Summer CSA Week 16, 2022

Leaves are starting to change color on the farm.

Sixteen weeks! Can you believe it? After this week, we have two more distributions in our summer CSA. Autumn is truly harvest season. Shares this week are overflowing and the farm crew is building muscle bringing in heavy squash, pumpkins and carrots. Temperatures are brisk and refreshing and we are making preparations for the fast approaching first frost.

Crew harvesting kale and rutabagas

In your share this week:

Green Beans – Carrots – Cilantro – Cucumber – Kale – Onion – Sweet Red Peppers (not hot) – Green Bell Peppers – Hot Wax Pepper – Potatoes – Rutabaga – Squash – Spinach – Tomatoes


Harvesting Squash

It’s always fun when throwing food is encouraged! The squash plants spreads out across the whole field, so when we harvest, squash are spread everywhere. To get squash consolidated we toss squash to each other across the field. You will find delicata and kabocha squash in your shares this week


Onions curing

Minnesota Pasties

This week’s box has all the vegetable ingredients you need for tasty pasties!

Ingredients

Crust

  • 1 stick butter, cubed
  • 1/2 cup shortening (Crisco)
  • 1 cup boiling water
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 3 1/2 to 4 cups flour

Filling

  • 1 1/2 lb meat, 70% ground beef, 30% ground pork (make vegetarian by excluding meat and adding a vegetarian gravy to the veggie filling)
  • 2 diced onions
  • 1 cup carrots, diced
  • 1 1/2 cups rutabaga, peeled and diced
  • 4 cups potatoes diced
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • dash of garlic salt (or use a minced fresh garlic clove)
  • butter
  • milk

Instructions

  1. Melt butter and Crisco in microwave. Stir in rest of crust ingredients. Do not over mix. Let cool to room temperature.
  2. Preheat oven to 400°F.
  3. In a very large bowl, add ground beef and pork together, squishing together with a clean hand to combine. Roughly break apart into dime sized pieces. Add in all veggies and seasoning and mix ingredients well.
  4. For jumbo sized pasties, roll dough into 10 inch circles. Add 1 cup filling on one side of each circle. With water, wet the edges of the dough around the filling. Add 1/2 tsp butter on top of filling. Fold dough over the side with the filling making a pouch. Press and seal all edges tightly. Trim any uneven edges and make a 1 inch slit on top of the pasty. Brush top with milk. Repeat until all ingredients are gone. For smaller pasties use 5 inch circles of dough and 1/2 cup of filling.
  5. Bake for 1 hour at 400° F. Let cool slightly before serving, or let cool completely before storing.

Recipe from Just a Pinch Recipes.

Check out some other great rutabaga recipes in our “April Winter CSA” post.


A sneak peak of what’s to come!

For the farm crew,

Starr

Summer CSA Week 15, 2022

At the Food Farm, we love our carrots, and our carrots love each other.

We are moving towards fall with seasonal favorites like leeks and acorn squash. We also have Noreaster beans, a very distinctive green bean and a favorite of the farm crew because of its great flavor.


In your share this week:

Noreaster Beans – Beets – Cabbage – Carrots – Cucumber – Leeks – Lettuce – Onion – Sweet Red Peppers (not hot!!!) – Green Bell Peppers – Russet Potatoes – Acorn Squash – Tomatoes


How we harvest our carrots

You probably love Food Farm carrots as much as we do. Our carrots go into your CSA boxes, go to several wholesale accounts including the Whole Foods Co-ops in Duluth, and are part of the our winter CSA shares. Long story short, we grow A LOT of carrots, and harvesting those carrots is quite a production!

