My favorite time to be on the farm

Hello Folks!

Happy almost Autumnal Equinox day...which incase you need a reminder, is on Friday the 22nd.  This is my favorite time to be on the farm, cold mornings, warm (but not hot) days, breezy and celebratory.  The perfect recipe for working hard all day without fatigue, reminding you that winter is coming and there is much to do before a somewhat unknown deadline.  We continue to check off fall chores this week, which mostly means harvesting things, but also includes seeding more for winter, cultivating winter crops, roasting chilies for the winter CSA, deconstructing and then reconstructing tunnels, and continuing the great cooler shuffle.  Warning, we may have a frost coming up this weekend, the temperatures look cooler and our farm is in a frost pocket near the river...this means we can be 7 degrees cooler than town...so be sure to get your beans and cherry tomatoes this week as there is a chance it will be the last week for them!

A huge thanks to all of you who did your part towing the tomato line this weekend at the market.  Apparently you can take the girl out of the Badger state but not the badger out of the girl. Hopefully processing the tomato boxes was an enjoyable experience for a cool, drizzly weekend.  In our house we made a big batch of salsa for both fresh eating and small batch canning...which has its pros and cons.  Pro is that it is magically delicious, Con is the shameful amount of tortilla chips we have consumed as of late. We are thinking our project for this weekend will be homemade ketchup...as there are still a lot of boxes of tomatoes that need to disappear!  Meaning you still have a chance to do your part if you missed the tomato pledge drive this past weekend.  If we can bring ourselves back North of the boarder this week (no promises), other things we would like to consume are cabbage and mushroom hand pies.  We got a great recipe from the 6 seasons cookbook by Joshua McFadden and will let you know how it goes. Pastry seems to be a lovely vessel for both sweet and savory in the fall and if you aren't up for putting away a box of tomatoes, you can do your part with a savory tomato pie. If you are feeling less ambitious,  homemade tomato soup is an easy trade and will be sure to keep the chilly fall nights at bay. We are heading into another round of broccoli on the farm, last one of the season.  Be sure to roast some this week with crushed garlic, red pepper flakes and olive oil.  Arugula is back for severalweeks and can be blended with late summer flavors like peaches or apples.  Add some sharp cheese and an apple cider dressing and you have the perfect autumnal lunch.  

We have 6 more weeks of our regular market CSA season and folks are starting to run out of money on their accounts...which is actually a good thing because it means you are not only eating well, but you are eating healthy!  In years past I have been able to runyour accounts at a loss and bill you at the end but this year with our new electronic system I have to have a positive balance for the system to work.  So, if you run out of money, you can either just keep coming to the stand and pay as your go or you can add more money to your account for the last 6 weeks and keep your discount.  If you would like to know your balance, please just ask at the stand next time you visit.  If you are a farm stand member, I will be sending out a balance sheet as soon as I get caught up on the accounts this week.

Looking forward to seeing many of you soon!

Katie

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This Week's Harvest

Kale

Collard

Chard

Head Lettuce 

Spicy Mix

Arugula

Radishes

Green, Savoy, and red Cabbage

Broccoli

Tomatoes, lots of kinds!

Eggplant

Bell Peppers

Red Onions

Green and Cranberry Beans

Yukon Gold Potatoes

Garlic

Fennel

Flowers

A tsunami of ripe fruits

Hello Folks,

September is here and has ushered in some lovely cooler temperatures...at least for now...and your farmers will take advantage of it while it lasts.  This first full week of the month finds your farmers sticky with tomato sap as we push through a tsunami of ripe fruits that has recently hit the farm.  We harvested over 800 lbs of romas yesterday alone and we will have them at the market for the next few weeks for your saucing pleasure. 

Romas are great for canning because they are a more fleshy tomato and tend to yield more than heirloom or slicing tomatoes.  I like to put away a mix of different types of tomatoes so that I can use the bulky romas for quantity and the heirloom and slicing tomatoes for quality.  I tend to cook down my slicing tomatoes skin and all on the stove top and then either put them through a food mill or use an emulsion blender to take care of the skins.  Then I put the final product in zip lock bags and squirrel them away in the freezer for soups and sauces. 

Cherry tomatoes are great for roasting and then freezing.  I like to cook mine down with fresh rosemary, thyme, and basil.  Portion some out and add some sweet white balsamic and salt and spread over crusty bread with some crème fresh or goat cheese for a easy week night supper.  If you are feeling as though you have more time, cherry tomato and fennel risotto is certainly worthy of it.  Serve with a side of fresh broccoli and skillet chicken and you will feel like royalty.

