We're enjoying this last whiff of summer, with some colder weather coming at us next week. We began a big fall transition this week with the removal of our tomatoes from the high tunnels to make way for transplanted salad mix, spinach, and kale that should keep Winter Shares stocked with greens November-January.
Growing greens in winter in Minnesota without heat is a pretty miraculous process. These crops are all cold hardy, but nothing approaching Minnesota-winter-hardy. But with the aid of the greenhouse plastic and a secondary row cover inside the tunnel, we can keep the plants alive through the winter. The thing is, they don't grow all that much with the short days and minimal warmth of Dec-Feb, so we need the plants to size up late September through early November, then they kind of hunker down when winter hits. We pull off the row cover on sunny days so the soil can bank heat, then re-cover before the sun goes down to trap that heat for the cold overnight. As along as we harvest the plants when they are not frozen, they can withstand repeated freezing and thawing during the winter. On that note, now's a great time to sign up for your winter share.
Lost Capital Foods Hot Sauce Fundraiser for Hail Storm Relief
Our friends at Lost Capital Foods, who buy lots of hot peppers from us each year, created a pair of sauces using damaged peppers picked right after the hail storm. They just announced preorders for the hot sauces, with 100% of the profits coming to us to offset losses incurred in the storm. If you (or a friend) like a little zip and flavor boost with your food, consider ordering their "Liquid Assets" sauces available on their website. For $20, you'll get two bottles of hot sauce, entry into a raffle with prizes offered by Twin Cities breweries, plus you'll be directly supporting us. There are options to have the sauces shipped to you or made available for pickup at the Mill City Farmers' Market...but a more convenient choice would be to have it delivered with your share. Just choose the "Existing Sogn Valley/CSA Member" option at checkout. We will pick up the orders from Lost Capital either next week or the week after, and add them to your share the following week. Purchase yours by clicking here and selecting the "Liquid Assets Set + Drawing" item.
A note on packaging: We try to minimize the number of plastic bags we use when packing shares, so lots of items are apportioned into quart or pint containers before packing, and then just dumped into the share boxes during packing. This is how we have handled mini sweet peppers, carrots, onions, and potatoes in recent shares. We know it makes for a less tidy box compared to individually bagging all those items, but our sense is that most of our members support reducing plastic usage. (And if you're like us, you have a stash of used plastic bags already sitting in a drawer.) However, some of these items still should be stored in plastic bags in your fridge in order to stay fresh - especially root vegetables like carrots, beets, turnips, and winter radishes. The same goes for most bunched items - kale, chard, radishes, herbs. We strongly suggest that you either transfer these items into bags you already have in the house or store them inside the large liner bag that comes with each share. Most of the root vegetables mentioned will get rubbery and greens and herbs will get wilty without being bagged. Hopefully we're striking the right balance with packaging, but let us know in the season-end survey coming next month.
Notes on items in this week's shares:
- Rainbow carrots will be a mix of orange, purple, and yellow varieties. The orange has the best flavor, in our opinion. Not quite as sweet as our storage carrots will be after frost, but very good. The purple variety we have typically grown was unavailable this year, so we tried a different variety 'Deep Purple'. The samples of purple carrots we dug last week weren't especially sweet or flavorful - full disclosure. They'd be nice in a slaw or roasted, although the purple color will fade when cooked.
- We'll be sending a different variety of garlic this week with larger heads and larger cloves than the ones in shares over the last month. This variety is called Majestic.
- Lots of great salad makings this week with the return of salad mix, head lettuce, radishes, dill, and tomatoes.
- We made this cilantro-based salad dressing last week, and loved it.
- The cooler weather coming in next week will be nice for this roasted chicken with fennel recipe we like.
Crops coming up soon: broccoli, parsley, baby kale, leeks.
Have a great week!
Dana
