squash, parsnips, leeks, celeriac, celery, pears, etc.. The variety of food we will produce from mid September through late November is pretty amazing-around 45 to 50 different kinds of food
lots of food

tomatoes
peppers
onions
leeks
garlic
chard
kale
spring mix
lettuce
arugula
Mizuna
Red Mustard
a variety of winter squashes-butternut, acorn and others
zucchini
carrots
rutabagas
radishes
 basil
sage
tarragon
oregano
thyme
horseradish
parsley
celery
celeraic
potatoes
parsnips
scallions
snow peas
sugars snap peas
asian greens
broccoli
pears
raspberries
strawberries
popcorn
honey
garlic powder
cilantro
green beans
eggplant
ginger
melons ( if Eugene decides to plant a late crop in a hoop house and it doesn't freeze too badly-about 1 year in 3 we can grow these into late fall/early winter)

And we are not the only farm producing so much in the fall-most farms that go to farmers markets will have lots and lots of produce available at least through the killing frosts and more and more are jumping on the season extension band wagon and have fresh and local produce most of the winter. this leads me to the question any of you want to sign up for our winter share program? I have asked before and would like to know if anyone wants to be a locavore into January?

Onto another subject-we are having a big farm tour this Sunday from 3 to 6pm if you have never been to a pot luck/farm tour here this is one of your best opportunities to learn a lot more about the farm that grows your food. This is a major component of being in a CSA-visiting the farm. Most people (like 99.999% of the eating public) never get a chance to visit any of the farms that supply their food. This has lead to a deep disconnect between eater and farm that has in turn, lead to a more and more dangerous and nutritionless food supply. By joining the farm share program you have indicated that you are well aware of this fact (God, I hope no one is doing this simply because it is "in" right now to be a locavore-that is about the worst reason to join a CSA type program). I feel that farm visits (more than coming to pick up food, though that is going a lot further than most people, at least you can see the farm and see that it actually exists and grows food) are very important. That it is this component more than any other that sets the CSA movement apart from say shopping at a farm stand or farmers market. Add to that,  the fact most farms do not allow the public onto their land for a variety of reasons.  Sunday you have the opportunity to see your farmers in action leading a big regional tour (something we have not done in several years but in the past did well). This will be educational and entertaining. be there or be square

If you have any friends or colleagues who might be interested in trying out our farm share program we have about 8 opening for September/October. Let 'em know what we are about.

Oh yeah before I forget-I was cleaning out a freezer in order to get ready for our poultry harvest next week and found several shrink wrapped ODA inspected cornish hens. We have 5 for sale at $10 ea (they are about 2.5 pounds on average). Yes they are expensive but this will be absolutely the best chicken you have ever had. I also have 1 pound containers of gizzards for a buck a container (makes good pet food) and several packages of chicken backs for $3 each-these are great for making stock or pet food (I use them for stock personally) each package has 4 backs. Let me know this week or before NEXT TUESDAY (the new chickens will be processed next Tuesday and I will need the room by around 4pm that day). To reserve your chicken just reply to this email ASAP, tell me what you want and pick it up when you pick up your share.

Before I forget, September has 5 Tuesdays in it. Everyone who has not signed up for the entire season and paid in full (and picks up on Tuesday) will not get a share Next Tuesday Sept 1st and will resume the following Tuesday Sept 8th

Recipe

Fruit smoothie
various fruit-raspberries, bananas, melon, strawberries, etc..
1 cup orange juice
2 cups yogurt
Honey to taste (probably 1/4 to 1/2 cup)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Put everything into a blender and blend until smooth.

If you want to make this alcoholic omit the yogurt and add about 1/4 cup of a good rum and 1 cup of ice. This is even better if you use frozen fruit (if you are going the alcohol route and use frozen fruit omit the ice). Makes about 4 cups.

