In the share this week: 2 lbs rutabaga 2 lbs scarlet turnips 1 fennel bulb 1 head green cabbage 1 bunch salad turnips 1 bag salad mix 1 bag mesclun mix Thoughts from Farmer Anna: Well it's feeling like summer again for a few days this week! We are so appreciative of the warmer temps as we bring the harvest in to wash. While we have a really nice pack shed to work in now, we haven't yet finished off and insulated a section of it so that we can minimally heat it when we have to work in below 40 degree temps. Hopefully, we'll be able to get that done in the next couple of months so that we'll have a comfortable space to work when we start harvesting greens out fo the hoophouses in February! Other than harvesting, this week we are working on cleaning up the fields, getting irrigation put away, and disassembling one of our hoophouses which is slated to move to a new position sometime before February. We're realizing that these hoophouses either need to be moved every 4-5 years, or at least uncovered and put into cover crops for a year to rejuvenate the soil. We were blown away by the incredible tomato and pepper (banana and poblano) production in the hoophouse we moved at the beginning of this season. I'm excited to come up with a good rotation plan for these structures that will optimize soil health and crop productivity. We've got a heavy share for you this last week of the CSA season! I'm so pleased with the cabbages we have for you this week. Our fall cabbages don't always size up nicely and are often plauged by insects or disease, but these are really pretty nice this year. This cabbage should be wonderfully sweet and dense and will keep for awhile if you aren't ready to use it right away. I'm loving lots of cabbage filled soups right now, but a bake or hash would be really good too, especially paired with some of the other roots veggies in your share. Something like this recipe: https://afullliving.com/rutabaga-hash-with-cabbage-bacon-and-leeks/#recipe For soup this week, I'm thinking about making a pureed turnip soup. You could use a combination of both your scarlet turnips and the salad turnips if you like. The scarlet turnips do take a little longer to cook, so if you end up using a combo, add in the white salad turnips a little later. I will also probably add more butter or oil when I make this or top with chopped cashews because I like a good dose of fat with my veggies! https://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/252800/creamy-turnip-soup/ Lastly, here's an idea for using your fennel and mesclun mix this week. Thinly sliced or shaved fennel is a wonderful salad topping and the flavor pair really well with mustard greens. The recipe below uses arugula, but the mix of greens in the mesclun will be perfect! https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-arugula-and-fennel-salad-with-lemon-vinaigrette-recipes-from-the-kitchn-202595#post-recipe-8920 2023 has been a really great growing season for us. I felt that we were able to produce really consistently, I was able to increase wages for our amazing employees, and we're doing a good job of improving soil with cover cropping, mowing and tarping. The work-life balance felt a lot better for me this year since we weren't also trying to build a house while farming :) I'm looking forward to getting into planning for next year, thinking hard about what went well and what we can improve. We are thinking a lot about how we can grow community in addition to all the veggies here on the farm too, so definitely stay tuned for info on events here next year! We are so grateful to each and every one of you for your support of our farm this season. This is hard work, but it is so rewarding and we wouldn't be here if it weren't for all of you! Have a lovely and restful winter season and we'll be in touch ❤️

In the share this week: 2 lbs watermelon radishes 1 bunch salad turnips 1 bunch red radishes 1 bag spinach 1 bag baby kale 1 head little gem lettuce Mix of italian sweet peppers 2-3 poblano peppers Thoughts from Farmer Anna: We had our first true frost of the season on Monday morning! It's just about right on time and was a pretty light frost overall so we weren't really concerned about it. I should probably have taken a picture of the frosty crops to include here, but I'm bad about remembering to take pics most of the time. Many of our fall crops are quite fine with frosts or even freezes down to around 28-30 degrees. I did spend a little time on Sunday afternoon row covering some of our leafy greens just in case they took a little damage from the frost. Probably not so necessary since similar uncovered plants look fine, but