This week your basket contains: broccoli, RED CABBAGE, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, Swiss chard,carrots,  sweet peppers, onions, and tomatoes.

PUMPKIN PICK-UP WEEKEND IS UPON US!  THIS WEEKEND, October 22 & 23 from 11:00 to 3:00 will be the time to come to the farm, choose your CARVING PUMPKINS, get corn stalks and gourds for decorating, do some gleaning, and share a potluck lunch with us and other subscribers.  We will fire up the pizza oven for both savory pizzas and PUMPKIN PIE PIZZA.  This is our favorite event of the year and hope to see you all here.

Thank you to everyone who has sent us egg cartons!  We currently have more than enough to accommodate our needs, especially as the hens are laying fewer eggs as the days get shorter.  We will let you know when we need more.

We plan our fall broccoli to be a succession of varieties with varying “days to maturity.  In a normal year, we get a nice slow progression from early varieties to later ones.  This record setting October has thrown all that out the window.  Our long string of 80+ degree days has had 2 major impacts.  One is that the heads are generally huge.  The other is that all the varieties are maturing at once.  That means we just can’t harvest it fast enough to get them to you at their best.  While they may look a bit “shaggy”  they still taste great (we’ve been eating some of the ones we thought were too far gone to put in your baskets and they are great.)

We had a mixed year with onions.  Our early “set onion” (planted from small onion bulbs” we quite nice.  On the other hand, the ones we seeded in February and planted in late May (later than we like; remember the rainy spring?) never really sized up.  The smaller ones still taste good, they will just take a bit more work in the kitchen.

Often as a farmer when something in the garden isn’t going the way we want it to you think “if I just do X, or Y, or Z I can fix this”.  Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t.  Other times nature has a way of reminding you what is actually in charge and seems to be saying “don’t just do something; stand there.”  This comes to mind today because most of the carrots in your basket were abandoned as too small to harvest and unlikely to ever be useful.  Boy, were we wrong!  Checking back on a whim we found some great carrots for you.  Enjoy!

Below are a couple of recipes that were passed along by subscribers.  Both are easily modified to what you have on hand and/or your personal preferences.

JULIANNE’S  COLESLAW

A simple red cabbage salad can be made by shredding red cabbage and carrots, mixing with thinly-sliced sweet peppers and scallions (or grated summer squash), and covering with the following dressing.  Whisk together 1/3 cup rice wine vinegar, 1-3 Tbsp. olive oil, 1 tsp turmeric, 1 Tbsp. honey, ½ tsp. pepper, salt to taste.

MAYE’S RED CABBAGE SALAD

2 lbs. red cabbage

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

1 ½ lbs. tart green apples, peeled, quartered, and sliced

½ c. butter (I use less)

1 t. salt

2 T. brown sugar

2 T. cider vinegar

¼ t. cloves

pinch cinnamon

pinch nutmeg

black pepper to taste

¾ c. beer

Sauté the cabbage, onions and apples in the butter for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the remaining ingredients and stir well. Cover, lower the heat, and let simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally. The cabbage can be served at this point but improves if allowed to cool and reheated several hours later or the next day.  From The Vegetarian Epicure Book Two by Anna Thomas

PIMIENTO SALAD

Roast the peppers on a grill or under a broiler.  Place the peppers close enough to thoroughly char the skins, turning so that they are pretty uniformly black.  The idea here is to do this as quickly as possible with high heat so that the skins char,

..0.but the meat doesn’t cook too much.  Let them cool in a paper sack for about ten minutes.  At this point, the skin should come off easily.  Remove the stem and seeds and slice thinly. Dress with vinaigrette to thoroughly coat the peppers.  This salad can be kept in the refrigerator for several days and improves the longer the peppers marinate.