Fifth Winter Distribution 

Hello All,

  Most of the snow is gone for now and winter is on its way back.  TIme to stock up on some veggies for snacks,soups, chili, and salads.   

   It will be easier to pick kale today and we have a beautiful crop of greens in the greenhouses ready for the picking today.  

   Distribution is tomorrow Wednesday the 16th from 2-6pm in the distribution shed. We still have shares available. There are 4 more distributions if you include this Wednesday, so you can still join and get a prorated share ($200). All the details are on the farm website - http://www.sweetlandfarm.org. There is one error on the site - we've added one more distribution date in March that is not listed on the site yet. March 6th is now the last distribution day.

Remaining Dates:  January 16th, January 30th, February 20th, March 6th.

This week's vegetables:

carrots

potatoes

onions

beets

parsnips

rutabagas

hakurei

spinach

Napa cabbage

savoy cabbage

daikon

celeriac

kohlrabi

kale

boc choi

chard

komatsuna (braising green)

turnips

watermelon radishes

Thanks and see you soon,

Sweet Land Farm

Third Winter Distribution

Hello All,

Welcome to another week of the (ummm....) Winter CSA! Distribution is this Wednesday the 19th from 2-6pm in the distribution shed. We still have shares available. There are 6 more distributions if you include this Wednesday, so you can still join and get a full share's worth (@the $300 price). All the details are on the farm website - http://www.sweetlandfarm.org. There is one error on the site - we've added one more distribution date in March that is not listed on the site yet. March 6th is now the last distribution day.

This week's vegetables:

carrots

potatoes

onions

beets

parsnips

rutabagas

hakurei

spinach

acorn squash

Napa cabbage

savoy cabbage

fennel

daikon

celeriac

kohlrabi

kale

boc choi

komatsuna (braising green)

turnips

watermelon radishes

Thanks and see you soon,

Salad battle strategy

Helllllllloooo My Hearties!

Well, actually we don't have to be that hearty yet seeing as the weather is ridiculously mild. From a winter farmer perspective, this mild weather makes the winter distributions SO EASY to prepare for. 

We still have plenty of winter shares available. There are still 7 distributions left, and a regular $300 share pays for 6, so you haven't missed anything. If you want to sign up just come to Wednesday's distribution and you can sign up there. There are also still 1 or 2 Healthy Food For All subsidized shares left. 

I went to some friends house the other night and brought along a bowl of shredded carrots (a Cuisinart is so divine...) and a big ole head of no-excuses-for-itself Napa cabbage. Once there I cut up the Napa (half of it anyway) and put it in a big salad bowl with the shredded carrots. Then my friend added all kinds of deliciousness to the bowl and I mixed it up. Lets just say that even though we were having lobster for dinner we all devoured that huge bowl of salad, sharing one fork, until it was almost gone before the lobster water even came to a boil.  We all agreed that we could eat that stuff without stopping for about a week. It was just so good! (The lobster was sublime as well, but very scary looking.)

Here's the recipe: (disclosure: I, Evangeline Sarat, bought cilantro at the store, and I'll do it again.)

Grated carrots

Thinly sliced Napa cabbage

raisins

peanuts

a thinly sliced bunch or two of cilantro

to taste: sesame or peanut oil, seasoned rice wine vinegar, fish sauce, sushi ginger (and some liquid added), garlic

Mix it all up and grab a fork, hunch over the bowl, and get ready to attack anyone who comes close.

This week's vegetables:

Still from the field:

romenesco, pac choi, tatsoi, radicchio, spinach, celery, parsley, kale

From storage:

carrots, beets, Napa cabbage, cabbage, potatoes, onions, garlic, turnips (many kinds), rutabagas, parsnips, acorn squash, diakon, watermelon radishes, celeriac, fennel

Here is an announcement from Wide Awake:

Dear Wide Awake Bakery Breadshare Members,

We’ve been getting some emails from concerned members: When does the breadshare end? Where do I go to get my bread now that the farm CSA is closed for the season? How can I sign up for another share? Is it possible to get bread all winter?

Here are a few answers!!

