Farm News-November 24, 2010

Hello Folks,

I know it’s hard saying goodbye, especially to your fresh vegetables, but we have reached the end of the season. We are in the process of making one final push to glean what we can from what is left in the fields.

Many of the greens are very small at this point. The spinach has been ravaged by the deer, despite our attempts to maintain the fence in place. There is very little for them to eat at present and the spinach, which they normally won’t bother with, is just too tempting and they find ways to get in. It is too small to bunch so we are harvesting it loose and will distribute what we have by weight. The lettuces too are rather tiny, so we will be sending 3 or 4 of them per share. We have only a few onions left and many of them have soft centers and we have a very small amount of shallots. We are making up small bags with an assortment- a red onion, a few small yellow onions and a few shallots. We will be sending the culls as an extra; they will require a little more work and there will be some loss, but there is still plenty of good eating to the larger ones. We are harvesting the Brussels sprouts, a very time consuming task because we must trim them from the stalk. It would be easier if we could ship the entire plant, but some have many sprouts and others only a few. For squash we have a large gray kabocha type called Sweet Mama. These make excellent pies, cakes or soups. We will also be including some butternut squash. We have some very nice red skinned turnips for your holiday table. We still have a small amount of sweet potatoes left, so we will send what we can. We have a lot of very small ones which will be best used by boiling and eating whole with the skins.

Thank you all for your participation and support this season and a special thanks to core group members and site hosts who work so hard to bring it all together. I wish all a Happy Holiday season and a healthy winter.

The share for this week will be: Lettuce, choice of broccoli or cauliflower, carrots, turnips, choice of arugula or mustard greens, spinach, Brussels sprouts, parsnips, onions, potatoes, kabocha and butternut squash.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Farmer John