Tierra Garden Organics CSA Week #12 In the Frost Pocket

Well, it has been sort of a distracting week....the Wolverine fire plume is always blooming on the horizon and there has been as much talk about fire as about veggies. Hopefully we will get a little rain this weekend and it will calm down those flames a bit. For now though, life continues like normal.
So we are now in week 12. This means that anytime in the next 6 weeks we can experience a killing frost. Right now, the weather is looking good. It is going to cool down for a bit but no frost is expected. Traditionally, the first crop to bite the dust is the basil. Once we start experiencing nights in the mid-low 30's the basil begins to get lots of black spots and refuses to grow. So....if you haven't made pesto yet, this would be the time to do so.
The rest of our crops are hardy to about 30F or so. With any luck, the frost will wait a few more weeks. However, like usual, if worse comes to worse, there will be lots of fall-type crops filling the boxes until the end of the season (potatoes, leeks, onions etc...)
I will keep this post short since really, nothing new is happening at the farm other than now Willy has to show up in the morning and work by the light of a headlamp. The daylight is leaving us rapidly now.
Enjoy the last week of summer vacation! This season will be our first with 2 kiddos in school full-time. I can't even imagine what this means and there is a small part of me that is feeling very 'mom-like' and wants them to stop growing up so fast! However, given the choice of going to school or picking more cherry tomatoes, I think our kids are definitely ready for a change of scenery.
Have a great week,

In Your Share This Week:
Onions (red and sweet), Beets, Kale/Collards/Chard, Potatoes, Garlic, Eggplant, Tomatoes, Basil, Carrots, CABBAGE! and probably a few other surprises....

Recipes:
Thanks Sarah H. for passing this one along....
Vietnamese Style Chicken Noodle Soup
Scalloped Potatoes
Basil Pesto

Tierra Garden Organics CSA Week #11 Start Bulking Up

Laura is back! Woo Hoo! It is so great to see her smiling face again. Sounds like Minnesota was beautiful and that she enjoyed her trip home. We are certainly happy that her parents didn't Shanghai her and keep her there for the rest of the season....I am sure they probably wanted to.

Farming is still going well....it feels like this season has really been moving along fairly smoothly. After Laura's return, she and Willy tackled the weeding of the next round of kohlrabi, broccoli and carrots. There will be another round of beets and maybe even beans and peas....the plants are sizing up nicely and barring any freakish early September hard frosts, they should make it to maturity.  With that being said, this last swing in the weather has made us feel a little cautious about the fall. In one day, the temperature plummeted from the 90's to the 70's. As we move closer and closer to the fall equinox, those outrageous swings will be bringing us into frost season. However, many of you know that we always take a shotgun approach to planting....Willy keeps planting a little of everything, knowing that some things will be a success and some will fail.

A very happy success has been our All Red potato crop.Willy and Laura were apparently giggling while digging potatoes the other morning. They look beautiful. Some of these will go into the boxes this week. As in years past, we will be selling unwashed potatoes in the fall for storage. If you know you will be wanting some, please let us know so we can get you on the list. This year we will have All Red, Huckleberry, Purple Viking and German Butterball. Last season we could not fill all of the requests we had for the Purple Vikings because they sold out early. If you know there is something you want, please tell us early so we can set it aside for you.We are hoping to have all bulk orders filled by the end of October. Same as last season, all late season unwashed potatoes will be $1/lb when ordering more than 20 lbs. Sweet onions are also available in bulk. We have 20 lb bags for $20...just like last year.  We should have storage and red onions available in bulk as well.

That's it for now. Have a great week!

In Your Share This Week:
All Red Potatoes, Sweet Onions, Peppers, Kohlrabi, Eggplant, Zucchini, Cucumbers, Garlic, Head Lettuce, Chard/Kale/Collards, Carrots and Beets? and probably a surprise or two....

Recipes:
Chocolate Zucchini Cake
Refrigerator Pickles; Cauliflower, Carrots, Cukes...You Name It!
Herbed Onion Salad Dressing
Kohlrabi Fritters with Yogurt Dill Sauce

Tierra Garden Organics CSA Week #10 Hell Week

This post will be relatively brief this time around. Willy and I are in the middle of what we are referring to as 'Hell Week'. We are most of the way through, but still have to keep pushing to make it to Sunday...the finish line.
Some of you know that in addition to working at the farm, I also manage the Retreat Center at Tierra.  This is the busy time of the year for us with weddings coming and going and lots of work in between. We have never hosted a mid-week wedding until Tuesday. So, during Hell Week I have been hosting 3 weddings (all multi-day) in 8 days up at the lodge with a Retreat Center full of guests.

