Fall Week 2 Newsletter and Buying Club Open

Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm!  Welcome to November!

Yesterday, Tuesday, CSA members received Week 2 boxes.  Week 2 is not an egg week.  There are 6 weeks remaining in our extended season CSA.

Our winter buying club is now open for ordering.  Ordering ends Thursday at 5 am and deliveries will be this weekend.  New on the buying club this week is a true seasonal favorite, fresh pressed cider.  We also have pastured chicken and eggs.  Pork is sold out for the season, with fresh pork being available the end of November.  And as always we have a variety of organically grown greens, root crops and storage vegetables available.

Our new item for this week are rutabagas.  The rutabaga, or Swedish turnip, is said to be the result of a cross between cabbage and turnips and it has been cultivated here for over 200 years.  Rutabagas are nutty and sweet with a mild turnip like flavor.  They are delicious roasted, or added to soups and stews.   In our kitchen, once we start harvesting rutabagas, we always mix rutabagas in with our mashed potatoes. This time of year we also make roasted vegetables often and we find a good mix to be rutabaga, beets, carrots, onions and potatoes.
  

On farm, we are still tightening up and preparing for cooler weather.  Some greenhouses are now covered in plastic and side and end walls have been erected.  These greenhouses are either planted with crops for winter and early spring harvest or will be heated beginning late winter for seedling production.  We will be removing the plastic from smaller greenhouses we use as nurseries for our seedlings.  These greenhouses will not be used until next spring and removing the plastic will prevent snow and ice from not only damaging the plastic, but also causing damage the houses structure.   Next week, we will be placing plastic over some of our field grown greens. This will allow us to harvest from these plots even after lower overnight temperatures.  All this winter and spring preparation and we are still harvesting greens and root crops! 

I will apologize now for this shortness of this newsletter.   Hopefully next week I can carve out some extra newsletter time.

For now, I will end by, as always thanking everyone for their continued support of our farm and local, sustainable agriculture.