better safe than sorry. Now we are in for several very warm days this week, which works out well for us since we need to get just a few more beds prepped for our garlic, overwintered onions, and some more hoophouse greens. I just seeded 3 beds of winter spinach today, and plan to get in some baby kale, mesclun mix and radishes, turnips and maybe beets too. We know that the kale and spinach are hearty enough to survive even below zero temps with double row cover inside our hoophouses, but I haven't tried to seed the root crops at this time of year. It's likely that the radishes may be ready just after the holidays or possibly sooner, the turnips a little later in January and the beets sometime in late February. We'll see how they do! It's always fun to experiment a bit with these things. Lettuce doesn't reliably make it through the coldest temps, so we typically plan to plant it out in the hoophouses in mid to late February for an early spring crop. Speaking of cold, it looks like right after our warm spell, we are in for some mid-twenties at night! We'll certainly have to do some more row covering for those low temps next week. We have one new item in the share this week - watermelon radishes! These hearty winter radishes have a light greenish outer peel with a bright pink interior. They store really well, so you can store them in your crisper drawer for a few months. I really love this post below for an explaining of how to use these cold weather beauties: https://www.loveandlemons.com/watermelon-radish/ The beautiful little gem lettuces are back this week too! I love this smaller sized lettuce heads because they are enough for about 2 people to have a salad and their coloring is so striking. You could make up a salad with this lettuce, mix in some baby kale and slice some turnips and radishes to put on top! The spinach is loving the cooler weather, along with the rain we had late last week. The leaves are getting huge! I was thinking that a frittata using your spinach and all of the peppers (sweet italian plus the poblanos) you're getting this week would be fab. You can check out the recipe below for an idea: https://www.saveur.com/article/recipes/potato-spinach-and-red-pepper-frittata/ Have a great week everyone!

In the share this week: 2 lbs white flesh sweet potatoes 1 bunch green onions 2 kohlrabi bulbs 1 bag arugula 1 bag mesclun mix 1 head bok choy 1 head red romaine Thoughts from Farmer Anna: We had our first big cool down of the fall this weekend and a very light and patchy frost when I walked out to the fields this morning. While I do welcome the transition to fall and the slow down that comes with it, I don't love working in the cold. Well, some types of work are fine, like heavier work that really gets the blood flowing. Harvesting in the cold is really what I dislike since my hands are particularly cold-sensitive. Luckily, the sun is coming out these days and warming the plants and people. Grow on the fall crops has really slowed down, but most everything is coming along just like it should. We have a lot of nice roots that will be coming at you in the last month of shares (just 4 more left after this week!) - watermelon radishes, turnips, rutabaga, carrots, more sweet potatoes and radishes - along with spinach, more baby kale and salad mix. We'll also be taking out the tomato and pepper plants starting next week, so they be some nice peppers still and a week or two of green tomatoes for those fried green tomato lovers. We are excited to have a new variety of sweet potatoes to share with you this year! These are the Japanese murasaki variety and if you'd like to learn more about them, here is a devoted tribute to these babies: https://www.bonappetit.com/story/japanese-sweet-potatoes.(https://www.bonappetit.com/story/japanese-sweet-potatoes) I still need to cook some up myself and give them a try and I'm looking forward to it. Since we have the first of our fall kohlrabi showing up this week too, I thought it would be delicious to combine these two in fritters (maybe add the green onions too), something like this: https://jessicainthekitchen.com/sweet-potato-kohlrabi-fritters-yogurt-tahini-sauce/ Bok choy is another new veggie in shares this week. It's a classic stir fry veggie and is also great in soups if you want to cook it. You can also chop it fine and eat it in a salad. I was thinking you might mix in some of your tender salad greens (either the arugula or mesclun) into a salad like this one: https://www.runningtothekitchen.com/bok-choy-salad-with-sesame-soy-sauce/(https://www.runningtothekitchen.com/bok-choy-salad-with-sesame-soy-sauce/) Have a great week everyone!

