Tuesday, September 25, 2012

CSA Week 16



Last Friday we couldn't peel our eyes away from
reading the forecast for the next two evenings, low 30s!
While our summer hats still hung by the door 
and SPF 50 always at arm's reach
we welcome Fall but not frost!
Joe and his crew spent most of Saturday morning
covering as many crops as he could to protect from
any potential frost damage.
By Monday afternoon we accessed that we had
minimal damage on sweet potato leaves, a great amount of
damage on some of our unprotected green beans, basil and tomato plants.
The minimal frost did shrivel up zinnias and celosia leaves as well as
sunflowers. I was impressed with how many of the other flowers such as calendula, cleome, cosmos and ageratums were not effected at all, plenty of bouquets still to be made!



Your vegetable harvest this week............4 more weeks left!

2 heads of lettuce
cherriette or french breakfast radishes
purple Italian eggplant
sweet red and yellow bell peppers
fresh thyme
san marzano tomatoes
red russian kale
sweet hakurei turnips



Your fruit harvest this week......... 2 more weeks left!

lakemont or neptune grapes (both seedless)
jonagold apples
honey crisp apples
mcintosh apples
bartlett or asian pears
All fruit is grown by Mick Klug Farm, St. Joseph Michigan

starting from the bartlett pear clockwise: mcintosh apple, honey crisp, empire, asian pear, golden supreme and in the center, gala apple.

The farm in your kitchen recipes:

A traditional saute of onion and kale is always great but Fall weather brings on Indian spices in our kitchen!
Bring out the cumin, curry, ginger and corriander and lets get cooking........


Pictures of the farm this week.........

brussel sprouts are healthy and are growing well, we may have
some available for sale at our farm stand this week so be sure to look out for them!
gorgeous budding brussel sprout

drying cayenne peppers and chamomile flowers in the greenhouse

floating row cover helps protect a few crops from the frost

frost damage to our green beans!

 swiss chard protected under row cover

 Edward gathers acorns for the goats

 of course Ophelia finds it first!

we try to offer a fresh herb every week for our CSA, pictured is 
a beautiful crop of  fresh parsley

a beautiful crop of fresh sage


 fresh thyme that is in the share this week

our peppers managed to escape any frost damage 

sweet carmen red peppers

time to say "until next season...." as we see our tomato plants
get hit pretty bad from two nights of frost. We'll harvest what we can for this week
so if you haven't had time to enjoy a good heirloom this season come by our stand for
one last tomato taste!

Edward, "I'm a farmer now helping out at the farm stand!"
happy as could be working last Thursday at the stand.

Duncan on the John Deere dual wheel tractor spreading our farm grown compost, getting ready for next season!

 Look at that rich layer of compost, standing there admiring the dark soil and it's smell,
I couldn't wait to start planting in it........or actually I think we all need to rest
a bit after this season!


Get ready because next week we'll be talking about pork!

Eat Well!

Your farmers,
Tania and Chris Cubberly along with our super crew, Duncan, Danny, Joe, Michelle, Tomas,
Devin and Keegan!