Greetings Country Valley Farm Members,
This is week 16 of the season. We are receiving some excellent growing weather and are very thankful for the sunshine.
We know that seasonal change can bring other changes and that many folks are busy; we also understand that people get tired and don’t want to cook – hey, we feel it too sometimes. We encourage everyone to continue to make time for yourselves, families, friends, and neighbors and keep food and healthy eating a priority and positive aspect of your daily life. Our mission includes increasing access to organic local food – your membership in our CSA helps make this a reality every day. We are committed to continuing to pack the farm shares with an abundance of great tasting, high quality, fresh organic produce each week – and providing variety that supports inspired cooking and eating. Creating space to cook, eat, enjoy life’s simple pleasures, and focus on our health is something we all deserve.
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR HOME DELIVERY MEMBERS: We have to change delivery days next week to Saturday September 16; as we have a family event Sunday morning and early afternoon. Deliveries will be Saturday afternoon and evening (next week only). Our delivery route is as follows, we are listing ranges to be safe:
- Superior Township and Ypsilanti – 3pm to 6pm
- Ann Arbor – 4pm to 7pm
- Plymouth – 5pm to 8pm
- Farmington Hills – 6pm to 9pm
- Hazel Park – 7pm to 9pm
- Dearborn – 7pm to 9pm
- Westland – 7pm to 9pm
- Canton – 7pm to 9pm
We apologize for the change, if this does not work for you please let Adam know ASAP and we will work out a good solution.
There is no change to pick up times at Genesis of Ann Arbor
A bit about what is going on the farm:
The warm weather and sunshine are really helping the fall crops and keeping the summer crops going.
We anticipate that we will have lettuces and broccoli in the shares in 2 weeks. We should have broccoli and cauliflower in the shares for a good handful of weeks once they start. We planted enough lettuce that we should have lettuce weekly once we start and continuing well into the fall. Did you know that lettuce can tolerate temperatures down to 20 F and then resumes growing when temperatures rise above freezing? It can, you just have to wait until it warms up above freezing and thaws fully before harvesting. Mother Nature is so amazing! Once it gets cooler, the lettuces beds will all have row cover on them.
We are unable to use the row cover now due to the heat, we learned the hard way as it cooked some of the first lettuces we had planted. The beans seem to be getting some continued cdeer damage but some beds look better than others and we may end up getting some harvest from them after all.
The tomatoes and peppers are producing well still, many of the tomato plants are in their final round of production. We have started harvesting just a small handful of the Yummy Orange peppers – these are our favorite and one of the sweetest peppers we have found, the plants are loading with fruit and will ripen soon enough and be in the shares.
Our partner farm, Cinzori Farm has a lot of varieties of tomatoes and sweet peppers that are harvesting each week and we will continue including them to increase the varieties members receive.
The dill is making flowers only now and not many ferns – if anyone needs any for pickles let Adam know. The dill we direct seeded some weeks ago is growing and we are hopeful for fresh dill ferns in October.
The cilantro that we direct seeded is growing slowly – so far this has not been a successful cilantro year for our farm.
The basil is slowing down but still growing. We had hoped to have thai basil and purple basil in the shares but are unsure as it just isn’t growing much (especially compared to the tulsi and Genovese basil which have made massive hedgerows and keep producing).
We will have kohlrabi starting soon.
We direct seeded cherry belle radishes, daikon radish, watermelon red-heart radish, and black Spanish radish – all of them are growing well.
We also direct seeded baby bok choy, red mustard greens, and tatsoi -we are watering them daily and expect to see sprouts soon.
We have about 2 weeks to Autumn equinox. Once the seasons change we will start to include varieties of hard squash each week, we will include summer squash next week and perhaps the week after to honor the ending of summer. Hard squash varieties will begin with spaghetti, delicata and then we will have acorn, carnival, kabocha, butternut, pie pumpkins, etc.
This week’s small shares contain the following items:
- Tri-color onions – 1 quart of mixed yellow, red, and white from our farm
- Baby turnip greens – 1 bunch from our farm
- Garlic – 3 bulbs from our farm
- Cucumbers – 3 slicers from Cinzori Farm
- French breakfast radishes – 1 bunch from Cinzori Farm
- Orange cocktail tomatoes – 1 pint from Cinzori Farm
- Purple/Ivory Bell Peppers – 2 or 3 from Cinzori Farm
- Medium shares will receive extra tomatoes, peppers, and turnip greens
- Large shares will packed as 2 small shares.
Some preparation and cooking tips:
- Tri-color onions – red, white, and yellow onions can be used raw or cooked in any recipe you like onions.
- Baby turnip greens – these are the first harvest from our fall turnip crop, the greens are super tender. We are packing them with the roots on to add a layer of culinary excitement. The roots and greens are edible. You can cook them together as you would any green, or eat them raw in a salad.
- Garlic – this is our pride and joy hardneck garlic. It has a great flavor raw or cooked and also stores well if you like to use only a little bit of garlic.
- Cucumbers – we have received a lot of great feedback on the cucumbers and are trying to include them in the shares each week that we can. These are not waxed or oiled so the peel can be left on and is edible and delicious.
- French breakfast radish – often eaten with butter or cheese, these can be eaten raw or cooked, and yes the greens are edible and delicious.
- Orange cocktail tomatoes – these have a nice balance of sweetness and are snacking size.
- Purple/ivory bell peppers – these are the variety Iko Iko, they are beautiful and delicious. Also great raw or cooked.
Check out our website and peruse old newsletters for additional cooking tips and recipe ideas: https://countryvalleyfarm.com/newsletter/
That’s all for now. Looking forward to seeing everyone soon.
Adam Mitchel
Country Valley Farm