CSA Week 14

Welcome to Week 14!

We thank you for joining our CSA and visiting our farm stand this season. From the early seeding in the greenhouse in March, preparing fields in April, transplanting in May, weeding and harvesting from June until the late heavy frost tells us its time to rest, we have grown together as your crew this season. Because of your support for local and organically grown food we stand here before a row of Zinnias and take our picture.

From left: Tania, Joe, Charlie, Sherman, Francisco, Michael, Chris and Armando!

We thank you for stepping away from your grocery store and allowing us to farm for you!

 

Your vegetable bounty this week:

Red Slicing Tomatoes

Poblano Peppers

Sweet Crisp Peppers

Spinach

Arugula

Early Fall Radishes

Red Cippolini

Red Adirondack Potatoes

Hakurei Turnips

Parsley

Your fruit bounty this week:

Jacklyn Red Raspberries

Canadice Grapes

Nectarines

Bartlett Pears

*Juniper Grapes

(* for our On Farm Guests who missed out on these grapes last week!)

Recipes!

Hakurei Turnips! These turnips have a sweet summery flavor to them

 and are best sliced and enjoyed on their own. They are also great roasted or made au gratin style!

The radishes have a mild peppery bite to them and would make a great side to your roasted chicken.

Roasted Radishes with Radish Greens

Some days we feel sweet and some days we feel sour............

how about Balsamic Glazed Sweet and Sour Cippolini!

Breakfast maybe hectic during the week...........maybe this will slow you down.....

Baked Eggs with Bacon and Spinach

Scrambled Eggs with Poblano Chiles and Cheese

Our Fall Parsley has a wonderful full flavor that would be great as a salad or made in an oil.....Parsley Oil.

Smokin' Poblano Peppers are coming your way.................Poblano & Skirt Steak Fajitas!

A great marriage of Sweet Peppers and Sausage..............

Sweet Pepper rice and Sausage.

As our evenings begin to cool down its time for us to warm up to Vanilla Roasted Pears!

Happenings on the farm this week.....

Admiring the last of the season. 

Popcorn is almost ready!

The evening before September's Harvest Moon!

Charlie always having fun in the field and harvested over 200 bunches of Parsnips!

Beautiful.

Golden Drumstick.

Irrigating leeks and brussels spouts.



Having fun among the Fall Broccoli!

We hope you enjoy your bounty this week,

Tania and Chris Cubberly and our crew, Michael, Armando, Francisco, Joe, Sherman and Charlie!

CSA Week 13

After 2 seasons of battling this root vegetable we finally won! We are so pleased to welcome you to our parsnips! This root vegetable is extremely fickle and the long 3 week germination stage is at times unbearable as the seeds are often swallowed up by weeds before they even emerge from the soil. Somehow this season our parsnips grew nearly flawless.

Pictured above is Chris harvesting parsnips that he direct seeded in the ground in early May.

A special note to Will, our August volunteer on the farm. Thanks for your time harvesting and weeding and tackling the beautiful flowering okra!

                                                   

Let's talk Celeriac!

This root vegetable (rarely found in your grocery store) is a kind of celery that is grown and used for it's root bulb rather than it's stalks which are too fibrous. It is very flavorful in a soup or stew and is amazing mashed or roasted with other vegetables.

Peel the tough surface layer with a sharp paring knife.

Once the other layer is peeled and the tops of the stalks are cut off you are ready to go!

If you decide not to use it right away it will store well in your fridge wrapped in a plastic bag, do not peel it but go ahead and discard the tops of the stalks.



Your (autumn?!) vegetable bounty this week.......

Orange Carrots

Parsnips

Tempel Farms Organics Salad Mix

Celeriac

San Marzano Tomatoes

Garlic

Red Beets with Greens

Red and Blue Adirondack Potatoes

Your fruit bounty this week........

Jupiter Blue Seedless Grapes

Red Haven Peaches

Alderman Plums

Zestar Apples

These Jupiter grapes will linger in your mind mid Winter as you reminisce about this Summer's fruit bounty. At the farm stand it's always a favorite time for me to watch as kids eat up their fruit before it even gets into the car. If these grapes make it home it will be a real treat for everyone to enjoy!

What's for dinner?

