Greetings farm Dancing Hen Farm and Welcome to CSA Week
19. This is an egg week. After this week
there are 3 more weeks remaining in the 2015 season.
Yes, I have to start with the weather! Crazy!
Here on farm we were in the low twenty’s over the weekend and now we
have been in the 70’s the past few days.
I am not complaining. I actually
love the diversity of Pennsylvania’s weather.
And who can complain about beautiful warms days in October! However, the bad news is that over the
weekend we did have a hard freeze on farm.
This means, almost all of our summer crops were killed. Sadly (and un-expectantly) we lost some
cherry tomato plants in our unheated greenhouse. We have not yet totally winterized our
greenhouses and the temperatures just dipped too low for the tomatoes. But, in reality, it is the middle of October,
time for the summer growing season to come to an end. Time to transition to greens and storage
crops.
One of my favorite crops this time of year are sweet
potatoes. I cannot resist a baked sweet
potato! I also find that sweets pair
really well with any cooking greens. And
if you have not tried sweet potato fries, you will not be disappointed. One recipe I have talked about in the past is
Sweet Potatoes, Apples and Braising greens.
This recipe does create a number of dirty dishes, but the flavor
combinations makes the extra cleanup well worth it. I usually slice my apples a bit smaller, tend
to cube the sweets and don’t think I have ever added the parsley. You can literally use any cooking green you
have available. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Sweet-Potatoes-Apples-and-Braising-Greens-240487
Our kitchen has been a bit busier lately. Over the weekend we made a really nice pork
roast with fennel. With the roast we
made baked sweet potatoes (of course!) and greens braised with garlic and red
pepper flakes. Farmer Don also made one
of his favorite summer time treats, fresh pico de gallo. This may be the last batch of the season, so
we are savoring it!
This coming weekend
I am hoping to actually do some canning.
Our pepper harvest has been really bountiful this season, so I will be
canning some. Peppers, being a low acid
vegetable, can only be canned using a pressure canner. I have a pressure canner, but I am not
certain plain canned peppers is a product we would use. Therefore I will be marinating and pickling
them to create an acidic product which can be water bath canned. In the past I have always frozen peppers, so
this will be my first attempt at preserving peppers this way. Wish me luck.
I will keep you posted on how they turn out. I most likely will also freeze peppers for
use in chili, soups and stews.
I want to take a bit of space in this newsletter to thank
our site hosts. These site hosts are
volunteers who allow us to use their businesses and homes to distribute our
weekly share boxes. They store our
share boxes each week and assist CSA members with the occasional delivery
related problem. Many of these people
and sites have been involved with our farm since the very first year and we are
grateful for their support. Our thanks
go out to the staff at Bloom Naturally at both the Bloomsburg and Danville
stores. Thanks to Meredith and Chris
Coopola our site hosts in Riverside. Thank
you to Dr. Maria and the entire staff at the Whole Life Center for Life in
Drums. Thank you to the Good Shepherd
Lutheran Church in Wilkes Barre and Guy and Adrieena for helping us with a
downtown Wilkes Barre drop site. Thanks
to Corrine and the entire staff of Balance Yoga for hosting our Forty Fort drop
site. And last, but not least. Thank you Judy and Misericordia University
for hosting our Dallas drop site. If you
see any of these individuals, please take a minute to thank them for the great
job they do for us.
Our winter buying club has started. This buying club is separate from our
CSA. Right now we are offering pickups
Friday evenings in Bloomsburg, Saturday mornings in Dallas and Forty Fort and
on farm pick up Friday evenings or anytime on Saturday. Once the Mountain Top Farmers Market ends, we
will be adding a pick up site in Mountain Top.
We are hoping to continue this buying club for the next few months. If
you have questions about this buying club, please contact us at the farm.
We currently have a nice supply of pastured chicken
available. Chicken is available for
purchase through our CSA buying club and our winter buying club. You can also purchase chicken (and eggs) on
farm. Please call or email us first if
you wish to purchase on farm, so we can be sure we have items available in our
cooler for you. This year’s chickens
have been some of the best we have ever raised.
Very consistent in size (4 to 6 pounds) and very moist and tasty! We offer whole and half chickens for
sale. As I have said before, if you have
not tried pasture raised chicken, I would encourage you to do so. You may never buy organic chicken from the
grocery store again!
Speaking of meat. Our
pigs are still eating, sleeping and foraging in our old apple orchard. We were worried, with the cooler temperatures
that we would need to move them off the hill and into the barn, in order to
keep them watered and provide them more sheltered. However, these warmer days, and the warmer
days forecast, have allowed to keep them on pasture. They do have a “house” and brush area for
shelter and thanks to the warm up, non-frozen water. This year’s pork should be available in late
November or early December. If you are
interested in purchasing bulk (freezer) pork from us, and have not already done
so, please email us so we can add you to our list and reserve pork for
you. If you are interested in buying
individual cuts of pork, these will be available through the winter buying club
in late November or early December.
Watch your email for details!
On Sunday, Farmer Don will be at the Mountain Top
Market. In addition to vegetables, he
will have a supply of eggs, a good supply of chicken and a limited supply of
pork. I think the weather is to be a bit
chilly, but not as frigid as last week.
If you come to market, stop by and say hello to Farmer Don. Also be sure to ask him about our buying club
and future pick up site in Mountain Top.
Another gentle reminder to please return your share boxes,
so we can reuse them. These boxes, at
1.75 to over 2.00 each, represent a substantial expense for the farm and we
trying to get by without purchasing more this season.
Thanks again to each of you, our members and friends of the
farm. Without your support we would not
be able to do what we do. We would not be able to sustainably farm this hilly
bit of land we call Dancing Hen Farm, our home.
So long for this week.
“be safe, be well and enjoy those veggies”.
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