First, we apologize for our poor communication. We’ve been having lots of trouble with our email system, and as a result many of you have not been getting updates. We’re hoping that this email, coming though your CSA farm, will reach you. We know we've created a lot of confusion, for which we apologize, and we are working to set things straight. Please stay tuned, and thank you for your patience!!

Q: Where do I go to get my bread?

A: If you regularly pick up your bread Sweet Land Farm, your bread will be at GOOD TO GO on TUESDAYS FROM 4-6:30.

Q: When does the breadshare end?

A: The breadshare ends the second week of December. The last bake will be Friday the 14^th.

Q: How do I sign up for another share? 

A:  Good Question!! Here’s how to do it: go to the website (wideawakebakery.com) and check the bulletins on the front page. When we have the new sign-up system in place, we’ll announce it there, and everywhere else we can think of. When it’s up and running, just click the sign-up button, and despite the fact that you may have already given us your email address and other info, please do it once again. (We’re working with a new system, one that we hope will improve our communications!!) When you do click on the new sign-up button, you’ll notice a few cool things: 1) it costs less to sign up! 2) you can pay online!! 3) you can set your own pickup schedule, including “half-shares”!!! 4) you can purchase other cool stuff, like t-shirts, pasta, granola, and who knows what else!!!!

Q: Can I get bread all winter?

A: Well, not really. We’re going to take a break over the holidays and then get going again in January.  But there is some good news in there—We will be having an OPEN HOUSE, and if you come you can get bread to freeze for the holiday!

Q: WHEN IS THE OPEN HOUSE?

A: December 19^th, from 6:30-9:30.

Q: WHERE IS THIS OPEN HOUSE?

A: At the bakery!! 4361 Buck Hill Rd. S., Trumansburg. That’s the mailing address, but we’re really just outside of Mecklenburg. We’ll post a map on the website. If you plan to use a GPS, just be sure to put the “south” in Buck Hill Road South. Without the south there’s no telling where you’ll end up!

Please stay tuned to the bakery website for more news!!

Thank you!!

Stef

Food Stamps and Subsidized Winter Shares

News Flash!

I am sorry I missed putting this into the email I just sent out. Here are two very important news items:

• We can now take payment for the Winter and Summer CSA in the form of Food Stamps (EBT). The whole share can be paid for with this method. We cannot process the payments here at the farm. If you would like to pay with Food Stamps,  Greenstar can process your payments for us. Please give us a copy of the receipt and make sure that your name is on it! If you have any more questions about how to pay for your share with Food Stamps please send me an email.
• Healthy Food For All is a program that we and several other farmers run along with Co-operative Extension. The program basically offers subsidized shares for CSA members that meet WIC or Food Stamp guidelines. Until recently we have only been able to offer a limited number of these shares to summer members. However, this winter we have money for 10 winter members to join the CSA and have half of the share price subsidized by the program. The program is ideally supposed to make fresh, local food available to people in the community who are new to the CSA experience, and who would otherwise not belong to a CSA. Please email me for more information. 

OK, I hope this helps some people out,

Evangeline

First Winter CSA is this Wednesday, November 21st

Hello all,

Greetings and here we go! Yes, the winter CSA is starting this Wednesday, November 21st. We still have PLENTY of winter shares available – tell your friends, family, and, depending on you persuasion, your enemies. (Scratch that,  you probably don't want such healthy enemies, bad strategy.) We think that the winter share is going to extra great this year with all of the flexibility that we’ve worked into it. This first distribution will look almost exactly like last week's vegetables because the weather is so mild. You can take two bags from where ever you want in the barn, that is, there are no "sides", you just take two bags total from the barn. 

WE'VE DECIDED TO ADD ONE MORE DISTRIBUTION TO THE WINTER CSA (DATES LISTED BELOW). SO, THERE ARE NOW EIGHT DISTRIBUTION DAYS TO CHOOSE FROM, AND A SHARE PAYS FOR SIX. TO STATE THE OBVIOUS, YOU CAN NOW MISS TWO DISTRIBUTIONS AND STILL GET YOUR FULL MONEY'S WORTH. 

NUTS AND BOLTS

* Distribution is at the farm.

* Distributions are every other Wednesday, and supply 2 weeks worth of food.

* Main distribution days are: 11/21, 12/5, 12/19, 1/2,  1/16,  1/30,  2/20,  & 3/6

* Distribution is from 2-6 pm on the main distribution days.

