12th CSA Week

What a beautiful day today!! The temperature was just nice at 18 degrees, no wind and full sun. Awesome.

This weeks large share has regular cucumbers, lemon cucumber, zucchini, carrots, red and yellow sweet onions, garlic, leeks, potatoes, cauliflower, radish and a bag of gourmet mixed greens. There are eight different types of baby greens mixed together to make a delightful and ultra healthy salad including tatsoi, kale, swiss chard, arugula, mizuna, bulls blood beet greens, regular beet greens and purple mustard. Beautiful and delicious!!

Greens getting all mixed together in the wash station

Picture perfect

Mizuna

Regular beet green

Bulls Blood beet green

Tatsoi

Arugula

Purple mustard

Swiss Chard

We pulled about half of the onions on the weekend and they are all up in the barn curing for fall/winter storage. There are lots of onions!! We had some great help on Saturday afternoon, thanks to Martin, Nicola, Sofie & Lucie who did a great job putting the onions in the crates, weeding the peppers and entertaining Ben & Jake. We still have a few onions in the ground that I'm hoping will grow a bit bigger but its hard to tell at this point if that will happen.

The winter squash are the next item on the list. They do not like cold temperatures and anything less than 4 degrees and they could get chilling injuries which would shorten their storage life. I have quite a few varieties but they are not as big or as mature as I would like so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the cold and especially the frost will stay away for awhile yet. We have some lovely looking spagetti, butternut, buttercup, acorn, delicata and hubbard coming along just nicely.

I've officially declard it "soup season" around here and in my opinion a good soup is not complete without lots of onions and some leeks!! Here is one of our favorites.

Potato & Leek Soup
3 cups chicken stock
1 cup beef stock
2-3 leeks (white and light green parts, I don't use the leaves but some people do add till the soup is done and remove before eating for more flavour)
3 medium potatoes, cut in small cubes (I peeled them but you would not have to)
2 carrots, cut in small pieces
1/2 onion
salt & pepper, to taste
summer savory, couple of shakes
thyme, couple of shakes
Fry the chopped onions and leeks in a bit of butter for a few minutes along with the salt, pepper, thyme and summer savory. Add chopped potatoes, carrots, chicken & beef stock and bring to a boil. Simmer for 1/2 to 3/4 hour or until veggies are soft. It can be eaten just like this or pureed as well. I often will puree about 3/4 of the soup and leave a bit for a chunkier feel.

Thanks to Jennifer for the following blueberry zucchini muffin recipe. If you have a few zucchini kicking around or if loving neighbors have decided you need their extras its a great way to use them up!!

Blueberry Zucchini Muffins
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 c vegetable oil
1/2 c applesauce ( I used motts blueberry applesauce since it was the only applesauce I had in the cupboard)
3 tsp vanilla extract
2 c white sugar
2 c shredded zucchini
1 1/2 c all-purpose flour
1 1/2 c wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
1 pint fresh blueberries ( I used frozen )
(Optional topping: Oats sprinkled with cinnamon sugar)
Preheat oven to 350F.
In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, oil, applesauce vanilla, and sugar. Fold in the zucchini. Beat in the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon. Gently fold in the blueberries. Transfer batter to greased or lined muffin pans. If you are using the topping, sprinkle on top of batter.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean.

For all our farm facebook followers you've probley already seen these pictures but here are some of the latest farm fun photos!! Enjoy and have a great rest of the week.