Week 12 CSA Newsletter

Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm!!

We hope everyone is enjoying their Week 12 boxes.  Week 12 was not an egg week.  Ordering for Week 13 is now underway and will end Sunday at 6 pm.  Week 13 will be a CHICKEN WEEK.  So, if you purchased a chicken share, please be sure to pick up your chicken with your vegetables next Tuesday.  After next Tuesday's Week 13 delivery, there are 7 weeks remaining in our CSA.

Rain!  Yep it is still raining!  But, as I have said before, time to count our blessings.  Sitting here watching the news coverage of the hurricane and my heart is breaking!  So thankful we are measuring our rain in inches and not in feet, like our friends to the south!  So thankful we are spending this evening in our home and not evacuating.  So thankful we are losing our tomatoes and not our home to the rain and storms.  I could go on...

In the fields, we are muddy!  And yes our tomatoes, unfortunately, are about done for the season, succumbing to disease brought on by this wet weather.  We still have some nice looking green cherry tomatoes on the vine and hopefully this weekend's dry sun will ripen them and keep them from splitting.  Snap beans are also a victim of the rain and are most likely done for the season, but our flat Italian beans are looking good.  Ground cherries are coming on strong.   As summer squash starts to slow a bit, we now have some winter squash available.  Our newly planted greens are up and growing and should be available soon.  We have started to harvest eggplant and hopefully, with a bit of luck, they should be available in greater numbers.

We have a few new additions on farm.  20 turkeys!  A spur of the moment decision, found Farmer Don ordering some turkey poults as an on farm experiment.  We have been raising pastured chickens for quite a while, but this is our first attempt at turkeys.  Right now the baby turkeys are in our barn under a heat lamp, but will eventually move to the field once they get a bit larger and have a few more feathers.  Stay tuned for, what I am sure will be some turkey adventures.  Let's hope the stories don't involve Rosie chasing turkeys around the farm.

The golden rod is blooming, the days are shorter and leaves are changing a bit.  Which means soup season has begun!  Farmer Don spent some time in the kitchen this week making two of my favorites, potato leek soup and a floating biscuit chili/stew.  The leeks were courtesy of Farmer Phil and the soup paired perfectly with grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches.  The chili was recipe found in Shannon Hayes' The Grassfed Gourmet.  I would recommend this book to anyone cooking/eating grassfed meats.  Shannon Hayes is a grass farmer, homemaker and homeschooler in New York State and is one of my favorite authors, bloggers and speakers.  Her website is www.radicalhomemaker.net.

I need to wrap this up, as Farmer Don is ringing the dinner bell.  Tacos tonight made with Dancing Hen Farm ground pork.

 

Thanks, as always, for your support of our small family farm.  And remember to count your blessings.