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.
  
  
  

CSA Week 15!

I for one am more than happy to see spinach season back!

 Early Autumn is a favorite time of year and we can't seem to get enough of the cooler season crops like spinach, leeks, and brussel's sprouts!.

Every Fall, it takes some time to grasp once again just how much slower things grow as the daylight hours dwindle and temperatures get cooler.
The water hauling, weed-killing, grass mowing battle can be stepped down a bit now. Whew!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Pick up is Thursday, September 19th.

4-7 pm at your respective site.

 

 

 

You Vegetable Harvest for this Week...

• Spinach

• Brussels Sprouts (removed from the stalk) (4 recipes)

• Arugula

• Green Savoy Cabbage

• Sweet Peppers

• French Fingerling Potatoes

• Leeks

• Broccoli

• Daikon Radishes (Pickled or Kimchi or Salad)

• Red Storage Onions (for On-Farm ONLY. Two weeks ago we mistakenly left these out of our On-Farm Shares...oops.)
  
  
  
  

Your Fruit Harvest for this Week...

• Arava Melon (Grown here at TFO! Sweet, tropical green flesh) 

• D'Anjou Pears (Mick Klug Farm)

• Mars Grapes (Mick Klug Farm) 

• Empire Apples (Mick Klug Farm)

  
  
  
   

 Early Autumn look around the farm.

 

Our Allis Chalmers G cultivating tractor waking.

No it's not an alien ship landing at midnight to abduct an innocent farmer. 

It's once again, the sun rising in the east to warm and feed our world!

 

 

 

The sun and Kyle.

 

 

 

 

L-O-W Clouds.

We gave in this year and grew a vegetable rarely eaten. You know, those round,
orange things you see so much of starting about this time every year...
Yep, those. We grew a bunch of those!









We had quite a few extra hands quickly working this Saturday
 in the first of 2 or 3 mass potato harvests.














Come see us soon and look how beautifully
the flower bouquets
have changed
for the Fall!


Go TFO Flower Team











Please stop by and see us to purchase farm grown products...

 
*Every Thursday 4 - 7 pm on the farm



*Every Saturday 8 am - 2 pm on the farm 



*Every Sunday 10 am - 3 pm at the Logan Square Farmers Market
 
*Every first and third Sunday of the month
           May 5 through October 20, 2013 9 am - 3 pm at Chicago Botanic Garden
 
 







Eat Well, Eat Local and Thank You!

CSA Week 14!

On the left are Red Hungarian Peppers. On the right are Red and Yellow Italian 'Corno di Toro' or

Horn of the Bull peppers.
All three varieties are sweet, thick walled and really delicious roasted or raw!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 12th. 4-7 pm at your respective site.

 

 

 

 

 

Your Vegetable Harvest for this Week...

 

• Sweet Peppers
• San Marzano Tomatoes (Great Italian Sauce Tomato)
  Sadly, this will be the one and only time this season that this super-fantastic San Marzano variety will show itself. With tons of hard work and some luck, next year will yield far more of these babies. 
• Heirloom and Hoophouse Tomatoes
• Green Beans
• Sweet Corn
• Lettuce Mix
• Green Kohlrabi
• Eggplant
• French Fingerling Potatoes
•  Broccoli

Your Fruit Harvest for this Week...

• Small 'Tasty Bites' cantaloupes (Grown here at TFO!) 

• Red Courtland Apples (Seedling Fruit)

• Stanley Plums (Mick Klug Farm)

• Honey Crisp Apples (Mick Klug Farm)