Carrots and other fall splendors

A most lovely sight — beautiful fall carrots, just pulled from the soil.

I sing with the kids a lot — mostly sweet little children’s songs that make reference to the seasons. Since fall arrived, I’ve been singing this one a lot:

Yellow the bracken, Golden the sheaves.
Rosy the apples, Crimson the leaves.
Mist on the hillsides, Clouds grey and white,
Autumn good morning, Summer good night.

Every morning when we head out on our daily bike ride through the white mist, I think of the images in this song and how simply they capture the wonder of this season. We are saying good morning to Autumn, yes, but we are still saying good night to Summer … The mist lingers into the morning, then lifts to reveal the most golden sunlight of the year — shining down on a world on fire with the yellows and reds of the leaves.

Small boy in a BIG field of carrots!

The kids and I finished our school work early this morning, so we offered to help Casey harvest carrots for the CSA before lunch. There, I discovered more and more and more gold in the form of the most beautiful (and enormous) fall carrots ever. What a joy it was to kneel on the cool earth with the sun on my back, pulling up carrot after carrot (and knowing how much joy those carrots would bring to your households this week!).

I have been really struck by the beauty of our farm in recent weeks. Fall brings its splendor, of course, but the farm has also just been looking extra nice. This year, we grew vegetables on the home farm again after taking a few years off to let the ground fallow. I love seeing those tended rows of colorful vegetables from our house (and the bright green cover crop in the fields being prepared for next year too!).

And a little girl shows me a BIG carrot she picked.

We hope you will come and appreciate some of the beauty of this season too in two weekends. Our fall CSA pumpkin patch open house is coming up on Sunday, October 25. More details below.

But, in the meantime, you can enjoy the golden colors of this week’s share — red tomatoes and peppers, creamy Butternut squash and rutabaga, yellow delicata, and so many other colors too.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

Pumpkin Patch CSA Open House! 2-4 pm, Sunday, October 25 at the farm. Join us for an apple variety tasting, pumpkins (of course!), and a farm tour at 3 pm.

Directions to the farm: Take the Dayton exit from HWY-18. Drive south through Dayton and stay on Wallace Rd/HWY-221 for about seven miles. Turn LEFT onto Grand Island Rd. After the bridge, turn RIGHT onto SE Upper Island Rd. Our driveway is the first one on your LEFT!

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Apples — More delicious Liberty apples this week.
• Salad mix — This week’s salad mix was picked primarily from one of our greenhouses. It’s a super tender diverse mix of greens: arugula, baby bok choy, pink turnip greens, beet greens, and more!
• Butternut squash — Folks have asked about Butternut ever since I posted a photo of some of it in our storage room! I should have perhaps better explained at some point that there is a season to each squash, even post-harvest. Some of our winter squashes store better than others, and some need to spend some time in warm storage to “cure” before being sweet and delicious for eating. These two factors determine when we decide to share each kind of squash with you all. The squashes you’ve had so far (spaghetti, pumpkins, acorn, and delicata) are the ones that have the shortest life in storage and don’t require curing time. That’s why we give those out first. Others, such as Butternut and Marina di Chioggia, store longer and benefit from curing — so we tend to wait longer before giving those out. But, the wait is over! Enjoy this week’s Butternut. I think this is one of our family’s all-time favorite foods. Mostly, I peel it, cube it and roast it until it is crispy outside and soft inside. So satisfying. But of course it makes great soup too. And I’ve even heard of people making “lasagna” with strips of Butternut in place of the noodles!
• Delicata winter squash
• Rutabaga — Another sign that fall is progressing — rutabaga! This is one of those much maligned and poorly understood old-timey vegetables. You might not even know what kind of vegetable it is, let alone how to best enjoy it. Rutabaga is a cole crop, somewhat closely related to Red Russian kale (that’s a surprise, eh?). The texture inside is denser than a kohlrabi, but it is still smooth and very sweet when raw. Rutabaga makes a great substitute for (or addition to) potatoes in all kinds of recipes — soups, mashed veggies, roasts, etc. It stays sweet and mild even when cooked (unlike turnips, which can go bitter when cooked). If you’re new to this veggie, I recommend trying it raw first, just to get acquainted with it. Peel a chunk and take a bite! Then try cubing it and adding it to a broth-based stew (we have stewing hens and beef bones for sale!).
• Kohlrabi — Kohlrabi also makes an excellent addition to broth-based soups. In fact, that’s one of my favorite ways to eat it! (Second only to dipping it in yummy sauces and dips.)
• Sweet peppers
• Hot peppers
• Roma tomatoes — I know it feels like tomatoes and tomatillos will go on and on forever and ever (the weather forecast for tomorrow is 80° after all!), but really the season will wind down soon. So! Time to make sure you get your fill of these summer crops! If you have room in your freezer, consider quickly putting up some tomatoes or tomatillos — it’s so easy. Just pop them in a freezer bag and put them in your freezer! (Do remove the paper wrapper from the tomatillos first though!) We do this every year with both crops, and we love using them all winter. They’re very easy to peel when you take them out — just put your frozen tomatoes/tomatillos into a bowl of warm water and let it sit for a few minutes. The peel will thaw first, and then you can just slide it off. The tomatoes can be chopped when partially thawed.
• Tomatillos
• Kale
• Beets
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Garlic — We started planting next year’s garlic this week! We invested in very expensive beautiful garlic seed with a focus on garlic with BIG cloves. We’re excited about having a stellar crop of awesome garlic next year.

And this week’s extra goodies from the farm:

• Eggs — $6/dozen
• Beef bones — Fall sale! Time to make bone broth to stay healthy all winter. Only $1/lb!!!!
• Ham — $12/lb ~ Buy now for your holiday meals! These will keep in your freezer beautifully until then!
• Lamb — We have a full range of cuts, from ground lamb to shanks to roasts to chops. Ground lamb and roasts are $8/lb; lambchops are $12/lb.
• Pork chops — $12/lb
• Stewing hens — $3.50/lb
• Ground beef — $7/lb