For Willy, 'Hell Week' has culminated in much of our usual, wonderful helpers and employees all being on vacation at the same time. Literally, Willy has been pulling out all of his 'Ace in the Hole' cards and called in friends and past volunteers to help man the farm while everyone is on summer vacation. And then, last night, the truck broke and had to be trailered back to the house. Likely it requires a small fix, but it is an inconvenience (to say the least) to have your market truck break the day before market.

Sprinkles on top of this cake are all of the family-related jobs like shuttling kids to and from summer camps and somehow managing to go grocery shopping for dog and cat food etc....etc...etc...

So,,....if you see us in the next couple of days and there are bags under our eyes, now you know why. Hell Week is temporary (really, it is more like Hell-10 Days) and then the hardest part of the summer should be behind us.

Hope you enjoy the boxes....they look awesome! The garden is exploding right now.

In Your Share This Week:
Kale/Collards/Chard, Sweet Onions, Kohlrabi, Radishes, Head Lettuce, Peppers (mostly hot plus a lipstick sweet pepper and a poblano), cherry tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, carrots, potatoes, and a couple of other tasty treats

Recipes:
Potato Salad
Pasta with Garlic and Cherry Tomatoes

Tierra Garden Organics CSA Week #9 All of the Reaping....

First off, Sorry that I didn't write a post last week. I try and do it religiously but usually 2 times during the season I miss my writing window and there is no newsletter for the week. Please forgive me, but I had the opportunity to take a 36 hour vacation in the San Juans and I couldn't say no.  It is very rare that Willy or I get a chance to step away from work during the summer. Farming is a career choice that does not come with weekends or vacation leave. A prime example:  Last Friday, Willy and I were feeling tired after an already full day of work, so we decided to forgo our usual routine of picking cucumbers, beans and zucchini until dusk. "It will have to wait until Sunday", we said to ourselves, knowing that Saturday would already be filled by farmers market, a wedding, and another miserably hot afternoon. The weather was too much for us; we were feeling sweaty and dusty and sapped.  Sunday came and went and still, the beans were only marginally picked and the cucumbers and zucchini went untouched. "It will have to wait until Monday  morning...." we said to ourselves, "On Monday, we will have time to harvest." Finally, on Monday, Laura showed up for work and we began the process of reaping in the bounty.....and reaping....and reaping.....and reaping. By the end of the day (meaning the end of the ENTIRE workday) we had finally almost reached the end of harvest. I say almost because after a full day of  3 adult and 1 medium-sized child's worth of labor, we still hadn't entirely completed bean harvest but all of the cukes and the zuchs were done. All told, we ended up running out of tubs to hold the bounty. These 3 crops in particular created a mountain that stretched approximately 5 feet tall, 5 feet long, and 3 feet deep of bins full to the brim. The cucumber harvest alone nearly topped 500 lbs. It was surprising, to say the least. We have never had a harvest that looked quite like the one that we experienced this week. It was mildly over-whelming and a consequence of our desire for a little R&R. So, without any further explanation needed, don't be surprised to see a nice big bag of cucumbers in your box this week. Trust me, I have a strong desire to give you many more than what we are doling out. But that desire to rid myself of this excess is outweighed by my respect for what your refrigerator can realistically hold. As a CSA member, if you feel that you have not received enough cukes in your box this week, please let me know and we can rectify that situation. There are plenty more where those came from and I am not shy about sharing with the appreciative.
I will also include a few cucumber recipes to get you thinking about creative ways to deal with this watery favorite. For us, personally, we have been making lots of refrigerator pickles, fermented pickles,raitas and cucumber salads.
Well, that is enough rambling for this week. Happy August! This box marks the 1/2 way point of the CSA.....potatoes, winter squash and maybe even a few melons are yet to come.


In Your Share This Week:
Kale/Collards/Chard, Pak Choi, Garlic, Sweet Onions, Carrots, Eggplant, Dill, Beans, Cucumbers, Zucchini, and probably a surprise or two....like Diakon Radish.....that was in the box last week too....it looks like a parsnip, but isn't.

Recipes:
Cucumber Salad
Ritas
Fermented Pickles