In the Winter months it's a good thing to find San Marzanos in a can, imported from Italy, but it's a true gem when you can have them fresh from a farm during the summer!  These are wonderful cut into a salad but if you're tempted to make tomato sauce as the cool temperatures remind us of canning and freezing, there is no better way than to sauce with San Marzanos.

Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter

Canning Tomato Sauce

These carrots may not be the prettiest on the block but make a great tasting side dish for dinner! If anyone is looking for maple syrup I have some left over that is available on the retail part of the farm stand on Thursdays, come see me!

Maple glazed Carrots

Pickled Beets

Roasted Beet Crositini

Celeriac and Parsnip Mash

Honey Glazed Roasted Carrots and Parsnips

Summer Honey is available for purchase!

Potato Harvest!

Armando uses the tractor powered potato digger to do most of the heavy work. The digger cuts just below the level where the potatoes grow and by way of a linked chain, lifts the spuds up and out of the soil and drops them for easy retrieval.

These Red and Blue Adirondack Potatoes are full of flavor and make a colorful meal. Add Celeriac to the plate and enjoy a simple Fall flavor to your roasted chicken dinner tonight!

A busy farm week................

Charlie, Sherman and Joe harvesting beets Tuesday morning.

Myself, amazed at how tall the broom corn is growing this season! Stay tuned for my boom corn wreaths in a few weeks!

Saturday morning we spent some time transplanting lettuce and scallions in the ground...........some
of the last transplanting of this season. You can see that we put a few 'scare' balloons around to try
and keep the deer at bay. A few have been getting in despite the deer fence.

All the new plants were put in the ground just before the afternoon rain came in, perfect timing!

Charlie, Joe, Michael, Chris and Armando harvesting potatoes.

 

Our compost piles are now being screened. Screening takes out the large pieces of wood, branches and debris and what's left is beautiful, fertile compost for us to spread on our fields this autumn to help our crops grow
next year.

We hope you enjoy your bounty this week!

Your farmers,

Tania and Chris Cubberly and our crew, Charlie, Joe, Michael, Francisco, Sherman and Armando!



CSA Week 12

Welcome to CSA Week 12!

Maple Syrup will be available this week in the retail side of Thursday's farm stand! We'll have 8oz and 12oz available for you in glass reusable jugs. For those that haven't had a chance to let me know they wanted to reserve one please come see me for availability!

Your vegetable harvest this week....................

Green Zebra Heirloom Tomato

Rose de Berne Heirloom Tomato

Basil

Ripe  Sweet Peppers

Sweet Corn! This is our last for the season, enjoy!

Eggplant

Arugula

Orange Carrots

Green Scallions

Your fruit harvest this week...............

Charentais Melons

Red Haven Peaches

Paula Red Apples

Goldenrod Sweet Grapes

These Goldenrod Grapes grown by Mick Klug of Mick Klug Farms in St. Joseph Michigan are a real treat! They are one of the first grapes to be harvested this season and once you taste these petite gems you'll agree that it could be the most perfect grape to start off the grape harvest. In the next couple of weeks we'll introduce you to a Red Seedless and a Blue Seedless Grape to enjoy.

 

A variety of tomatoes will be offered this season. Pictured above is a Green Zebra, a favorite here on the farm. It's filled with a complex yet balanced lemon lime flavor that is great on it's own.
Another variety in the share this week is a Rose de Berne, also a wonderful heirloom tomato! This thin skin variety has a great balance of sweet and savory, enjoy this rich tomato flavor!

 A few tomato recipes to try out: Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Salad. Another recipe to try is one that we enjoyed for last night's dinner, Pearl Couscous with Olives and Roasted Tomatoes. Chris loves the Rose de Berne for juicing and eating, Homemade Tomato Juice.

Arugula is back! Pictured above is our Arugula growing in the Hoop House grown under remay ( a light cloth that allows light but not the eager pests that eat the plant). Remay is our best protection from pests, who needs insecticides? This arugula can be enjoyed on it's own to appreciate it's true peppery flavor. One of my favorite meals consists of whipped cannellini beans with garlic on great crusty bread topped with arugula and bacon. MMMmmmm! Here is another recipe to try,

Arugula Corn Salad with Bacon

I found Sherman in the Hoop House battling the mosquitoes but gave me a quick smile as he harvests these Carmen Sweet Peppers. These peppers are great on their own but offer a great flavor roasted or grilled.

