Beets, Carrots, Lettuce, Mustard mix, Onions, Peppers, Hot peppers, Satina potatoes, Thyme, Tomatoes, Delicata winter squash
I am embarrassed to report that I may be compelled to fill this week’s newsletter with something like actual news—a fact that in and of itself might count as news. I hope you will forgive me for thus misusing this space, which as most of you have probably noticed by now is usually reserved for the sorts of meandering ruminations that take hold of one’s mind during long periods of tedious physical work.
There’s something about repetitive manual labor that provokes this digressive, speculative sort of thinking. Like driving, much farm work requires only a specific, limited kind of attentiveness. If you find yourself, let’s say, weeding a bed of carrots (and if you don’t often find yourself doing that but would like to, do please let me know) you have to concentrate on the task enough to ensure that you remove the weeds and leave the carrots. It’s no good letting your thoughts wander so far that you end up pulling out everything or, more likely, nothing. But those thoughts can roam quite surprisingly far and wide without impinging on your carrot weeding skills (and should you happen to possess carrot weeding skills and lack the proper place in which to employ them do get in touch with me). Apparently the part of your brain that controls fine motor coordination and sight recognition is entirely separate from the piece that takes care of philosophical reflection, and the two can work side by side without affecting one another. Moreover, keeping the motor coordination part busy with the carrots somehow disables or distracts whatever normally reins in our philosophical impulses. I would not be surprised to discover that Plato was an avid vegetable gardener and did his most profound thinking while kneeling amongst his crops plucking out interlopers (and if you would like to have a similar philosophical experience I would be happy to offer you a place to do so).
But I stray. Too much weeding, I guess. Especially for this time of year. By now we should have managed to do in all the weeds. There’s a technique called stale seed bedding in which you get the weed seeds near the surface to germinate and then till the bed shallowly, and if you do that a few times then you should have taken care of all the weeds. It takes a little time, but it ought to work for the vegetables we sow late in the season. This year for some reason many of the beds where we have seeded fall crops are not proving at all stale, and along with the plants we want we are getting lovely stands of pigweed and lamb’s quarters and purslane—all edible, I hasten to note, should any of you want to come out and pick them.
Actually one of you already did, and made a weed quiche, which he might reprise for the pie contest on October 3rd. It is best, I think, to get in a few practice pies before the competition, something I mention now because with just over two weeks to go you still have plenty of time to refine your recipe. You don’t want to turn up on the 3rd with an entry only to find that something has gone dreadfully wrong with the crust or realize too late that adding cilantro to the peach filling was a less inspired idea than it seemed at first.
All of which is by way of introducing the first piece of news, namely that our fall harvest festival and annual pie contest takes place on Sunday, October 3rd. We will have field tours and our traditional potato harvest starting at 3, and a potluck dinner starting at 6. All CSA members can enter a pie (or multiple pies) in the contest to be judged by the farm crew.
We hope you will come out to the farm for this event even if you do not bring a pie. You don’t have to see the farm to enjoy the produce. But it is hard to understand fully the basic connection between your food and a field (a connection that exists no matter where you get your food) if you never see the field. Most Americans, deliberately cut off from any direct knowledge of where and how their food is produced, never get that chance. As a member of our CSA, however, you do. You can come to the farm and see the crops that will turn up in your share the following week and ask us about how we grow them and taste a fresh-dug carrot or scoop up a handful of husk cherries and find out what to do with those really hot peppers. It is a pleasant, tasty, scenic way to add even more value to your share.
We will have one more event at the end of the season. Each year we give extra produce to organizations that use it in local food pantries. While these groups have some ability to harvest the extra crops, they generally cannot pick as much as we have to offer. So we call on you to help glean at the end of the season. It is a chance to get dirty for a good cause. I will let you know the date later on.
There is one other event coming up you should know about. The Agricultural Stewardship Association, our local land trust, puts on an art show, Landscapes for Landsake, every year. This year’s show, featuring 150 works by 36 local artists, takes place on Saturday, October 9th from 3 to 6 just outside Cambridge. It is a great party and a great show, and the money raised at the event helps ASA in its mission to protect good soil in the region for agricultural use, a mission that benefits all of us wherever in the area we live. You can get more details about the show on ASA’s website, Agstewardship.org, or Facebook.
You should also know that the easiest way to cook a winter squash is to stick it in a 400 degree oven until it is quite soft, about an hour. Then you can cut it open a scoop out the flesh and eat it as it is or puree it with a bit of cream, perhaps a dash of sherry, a sprinkle of paprika and a little thyme (you can also add stock to the puree and make a squash soup). And that the mustard greens are nice steamed, but even better as a salad with dressing of vinegar, cream, mustard, soy sauce, sesame oil and ginger.
