Share 19 - week of Oct 6th
In the share this week:
1 small butternut squash
1 head caraflex cabbage
1 bunch green onions
1 bunch salad turnips
1 fennel bulb
1 bunch dill
Sweet pepper mix
1 bag arugula
Habanada peppers
Thoughts from Farmer Anna:
We are continuing to pull out old crops, prep beds and get them seeded into overwintering cover crops (field beds) or overwintering greens (hoophouse beds). Above you can see my mother-in-law Debbie, in her new-to-her straw hat, hard at work ready to cart some old basil to the dump pile. These hoophouse beds will get seeded into baby kale, spinach and radishes tomorrow. Seeding these crops at this time of year means they'll be ready for harvest around the end of January or beginning of February. We are losing daylight fast now that we are past the fall equinox and the countdown to our last 10-hr day, which around this latitude happens the second week of November. Folks call the period of time when days are less than 10 hours, the 'Persephone Period' named for the daughter of the Greek goddess Demeter who was sentenced to spend her winters in the underworld. During this time, there is so little solar energy reaching us, so very little plant growth is happening. Then once we move back into increasing daylight after Feb 1st, we definitely see the baby greens in the hoophouses start to take off!
I really love the share this week! Fall veggies are my jam, so this share just looks totally delicious. Also, I notice that I just getting hungrier in the fall and that has an evolutionary sense to me. The cooler weather helps for sure. It makes it seem more reasonable to heat up the kitchen!
The fennel we are pulling out of the field is just perfect. Fennel pairs so well with sausage and it feels like fall is the time to make a creamy and comforting risotto, so I'm thinking about a fennel and butternut mix. Here's a recipe for an idea:
The cabbages we grew for fall are a slightly different variety (we did grow them several years ago) called caraflex that have a pointy head. We were hoping these heads would hold together better and not start to break open. We lost nearly all of the crop last year to breaking, so I had researched whether certain varieties were more resistant and caraflex came up. Evidently this breaking is something cabbage heads do naturally in order to send up their flower stalks and set seed. We are still seeing some breaking in the caraflex heads, but much less than last year, so that's great! Since the dill is doing so well, we have that in shares again this week and since it goes so well in vinegary salads, I'm thinking a dilly coleslaw may be in order:
I'm also really pleased with how beautiful the arugula is this week. It is just big enough to cut, meaning the leaves are tender and lovely and will hopefully regrow nicely so we can get a second cut in another couple of weeks.
Enjoy your week!