These unseasonably warm temperatures don’t feel quite like winter squash weather. Despite that, in honor of October, we are putting out the spread. From sweet delicata to dry and smooth buttercups and novelty spaghetti squash.
As we harvest, clean and put storage crops away for the next six months of eating, we separate out any fruits and veggies that we think may not store well. Either they are a little small, slightly soft or a tad misshapen. If they are still good and tasty right now, we put them into the seconds box and prioritize eating them up first.
For the next couple of weeks you may see some of the seconds in the share—this week we have onions and winter squash that don’t quite make the storage cut. Feel free to take extras of the seconds, just in case you get a bad one.
Bean Picking
Thanks for all of the offers of bean-pickin’ help. We need a stretch of dry weather to collect pods in (a stretch at this point being anything longer than 8 hours). We will let everyone know as soon as we do, when the picking will be and will aim for a weekend or after school on a weekday.
The Farm Shares
In the veggie share: Winter squash, pac choi, chinese cabbage, broccoli, kale, chard, eggplant, hot and sweet peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, carrots, beets, celeriac, mesclun mix, lettuce heads, cabbage, garlic, onions and shallots. U-pick flowers and sungolds are dwindling, but available in the field. Coming in with some colder weather: leeks and halloween pumpkins.
In the meat share: We have entered a magical, rare period of time called the BLT days. A brief window in the fall, when the first of this year’s pork has been butchered and yet it’s warm enough for there to be tomatoes on the vine. The bacon has been smoked, sliced and wrapped. We are well stocked now with four different kinds of sausage: Ginger Sage, Bourbon Fennel, Sweet Italian and Spicy Italian. We also have all other cuts of pork and plenty of whole and half chickens. Plus a little ground beef. Fresh chickens again next week, followed at the end of the month with beef.
Sara Kurak is one of the owners and operators of Full and By Farm in Essex, NY. She shares updates from the farm with her CSA members and also contributes those letters to the Essex on Lake Champlain Blog to share the news with a wider audience. Learn about farm life week-to-week through her reports!
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