Week 12 Newsletter

Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm!  Welcome to Week 12 of our Summer/Main season CSA.  Hopefully all of our CSA members are enjoying their boxes.  Week 12 is not an egg week.

It seems like it has been raining for days!  Although I know it hasn't, since Monday was a beautiful day for harvest.  But, Sunday was a wash out and the rain started Tuesday afternoon and continued right through last night.  I am ready to dry out!  It is, however, fairly easy to keep our rains in perspective, by simply following any the news outlets.  Texas is still drying out from rain measuring in the feet and now Hurricane Irma is, literally, destroying entire islands and bearing down on Florida.  Yes, we are lucky to be in relatively dry Pennsylvania.  It is all a matter of perspective.

These cooler rainy days are helping some of our crops and bringing an end to others.  Greens, both salad and cooking, are growing well and enjoying the cooler temperatures.  Most of our summer crops, however, are not so happy.  We are continuing to harvest some beautiful tomatillos and our sungold tomatoes planted in our greenhouse look beautiful.  The majority of our tomato harvest, however, is quickly coming to an end and you can expect to see fewer and fewer tomatoes available.  Our final planting of snap beans look great and are flowering nicely and starting to produce beans. Hopefully the beans will mature before fall and frost really set in.  We have another summer squash planting and like the beans, we are hopeful for a harvest before frost.  Peppers are producing and we are watching our eggplants in hopes of a small harvest.
  

Our fields are just about completely planted for fall and winter harvest.  This week we are focusing on getting our greenhouse planted for fall.  We will allow the sungold tomatoes to continue to produce, but other crops planted in the greenhouse will be removed, these beds will be turned over and greens will be planted.  We are excited for a nice fall harvest of greens this year.

Speaking of fall we are six weeks away from the start of our new fall/winter CSA.  For fall we have full and part shares available and add on egg shares.  The fall share runs for 8 weeks and begins immediately following our summer/main season.  You do not need to be a member of our summer CSA to become a member of our fall CSA.  Registration is now open on our website for fall memberships.  As always, if you have questions or need additional information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Continuing with our fall theme.  Fall, on farm, means more protein becomes available.  We will once again be offering apple orchard pork.  Freezer pork will be available by the half and whole.  In a few months, we will also have some individual cuts of pork available for sale through our buyers clubs and at markets.  Watch your email for more details on pork or email us with specific questions.  We have increased our production of chicken for this fall and soon we will, also, have some chicken available through our buyers club and markets.  Chicken has been in short supply this season!  For most of this season we have been sold out of chicken and Farmer Don and I are eagerly awaiting having chicken for our own dinner table soon!

Boxes!  Yes, boxes again!  First, thanks to everyone one who treats our boxes with care and returns them each week.  And then my usual reminder:  Please return your box to your pick up site! If we deliver you box to your house, please leave empty boxes and coolers on your porch for us to pick up.  As I have said in the past, we try hard to keep our operation sustainable.  By returning your box, not only are you helping us to be financially sustainable, but you are helping the environment by keeping these boxes out of our ever growing landfills in Pennsylvania.

Our kitchen has been fairly quiet recently.  I did freeze beans last weekend and still would like to find time to can some salsa verde.  My plans were for more tomatoes, but with our tomato harvest quickly coming to an end, I am thinking the sauce and tomatoes in the pantry now will have to last the winter.  I will still make and can some applesauce and of course, sauerkraut is still in the plans.  If I get really ambitious and somehow find an additional day in an upcoming week, I may also try and can some pickled beets.  Dinners this time of year tend to be fairly simple, using ingredients from the farm.  We tend to eat late in the evening, after chores are complete and darkness has fallen.  Maybe not the best for our bodies, but reality on a busy farm.

So it is now light out, the dogs are begging for breakfast and I need to get this day started. As usual, I will pass this over to Farmer Don to read and then send it off to all our farm members and friends.

Be safe, be well, enjoy your veggies and have a great week.