November Journey CSA Share Week 1!

Welcome to Week 1 of your November Journey Share!
Nothin' scary about it, this share is packed with lots of good stuff.

 

 

 

 

Your Vegetable Harvest for this Week...

  

• Yellow Carrots* ( Really good raw and great cooked)
• Green Savoy Cabbage*
• Spinach
• Scallions*
• Baby Red and Gold Beets*
• Celeriac/Celery Root* (4 good looking recipes)
• Baby Fennel Bulbs*
• Lettuce Mix
• Sweet Hakurei Salad Turnips* (without greens)
• Curly Green Kale*
  
  
  * = All these items shredded or julienned together could and would make a scarily delicious and frighteningly beautiful coleslaw.

Peter, Tomas, Jesus and Kyle looking pretty darn smiley.
There wasn't enough room in the 4 wheeler for one more thing so Kyle had to

carry the last bunch of Yellow Carrots in his hand.

 

 

Not so happy.
It just aint sweet pepper weather no more.
Our favorite Sweet, Italian Corno di Toro (horn of the bull) Peppers
can take some cool and maybe cold weather but a few frosts and they melt down into mush.
We picked and picked these guys and still they provide more. Truth is, near the end of

their season the peppers produced on the well picked plants start to get smaller and smaller and just don't reach their full size anyway. In the same way but different,(?!) tomatoes, when left on the vine till the cold weather comes, start to have an 'off'' flavor and though they may be plentiful, are really not that enjoyable to the taste buds.









 

Do you see the future?

These are some freshly made planting beds for Spring 2014.
We set aside just a few acres for planting into in early spring to get a jump

on the season. This makes the farmer feel much better in case of very extended wet spring weather.
The rest of our fields are planted with a winter rye and/or vetch or oat cover crop.

 

 

 

 

 

Farm Stand and Farmer's Market

Stop by the LAST regular Saturday Farm Stand TODAY

Oct. 26,  8 am - 2 pm.

 

**Stop by the Farm Stand and pick up some of our newly harvested PORK.
Chops, Ribs, Italian Sausage, Breakfast Links, Shoulder Roasts.....
Our naturally cured and smoked pork will arrive in a week or two. Bacon, Hams and Hocks!

**Also we still have lots of hard-to-find apple varieties grown on our farm!
Sweet - Tart and everywhere in between.


We will be open periodically during the winter. Check for future newsletters.

 

 

 

 

 

ALSO...

 

 

Join us for the LAST OUTDOOR Logan Square Farmer's Market of the season!

This Sunday, Oct. 27 , 10 am - 3 pm.

 

 

 

 

Sign up HERE for your THANKSGIVING SHARE

 

 

 

ALSO...

 

 

Sing up here and get an
Early Bird Discount for our

2014 CSA SHARES.

Vegetable, Fruit, Autumn and Thanksgiving Shares.
All CSA pick up sites are encouraged
to sign up before December 31st
to take advantage of the early bird discount.
On-Farm, Lake Forest, Mt. Prospect and Logan Square.
(Starting in 2014 we will be delivering Autumn and Thanksgiving Shares to off farm locations!!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eat Well, Eat Local and Thank You!

CSA Week 20!

Hurry!

That is the word of the last few days. We need to get a huge amount of crops in before they get frosted and ruined. A frost or two around this time in October is not unusual but to have it dip into the 20's is a bit much. In the last few days we saved radishes, beets, turnips, lemongrass, escarole, arugula, and we covered quite a bit more in hopes of prolonging the harvest period. Here you see the crew saving some of our fantastic, big, thick and tasty spinach. We hope the crowns of these and other spinach plants live through the long winter to grow again and produce some super fantastic spinach in the spring!
You know, vegetable farm work can be extremely satisfying and fulfilling and it can also be very difficult physically and very challenging mentally. It is certainly not for everybody. Every season we see some well meaning folks fall by the wayside and quit or just stop showing up because they can't handle the heat and cold and ticks and rain and dry, cracking hands and frozen fingers and................
It really helps to have a passion for food, local food, growing plants and animals and very hard work.
We are lucky to have had such a passionate crew this season. Every year our farm products get better and our systems get more efficient thanks in large part to our crew.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a FULL SHARES ONLY week...Full Vegetable Shares.

 

Pick up is Thursday, October 24th. 4-7 pm at your respective site.

 

 

 

 

 

Your Vegetable Harvest for the LAST WEEK of the

                                                             "Full Summer Journey".....

 

• Mixed Fingerling Potatoes (A mix of French, LaRatte and Amarosa)
  (Warm Fingerling Salad)
• Sweet Potatoes- Covington - orange flesh, orange skin and Japanese - white flesh and ruby skin  (sweet potato and sausage soup!) (How about using TFO Italian Sausage in place of chorizo? Also, don't peel the sweet potatoes cause skin is good!)
• Arugula
• Spinach
• Scarlet Salad Turnips (Salad with radishes and carrots.)
• French Breakfast Radishes (OK, let's pickle radishes and dispel a myth.)
• Orange Carrots
• Escarole (Stew! Substitute Escarole for the chard.) 
• Italian Parsley
• Red Beets with Greens

CSA Week 19!

Tania shows off our fall colors.
Purple carrots, yellow sunflowers, crimson dahlias, rosy cheeks and
those ever present orange buckets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is ALL SHARES week...FULL and HALF Vegetable Shares!
Sadly, this is the LAST week for half shares.

 

Pick up is Thursday, October 17th.

4-7 pm at your respective site.

 

 

 

It looks quite tropical in our hoophouse with the GINGER harvest going on.