In the share this week: 1.33 lb tomatoes 2 green zucchini 1 bag rainbow carrots 1 lb yellow onions 1 bunch cilantro 1 head lettuce 2 bell or sweet peppers Thoughts from Farmer Anna: We were able to get quite a bit of bed prep and fall planting done during our CSA break last week. So far we've planted carrots, sugar snap peas, napa cabbage, beets, swiss chard, radicchio, and green onions. This week we'll continue with kohlrabi, rutabaga, fennel, watermelon radishes, and some of the fall greens like spicy salad and red russian kale. The fall planting window is not as forgiving as springtime. Since the day length is slowly diminishing, we have to make sure to get all of our plantings in before it's too late and they won't have enough time to mature before it gets too cold and dark. This nice part is that we'll be able to continue harvesting from some of our long term plantings (like peppers and tomatoes) as well as give storage items like onions and garlic in our fall shares. We'll finish up with most of our plantings for the year by mid-September, with just a few things like overwintered hoophouse greens and onions to plant after that. Our family also took time for a weekend trip to lake cumberland, which we all really enjoyed. It's always hard to leave the farm even for a day in the summer because it feels like the work starts to pile up in your absence. It is always worth taking a step away though, to force ourselves to relax just a bit and not feel like we need to be constantly productive. The early part of this week has been a bit hectic, getting back to more harvesting along with back to school preparations for the kids (they go back on Wednesday). Hopefully we have mostly gotten what we need together and all three of them will have a great day tomorrow! It's hard to believe, but we have an 8th, 4th and 3rd grader this year. They've had a full and fun summer and at least 2 out of 3 are excited to be headed back to school :) I'm excited because we have the elusive pairing of cilantro and tomatoes in this week's share! We were able to get cilantro started about 5 weeks ago during a few cooler days and it's looking absolutely perfect this week. I think you should make up some fresh salsa with your tomatoes, onions and cilantro. You could also add in some sweet or bell pepper too. This fresh salsa is delicious without any hot pepper, but you could grab some jalapenos or poblano from the online store if you want the extra heat: Well we had a really good rainbow carrot year in 2022, but it's looking like 2023 is a bit disappointing. I'm thinking that the dry weather in May and June didn't help these carrots to be their best. Colored carrots are never quite as uniform and nice as the orange ones- they are just a bit more wild. The yellow and purple carrots faired best, so you'll see at least some of those in your bag this week. Since they are less than perfectly beautiful, I was thinking that they'd be great for shredding along with some zucchini and cooking into fritters like this recipe: https://www.reneeskitchenadventures.com/2020/08/carrot-zucchini-fritters.html We are happy to be able to give a head of lettuce to everyone this week. Lettuce is tough to have at this time of year. We plant a lot of it every week in order to have it right now, but a lot of what we plant (30-50%) doesn't end up being harvestable due to leaf burn, or bolting just a bit too soon, or other weird things happening with their leaves. The summer crisp lettuce is always the most resistant to bolting so that's one reason we love it so much. It's an awesome lettuce for sandwiches - so maybe this is the week for a classic BLT! Hope you all have a great week!

In the share this week: 1.3 lb tomatoes 1 large green pepper 2 banana peppers 1 bag carrots Salsa verde mix 1 bunch green onions 1 lb green zucchini 1 bag salad mix Bonus: small cucumber Thoughts from Farmer Anna: The tomatoes are on in full force now and this share feels like a transition toward the serious summer crops, with peppers coming on too. During these first weeks of harvest the tomatoes are so big and so beautiful. They would be awesome on a sandwich, salad, or made into a fresh salsa. Maybe saute up the green pepper, onion and zucchini and then add the tomato in at the end for a summer side dish, or a fresh sauce to go over pasta. We did this last week and blended it just a bit with the immersion blender for better uptake among the kids. Or you could put all of your summer veggies into a frittata or egg bake, something like this: Salsa verde mix bags are back again this year! These bags contain all the veggies you need to make a tasty salsa verde - tomatillos, jalapeno, onion and garlic. It would be really good with cilantro too, but that is tough to have in the heat of the summer here. I love roasting my veggies first and then blending them together. If you need more inspiration, here's a good post on salsa verde: I've been mostly thankful for all of the rain we've had over the last few weeks. Just in the last few days it's starting to feel like a bit too much. We need to harvest our storage onions this week and they don't cure as well if it's been wet before harvest. We can't leave them too long in the field either, so we started our harvest of those today even though it was really too wet. The lettuces that we grow through the season are starting to get some bottom rot from all the moisture, but since we have so many of them it still seems like we are harvesting enough. All in all it's much better to be getting a little too much rain in July than not enough. It's great to not be running the water constantly, but the weeds are getting a little crazy in some spots. Thankfully, we are at the point in the season where we are mowing and tarping several fields to prepare for fall plantings. It seems crazy since we are the in the middle of summer, but we'll start planting for fall later this month and will be nearly finished planting for the year by mid-September. These seasons seem to spin by faster and faster each year! Have a great week!