We are harvesting winter squash today...and probably tomorrow too.  It will need to cure for a few weeks before it sweetens up, so you will not see it at the market, but it is a sure sign that fall is in the air.  Speaking of fall, we only have 8 weeks left of our summer program, so if you haven't signed up for your winter share, now is good time to do so.  You can either bring a check to the market and circumnavigate the pesky credit card fees or you can do it from the comfort of your home here.  

Looking forward to seeing many of you real soon!

Katie

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This Week's Harvest

Kale

Chard

Collard

Head Lettuce

Carrots

Beets

Potatoes

Leeks

Broccoli

Savoy, Green, and Purple cabbage

Fennel

Heirloom, Cherry, and Roma Tomatoes

Eggplant

Bell Peppers

Basil 

Red Onions

Garlic

Flowers

Green Beans

Always new challenges here!

Hello Folks,

Hope everyone had a great eclipse holiday!  Even though your farmers didn't get to travel to a totality locality, we still were able to enjoy the magic from the tomato tunnels.  Pretty crazy experience! Now that it is a bit dryer, your farmers have been busy this week trying to figure out our new carrot harvester.  It actually works pretty well for a machine from the 1970s but now we have a materials handling problem.  The machine is too fast and we can't keep up with the washing and packing logistics.  Its always a new challenge here!  Speaking of carrot harvesting, I'm sure that you have noticed that we have been bagging our carrots at the market rather than bunching them.  No one seems to be complaining, but we changed because it is more efficient for the farm and there were enough folks at the market asking us to remove the tops before putting them in their bag.  We figured we would make it easier for everyone by getting rid of the tops ahead of time and giving you a handy bag to store them in.  Winning!

Its back to school time and we have lots of healthy, delicious stuff for sack lunches.  Carrot sticks, sweet peppers, sun gold cherry tomatoes, and fresh green beans all are easy things to pop in lunches to ensure your kids are eating well even when they aren't home for the summer any more.  We are at the glut of heirloom tomato season!  The plants will be producing high volumes of tomatoes for the next two weeks, so take advantage!  Last night the whole family enjoyed BLTs with a side of oven crisped new potatoes.  Talk about a satisfying meal.  New potatoes are great for all sorts of stuff including potato salad, hash browns, and just plan roasting.  I'm thinking of a new potato skillet hash with onions, cabbage, and sweet peppers.  New potatoes have a thin skin, so store them in a plastic bag in your fridge until you are ready to eat them.  This week we have Yukon Gold at the stand, but may have some other varieties coming down the pike.  We will probably start to have flats of heirloom tomato uglies at the market this week.  Not sure how many we will have but ask at the market stand if you are interested.  Boxes of romas will be coming on strong soon.

See you all real soon!

Katie

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This Week's Harvest (Again, please be patient with the quantities of some things, we are going to be low for a little while.)

Kale 

Chard

Collards

Head Lettuce (sort of)

Green Beans

Italian Eggplant

Heirloom Tomatoes

Cherry Tomatoes

Sweet Bell Peppers

Yukon Gold Potatoes

Sweet Onions

Salad Cucumbers

Lemon Cucumbers

Cabbage

Basil

Beets

Carrots

Garlic

Yellow Squash

Flowers

Farmin' In the Moment

Winter Farm Shares now on sale!

Good Morning Folks!

First of all, thanks to all of you who sent such thoughtful emails and offered such encouraging words at the market on Saturday.  It means more than you know to your farmers and the team here and we feel uplifted after such a difficult week.  We are in recovery mode this week, assessing damages, prioritizing tasks...and then reprioritizing...the rule book has been thrown out the window and we are just farmin' in the moment so to speak.   There are plants to foliar, fruit to trim, weeds to whack (still too wet to get the tractors in the field), and oh the endless onion harvest.  Some of the produce will look less than perfect at the market stand this week and as painful as it is to present you all with blemished product, we have little choice.  Much of the blemishes are just scaring, the plant naturally healing itself on the vine after the injuries.  Although we have sorted through the product that did not heal itself (aka, rotted), it would be best not to store scared veggies in your fridge for too long (a week or two is good) for risk of pre-mature spoilage. 

Many of you have asked what you can do to support the farm through this storm and after assessing our situation, we have decided to try to double down on our winter production.  We have increased our goal for winter CSA sign ups, so please spread the word! Signing up for a winter CSA share with the farm would not only help us cash flow through the end of the year but also provide you and your families with delicious winter produce during the dark months. And quite honestly, its fun! Pick ups are every other Wednesday at Equinox Brewing so it is the prefect mid-week winter treat.

There were a few winter crops that were hit by the storm, but we feel confident that if they do not pull through, we will be able to find another local organic source to substitute them. Many folks find the winter share is great to split with another family as we only offer one size.  If you are interested in a winter share but don't know anyone who might split with you, just shoot me an email and I will start connecting folks.  Finally, if you are in the Loveland area, we have some folks who are interested in setting up a pick-up rotation to make it more convenient to get your winter vegetables.  Please let me know if you are interested in getting on that list. You can find more info and sign up for the winter CSA share here.