* If you have purchased a pre-boxed share you may pick up you share from 9-5, Thurs, Fri, & Sat following the main day.

* If you need us to we will box a share for you, even if you have not pre-purchased one. Please let us know that you need on by noon of distribution day, and the boxing costs $6.

* There are 8 distributions and a share pays for 6, so choose the 6 dates that work best for you. No need to tell us which distribution you are going to miss. We hope this accommodates your winter travel plans and a snow date. You may certainly come to all 8 distributions, it just costs more.

FUN STUFF:

*We will always have eggs available for purchase at distribution. You can buy as many as you could possibly use – we have lots. Eggs store easily for 2 weeks, so buy a 2 week supply. The chickens are happy in their light filled greenhouse out on one of the oat and pea pastures. We leave the door of the chicken greenhouse open all the time, so they go in and out all winter. The greenhouse is cozy with lots of loose hay covering the floor and mounded up the sidewalls. We need egg cartons – bring them on over, we’ll take all you’ve got.

VEGGIES:

Here’s the list: potatoes, carrots, onions, leeks, winter squash, celery, tatsoi, bok choi, radicchio, Chinese cabbage, cabbage, turnips, rutabagas, celeriac, beets, diakon, kale, spinach, parsnips, kohlrabi, parsley, garlic, 

Stephan Grappelli

Helllooo out there!

Yes, there are 2 weeks left of the Summer CSA, so the last Tuesday distribution is the 13th, and the last Friday is the 16th. The winter CSA starts THE NEXT WEEK, WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 21ST. That's the day before Thanksgiving. 

The winter CSA is super super super flexible this year. Members take 2 SLF bags of WHATEVER they want from WHERE EVER they want in the barn. So, you could eat just kale, spinach, carrots and onions all winter if you wanted. Or just potatoes, beets and cabbage. You get the picture. It's like going to the store except everything is local, organic, and grown on fantastic soil, looks great, and does Wegman's have a wood stove surrounded by babies in car seats listening to Stephan Grappelli in the produce section?

http://www.sweetlandfarm.org

Here's the winter CSA food prediction:

potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, kale, cabbage, Napa cabbage, leeks, beets, celeriac,
turnips, radishes, rutabagas, winter squash, parsnips, kohlrabi, fennel, and greens (spinach,
chard, and braising greens) from the 3 passive solar greenhouses.

Here's this week's food prediction:

kohlrabi - super sweet and delicious - try it slice raw with dip

carrots

beets

potatoes

leeks (!!! for the last two weeks you lucky duckies)

radicchio

endive

kale

chard

pac choi

arugula

spinach - could this stuff be any sweeter?

rutabagas

purple top turnips

hakurei

tatsoi

green tomatoes

celery

acorn squash

fennel - caramelize this and then add white wine and sausage and simmer for awhile til the wine is gone. Whoa.

garlic

u-pick:

parsley, dill, cilantro, chard, kale - all great, all unlimited.

Farm week

Hello out there!

Winter squash! We've had a couple of questions about this crop. It failed dismally. We don't ever irrigate winter squash - it just takes too much land to grow enough for the CSA to make irrigation feasible. Usually it does great or at least pretty good. This year it didn't get rain at key times in its life, and the fruits suffered. For an idea of how bad it was this year compared to others, this fall we harvested 3 pallet bins of squash. Last year we harvested 11 pallet bins from the same amount of land planted. Pretty bad numbers. So, we have some squash right now, but it will only last for a week or so. It is also not very ripe, and small. There will be squash for about 3 weeks of the winter CSA. 

Vegetable Forecast: 

napa cabbage

cabbage

carrots - 

beets

potatoes

red onions

winter squash

tatsoi

spinach

chard

kale

radicchio

escarole/endive

fennel

greenish tomatoes

hakurei

celery

broccoli raab - not really raabing

arugula

u-pick:

all unlimited:

parsley 

raspberries - almost gone

tomatillos - LOTS OF AWESOME ONES!!!

kale

chard

dill

cilantro

big sunflower heads by road

See you around!

Winter CSA Announced, plus lots of UNLIMITED U-PICK

Hello!

