Buenos Dias!

What a beautiful week we are having here on the Front Range! Every day feels like a gift after the snow and crazy winds of last week and we are making hay while the sun shines here on the farm. The darker mornings make it harder to get out of bed, but boy are the sun rises on the farm amazing right now. The colors are explosive and the light seems to dance on the blazing autumn foliage. It is good motivation to keep pushing forward on our winter chore list. This week we have been moving giant hoop houses, harvesting and washing storage cabbage, celeriac, and watermelon radishes, seeding late winter greens, and slogging through cold morning field clean up.

As we move closer to the finish line for our summer program, there is still a lot of great stuff to eat! Celeriac, or celery root as it is sometimes called, is less of a disease of the intestines and more of a fuzzy, ugly root crop that has a mild nutty flavor and low glycemic index. It is not actually the root of the celery plant, (although there are times I wish it were so that I could stop trying to explain its odd name), but it is in the same family. Farmer Nic likes to joke that it is the redwood of vegetables because it is the first thing you plant in the greenhouse in March and one of the last things you pull out of the ground in the fall. You can use it in almost any way that you use a potato, just peel off the ugly, and proceed from there. I like to substitute it for any soup recipe with celery as it really highlights its nutty flavor. Blended with fennel and carrots it makes an amazing soup, but I have also been told that it makes mashed potatoes taste like artichoke dip. We made some celeriac, leek and apple latkes that were pretty divine. We served them with a dollop of yogurt and a side of butternut squash with wilted tatsoi and did not feel sorry for ourselves one little bit.

Looking forward to seeing you all real soon,

Katie

Farmer's Journal

Moving closer to the finish line