Last Regular Pickup...

This week is our last week for normal pickups, although we hope to see our members for the next few weeks for the ala' carte Sunday pickups.

In the mean time, this week we have Green Tomatoes or unripe tomatoes. These are a fun little splurge at the end of the season, so why not try them out?

• Lots of Yummy recipies
  Rosted Squash and Green Tomatoes
• Green Tomatoe Soup
• Green Tomatoe Pie
• Green Tomatoe Pickles
• Other Green Toms Canning - Always be careful with canning recipies! I do not know this source.
  How to ripen them indoors

Pulling Tomatoes...

This time of year is both happy and sad on the farm. We are sad that the season is coming to an end, but happy that the prospects for next year seem so bright. Today was a perfect example of the dichotomy of this time of the season.

I was pulling tomatoes plants from the garden. We could wait until the frost we are expecting next week, but the plants are basically done, so now is as good a time as any to do it. As I pulled them out of the ground I picked some of the better ripe tomatoes and bigger green ones for this week's pickup. But mainly it is a destructive act, pulling them out by the roots and throwing them in the pile to be added to our compost heaps. Sad, admitting the end of the summer tomatoes and the end of summer.

At the same time Eric was mowing close the new ground (about an another acre) we plan on planting next year. In the next couple weeks it will be plowed, disced, and tilled. Happy and hopeful of what next year will bring.

It is that time of year!

((Oh, and in case you wonder why we pull the tomato plants instead of tilling them under in place, it is part of our Integrated Pest Management practices. By pulling them and any associated diseases, bugs, or fungi they are no longer in the garden to crop their heads up next year. The composting process will kill any pathogens, and we will have the benefit of their biomass in compost next year without the risk of perpetuating any problems.))

Winter is coming...

I never though so much of my time would by spent thinking about weather. About rain, too little or too much? About the temperature, too low or too high? This fall our temperatures have been beautiful, but alas it is not fated to continue. This morning’s weather forecast check showed Saturday Oct 27, low 32 and Sunday Oct 28 a low of 29!

Time to start thinking about our frost protection! As we have discussed with our CSA members this coming week (Oct 21 and 24) will be our last “regular” pickup. After that we will be switching to Sunday only pickup and instead of having bags already packed for our members we will send out an email on Friday where we will indicate what we have available and the cost for each. This will be available for members only. Items will include winter squash, onions, kale, and honey. We also expect to be able to offer lettuce, radishes, turnips, beets, and maybe a few other late season items!
We hope we will have three or four of these pickups until we are done for the year!

Sun Gods reward solar!

The Indians won again last night and may well guarantee themselves a world series spot on Thursday. The solar gods are rewarding baseball teams with photovoltaic (solar) panels this year.

There are currently 3 teams in major league baseball who currently have solar panels in their facilities, the San Francisco giants, the Colorado Rockies, and the Cleveland Indians. Coincidence? I don't think so! The Red socks to are embracing "green" recently implementing a recycling program, but their solar system is still in the planning phase, the Indians on the other hand already have a small solar system going. Enough power to power every TV in the Jake!

Since the Red Socks don't have their system done yet the Indians are fated to win the series! We may run into trouble with the Rockies though whose own solar system is slightly bigger then our own...

Local Food and Carbon Offsets

I found a reference to this on one of my favorite farm blogs, Sugar Creek .

"If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That's not gallons, but barrels. Small changes in buying habits can make big differences. Becoming a less energy-dependent nation may just need to start with a good breakfast." Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral"

That is amazing, absolutely gob smacking! Think about these numbers.

1 barrel of oil makes 20 gallons of gasoline. 1 gallon of gasoline makes 20 pounds of carbon dioxide. So if every person ate just one meal a week of local food that would equal 440,000,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a week! 22,880,000,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year!

One passenger car a year getting 21.5mpg and traveling 12,500 miles a year only emit 11,450 pounds of CO2 a year!

We need to think about definitive ways to offset the carbon emitted by people driving to our farm for pickup. Maybe by purchasing compact fluorescent for lower income households?

Kale day...

We think we have a pretty nice share for members this week, given how late it is in the season, but alas, our tomatoes are almost done and our summer squash is gone. Soon snow will blow and we will wonder where summer went! (This week's Sunday share below. 1 butternut squash, 1 acorn, a handfull of hot peppers, 3 small sweet banana peppers, 1pound plus a handful of green beans, 8 apples, 8 lemon tomatoes, 3 or 4 small heirloom eggplant. and the kale.)


In the meantime we have LOTS of kale for people. Today we only gave 1-1/2 pounds (which takes up about half a grocery bag, but we will have it available until the end our season in a couple weeks, and lots of it!

I hate it that often my favorite veggies are the most misunderstood, among them Kale. Which is not your mother's greens! It has 100 and one possible uses and to help you find them here are some links to great Kale recipes on line (look in your newsletter for others!)

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_30572,00.html
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_35502,00.html
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_31266,00.html
http://www.grouprecipes.com/7542/kale-and-bean-salad.html
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1108194
Kale wraps! http://www.hgtvclassifieds.com/hgtv/ah_recipes_sandwiches/article/0,1801,HGTV_3193_2857148,00.html

or Kale chips!?! -http://www.reapfoodgroup.org/FFTF2007/07%20winning%20recipes.htm

There! Now everyone should be able to find SOMETHING to do with their kale! Good luck and let us know how your kale experiments went!

Honey Day...

Finally inside! It is 9:30 and we just got done extracting our honey from our bee hives. We did farm chores this morning and by the time we had eaten lunch and gotten out to the bee hives it was already almost 2:00. Today is a Saturday and when you hold full time off farm jobs weekends during the season go away fast!

First step is to pull the "suppers" off the hives. My husband did this while I stood FAR back and watched. When we started beekeeping 4 years ago it was my hobby. That lasted 3 years and about 25 stings, until one day one bee got me in my leg and before I knew it I was blowing up like a balloon and covered in hives (the bumpy red kind not the bee kind!) By the time my husband got me to the ER about 20 minutes later I was starting to cough! Welcome to the world of bee allergies. I have been getting allergy shots to build up an immunity but for now I stand way back and yell at him... "SMOKE THE ENTRANCE!!! THE ENTRANCE!!!"

In any case we pulled all 5 suppers from our 3 hives and brought them back to the sorting shed to start the extracting process.

Note to self. Do not do do this in 55 degree weather. Cold honey does not want to flow, and we cold filter all our honey. Heat destroys enzymes in the honey that helps make it so healthy, so ours never gets heated above room temperature. But a room temperature of 55 was not going to work, so the first step was to heat the room a little. The little propane heater did the trick, no problem.

After we got the room up to temperature the next step was to uncap the frames. When honey is ready for winter storage bees put a little piece of wax over the top of it. So we use a hot knife to cut that off. Then the frames go four at a time into an extractor, which is basically a big tub with a handle on it, so my poor husband gets to spin it round and round really fast until all the honey flys out the sides.

Typically this is pretty easy, but typically the honey is not cold! Cold=thick! It took some time but eventually we got all 50 frames uncapped and spun! I have never seen honey run so slow!

And all this takes place among a few left over bees who are stuck inside with us. Not to mention the yellow jackets and wasps who somehow always find a way in when there are five gallon buckets of honey.

No one got stung, and once we got the room heated up it went well and after all that we have about 12 gallons of honey, about 144 pounds!

I think I may need to order some more bears!