Fall CSA Week 6

1. Onions, Alisa Craig
2. Garlic
3. Red Cabbage: Black Bean and Avocado Tacos
4. Carrots 2#: Carrot Cake Cupcakes
5. Potatoes 3#
6. Butternut Squash: substitute for pumpkin, Pumpkin Smoothies
7. Carnival Acorn Squash: Stuffed Acorn with Mushroom and Chickpeas
8. Winter Salad Mix
9. Daikon Radish
10. Rutabaga: Mashed Rutabaga with Sour Cream and Dill
11. Brussel Sprouts 1#: Butternut Squash Pizza with Maple Glazed Brussels
12. Pennsylvania Butter Dutch Popcorn: Perfect Popcorn
13. Eggs: Pumpkin Waffles

This is our last FALL CSA share of the season. Thank you to all of our FALL CSA members for your support of the farm. I hope we provided an assortment of vegetables throughout the season to your liking. For those participating in our WINTER CSA, deliveries will begin Wednesday, January 7, 2015. The calendar for the winter delivery on our website here. The winter shares are all sold out for the season.

Sign-up for next seasons 2015 CSA program will begin after January 1, 2015. We accept sign-up for all seasons at that time until we have reached capacity. I will automatically renew previous members this season based upon their previous year’s selections. There will be a prompt in a renewal email with directions to change and/or cancel your farm share if desired.

The salad greens have lasted us throughout the entire fall season and I’m always delighted when we can do that despite having pretty cold temperatures early on in November. Our spinach is still holding steady in our winter tunnel for harvesting for the winter shares as it is hardier than salad greens and can survive the harsher conditions of winter. We have to monitor temperatures and humidity levels regularly to keep the plants healthy and ration out the greens to our best ability to try to have enough supply throughout the entire winter months. Let’s hope we don’t endure to many -60 degree conditions this winter as those conditions are challenging.

I wanted to share an article written by Joel Fuhrman entitled “Cancer Alert – Your Best Defense, Go Cruciferous”. He says “many studies have shown that eating fresh fruits, beans, vegetables, seeds, and nuts reduces the occurrence of cancer. Fuhrman plotted cancer incidence in 25 countries against unrefined plant food intake and found that as vegetables, beans, and fruit consumption goes up 20% in a population, cancer rates typically drop 20%. But cruciferous vegetables are different; they have been shown to be twice as effective. As cruciferous vegetable intake goes up 20%, in a population, cancer rates drop 40%.”

So what are cruciferous vegetables you ask? Well, your CSA box usually contains at least 1 but usually more each week. Here’s the list and remember to eat 1/2 c of raw or lightly cooked each day for health. It all goes back to the saying, “Let Food Be Thy Medicine”.

The new item in the box this week is thePennsylvania Butter Dutch popcorn. This is a heirloom variety of popcorn that grows well here and proves to be creamy, buttery, and delicious! We grew popcorn this season as part of the hog/corn rotation in the back section of the garden. My dad shares stories growing up on a farm outside of Alma where each of the eight kids would sit down and listen to a special program on the radio and shell ears of popcorn. Popcorn was the evening snack when he was a child as there were no bags of chips, crackers, or other fast food snacks available. The cobs and dried husks were used as fire starter for grandma’s wood cooking stove. Today, I still find the dried cobs very useful for starting fires in our woodstove used to heat the house or barn. Just like my grandpa did, I have gunny sacks of popcorn hanging from the rafters in my barn to keep away from any critters and store for the winter.

I shelled 4 ears of popcorn, then applied lotion as the seeds are a little rough, and had about 1 1/2 cups of popping corn. All but a couple seeds popped in our test batch. I use 1 cup of seeds in our stove top popcorn maker that has a little stir rod in in, but you can use a regular pot with a lid as well. Use an oil with a high smoke index, such as coconut, canola, or peanut and stir or shake regularly while on high heat. I turn off the stove when the pan is over half full. Once the popcorn is done popping, I dump the pot into a brown paper bag and add our seasoning. The boys always fight over who gets to shake the bag. Our favorite seasonings are garlic powder or roasted garlic seasoning, nutritional yeast, and soy sauce (that I keep in a spritz bottle). I hope you enjoy our family tradition as much as we do.

Happy Holidays!

Eat Well. Smile Often.

Your Farmer,

Heather