Week 20! Time for cooler weather and acorn squash!
Regular Share
-Acorn Squash
-Choice: Peppers OR Eggplant
-Choice: Broccoli OR Roasted Chilis
-Potatoes
-Choice: Lettuce OR Arugula OR Spinach
-Choice: Kale OR Collards OR Bok Choi
Large Share Additions
-Broccoli AND Roasted Chilis
-Choose 2: Lettuce OR Arugula OR Spinach
-Shunkyo Radishes
Fruit – FINAL WEEK
-Apples
This is our 12th and final week of our fruit share.
It’s week 18 and we dodged the freezing weather! Enjoy a few more summer crops as we transition into fall.
Regular Share
-Tomatoes
-Peppers
-Onions
-Potatoes
-Choice: Kale OR Collards OR Chard
-Choice: Beets OR Hakurei Turnips
-Choice: Lettuce Or Braising Mix OR Arugula
Large Share
-Broccoli
-Double Potatoes
-Spaghetti Squash
Fruit Share
-Peaches
Sigh…Every year we have crop failures. Blame the raccoons for the watermelons. We have a gorgeous field of watermelons that are just about ripe. But the raccoons know this, too. I think every raccoon in Boulder County must be visiting our farm at night. We have a field full of hundreds of watermelons. About 70% of them have been eaten by the raccoons. I can just imagine the tubby little raccoons sticking their sharp claws through the watermelon rind, then using their paws to scoop out all the delicious, sweet flesh of the watermelon. Then they waddle away with their full bellies after a night of gorging in our field.
A few years ago the coyotes found the watermelon field. They would pull the melons off the plant and roll them away. Then they would open them up and eat every last bit up to the green skin, so that skin would collapse on itself.
The watermelons are at our farm on Valmont Road. Wyatt says that next year we will try putting the watermelons at the farm where we live, on 63rd Street. The soil at 63rd Street isn’t as good for melons–it has too much clay. But we have 2 big dogs who woof all night and keep the coyotes and raccoons away. Maybe then you will all get to enjoy some watermelon on a hot August day.
I have eaten this wonderful salad several times at Oak at 14th. I just made it recently for the first time. The Denver Post got the recipe from Oak chef and owner, Steve Redzikowski. Click here for Steve’s recipe: Kale and Apple Salad Recipe
I went heavy on the kale and didn’t candy the almonds. Here’s what I put in my salad: kale, apple, hakurei turnips, almonds, lemon juice, Parmesan, olive oil, salt, pepper, and chile powder. Basically, you chop everything up and mix it in a bowl.
The salad is delicious and chopping the kale finely makes it easy to eat. Plus it leaves you feeling super healthy!
We are happy to say that we are now taking CSA memberships for the 2014 season! Click here to join!
You can find all the details on our website. But here’s a quick summary of the highlights:
Our CSA season is 22 weeks long from May 19 to October 16.
We have four pickup locations operating from 4-7pm:
We offer three sizes for our Veggie Share:
We also offer some additional options for purchase:
For all the details please see our website. We hope you will join us for a delicious 2014!
Remember a couple of weeks ago when the temperature did not go above freezing for a handful of days–and we were all miserable? Well, our greens were miserable, too. We had two hoop houses full of beautiful arugula, lettuce, bok choi, and kale. Our hoop houses should offer just enough protection to keep greens alive. But apparently not when the overnight low is -10 degrees. All of those beautiful greens turned to slimy mush. Boo.
We also had a few thousand pounds of winter squash stored away. We tried to use heaters to keep the squash from freezing, but it was in a shed and the heaters just couldn’t keep up with the sub-zero temperatures and the squash all froze solid.
We had root vegetables like carrots and turnips stored in coolers inside our walk-in refrigerator. We put heaters inside the refrigerator and that paid off. Hooray! At least we were able to save the roots.
This is a reminder to us of why we don’t try to produce a lot of vegetables for the winter months. It can be done, but it isn’t easy.