Ok, enough storm talk.  Its time to get back to what we all have in common and that is food!  And given the current state of the farm, we are going to be celebrating the ordinary and giving thanks for what survived.  Yes, believe it or not, we are going to make cabbage sexy this week.  We grow several types of cabbage on the farm, almost exclusively for the late summer and fall months and so this is just the first of hopefully several types to come.  This is a green, fresh eating variety which means it will store for at least a month or more in your fridge but is not a nice,thick head like our winter varieties.  Our favorite way to eat it is making a delicious slaw for fish tacos with chopped carrot and sweet onion, but there are many other ways to prepare it such as making a big batch of sauerkraut to slather on burgers, braising it with sweet peppers, or stewing it down with some delicious tomatoes.  If you are feeling very fancy, check out Melissa Clark's recipe for cabbage and onion torta, it is sure to break even the most stubborn of cabbage haters.

Looking forward to seeing many of you soon,

Katie

P.S. This availability is somewhat fluid, so we may not have everything at every market.  I know it makes it hard to plan, but its just the reality of the situation, sorry!

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This Week's Harvest

Kale

Beets, Loose

Carrots

Beans, mostly green but some yellow

Italian and Asian Eggplant

Sweet Peppers

Summer Squash, just a little bit

Salad Cucumbers

Shallots

Sweet Onions

Heirloom Tomatoes

Cherry Tomatoes

Green Fresh Cabbage

Flowers, just a few bouquets

Garlic, plenty :)

Its all a state of mind

This brings a whole new meaning to the term Green Thumb!

Hello Folks,

This summer has flown by, faster I think than any other year and I feel like I have a bit of whiplash trying to catch up with all the stuff we have to do in the next few months.  We are almost to the middle of the lake here on the farm, the time when we are equal distance from either shore and we have no choice but to just keep swimming.  Not a bad thing really as the light is starting to change and the temperatures (in theory) should be slowly but steadily decreasing.  Who am I kidding, we live in Colorado, it will just be hot until one day it will just start snowing.  The slow slide is a nice state of mind though. This week has your farmers busily harvesting summer's bounty, beating back the last big weed push from the field edges, germinating winter carrots, beets, and storage radishes, and prepping for September's loose leaf crops.  AND we are still harvesting onions...forever onions.

Its ratatouille time folks!  I have no idea how long we will have zucchini as the cucumber beetles are attacking those plants as well, but I'm hoping for another few weeks.  Just enough time for you to make one of summer's most lovely treats.  Traditionally done in the oven, you can make a big batch and freeze it if you don't cook it all the way.  Otherwise, I like to make a quicker version with peppers, eggplants, summer squash and tomatoes on the stove top.  I must admit that the oven version is better, but sometimes you just don't want to get your house all hot after a long day in the sun.  Serve it with basil, lots of olive oil, crusty bread, and some good wine. Groan with delight and be thankful for summer. Our slicing cucumbers are officially done.  Which would be sad news if we didn't have a nice substitute in the "pickling" cucumbers.  I use quotations because they are really just small cucumbers that you can use the same way you might use a slicing cucumber.  We can call them salad cucumbers if that makes it not to eat them pickled.  Again, its all a state of mind.

Just a quick reminder on veggie storage, most crops want to be in a sealed plastic bag in your fridge.  Eggplant, summer squash, peppers, and cucumbers do well with a towel in the plastic bag.  If you are afraid of head lettuce prep, here is your easy cheat.  Just cut off the end, chop coarsely and put it into the salad spinner basket.  Put the basket in the salad spinner bowl and fill with water.  Pick up the basket, pour out the water and repeat.  Spin when done and store in the spinner in your fridge for ease of use later. If you don't have a salad spinner, there are other tricks, but really just get a salad spinner, you can thank me later. Finally, our heirloom tomatoes are ripe when we pick them.  Do not get more than you can eat in 2-3 days because that is how long they will keep on your counter.  Yes, you heard me, your counter.  Tomatoes will last longer in the fridge, but their texture will change and they will not be nearly as delicious as they should be for all the TLC we put into them.  Also, don't be fooled by their color, if they are supple, they are ripe, I promise.

Looking forward to seeing you all real soon!

Katie

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This week's Harvest

Kale

Swiss Chard

Head Lettuce

Carrots

Beets

Green and Dragon Beans

Eggplant, Asian and Italian

Bell Peppers and Hot Peppers

Zucchini and Summer Squash

Sweet Onions

Heirloom Tomatoes

"Salad" Cucumbers

Garlic

Basil

Flowers