What's in the Share This Week

Red raspberries-2 1/2 pints of fall berries
Garlic-2 or 3 corms of garlic
Scallions-a bunch of green onions
Melon-I believe you will get a red watermelon but it might be a cantaloupe instead (but I am about 95% it will be watermelon)
Blackberries-1/2 pint of blackberries
Basil-1/4 pound bag of basil
Parsley-1/4 pound of parsley
Tomatoes-week two of tomato madness-expect at least 8 pounds of a mix of heirloom tomatoes, like last week.
Peppers-several green and purple peppers.
Rutabaga-the harvest is in and these are very nice-you will get a nice big one this week
Cucumber-several nice lemon cukes this weeks
Shallots-a hand full of shallots

Lucy Goodman
Boulder Belt Eco-Farm
Eaton, OH
http://boulderbelt.blogspot.com

Greetings,

It's week 20 for the farm share. That's a lot of weeks of a lot of seasonal food. Most CSA programs stop right about at this point but not us. Like the Energizer Bunny we keep on going. I don't know about you guys, but we have been really pleased with the Farm Share Initiative thus far. Before we did this we spent Tuesdays for the last 14 years going to the Tuesday farmers market in Oxford. We loved that market (we had been there from day one) but it was not thriving and we were not making much money-imagine making $200 for 18 hours of generally hard work. And that $200 is split between two people. This time of year was especially hard as Oxford is dead in late July/early August because the university is closed (except for the 4th summer term which virtually no one does because you get only 48 hours of summer vacation-been there done that) and we always have lots of heavy food-water melons, cantaloupe, tomatoes, etc.. Not to mention, it is almost always hot and humid this time of year. So we would harvest crops for market in the heat, clean and bag them in the heat, load up the van with about 3000 pounds of food at 2pm every Tuesday afternoon. Drive to Oxford, park, set up in even greater heat because Oxford is about 5 degrees hotter than the farm. Set up meant taking lots of heavy crates and coolers of food out of the van and onto the lawn about 50 feet away-no selling right out of the van as we do on Saturdays-plus tables, the EZ Shelter and the other things we use to display our produce at market. Maybe there would be other farmers and artisans setting up but the last couple of years it was more common for us to be the only people setting (which was lonely). We would get set up by 4pm and than play the waiting game. Sometimes we would wait over an hour before we got our first customer, especially this time of year. Time would pass, we would get malts from UDF to keep cool and stave off hunger. Than 7pm would finally roll around and we would usually have about 80% of the produce unsold so it got loaded back into the van and we went home. We would get unloaded around 8:30pm, meaning the van would get empty and the fridges would fill up (some items we would compost but most would sit in the fridge taking up space and that meant that when harvest time for the Saturday market came around we would have a cold storage space crisis) and than I would make dinner and our day would end around 10 pm.

With the farm share, we  harvest for a known market (you guys) which means there is virtually no waste. You see when you do a farmers market you have to harvest with the assumption there will be a lot of customers and everything you bring in will sell. So you generally get a lot more stuff than you need. This takes hours and hours to do and it is always a bummer when hardly anything sells in the end. With the FSI we harvest, fill the fridge up with produce and by mid afternoon on Tuesdays the shares are packed and the fridge is empty.

We don't have to leave the farm mid afternoon and return after dark to do an evening market which means a lot more gets done on the farm-basically we have an extra work day we have never had (we started this market the same year we went full time with farming). This has made a huge difference in our stress levels (they are way down) and with the farm's health in general (it's always been good but now it is getting even better). And the other big thing is we are making more money via the FSI than we ever did with the Tuesday market and this too is contributing greatly to the overall health of the farm.

In a nutshell, the FSI (you guys) are taking Boulder Belt Eco-Farm to the next level of success. Our goal is to have a 50 member FSI in two years and drop all outside markets except the farm store. Right now we are at 15 memberships sold and we should pick up another 3 or 4 next month. We were hoping to get to 30 members this year but this has not happened and as it turns out this is good as we have not been planting for a CSA like program right now but rather for farmers markets. There is a difference in how you plan out a market garden between the two. We do grow enough to supply 50 memberships in theory. But in fact we couldn't have done 30 shares all 32 or so weeks this season as we were not set up to do this in spring to do so. We did have enough to easily do the 12 or so shares that we sold back in April  but we needed more hoop houses for the leafy greens and other early items to get up to supplying 30 shares. And we needed to adjust what we plant a bit-we need to drop some of the crops we attempt to do early but generally fail such as melons and cucumbers (between it being too cold and the voles devouring most of the seedlings in April most years it is a wash trying to do summer crops in spring) and do more of the crops that will do better in early spring like cilantro, scallions, lettuce, arugula, radishes, etc., etc.. Next season we will be much more prepared to do this program so we can easily take more members. And with your help we can get more members. We need you to help us recruit new members. We realize several of you have already done this and we are very grateful for your efforts. But if we are to reach our goal of 30 members for 2010 we need to get the word out and there is no better endorsement than people who are already members telling their friends, family, coworkers, etc.. Not to mention, you can better than us describe what it is like to be in the Boulder Belt FSI. We have never been in a CSA program, all we have done is run them on and off for the past 12 years so we have no idea, really, of what your experience is like.

