Dear Farm Partners,
Many thanks to everyone for the good wishes on our baby announcement! We are very touched by your support and enthusiasm. It’s great to finally share the news widely–between going public and hearing the baby’s heartbeat, it starts to feel more and more real, at least to me. It also helps that I’m feeling so much better than I did for the first several weeks, which has coincided nicely with the change of weather. I feel as though my pregnancy and the remainder of our season can actually progress now, instead of feeling stuck in seemingly endless heat and nausea.
We both have the sense that the farm is moving forward. We always have setbacks, days of discouragement, days of total drowsiness (after so much sun the clouds have made us very sleepy!), and we deal with difficulties as well as we can. But we learned so much this season. Now that we’ve passed the peak we keep looking back and saying, Wow, that was so hard, but we learned and figured out so much. So often we felt we were just trying to survive (true), and that so many things went wrong (also true), but in the end it was productive. It pushed us to solve problems more quickly, leading to decisions that have allowed us to implement short- and long-term changes on the farm sooner and more effectively. We’ve written down lots of notes in our What Went Wrong notebook. We have a better sense of what we need to grow, how to grow it, and where we need to try and sell it. Farming is surprisingly complex, but we become more aware of the complexities of farming and how to adapt to them with time.
I hope you all have had a very cozy week. I know I have. Of course, I have spent much of it outside, but I find the gray, chilly weather so enjoyable after such a hot summer.
In your very full, heavy boxes: Red Kuri Hubbard Squash, Chioggia Beets, Royal Chantenay Carrots, Hakurei Turnips, Red Russian Kale, Butterhead Lettuce, Cantaloupe, Sweet Peppers, and Parsley.
We hope you enjoy the fall bounty this week! Summer is certainly not the only time of year when the garden produces in abundance. Our featured winter squash is the beautiful Red Kuri Hubbard. I just love the color and the tear-drop shape of this squash! It’s also delicious, nice and moist and just a little sweet. I made this simple Red Kuri Pumpkin Soup from The Nourished Kitchen earlier in the week, which has been perfect for our fall weather.* I would also like to try this gorgeous-looking Kale and Red Kuri Squash Salad.
Your carrots are a French heirloom variety that was common in French markets one hundred years ago. We’re very charmed by their fat, stubby roots! The flavor is also very good. They are wonderful raw and can easily be used for cooking.
Thanks again for all your good wishes and your support, and sorry this week’s post is a little late.
Happy Fall,
Ashli (and Jeremy)
Saturday’s market stand
*a note about the Red Kuri soup recipe: the recipe calls for some odd roasting temperatures for the squash and onions (480 and 430 degrees Fahrenheit), which I assume are approximate conversions from Celsius. You could probably get away with roasting the lot for 400 degrees F for 30 to 45 minutes, until tender and roasty. I just used squash that I had roasted the previous day.
The Excelsior Farm Chronicle 