Red Wagon Farm

Why I Love Winter CSA

Posted on October 25, 2023 by mo

I love Summer at the Farm, it is always crazy. Some years more than others, but we can always count on crazy. We can also count on things slowing down in the Fall. Somehow we make it across the finish line of our regular season CSA, we breathe a sigh of relief that Summer is over (phew, we did it!) and low and behold, Winter CSA is here (yay) and I LOVE everything about it!

I love that almost all of you Winter CSA members are repeat and loyal Red Wagon CSA’ers. Many of you have been with us since day one. You are familiar and as excited about the Winter vegetables as I am!

I love the winter vegetables, pumpkins and all the root crops. Winter greens are so special too, they seem like a miracle to me, how something so beautiful can grow and thrive this time of year and be so delicious.

In the summer I don’t want to turn on the oven. I make a ton of salads and grill almost everything I cook, which is fine but I am ready for something different. Cool weather means I get to turn the oven on and deeply slow roast vegetables and bake casseroles and pies.

I love to slow cook some beans when it cools off and add whatever vegetables I have from CSA that week. , it’s one of my favorite meals.

This morning was a little chilly and I was baking bread. While the oven was on I took the opportunity to roast some vegetables, my first winter luxury pie pumpkin and a baby butternut squash this season!

I also roasted a few beets.

I have no specific plans for any of these roasted vegetables, but I feel rich knowing I can quickly throw together some delicious meals now that the main ingredient is prepped waiting for need and inspiration.

It’s great to have you here with us for the next 14 weeks. Let’s have some fun in the kitchen and enjoy some delicious Winter food.

Posted in 2023, Farm | Comments Off

Welcome Winter CSA Members!

Posted on October 25, 2023 by Amy

Welcome Winter CSA members! We are happy to get started with our 4th year of our Winter CSA! I always say that our CSA members are the foundation of our farm. Red Wagon would simply not exist without our CSA. But our Winter CSA members take it to a whole other level! You are the ones who are truly committed to supporting small-scale agriculture and our local food system.

We try really hard to give you a good assortment of vegetables to feed you for a lot of the winter. I think we do a pretty good job with this! I want to try here to explain one of the many ways our Winter CSA members support our farm in return.

The main growing season in Colorado is about seven months. Eight months if you’re being generous. It is really hard to get through the other four or five months when you’re not producing and selling much. For a number of years we’ve been selling storage crops to restaurants over the winter (mostly roots and winter squash). That was just barely enough to pay our basic farm expenses and keep one or two people employed part time. That meant that we could only hope to keep our best crew members for a season or two–maybe three if we were really lucky. Not many people can make it for 4-5 months each year without income. And it gets old fast to spend your winters at a job that you’re not very excited about.

Like many things, our Winter CSA was born out of the pandemic and our need to reinvent ourselves during such crazy times. It turns out that it is a great fit for us! Our Winter CSA hasn’t completely fixed the many challenges of having a seasonal business. But it’s gone a long way towards giving a few people stable employment at Red Wagon! You are the ones who’ve made this happen!

The pace of things at our farm is less hectic this time of year and I’m able to spend more time at our CSA pickups. I’m looking forward to seeing you!

Amy

Posted in 2023, Farm, Newsletter | Comments Off

Celeriac Soup

Posted on October 17, 2023 by mo

Fall and Winter crops are here and one of my favorite vegetables is a choice this week-Celeriac! Days are noticeably shorter and cooler and I wanted some soup.

I say all the time ‘use what you have and what you like’ and that is what I did to make this Celeriac Soup.

I looked at my basic potato leek soup recipe and gathered pretty much equal amounts of whatever ingredients I had to make this soup. I bet you have most of these ingredients, or similar enough in your refrigerator and can make this soup too.

1 little leek and a couple little onions washed and cut into circles.
1 1/2 to 2 pounds of celeriac and a few smalls potatoes
2 tablespoons of butter or olive oil to sauté the vegetables, I used a little of both
4 cups of liquid maybe a little more to thin it outt. You can use vegetable or chicken stock, or water or milk-dairy or plant based. I used chicken stock today, I thought I was going to use some oat milk too, I like to mix liquids, when I took this photo, but I didn’t use it after all. But you might want to.
Salt, pepper and any herbs you like. I had some celery leaves so I am using those instead of herbs. I also added some bay leaves, not in this picture.
You can always add optional toppings to finish the soup like cheeses, seeds or nuts or some crunchy raw vegetables are all a nice way to finish a hearty soup and make dinner feel special and fun. Look in your refrigerator and pantry for yummy toppings.

Peel the celeriac and cut up everything else and add it to a large pot. Sauté on medium heat with some butter and or olive oil and salt and pepper.

When all the vegetables have started to soften a little add whatever liquid you are using (I added my bay leaves at this point) and cover the pan with a lid and let that simmer for at least 45 minutes or an hour or so until everything is really really soft.