We need three different pieces of equipment and a farm crew of at least five to harvest carrots mechanically. First in the harvest train is the tractor, which pulls and powers everything mechanical. Next is the carrot harvester. The carrot harvester digs up the carrots, pulls them up a conveyor by their tops (leaves), and then slices off the tops so they fall into a collection bucket. One person drives the tractor while another person (always Janaki) steers the carrot harvester making sure it is perfectly lined up with the rows, digging to the appropriate depth and generally running properly. Lastly, is the trailer with the collection buckets and farm crew. Carrots come down the chute FAST. One person kneels down swapping out new buckets as they fill, approximately a new bucket every eight seconds. The first crew member sets full buckets aside, and a 2nd crew member moves that bucket from the front to the back of the trailer and gets a new empty bucket ready for the first person to grab. The third and final person arranges full buckets in the back of the trailer or dumps buckets into a pallet box so we can fit as many carrots on the trailer as possible! It’s cardio, weight-bearing, and teamwork so let us know if you’d like to add it to your workout routine this fall.


Gado Gado (from The Moosewood Cookbook)

Ingredients

  • 2 cups rice
  • ½ tsp turmeric
  • broccoli or cauliflower
  • green beans
  • green or red cabbage, finely shredded
  • carrots, sliced thinly
  • cucumber
  • peppers
  • squash
  • tomato
  • lettuce

Instructions

  1. Make yellow rice by cooking 2 cups of rice in 3 cups of simmering water with 1/2 tsp of turmeric until tender.
  2. Cut all vegetables into small bite-sized pieces. Exact measurement are not necessary, just use what you like! Lightly steam the cauliflower/broccoli, green beans, and squash.
  3. Tear the lettuce or greens mix and place on a platter or plate.  Top the greens with the yellow rice.  Arrange the chopped vegetables on top of the rice.  Top with hard boiled eggs and/or tofu.  Dress with the peanut sauce.

Peanut Sauce

Ingredients

  • 1 cup peanut butter
  • 1 heaping tablespoon grated ginger (fresh)
  • 1 heaping tablespoon finely minced garlic
  • 3 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 1.5 cups hot water
  • 4 tablespoons cider vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 1 tsp salt
  • crushed red pepper, to taste

Instructions

  1. Put everything in a blender and puree until smooth.  If the sauce is too thick, add a little extra water.  Drizzle over Gado Gado.

The Gado Gado can also be topped with sauteed ginger and garlic (very thin slices), crispy fried onions, shredded coconut, and slices of oranges.


Looking for past recipes?

You can search all past newsletters using the search box in the upper right hand corner of your screen. If you remember the title or unique keywords in a previously posted recipe, this can be helpful way to find old recipes.

If you’re looking more generally for a recipe to use something in your box check out the tag cloud below:

Arugula Basil Beet Bell Pepper Broccoli Brussels Sprouts Cabbage Carrot Carrot Leaf Cauliflower Celery Chard Chives Cilantro Cucumber Delicata Squash Dill Dressing/Sauce Egg Garlic Garlic Scape Green Bean Green Onion Kale Leek Mint Napa Cabbage Onion Parsley Parsnip Pepper Potato Radish Red Onion Red Potato Rutabaga Scallion Shallot Spinach Thyme Tomato Turnip Winter Squash Yellow Onion Zucchini

The larger the word above the more posts with a recipe that features that vegetable. Click the vegetable you’re seeking a recipe for, and our website will return a list of all the newsletters that feature that vegetable!


For the farm crew,

Starr

Summer CSA Week 14, 2022

The whole crew picking green beans.

It has been an exciting week! Saturday was Harvest Fest at Bayfront Festival Park. It was great seeing all of you that stopped by our booth. We have also had a new crew member join the gang and an old crew member move on to great new things.

A note about peppers: The large pointy red peppers are a SWEET pepper variety named Carmen. The smaller yellow pointy pepper are a HOT pepper variety.

In your share this week:

Green Beans – Carrots – Celery – Cilantro – Cucumber – Garlic – Onion – Red Pepper – Green Peppers – Hot Peppers – Potatoes – Tomato – Zucchini


Here are pictures from our Harvest Fest booth! We moved a lot of produce on Saturday. Thank you to everyone who came out. Harvest Fest is hosted by the Lake Superior Sustainable Farming Association.


