CSA Week 17

***2 weeks to go! Final CSA is November 6 or 8***

In your share week 17:

Winter luxury pumpkin
Onion
Potato
Kale
Salad mix
Cilantro or Italian parsley
Broccoli (Some sites only)

Full shares only:

Romaine Lettuce
Tomato

My internet is down, i have recipes for you this week but not on my phone! I really will try to post them asap…

We finally got all the winter squash and pumpkins in, the last week or so of warm days has really helped them ripen up.  This is when I am reminded how much later our climate is than the Willamette Valley; all my valley farmer friends brought in their squash weeks ago.

These pumpkins are an heirloom variety called Winter Luxury.  They make the most fantastic pumpkin puree: flavorful, sweet, and velvety.  I’ve used the puree to make pies, soups, risotto, and more.  They are also delicious to roast and eat with butter or other toppings, although I think their texture is better pureed.  I cook them the same way I cook winter squash.  Cut it in half, put it in a pan with a bit of water, and roast it at 375 until a fork goes through it easily.  To puree it, I just scoop out the seeds, peel off the skin, and use my immersion blender (you can also use a food processor, a regular blender, or a potato masher).

If you have a large pumpkin and don’t want to use it all at once, the puree freezes well.  I’d roast the whole pumpkin, since it won’t keep for long once it’s cut open.  Left whole and uncooked, these pumpkins are sturdy but not terribly long keepers.  It should keep at room temperature at least until Thanksgiving and possibly until the end of the year.

We have less variety now that we are into the end of the season, but everything is still fresh and tasty.  I find that the greens and roots get sweeter and more tender with these frosty nights.  Today’s salad is mostly from the greenhouse and looks more like spring salad.  It is extra tender and succulent, and quite a bit milder than the field salad.  Our fall greenhouse salad is usually pretty weak, as the limited light and shortening days make it leggy.  It really shines when it starts to grow back as the days get longer in January and February.  But this bed was an exception: this is really perfect baby salad!

Since our fall crops have been low yielding, we’ve decided to close our farm stands early.  Next week (October 30 and November 1) will be the final weeks for our farm stands, both here at the farm and at the Lincoln City Hospital.  We will reopen at the farm for one last hurrah on November 20, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  Your CSA will go one week longer than the farm stands, until November 6 or 8.  Most pickups will remain the same.  For folks who pick up at the hospital we are working on finding a spot at the hospital where we can leave the shares for you.  I will get in touch next week and let you know where they will be.

This is the first year we will not go until Thanksgiving, and the fewest Thanksgiving shares we will pack I think since our first year.  It seems so strange, since over the summer we had more produce than we could handle and were donating a couple hundred pounds a week to the food pantries.  But it seems that all of our poorer crops decided to be the fall ones: carrots, potatoes, yacon, and brussels sprouts.  We are doing our best to keep your shares full and interesting up to the last week, though I know these last few have less variety.  That’s always true in the fall, and that’s how the CSA works: you get what’s abundant on the farm, when it’s abundant.