Announcing the 2012-13 Winter CSA! It is definitely that time of year. It's getting chillier and chillier and the fall colors are blazing. The forecast says 25 on Friday night. Time to make your winter nutrient balance sheets. Will you put a big ole wallop of nutrient dense, gorgeous power packed local fantastical magical food on the plus side of your balance sheet for the winter? I guess you can tell that I think you should. The winter crops are looking great with all of the lovely rain that we've gotten last month or so. The beets are crisp, and dark blood red. The almost unbelievable color that pours out of a red beet when its cut is a mystical promise of something or another. Those mystical promises are hard to pin down, sometimes you just have to trust them with out the burden of understanding. The carrots are super sweet and large. Fairly in charge, too. I imagine that they are full of mystical promise as well, but am not going there right now. OK, look for a simple, logical list of winter CSA food several paragraphs below. 

Last winter we started a new distribution system aimed at your increased shareholder pleasure. It worked well. Instead of taking one bag from each side of the barn, shareholders can now take 2 bags total from where ever they want. So, to say it another way, you can now fill two bags with whatever you want, from where ever you want. Read: you can take two big ole bags of spinach if you want, or two bags stuffed full of potatoes, or two bustling bags of kale and onions. Its your choice. No rutabagas or turnips for you if they are disgusting to you.  We've thought long and hard about this and feel we can pull it off to better accommodate your individual preferences. We want to provide what you want to eat! 

WINTER CSA

* Distributions are in the farm shed (heated by a wood stove). There is a good kid fence
around the stove. The drive and parking lots are always plowed for distribution.

* Distributions are every other Wednesday and each supplies 2 weeks worth of food.

* We have created more pick-up options. Distribution is
from 2-6 pm on the main distribution days. Can't make it? We'll box a share for
you and you can pick it up from 9-5, Thurs, Fri, & Sat following the main day. This costs extra
due to the extra work involved.

* There are 7 distributions and a share pays for 6, so choose the 6 dates that work best for you.
We hope this accommodates your winter travel plans and a snow date. You may certainly come
to all 7 distributions, it just costs more.

* The Winter CSA dates are: November 21, December 5, December 19, January 2, January 16, January 30, February 20. All Wednesdays.

* A regular winter share (6 distributions, on the main days) costs $300. THIS IS THE SAME PRICE AS LAST YEAR

* A boxed winter share, 6 distributions, costs $345.

* A regular winter share, 7 distributions, costs $350.

* A boxed winter share, 7 distributions, costs $400.

Here's what will most likely be in the winter share:
potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, kale, cabbage, Napa cabbage, beets, celeriac,
turnips, radishes, rutabagas, winter squash, parsnips, kohlrabi, fennel, and greens (spinach, chard, and
braising greens) from the 3 passive solar greenhouses.

Most of October and November is spent pulling in food from the fields and storing it for the
winter CSA. We do our best to estimate how many members will join for the winter, but
hard facts make it much easier to figure out how much to harvest and store. To make it easier
for you to join early the winter deposit is only $50. Join soon and lessen our guesswork.
Payments can be mailed or dropped off in the shed. Please include your email on your check
when you join, even if I already have it. 

NOW UNLIMITED U-PICK:

Paste tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, hot peppers, chard, kale, parsley, dill, cilantro, RASPBERRIES, flowers

Time to pick! Pick pick pick them all!

Ok, See you around,

Evangelin

Dates

Hello out there!

Sorry for the late email, I got waylaid. I just checked the dates of the CSA. The last distribution days of the summer CSA are Tuesday, November 13th, and Friday, November 16th. That's six more weeks of farm eating fun. Paul and I are going to sit down in the next couple of days and set the start date for the winter CSA. Details forth-coming. 

This week's food:

garlic - on the docket for the rest of the season, one bulb per week.

spinach

hakurei turnips

head lettuce

scarlet queen turnips - gorgeous

raddicchio

carrots - here til spring

beets - here til spring

tatsoi

pac choi - this is what I am eating these days. Bomber.

kale

chard

endive/escarole

maybe some other surprises

u-pick:

Note: The fall frosts are creeping into reality, so all of the tender crops are going to be killed soon. That includes all tomatoes, tomatillos, flowers and beans.