Tomato and Pepper Chunky Salsa

Salsa is one of the joys of summer. It’s great as a snack with tortilla chips or on top of eggs. Luckily, salsa is very easy to make!

Ingredients

  • 7 medium tomatoes
  • 1 red bell pepper (the long pointed one)
  • 1 small diced red onion
  • 1 hot pepper
  • ½ cup fresh cilantro
  • 1–2 garlic cloves
  • juice of 1 lime
  • ½ tsp pepper
  • ½ tsp cumin
  • 1 tsp salt, or to taste

Instructions

  1. Finely dice the tomatoes, red bell pepper, red onion, hot pepper, garlic and cilantro. Combine in a large bowl and add lime juice and seasonings.
  2. Alternatively, process all ingredients in a food processor for 30 seconds.
  3. Store in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

Recipe based off the green creator..


Congrats to our former crew member, Emily, who is moving on to a great new job in her field. Emily has been with the Food Farm for two years and wrote last year’s newsletters.

This beautiful key lime pie was made in Emily’s honor by Charlie, a fellow crew member.


A great morning for spiders!

The first spider is a funnel-weaver spider with in her name-sake funnel web beautifully outlined in morning dew. This spider was found next to our celery rows. The picture doesn’t do justice to the unique 3D tunnel structure this spider builds. The second spider is a black and yellow argiope, also called a black-and-yellow garden spider, which may be the largest web-building spider in the northern United States. She was a big one! She was found feasting on a fly in her web that spanned one of the green bean paths. (We made certain not to disrupt her.) Many think because this spider is so colorful and large it must be dangerous, but in reality, they are shy and rarely venture off their webs. We appreciate these spiders eating the more annoying bugs for us!


For the farm crew,

Starr

Summer CSA Week 13, 2022

After a couple of cool days, we’re ready for another warm dry week at the farm. Aside from routine harvest tasks, the main jobs for this week are bringing in a beautiful crop of storage onions and scouting the fields for weeds that eluded summer’s cultivation and hand weeding.

In your share this week:

Basil – Green Beans – Carrots – Cucumber – Lettuce – Melons – Green Peppers – Hot Peppers – Sweet Onion – Red Potatoes – Tomato – Zucchini


A friend flew over the farm this weekend–it’s nice to see that it looks just as good from the air!

Classic Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients

  • 4 large green bell peppers or about 5 small ones
  • 15 ounce can tomato sauce
  • 1/2 pound ground beef or turkey
  • 1/3 cup chopped onion
  • 1 cup cooked brown or white rice
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

Instructions

  1. Place minced garlic and chopped cilantro in a large bowl and set aside.
  2. Bring water to a boil and plunge in green beans. Cook just until tender, about 5-10 minutes, do not overcook. Drain well and place beans back in hot pan, turn on stove burner and shake for 30 seconds to dry the beans out. Pour hot beans in the bowl with the garlic and cilantro mixture and stir briefly, then let sit untouched for ten full minutes. Add olive oil, toss and place in refrigerator overnight or for at least 4 hours.
  3. Before you are ready to serve, remove beans from refrigeration and let sit for 45 minutes at room temperature. Add lemon juice, vinegar and pepper. Toss, taste for seasoning and serve.

Recipe from Feast and Farm.


Fruit Dip to serve with your melon!

Ingredients

7oz marshmallow fluff

8oz cream cheese, softened to room temperature

2 Tablespoons frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed

Instructions

  1. Spoon marshmallow fluff into a large, microwave safe mixing bowl then microwave for 15 seconds. Add softened cream cheese and orange juice concentrate then whisk or beat with an electric hand mixer until very smooth. Chill for several hours or overnight. Serve with assorted fruit.

Based off a recipe from iowa girl eats.


Chester and Ellis

For the farm crew,

Starr