Hey, I realized this past Sunday should have been pot-luck Sunday. With all that is going on this month we forgot about it. It don't see how we can fit this in this month so lets shoot for a September 20th pot luck and farm tour. We will offer a couple of our pastured chickens for dinner, probably roasted to perfection. This month we are having a big farm tour (sans pot luck) on the 30th from 3 to 6 pm in conjunction with the Innovative farmers of Ohio. This event is free and open to the public. I expect a couple of hundred people will attend. If you want to see how we conduct a formal farm tour or if you have not come to one of our potluck dinners/farm tours I suggest you attend

Recipe
Potato salad
This is an old family recipe, from my paternal grandmother, maybe great grandmother.

1 pound of taters washed, diced and boiled until soft but not falling apart
6 hard boiled eggs, deshelled and sliced
1/2 cup sweet onion sliced thin
1 green pepper sliced thin
1/2 cup parsley chopped fine
1 TBL dried rosemary or 4x that amount if fresh
1 cup mayo
1/8 cup mustard
Salt and pepper to taste

Put everything in a large bowl and mix together. Let sit in the fridge for a couple of hours before serving.

What's in the share this week

Charentais melon-these are exquisite French melons. Hard to grow and very limited
Bright lights Chard-chard is back again this week
Arugula-we have arugula again. We planted a new bed back in July and it is now harvestable. generally this is hard to grow in August because it is so hot and dry but this summer has been cool and the past 3 weeks reasonably wet
Potatoes-A couple of pounds. These may have some holes in them due to voracious grubs that can eat a big tater in less than 2 hours. Simply cut the hole out of the tuber with a paring knife. These are the kind of taters we eat all the time (we rarely eat the top shelf produce-that goes to you guys). Normally I would not foist second rate produce on you but we have a lot of these and have to move them as they will not store well and we cannot eat that many spuds. oh and the biodynamic calendar sez not to harvest today (tuesday)
Basil-another big bag of basil. the plants are going nuts right now and that means great bounty. If I were a FSI member i would make pesto and freeze it sans the cheese.
Tomatoes-okay you will be getting a lot of maters this week. the pale yellow ones are actually a white tomato called great white. The browns are either Paul Robeson (big and ugly) or Nyagous (small round). The huge orange beefsteak is Dr Wyche's yellow. The cherry tomatoes are a mix of Sunsugar (orange) and Cherrywine (pink). The reds will be Early Girl (biggest) and Matina (smaller but not as small as the early crop was). The weird shaped yellow and red striped ones are Boulder Belt Striped. You may get some pink/purple maters, I have no idea what they are but they are excellent. Expect at least 7 pounds, probably more. Make a ratatouille with 'em, that should use at least 4 pounds for one meal.
Onions-2 pounds of Ailsa Craig sweet onions. these are best raw but do cook well enough
Carrots-a bag of our rainbow mix-the yellow is a French heirloom Jaune D'uabe, the red are Purple Haze (is in my mind...) and the orange are Bolero.
Cukes-this may be the last week for the cukes. The plants are definitely on the wane. like last week you get 3 different kinds, poona Kheera, Lemon and Telegraph
Garlic-This week several corms of Persian Star-this stores well so you might want to hold one back for later use. start a garlic collection for winter
Eggplant-a mix of purple and black and maybe some of the small purple striped fairytail (the cherry tomato of the eggplant world)
Peppers-several green and purple peppers. It will be another couple of weeks before the ripe red, yellow and orange peppers start to come in

Lucy Goodman
Boulder Belt Eco-Farm
Eaton, OH
http://boulderbelt.blogspot.com