Limited:

paste tomatoes - 5 gallons

tomatillos - 3 gallons

raspberries - 3 quarts

unlimited:

edemame

green beans (almost done for the year)

cherry tomatoes

chard - yes! time to stock up!

kale - ditto!

parsley - awesome

cilantro 

dill

flowers

The menu for Healthy Food For All's fourth fine dining benefit gala of the 2012 season has been released! 

Join us Sunday, October 14th at Remembrance Farm in Trumansburg, NY with a menu prepared by Executive Chef-Owner Scott Signori of Stonecat Cafe paired with wines from Damiani Wine Cellars. 

The wine and hors d’oeuvres reception with live music from Evil City String band starts at 5:00pm followed by dinner at 6pm. Check out the menu and purchase tickets online, but don't delay…only 10 seats are left!

Tickets start at $75 (all-inclusive) with proceeds benefiting Healthy Food For All, a farmer-driven initiative in partnership with Cornell Cooperative Extension Tompkins County to make fresh produce accessible to households with limited income. 

 

Fine Dining for a Cause 

Join farmers in their efforts to share the bounty of our region with all! 

****************************************************************************

For Information on Healthy Food For All:
Contact: Elizabeth V. Karabinakis, Director
Email: evk4@cornell.edu
Phone:  607-272-2292
Website: www.HealthyFoodForAll.org

  Find Healthy Food For All on Facebook
For Harvest Dinners on the Farm Reservations or Ticket Sales:Contact: Samantha Castillo-Davis, Harvest Dinner Reservations Volunteer
Email: harvestdinners@gmail.com
Phone: 607-342-8845
Online purchase: www.HealthyFoodForAll.org

Harvest Dinners are a part of "Wine, Dine, Play and Stay," a project sponsored by the Tompkins County Tourism Program.

Grim Reaper

Hello out there!

I am in the process of responding to balance questions - if I have not answered you I will sometime this week. Thanks for your patience! Payment is due in full next Monday. 

The crew has been spending their time this week ripping out, systematically, and in order of reverse importance, all of the hot weather crops from the three greenhouses. Bye bye eggplants, peppers, basil, and tomatoes. In that order. You can breathe, they stripped the plants of their fruits (if they had any) before they pulled the plants out of the ground. The fruits are stock piled in the distribution shed. Actually, don't hold your breath for eggplant. I must say, what a disappointing crop in general. We thought that if we babied them and gave them the most prime-est real estate on the farm in the greenhouse they'd perform like crazy. We were wrong! I'm not sure what we'll do about that crop in the future. They want Italy (or California). 

It's counter intuitive to pull out all of those plants right now. They are big, green, bushy, and covered in fruit. It feels wrong to kill them. As it goes on this farm, spinach and chard in February is much more important than a couple more weeks of peppers and tomatoes in late September. If we're to get good plantings of winter greens in the greenhouses we have to seed between the end of September and the first week or two of October. Which necessitates ripping out all that productive, hard worked for summer bounty a bit before it's really it's time to go. It makes me feel a bit like the grim reaper, but with more judgement than the grim reaper is supposed to embody. Life/death cycle of farming.

This week's vegetables: 

spinach

celery - as a group you guys are tripling your weekly consumption of this fall essential.

beets

carrots - the fall planting is mature enough to start harvesting now. Carrots til June.

arugula

parsley

pac choi

tatsoi - use like pac choi

tomatoes - seriously on their way out

hakurei

peppers - we ripped out all of the peppers from the greenhouses last week to make way for winter greens. Before we pulled the plants we stripped them of peppers. There is a glut and soon there will be nothing.

radicchio - heaven on earth for some, a bitter hell for others. 

kale - fantastically bodacious

chard - ditto

endive

cabbage of some kind

u-pick:

unlimited:

flowers

basil

parsely

chard

kale

dill

cilantro

cherry tomatoes

beans

limited:

hot peppers - 2 gallons

tomatillos - 2 gallons

paste tomatoes - 5 gallons

raspberries - 2 QUARTS!!

Fall Farm Talk

Hello out there!

What a gorgeous morning. Quite a difference from that wild black cloud and Herculean wind that swept through the farm last Friday night. I think that was the strongest wind I've ever experienced here. Everything was fine, but all of you who where here during the storm must have had an exciting time. 

