Farm Message for Saturday, October 3, 2009

Star Hollow Farm News

For the week preceding Saturday, October 3rd, 2009

Hi folks,

Summer is now officially over, and the maple trees' changing leaf colors prove it. We've had several nights in the high 30s, and even fired up the wood stove last Saturday evening after returning from market in the rain. It felt good. We also got to see both of our “away from home” children over the weekend, which was great. And we took a 12-hour break from the farm and went to the Celtic music festival we attend each Fall in Bethlehem, PA. Nothing like sitting outside, drinking beer, listening to fiddles and bagpipes on a Sunday morning to make you feel like you're on break!

This week's planned produce: New or back-on-the-list items underlined. Some items sell out fast. As at any farmer's market it's first-come, first-served.

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Greens: arugula, baby Asian greens, bok choi, braising greens, cabbage, chard, Lettuce (bibb, red leaf, romaine), mesclun, microgreens, kale, pea shoots, baby spinach.
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Veggies: beans (green, wax, Romano), beets, broccoli, carrots (bunched and roots), cauliflower, sweet corn, English cucumbers, eggplant (Oriental), garlic, onions (cippolini and red), peppers (bell, assorted chiles), potatoes (five or six kinds), radishes (French breakfast), rhubarb, scallions, shallots, sweet potatoes, tomatoes (standard red, yellow, green, assorted heirlooms, Romas, canners, cherries), sweet white turnips, yellow squash, zucchini, winter squash (acorn, buttercup, butternut, delicata, kabocha)
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Herbs: Italian basil, chives, cilantro, parsley, peppermint, sage, rosemary, sorrel, thyme
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Mushrooms: crimini, portabella, log-grown shiitake, white
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Berries & fruit: blackberries, blueberries, ever-bearing strawberries, apples (Fuji, golden delicious, honey crisp, Jonathan).
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Other items: the usual eggs, butter and cheeses. Also Keswick cheddar, feta and ricotta.

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On sale or reduced:
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Roma tomatoes by the 10# box
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10# boxes of winter squash seconds
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3 pound bags of seconds potatoes
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ricotta cheese.

On the farm: In spite of my back, we're running pretty much flat out here, trying to get in the harvest and put our fields “to sleep” before winter really sets in. We hired a crew of three people to help with potato and squash harvest last week, and that certainly helped. What remains to be done? We have about a dozen more rows of potatoes to dig, out of the initial 84. Our new potato harvester does not, as it turns out, work on fingerling potatoes – due to their size and shape – and fingerlings represent about a fifth of our potato acreage. So we're doing them the old way, which takes a lot longer. As soon as the potatoes are all out – which I hope will be tomorrow – we'll pull up all the plastic from the winter squash fields, spin on our rye/vetch cover crop mix, disc those seeds in, and we're done! Off to Florida for the winter (riiiiiight.......) Whoops, what I meant was continue processing those tons of potatoes and winter squash, and continuing to harvest herbs and greens and peppers and celery and celeriac from our garden, the greenhouse, and the high tunnel. There is no call for frost for the next ten days, which will put us well beyond our average first-frost date of October 1 (tomorrow!).

Price discussion: Last week I went into quite an in-depth discussion about our prices, compared with several DC grocery stores. If you missed it and are interested, it was also posted on the blog. (www.starhollowfarmcsa.blogspot.com).

CSA-Specific Information

Planned CSA produce for this week:

This week the plan is for a head of broccoli, a bunch of Swiss chard, head of bibb lettuce, an onion, a quart of baby potatoes, some sweet mini-peppers, Roma tomatoes, several delicata winter squash, and two Jonagold apples. Enjoy!

Adams Morgan CSA volunteers: Thanks to Samir and Amy for their help handing out orders last weekend. We appreciate the help!


Thanks for your support!

Randy, Chris and all at Star Hollow Farm

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