We are ready to start taking memberships for our 2013-2014 Winter CSA. Click here to join.
Here are the quick details:
We will only have one pickup location during the winter and it will be at Red Wagon (7694 N 63rd St). The pickups will be 4-7 pm every other Thursday starting 11/21.
Veggies – We will have veggies for order at the pickups when we have them available. However, the weather can be so variable in the winter and we are not set up to commit to having veggies throughout the winter. You can join our Winter CSA (at no cost) if you just want to receive the emails telling you what veggies are available for order at each pickup. Click here to join.
We have created great partnerships with other farms and we want to make their items available to you over the winter. We will have:
Eggs
Mushrooms
Coffee
Beef
Pork
On a different note, we are now hosting a raw milk pickup from Windsory Dairy at our farm. Red Wagon is not involved in producing the milk or collecting payments, we are simply acting as a pickup location for Windsor Dairy. We personally have been drinking raw milk from Windsor Dairy for about 5 years and think it is wonderful! Check the Windsor Dairy web page for more info on becoming a shareowner.
Please contact us with any questions. It will be fun to see you over the winter!
Amy & Wyatt
Sign up for 2 weeks of veggies with the Red Wagon Mini Fall CSA! Pick up vegetables on Oct 22 & 29.
This is a great way for current CSA members to enjoy 2 more weeks of vegetables. It is also a good way to try out our CSA for a week or two if you aren’t sure that CSA is right for you.
We will have two pickups:
Additional Details:
Click here to join our Mini Fall CSA. You will also find prices and additional information in this link. We hope you’ll join us into the fall!
How did it get to be October?!? I can’t believe how fast this season has flown by!
Wyatt and I want to express our gratitude to all of you for making another farm season possible. We truly couldn’t do it without our CSA members. You are the core of our farm and make it possible for us to grow a huge variety of vegetables each year. I’ve said many times that having our CSA makes it so much easier to keep our farm in business. I’ve tried to articulate the reasons many times. But I still don’t think any of you realize how important you are to us. We really couldn’t do it without you!
This was our 7th CSA year and our 10th year of farming. We successfully fed 425 CSA members this season. We take our commitment to all of you very seriously and feel like it is a huge success when we get to the end of the season and have fed you for 22 weeks. You have no idea how much thought and energy Wyatt puts into making a crop plan to make sure we have a great variety of food for you each week. For any of you home gardeners, just imagine how much energy it would take for you to grow all of your CSA vegetables each week and not have any weeks where the only thing you have to eat is zucchini.
Each farm season seems crazy and this one was no exception. In March we were feeling panicked because we thought we would be heading into a record-setting drought year. Then in April we had record snows and while this greatly improved our water situation, it was too cold and wet to plant anything. It was another hot summer, followed by the devastating floods that affected so many of us. Our farm has thankfully recovered from all the rain in September, but it was difficult to have such a huge disruption at the peak of our harvest.
We had a great farm crew this year to do all the work that is involved in bringing you your food each week. We have about 20 people who show up at the farm at sunrise each day to work long, hard hours growing food. We try to pay them as well as we can, but farm work just doesn’t pay that great. Our farm crew works unbelievable hard and most of them do it for the love of feeding people. Speaking of loving to feed people, we owe a huge thanks to Mo for telling us what to do with our CSA veggies each week. Her passion for food really comes out in her weekly recipe posts. We also had a handful of amazing volunteers to help with logistics like handling missed CSA pickups and redesigning our web page. The Tuv Ha’Aretz core committee also did a tremendous amount of work behind the scenes. Thank you so much to all of you!
Our fields still have a lot of food growing, so we plan to have our Mini Fall CSA again this year. And we are currently working on putting together our first ever Winter CSA. We’ll send out details soon. And of course we’ll keep you posted on signing up for our regular season CSA for 2014.
Once again, you have our sincerest gratitude and we hope to see all of you again in 2014.
Amy & Wyatt