Roasted Red Pepper Tomato Sauce

Roasted Red Pepper and Walnut Spread

Once again, Sherman! Harvesting these crunchy sweet orange carrots for your shares this week!

Carrot cake with Maple-Cream cheese Frosting

Maple Glazed Carrots

A great way to marry these two flavors.......Eggplant Salad Toasts! or

Chinese Eggplant with Ginger and Scallions!

Eggplant Parmesan

Summer Corn Chowder with Scallions, Bacon and Potatoes

Orange Chicken with Scallions

We hope you enjoy your bounty this week!

Your farmers,

Tania and Chris Cubberly along with our crew, Charlie, Sherman, Elliott, Joe, Francisco, Michael and Armando!

CSA Week 11

 Last Saturday morning rain brought in beautiful dark skies with a steak of white light running through. Before heavy rains came in much of the morning harvest was complete with chard, kale, flowers, eggplant and peppers  for Sunday's market. During the the weeks of no rain on the farm we often do a rain dance or call to the rain clouds while we move irrigation pipe from field to field day after day, here Joe is letting the rain clouds know that we've had enough rain for now and to pass over us, no such chance!

On Monday Armando, Joe and Francisco began extracting honey. It took them all day to go through 18 supers that hold 10 frames each. Once they were finished we were able bottle nearly 600 pounds of honey. Pictured on the left, Joe scrapes the wax caps of the frames, which we saved for potential candle making this winter. Armando then takes the frames and slides two of them in an extractor that spins very fast allows the honey to come off and drip out into a bucket that has a screen on top to catch any loose wax, pictured below.

 

Francisco then takes the buckets of honey and pours them into jars, heat seals the caps on and puts on our label. Honey is here!!!

This week's CSA is for all Full and Half Share members as well as our Seasonal Fruit members.

This week's vegetable bounty:

Honey

 Fresh Thyme

Green and/or Yellow Wax Beans

White Sweet Onions

Jalapenos

Tomatillos

Orange Carrots

Mix of dark Red Norland and Adirondack Blue Potatoes

Whole Wheat Flour*

*The whole wheat flour is from our farmer friend, Molly Breslin. Molly, along with her father, grow small grains and dry beans in Ottawa Illinois. Please visit their site for more info Breslin Farms.

The mix of potatoes may be slightly cosmetically challenged but don't let that discourage you from eating the skin as well. These cook well together, drizzled with olive oil and thyme make a perfect side of roasted potatoes.

This week's fruit bounty:

Pristine Apples

White Nectarines

Maverick Orange Melon

Arava Green Melon

The melons this week come from our friend, Peter Klien of Seedling Fruit, in South Haven Michigan. Although he is not organic he does offer the best fruit he can with as little pest control as possible leaving us with great tasting locally grown fruit. Enjoy!

Recipes! Recipes! Recipes!

Flatbreads with Honey, Thyme and Sea Salt

Honey Whole Wheat Bread

Really simple homemade Pizza!

Roast Chicken with Lemon and Thyme

Tomatillo Salsa Verde

More pictures of the farm this week.......

Above the chard and kales is Armando prepping more beds for our fall/winter seeding.



Tomato season is in full bloom! Although you don't have any in your share this week we will have some heirloom beauties for sale at our farm stand. Pictured is Michael harvesting some sweet summer tomatoes!

In between all the rain we're surrounded by plenty of mosquitoes. Here, Joe, Elliott and Charlie, gear up with head nets and long sleeves while they harvest Green chard.

Tuesday morning welcomed us with more rain but that didn't stop us from harvesting green beans!

These angelic flowers, Oscar Butterfly Weed, has won me over as my favorite flower this season!

At the farm stand this week:

We will offer our honey for sale along with various cooking greens, herbs, onions, eggplant, chicken, eggs and more! In the next few weeks we will also offer maple syrup. This will be locally sourced from Hilltop Sugar Bush in Wisconsin. Although we have many maple trees that have given us beautiful maple syrup at the farm we don't yet have the licensed kitchen to be able to offer it to you. Until then, we will have a limited supply! If you know you'd like to purchase any please send me an email so that I may have you on our list to save you a bottle or two. Please let me know! tempelfarmsorganics@yahoo.com

We hope you enjoy this week's bounty!

Your farmers,

Tania and Chris Cubberly along with their crew, Joe, Francisco, Michael, Elliott, Charlie, Sherman, and Armando!