When the vegetables are done your soup is done, it’s that easy. Taste it and see if you want to add some milk or cream or salt or pepper, maybe more liquid? I blended mine a little with an immersion blender. I left some chunks, I like it chunky. If you do blend it and you used bay leaves make sure you take the bay leaves out don’t blend them!

My soup was really nice at this point and I didn’t want to add anything except a few chives. I thought I was going to add milk or cheese but no. I had made some pumpkin bread that went perfectly with the soup. Super simple and fast.

Taste yours you may want to add something, otherwise, your done! Dinner is served!

Well Friends. This is Week 22. Thank you so much for your support. Winter CSA starts next week and I hope to see you at the Winter pickups, but if not hopefully next year in our regular season CSA.

Be well.

Posted in 2023, Celery Celeriac, Recipes | Comments Off

Any Vegetable Coconut Milk Soup

Posted on October 10, 2023 by mo

I love a ‘clean out the refrigerator’ simple meal. I like this because it’s quick, adaptable and uses up any and all vegetables you want to throw at it. Any protein you like too can easily be added, chicken, salmon, tofu. You are basically making a tasty broth that will compliment any vegetables you like.

Start by gathering and chopping into bite size pieces any vegetables you want to use. I find about 4 cups of chopped vegetables and 1 cup of protein (if you are adding that) is about right for 4 servings .

You’ll also need;

1 14-ounce can full-fat coconut milk
4 cups of any seasonal vegetable chopped plus protein if you are using any
1/2 can water or broth(use the coconut can to measure)
2-inch knob of ginger, peeled and grated (~1T grated), more if you like ginger a lot.
1 cup minced shallots, onions or leeks
1 1/2 teaspoons fine grain sea salt, or to taste
Optional, but highly suggested ingredients; lime, sweetener like (raw) sugar or agave, curry paste or powder. I used about 1 tablespoon of curry paste and 2 tablespoons of agave and one (sad) lime, I wish I had more lime. Herbs like basil, cilantro or mint are great too.

I added the tomato, radish and jalapeno raw to the dish at the end, like a garnish/side salad, but you can add anything at anytime. I LOVE winter squash in this dish and serve that with rice. Depending on what vegetables you use like broccoli or eggplant, this would be great over mashed potatoes or mashed cauliflower. Collards are really good here too if you blend them into the broth it reminds me of saag.

These are the vegetables I had today.

Cook whatever allium you are using with some oil, ginger and the curry powder or paste if you are using it, until the alliums and ginger soften.

Add the coconut milk, water/broth and vegetables and any of the optional ingredients you are using and taste taste taste. Lime, salt and agave or sugar add so much here.

That’s it. Serve it with noodles, potatoes, rice, naan, anything you like.

Fall is in the air. Only two more weeks of Main Season CSA. Then the winter CSA starts.

See you at pickup.

Posted in 2023, Recipes, Soups | Comments Off

Aphids in Organic Produce

Posted on October 3, 2023 by mo

Aphids are natural part of organic farming. I’ll admit they are a nuisance and can be icky sometimes (they are a great food source for beneficial insects) but luckily they can’t hurt humans and are usually pretty straightforward to manage.

Try as we might to get rid of and control aphids, you still might find aphids on some of the vegetables you get like; lettuce, kale, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage. Probably others I can’t think of right now, oh, Brussels sprouts. Holy moly do aphids like Brussels sprouts.

You might find them on the underside of leafy greens.

Here are some on the top of this cauliflower.

And the underside too. There are only a couple, they are hard to see, but they are there.

We have a machine that is a conveyor belt/sprayer we use to wash soil off vegetables and also use it to try to spray aphids off vegetables we harvest. Aphids are great at hiding so you might need to do some aphid control at home in addition to what we do.

I think the easiest way to get rid of them is to put your vegetable in a sink and spray them with the strongest spray you have and simply wash them away. Spray from the top and the bottom!

You can also soak your vegetables before or after spraying them to give them a good once over. While they are soaking give them a good swish around the water to help dislodge the aphids. We like to soak the vegetables at the farm in addition to using the conveyor sprayer, the aphids dislodge and float to the top of the water. Wyatt likes to add some salt to the water at home and says that helps dislodge them. I’ll have to try it.

This picture I am soaking the cauliflower after spraying, you can see a few aphids floating that I missed with the sprayer.

Sometimes soaking or spraying isn’t even necessary. I had a cabbage with a few aphids and I just peeled off a couple leaves and it was clean as can be under a few leaves I composted.

The only way to control aphids 100% is to use pesticides (I think about pesticide use when I am in the grocery store looking at broccoli or Brussels sprouts with no aphids or caterpillars and personally, I keep walking) obviously we aren’t willing to use chemicals and we’ll deal with aphids as they come, as best we can.

It does involve an extra step or two on our part and sometimes yours. We hope you understand and think it is worth the trouble/effort.

We do.

Posted in 2023, Farm | Comments Off

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