In the share this week: 1 bunch carrots 2 zucchini 1 lb yellow onions 1 bag salad mix 1 bunch curly kale 2 kohlrabi or 1 cabbage 1 bunch dill Thoughts from Farmer Anna: Happy 4th of July everyone! We are so excited about the carrots and zucchini this week and the cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen up too. Be sure to check out the store for those - there aren't quite enough to give in shares just yet :) Alrighty, it's late and we've had a long, fun day so here are a couple of fun recipe ideas for you this week:

In the share this week: 1 bunch red long onions 1 cabbage 1 bunch swiss chard 1 kohlrabi 2 bunch turnips 1 bag sweet basil 1 bag salad mix Thoughts from Farmer Anna: Happy (almost) summer solstice! After the short heat wave we had at the end of May, it certainly hasn't felt much like summer over the last few weeks. The summer crops seems to be growing really slowly this year due mostly to the lack of rain we had for a month, but also partly due to the cooler temps we've been having. I was really hoping that we'd have cucumbers and zucchini in shares starting next week, but it looks like it will probably be the week after that before those crops are fully going. There are just a few cherry tomatoes starting to ripen, but those will be a few more weeks before we have critical mass for shares too. There typically are a couple of slightly leaner weeks in between the spring bounty and before the classic crops of summer are ready. Luckily, we grow such a diversity of crops and plan to have more than we think we'll need, so that we're still covered when the succession crops just aren't quite ready yet. The share this week feels a lot like an in-between share, although honestly there are a lot of new and awesome crops included. New items that I'm particularly excited about are cabbage (such an under appreciated vegetable!) and these italian red long onions. The onions are on the strong side, so a little can go a long way. We've harvested them fresh and their greens still look great, so definitely chop up the whole thing - bulbs and greens to throw into your cooking this week. Our family really loves soup with cabbage and since it's still a bit cooler this week maybe that would sound good to you to. Here's a recipe for an idea, but you could really use almost all of the items in your share this week in a big cabbage soup: Two more new items in the shares this week are sweet basil and swiss chard. This is our first cut of the sweet basil, and we are cutting the middle out of the plants to encourage them to grow big and bushy, so you'll find your herbs bagged up instead of bunched. They will keep fairly well at room temperature in a bag for a few days, or you can add them to the soup recipe above, or you can blend them together with your swiss chard for a different twist on classic pesto: Hopefully you are trying and enjoying the kohlrabi in your shares! I know it can be a lot sometimes and it's good to know that certain vegetables keep in the fridge for a good long time, so that you can focus on eating up those that spoil a little faster. Kohlrabi is one of those workhorse veggies that last for a month or more in the fridge. They are best kept with their greens removed (this is true for all root crops too). Most of the root crops we give bunched with their greens should ideally be separated from the greens for storage. If you love greens to cook, put in smoothies, etc., you can certainly use them! They are also great to compost if you have plenty of other greens to eat. The last new crop in the share this week are the salad turnips! These are a favorite vegetable in our family because they are so incredibly versatile. They are wonderful raw - my kids like them sliced and sprinkled with salt. We also throw them into soups, stir-fry, curry, or a roasted veg side dish. I was a little disappointed in our last spring planting of these (from which we're harvesting this week). The turnips weren't quite as filled out as expected and some had some funny shaping. I'm guessing this was mostly due to dry weather. We did harvest out a lot of turnips from a previous planting last week to store without their greens, so some of you may be receiving those on Thursday or Saturday if we can't get enough from the current planting. Alrghty, that's all for now! Be sure to check out the comments of previous newsletters as some of you are starting to share recipe ideas there. We'd love to see more of that if you have something you'd like to share!