(CSA Newsletter: Late Season Week 1)
Meet this week’s vegetables:
Welcome to the 2008 ‘Late’ CSA Season! As if Mother Nature heard our plans for the CSA, this week delivered another fall tiding to the fields: first frost.
We woke up Thursday morning to a very cold farm. When we ventured out to pick salad mix for our last market, the thermometer inside our wash station was reading 38°, and we donned long underwear and gloves for the first time in months. When we arrived at the lettuce, we weren’t surprised to find that some of our lettuce had indeed frozen overnight.
That first frost was spotty, hitting only the lowest points of our fields, but two nights later we were hit with a bona fide freeze. The paper reported lows of 28° in McMinnville and 31° in Salem. Since we’re halfway between the two, I imagine we were somewhere down below 32° as well. We woke up Saturday morning to our first winter-white field scene: ice crystals had formed on every surface and fog was settled over the island. The chickens’ water had a layer of ice over the top, and all of our cold-sensitive crops looked ‘bitten.’
Fortunately, this time of year we’ve stopped relying on many cold-sensitive crops, so the first frost wasn’t a terribly big deal for our farm. We had spent a few hours Friday digging many of our remaining sweet potatoes to store and managed to cover what were left. All the important fall and winter crops appear to be fine, despite the first frost arriving almost a month earlier than last year’s (which came in early November).
But, the killing frost does effectively end any ‘Indian’ summer we might have been enjoying. The lettuces are mostly kaput (some of the smaller heads might pull through for a decent CSA harvest in future weeks) and even the tomatoes and peppers in our hoophouses have essentially stopped ripening now. This week will probably be the last week we taste fresh tomatoes and peppers until 2009.
Despite the end of the lingering summer, here at Oakhill Organics we are as excited as ever for the last ten weeks of 2008’s CSA. Even with the cooler weather, the cold-hardy crops continue to grow rapidly. We took a thorough field walk this morning (Monday) to plan this week’s share and sketch out the next nine weeks’ shares as well. Even though lettuce and tomatoes are dropping off the lists sooner than we expected, the shares all look delicious and are packed with a diverse assortment of vegetables.
So that you know what to expect (especially if you’re new this week to the CSA), each week this fall we will aim to provide a balanced selection of vegetables from storage and the fields. In the cold months, that will mean some cooking greens (kale, chard), roots (carrots, beets, parsnips), starchy vegetables (potatoes, winter squash), green vegetables (broccoli, brussels sprouts), alliums (onions, garlic, leeks), and occasionally fresh eating greens (lettuce, arugula, radicchio).
We will always provide serving and preparation suggestions along with favorite recipes. If you are new to eating seasonal vegetables, we recommend buying From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce, published by the Madison Area CSA Coalition.
Enjoy the vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
Quick veggie storage tips: Keeping your veggies fresh is crucial to enjoying their full nutritional & taste potential. Since we harvest all of our CSA vegetables each week for pick-up, they should keep longer than their grocery equivalent — if stored properly. We recommend storing all green vegetables (leafy greens, broccoli, cabbage) in the fridge, stored loosely (not packed tight) in a sealed plastic bag or in a damp towel in the crisper drawer. Fresh root crops — such as carrots, beets and celery root—also keep best in a sealed bag in the fridge or in a damp towel in the crisper drawer. Dry storage veggies — winter squash, potatoes, onions, garlic — prefer a dry, cool place with good air circulation, such as an open basket or box in a cool, dark pantry.
