Share 16 - week of Sept 15th
In the share this week:
1 pie pumpkin
2 lbs slicer tomatoes
1 lb yellow onions
1-2 sweet peppers
1 bunch cilantro
1 bunch celery or kale
1 bag spicy salad mix
3 habanada peppers
Thoughts from Farmer Anna:
Video evidence! The baby chicks have moved out to pasture with mama this week. They are doing wonderfully and it is so much fun to watch them forage. They are so stinking cute! You can really only have chicks on pasture this early if they are with mom since she will protect them from predators, other chickens, etc. It will be interesting to see if chicks raised with mom are noticeably different in any way that chicks we raise in the brooder.
In non-chicken news, the farm has withstood this September heat wave reasonably well so far. The nice thing is that the days just aren't as long this time of year, so it's not hot for so much of the day. We have some nice greens and roots crops coming along, so you can look forward to more of those in your shares soon. Cross your fingers that we get some reprieve from heat and a bit more rain soon. The rain we got last weekend just really didn't amount to much. Fall is a tricky time for water anyway. Too much and the crops are susceptible to many fungal diseases. Too little and the crops grow slowly or not at all. In the last few years, the fall season has seemed challenging for one reason or another. This year we have lots of different pests going after some of our brassica crops (mostly the rutabaga), poor germination on others due to lack of rain, and then just silly things like a mole running through a bed we just seeded. We still have plenty of nice crops in store for the next 6 weeks of shares, just more disappointments in this season than the spring and summer.
The tomatoes have happily put out another flush of nice fruit, so everyone is getting 2 lbs of slicer tomatoes in your share this week. The cilantro has been hanging on quite well so we have that again to pair with all those tomatoes too! We've really been enjoying adding chopped fresh tomatoes and cilantro to lots of different kinds of tacos or toastadas over the last few weeks. Here's some fun ideas for toastada toppings:
The last of our celery planting is going out in shares this week. We cut out all the celery from the bed to make way for late fall/early winter spinach and we were happy to be able to salvage some really nice bunches. We don't have enough for all shares through the week, so some of you will get kale instead.
The habanada peppers are an interesting addition to our crops this year. I'm curious to hear what you think about them. They would be fun to cut into rounds and add to some tacos or toastadas. Here is a link to an article about about these non-spicy peppers:
The pie pumpkins did pretty well this year, but this will be the last week for them. They will keep for several months, so don't feel like you need to cook them up right away if you'd like to use them as decoration for awhile. You could even save them until Thanksgiving and make your pie with fresh pumpkin! Next week we'll start giving butternut squash - which is my personal favorite (and also what I typically use instead of pumpkin for pies :)
Have a great week all!