Week 11, 2023

Dear Country Valley Farm Community,

This is week #11 of the 2023 season! Some folks’ membership will end after this week; some ended last week. If you haven’t confirmed whether you are extending or not, and your membership is ending, please reach out to Adam either way.

If anyone wants to extend their membership and add weeks or if you’d like to increase the size of your share, please reach out. If a payment plan would be helpful, just let me know – we are happy to make it work for everyone in a good way. If you know other folks who would like to join, we are still accepting new members and we appreciate any referrals.

We are enjoying this wonderful July Michigan weather. We hope everyone is getting some time to enjoy the beauty of this wonderful area this time of year.

Thank you for your support and participation. It means a whole lot to us.

This week’s shares contain the following, some preparation inspiration is below:

1. Blueberries – 1pint from Adams Organic Blueberry Farm in Hartford, MI
2. Tulsi Holy Basil – 1 big bunch from our farm
3. Cabbage – 1 nice head from Cinzori Farm in Ceresco, MI
4. Summer Squash Medley – 1 mixed pint of Patty Pan and Round Green and Gold Zucchini from Cinzori Farm
5. Broccoli – 1 big head from Sunny Side Farm in Homer, MI
6. Amish Slicer Tomatoes – 1 pint from Sunny Side Farm
7. Bell Peppers – 1 mixed quart of green and other color bell peppers from Sunny Side Farm

Medium shares contain the above listed items, and:

1. Blueberries – 1 extra pint
2. Bell Peppers – 1 extra quart
3. Summer Squash – 1 extra pint

A note about the other farms that we source from for our CSA shares:

We only partner with certified organic farms that are local and are run by small families. We do not include any produce in our CSA shares that is not certified organic and we do not source product from large corporate farms. We are a small family farm and we are certified organic. It is our intention to continue to grow our farm in a manner that is aligned with our intentions and goals; which includes community connections and sharing the bounty of the land with other folks in our area. By partnering with other farms the way we do, we not only help make our shares as great as they can be each week for our members, we also help those families that we are sourcing from by getting their produce to consumers in the area. This also can alleviate stress if there is a crop failure at our farm or if we get bogged down with certain farm chores, because no matter what we want the CSA shares to be awesome and exceed expectations. 

Some preparation inspiration: Remember to wash all produce thoroughly.

• Blueberries – we are so happy to be able to offer Michigan grown organic blueberries in our shares. The Adams family has been farming since 1870 and has been growing blueberries since the 1950s. We hope to be able to include their blueberries in quite a few shares this season.
• Tulsi Holy Basil – is somewhat popular for teas, and is great hot or cold. Simple wash the basil, stems and flowers and all, and place in a vessel (tea pot or large container) and pour boiling water over it, cover and steep for at least 10 minutes. Sweeten to taste. But did you know how delicious Tulsi is as a culinary herb? We use it to make pesto, and pasta, we also like to chop it up and add to veggie dishes in the last few minutes of cooking. It pairs really nicely with curries and can be used anywhere you would use thai basil.
• Cabbage – this time of year we use cabbage as a salad green often. Have some fun and experiment with old favorite slaw recipes, or try something new. A tulsi basil and cabbage slaw is delicious – add some rice vinegar and a little tamari/shoyu (soy sauce) and a bit of honey and let it sit covered for at least 30 minutes and serve. Leftovers of this slaw will taste even better as the dressing macerates the cabbage a bit and the flavors all marry together.
• Summer Squash Medley – this week we are focusing on round and scalloped shaped squash. These are so fresh that they really do taste great raw. Of course easy and good on the grill, as a stand alone side dish simply steamed, or included in a mixed veggie dish.
• Broccoli – another great simple vegetable that pairs well with many other veggies, and can be eaten raw or cooked. A massive stir fry with the tulsi, cabbage, peppers and summer squash would go along way and is an easy way to cook most of this week’s share and then have lots of leftovers to eat for days to come.
• Amish Slicer Tomatoes – the first tomatoes in the shares so far this year. These are an item we anticipate greatly each summer. We love slicing a tomato and eating it plain as is, or making tomato salads, or tomato sandwiches, etc. We will include a variety of tomatoes as we progress through the season, and some weeks will include more tomatoes than others.
• Bell Peppers – this is just the start of the pepper season. We plan to include many varieties of sweet peppers as the season progresses. Is it a stuffed pepper week, or fajitas, or kabobs or? We love hearing how folks use their CSA shares.

What is going on at the Farm:

We got all of the garlic harvested this week. Overall, the crop looks better than expected for this drought year. We will start to include garlic in the shares once it cures a bit.

We harvested some of the onions and will work to get the rest of them harvested next week.

Our potatoes are harvestable but could go a bit longer and size up some more.

We planted quite a bit of basil, dill, and cilantro seed this week in some of the beds that garlic was harvested from. Our initial herb direct-seeding over a month ago seems to be a crop failure. Luckily we did transplant the Tulsi holy basil prior to that and it is thriving.

We will plant more crops in the coming weeks for fall harvest.

A more detailed crop by crop update will be in next week’s Newsletter.

Here is the plan for deliveries:

Route:

8-10AM      Ypsilanti and Milan

9AM-1PM    Ann Arbor

12PM-2PM   Canton, Plymouth, and Northville

1PM-3PM    Farmington Hills and Bloomfield Hills

2PM-4PM    Troy, Hazel Park, Ferndale

We understand that there may be weeks that folks want to skip their share. That is okay so long as you confirm with us at least 7 days in advance of the skip week. In those cases, you can let us know if you want to add a share to the end of your season, or receive double shares some weeks etc. We encourage members to find a friend, family member, or neighbor to pick up your share from your porch and share the bounty of the harvest, instead of skipping weeks – if that is a viable option for you. Some members opt to notify us of skip weeks and ask that we donate the shares – we are happy to do that. We don’t donate to a food bank in those instances, we give the food directly to our neighbors or folks in the community that would benefit from it.

My phone number is (831) 706-1237. You can call or text if it is the day of or day before delivery if you have anything urgent to communicate. I don’t usually check emails much over the weekend but I do have my phone on me if you need to touch base.

There is lots of good info on our website www.countryvalleyfarm.com

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions at all.

Thank you for sharing this message and our contact info with anyone who you know who may be interested.  We appreciate the community support.

Kind regards,                 

Adam Mitchel

Country Valley Farm

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