Ignore the fact that it's about 52 degrees and drizzly. If you close your eyes and sniff though, you would swear you were in the misty hills of Hawaii.
Everybody will receive a 'hand' of baby ginger in their share this week. It's considered baby because our ginger growing season is short by ginger standards. Only about 5 - 6 months!
The ginger in your share can be used without peeling given its tender skin. It will not store very long (about 1 week) because of that thin skin but is so fantastic you will want to use it up right away!

 

 

Your Vegetable Harvest for this Week...

 

Tomas, Kyle and Jesus harvest leeks on this cool mid-fall morning.

 

 

•  Brussels Sprouts (With Pancetta & Caraway)
• Lettuce Mix
• Watermelon/Beauty Heart Radishes (Peel the skin for a milder radish. Keep the skin on for a spicy, crunchy snack.) (Radish & Carrot Salad)
• Sweet Hakurei Salad Turnips with green tops
• Purple Carrots (great raw or cooked)(Thai carrot soup)
• Fresh Baby Ginger (Ginger Fried Rice)
• Fresh Lemongrass (Burmese-Style Chicken)
• Jalapeno Peppers
• Leeks
• Yellow Storage Onions
• Butternut Squash (lots of squash recipes - feel free to interchange squash varieties. There is NO wrong winter squash choice!)
• Blue Potatoes
  
  
  
  
  

CSA Week 18!

Working outside on a autumn morning.
We often feel lucky to be able to call this our office within the season.
The work is very hard and the hours are very long but the satisfaction we get from growing
food and flowers is very...well, satisfying.







This is a FULL SHARES ONLY week...Full Vegetable and Fruit Shares!

That means only those with Fruit and FULL Vegetable shares will pick up.

 

Pick up is Thursday, October 10th. 4-7 pm at your respective site.

 

 

 

 

 

Your Vegetable Harvest for this Week...

 

 

• Orange Carrots with Tops (Don't be afraid of any oddball carrots that you may receive such as the one Peter is holding. They taste great and look funny! What more could you want?!)
• Savoy Cabbage
• Purple Top Turnips
• Sweet Peppers (Yes these are still hanging on and are super fantastic roasted/charred for tonight or frozen for a cold night in January.)
• Baby Arugula
• Purple Kohlrabi
• Cauliflower
• Frisee (A slightly bitter green from the chicory family)
• Buttercup Winter Squash (The flavor and texture are quite a bit like sweet potatoes.)
• Lettuce Heads (1 large green romaine and 1 mini red romaine.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
  Your (last of the season) Fruit Harvest for this Week...
  
  
  
• Concord Grapes (eat them immediately or juice them for their distinct, explosive flavor!) (Mick Klug Farm)
• Asian Pears (Local farmer, Gail Cox from Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin brings us these unsprayed, crisp and sweet fruits.)
• Ida Red Apples (Mick Klug Farm)
• Honeycrisp Apples (Mick Klug Farm)
  
  
  **Yes, it's true. This is the last week of the fruit share.
  The good news is that we have fruit for sale at the farm stand for the next few Thursdays and Saturdays.
  

CSA Week 17!

Romanesco will be in your vegetable share this week.

Big, visually stunning and nutty in flavor, this so called "Roman cauliflower"

comes from a huge, leafy plant that will be turned back into the soil to feed more plants.










This is a ALL SHARES week...FULL and HALF Vegetable and Fruit Shares!

 

Pick up is Thursday, October 3rd.

4-7 pm at your respective site.

 

 

 

 

 

Your Vegetable Harvest for this Week...

 

 

• Carrots with tops
• Acorn Squash (lots of recipes)
• Romanesco (Gratin or with garlic or Alla Diavola)
• Arugula
• Lettuce Heads
• Carola Potatoes (Yellow skin and flesh just like a Yukon Gold)
• Sage bunch
• Cippolini Onions (with steak and sage butter)
• Hakurei Salad Turnips (On-farm only. Off-farm will be getting these next week)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Your Fruit Harvest for this Week...
  
• Neptune Grapes
• Golden Smoothee Apples
• Seckel Pears
• Red Courtland or Empire Apples
  
  
  

CSA Week 16!

This is Chris A.
He's in charge of our wash/pack house. A big job for sure.

 He holds a few examples of the celeriac or celery root that you will receive in your share this week.

Celeriac roasts great, mashes beautifully alone or with potatoes and goes very well in fall soups.

Enjoy the delicious sweet celery flavor.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a FULL SHARES Only week...Full Vegetable and Fruit Shares!

That means only those with Fruit and FULL Vegetable shares will pick up.

Pick up is Thursday, September 26th. 4-7 pm at your respective site.

 

 

Your Vegetable Harvest for this Week...

 

 

• Gold Beets with Tops**
• Dark Purple "Nadia" Eggplant (last of the season)**
• Mildly Spicy Mustard Greens Mix 
• Spinach
• Celeriac**
• Red and Yellow Sweet Peppers**
• 2 Heads Leaf Lettuce
• Fennel Bulbs**
• Potimarron Heirloom Winter Squash**
• Small and Medium Russet Potatoes**
  
  
  ** These could all be roasted and tossed together for an extraordinary Autumn dinner.  
  Next morning, toss a handful of roasted veg into your omelet!
  
  
  
  
  
  Your Fruit Harvest for this Week...
• Jonagold Apples (Seedling Fruit)
• Bosc Pears (Seedling Fruit)
• Honeycrisp Apples (Mick Klug Farm)
• Red Courtland Apples (Mick Klug Farm)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Tania brushes tung oil onto maple rounds.
  Kevin, in the carpentry shop cut and sanded them down and the flower crew will use them to stage flower arrangments on for a special event.
  Wow, our people do a fantastic job!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Hello Pig.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It's time again to harvest our pork.
  Fresh pork cuts will be available within a few weeks.
  Naturally cured and smoked pork will be ready in a month.