Farm Happenings at Where the Redfearn Grows Natural Farm
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Last CSA pickup before Thanksgiving

Posted on November 13th, 2021 by Dave Redfearn

Hey all, just want to make sure you remember that the Nov 18th CSA pickup is your last chance to stock up before that big Thanksgiving meal (We'll be taking the week of Thanksgiving off and then back to the winter CSA again December 2nd).  We've been harvesting root crops like crazy to get ready for this big pre-Thanksgiving pickup and we've got a ton available to don't be shy about adding extra items for your feast and to tied you over for the week without the veg delivery!  

We've got beautiful greens and colorful radishes for salads and tons and tons of interesting and traditional roots for roasting.  Some of our favorites to make those holiday salads pop are the watermelon radishes and purple or red daikon radishes.  You'll have everyone asking "what is that sliced on the salad?".  Also, carrots are amazing!  We had some reject carrots left out in the field that I snacked on the other day, covered in dirt and all (both me and the carrot) and it was delightful!  If you've been with us for a while you know that carrots and many greens get sweeter once they've been exposed to frost.  We've got super sweet sweet potatoes, potatoes, and amazing fresh ginger.   I can't list it all here, but you'll see that the harvest is plentiful, so don't be shy about stocking up!  We're also making a lot of herbs available this week for your culinary pleasure!

What's with the dirt?

Fair warning on sweet potatoes.  They will come with some dried on dirt!  We don't wash them because washing cuts down on storage life, so we cure them with some soil attached.  This year, it was pretty muddy when we had to harvest, so there's a little extra dried soil.  The good news is that organic soil full of microbial life is good for you.  If you have hypochondriac tendencies, I'd recommend reading about the benefits of soil microbes.  So be prepared for sweet potatoes with a little natural Prozac for free.  Maybe that'll take the edge off of the after dinner political discussion with Uncle Leroy.  

Do you want to Plant Garlic?

Believe it or not, we're still harvesting the majority of your food from outdoors!  Now we're down to mostly frost tolerant crops and we cover some of them to help get them through cold nights. We're slowly chipping away at storage root harvests like the daikon and watermelon radishes, carrots, and cabbages.  We've also started planting garlic for next year.  Wow, we've got a lot to plant!  I may have over-ordered seed garlic.  Because of short seed supplies, you have to order early to make sure you get them and we ordered before we had even harvested this year's crop.  Our crop was really good and we were able to keep a lot of nice big garlic for seed, so in addition to the purchased seed garlic we have a ton of our own garlic to plant.  Would you like to grow some garlic?  We'll make some seed garlic available this week.  The best time to plant is around Thanksgiving.  Just break up the garlic bulb and plant each clove pointy side up in the garden.  We space ours around 4" apart in rows 8" apart and plant them with around 1" of soil or compost above them.   

We will have 1/2 lb bags of seed garlic available.  That will be enough for approximately 30-40 garlic plants.

 

Bread and Cheese Share

Bread: Farm to Market French Farm Artisan Loaf

Cheese: Hemme Brothers, Brother's Keeper 6oz. block

Mystery 3- packs of Hemme Brothers Cheeses also available

 

 Thanksgiving Wishes

We want to express our thankfulness for sharing in our farm experience.  Thanks for taking us home with you to celebrate this holiday with family and friends.  We'll be offering up special thanks for you as we say grace over our Farrar family turkey and all of our own farm fix'ns.  

Blessings to you,

Dave and Sheri