THE BEET: Volume 15; Issue 18

FULL SHARE & YELLOW HALF SHARE PICK UP TONIGHT

Pick up today: 5pm - 7:30pm at PS 56 on the corner of Gates and Downing

A Few Announcements

Be sure to sign up for your volunteer hours if you haven't already!

EVENTS:  please put our two end-of-season events on your calendar: our Halloween party during distribution on Thursday, October 27 (we'd love to see our youngest members in costume!) and our 15th anniversary party on Tuesday, November 1. More details coming soon. If you've signed up for volunteer hours on site but want to contribute to our party efforts, please get in touch with us at information@clintonhillcsa.org, and we'll get back to you soon! Please don't cancel your on-site distribution hours, though.

And all payments are due now; if you're not sure what you owe, email us at treasurer@clintonhillcsa.org

This Week's Share

  • Arugula                                              
  • Adolescent Lettuces
  • Braising Mix                                      
  • Chiles or Tomatillos
  • Cilantro                                             
  • Yellow Onions
  • Sweet Peppers                                  
  • Miscellaneous Tomatoes
  • Squashes                                          
  • Fingerling Potatoes
  • Fruit Share: Bosc Pears & Empire Apples from Yonder Farm

 

Letter From Windflower Farm

It’s nearly time to sign up for a Windflower Farm winter share. The winter share is four once-a-month deliveries of our own organic salad greens (including kales, spinach, Swiss chard, tatsoi and others), plus winter squashes, carrots, beets, onions, leeks, potatoes and sweet potatoes. Each month, we also include apples and pears (if we can get them) from Yonder Farm, and either apple cider from Borden Farm or jams made from our own organic strawberries and blackberries. To make it even more interesting we’ll occasionally include our own popcorn, black turtle beans, garlic and dried chiles. The winter share is delivered on Saturdays to a location very near your current pickup site. We hope you’ll join us for the winter share. It keeps us off the streets of Easton, money in the pockets of my staff, and it’s really yummy stuff. Look for a sign-up form in the next week or two. 

This week’s share is likely to be the last that includes all the makings of a good salsa. Summer has truly come to its end here; a frost last week left the lawn frosty and singed the tops of our low-lying sweet potatoes. We have nearly completed our fall harvests. In fact, all we have left in the field are sweet potatoes, leeks, bunching carrots and beets, storage turnips and fall greens. Red and orange foliage is popping up in the landscape. Your final tomatoes of the season may come as early as next week. And then it’s on to the crops of fall, starting next week with the likes of sweet potatoes, fennel, carrots and garlic, along with an assortment of greens.

There is a period of time each fall, between the final harvest of our storage crops and the start of winter, when we can complete a project unrelated to our crops. This year, it’s an expansion of one of our outbuildings. In modest stages we try to improve the infrastructure of our farm. This project will give us improved staff living quarters. So, this week, we’ll put the backhoe back on the John Deere and start digging. By this time next week, we should have poured the concrete piers and begun erecting the frame. If all goes well, we’ll have a roof and siding on before the first snowfall.

Have a great week, Ted

Recipe Ideas

As Ted is saying this week is the last week for salsa fixin's, I thought I would recommend a few latin inspired dishes.  For everyone who doesn't want to turn the oven on- try this Mexican Quinoa Salad from The Minimalist Baker.  It has a lot going on to satisfy all the taste buds- sweet, salty, savory, and looks like it could easily keep for lunch the next day.

I love this simple polenta recipe from the Moosewood.  They call for spinach- but you could use any green- and basically suggests you top it with Pico de Gallo.  Go here for Spinach Polenta and here for their killer Pico recipe.  You could also put Tomatillo Mole Sauce on top of this.

For something a little more special- a good weekend dinner, try this recipe from Cafe Pasqual's in Santa Fe:  Grilled Chipotle Shrimp Tostadas.  I was recently in Santa Fe, and had the privilege to eat at Pasqual's; it's everything you've every wanted from Southwest Home cooking. 

Around Town

NYC's Wine and Food festival is coming up!  It's 4 days of food events, celebrity chefs, cooking demonstrations, seminars and workshops on topics all things food related.  And the best part is that 100% of the proceeds go to charity.  When:  October 13-16.  Event schedules and tickets here.

Local Apple Picking:: If you're looking to something a little more intimate and relaxing- here's a list of the best farms in the NYC vicinity for you and your clan to go apple picking!  So many delicious things can be made with apples, and they're all the more sweeter- if you picked them yourself.

Veronica