We've spent the last week on our hands and knees, digging in the dirt, and dragging 35 pound lugs behind us for 8 hours a day. Can you guess what we're doing? Try! 

Answer: Harvesting 12,000 pounds of potatoes in 35 pound increments! I can say that potato harvest is one heck of a work out. Although I think you have to do it for 8 hours to get the full benefit. We planted twice as many potatoes this spring as we did in '11. As a whole, you guys and gals LOVE potatoes. Understandable, they are filling, sustaining, and delicious, and a core food in our culture. So, the big plan was to double the amount of potatoes that you get in our quest to ever make the share better and better. Best laid plans..... The drought this year hit the potatoes hard, as potatoes absolutely thrive with lots of rain. Alas, instead of doubling the harvest this year we're going to come in under last year's yield. (Very sad math if you care to calculate).  Such is farming and life. Rest assured, next year we still plan on the monster size planting of potatoes, and hopefully we'll get fantastic rain in timely, perfect increments all summer, and you all can eat potatoes to your hearts content.

Veggie Forecast:

chard - looking heavenly, and will last until about a 22 degree frost (usually end of October)

kale - looking cherubic. The kale is only going to get better as Fall deepens. I don't even eat kale until we've had the first frost. (I'm a chard gal in the summer) The frost converts some of the starches in the kale to sugar. Frost does that to lots of cold weather crops - you'll notice many crops getting sweeter after a frost or two (especially carrots!)

beets - here until next June.

squash - we are picking about a bin of this every other day, as opposed to the 8 bins every other day that we get in the main squash season. What I'm saying is that these cool nights are telling the squash to go ahead and give up the ghost. There probably won't be any this week.

carrots - there aren't any carrots this week. We plant a big round of carrots in the spring, and then another, huge-er round of carrots in late summer. Right now we are between these two plantings. The late summer planting is almost ready, just not quite to size yet. Soon. Once we dip into those there will be delicious carrots 'til March.

garlic - say hello to garlic again this week.

tomatoes - Need I say more than cool nights? These are making their closing speechs of summer to us. 

hot peppers - yes, we'll pick them for you as well as open them up for you pick.

cilantro - surprisingly good at cold weather production even though we associate it with hot, south of the border weather

parsley

tatsoi - a funky Asian heading green. We grow it as a head, although maybe you've seen it as individual leaves in salad mix (not ours).

pac choi - ah wonderful fall contender. The bread and butter of much of the world.

arugula - it just doesn't stop this year

spinach - ditto!!

salad mix and head lettuce - they were tired this week and asked for time off. They've worked hard so we said ok. They've got quite the work ethic however, so they'll be back soon. 

onions - here for the long haul

leeks - we've got to cut you fiends off for a week or two! They'll be back though.

basil - yummy this all up for the next couple of weeks because it's almost gone. Very tender hearted.

And....... I am almost scared to write it..... Broccoli and Cauliflower! These crops trickle in as they get start, pump it up, and then trickle out. A verbal description of a bell curve. The trickle in has begun, so go easy this week. We may put one out at a time.

U-pick:

Limited:

Raspberries! One cup season limit. The way to handle this is to head out to the patch, fill your hand with raspberries while popping a couple in your mouth, and then put your head down and half run out of the patch and away from temptation while carefully cradling your precious berries in your hand. Eat them once you are a safe distance from the patch.  They are actually looking ok after looking awful, so watch for that limit to increase sometime soonish. These are fall bearing berries, the ones that we had earlier are summer bearing. Two separate plantings and crops.

tomatillos - 2 gallons

paste tomatoes - 5 gallons

hot peppers - 2 gallons

Unlimited:

flowers - fill up your soul with color

green beans - this is a new patch, and is the last crop of the season.

cilantro and dill

Early Morning Farm Harvest Dinner

WHEN: Sunday, September, 30th, 2012, 4:30 p.m. reception, 5:30 p.m. Dinner

WHERE: Early Morning Farm, Genoa

CHEF: Patrick Higgins, Executing Chef, Aurora Inn

WINE: Bet the Farm

MUSIC: Sundown Sally, original home-spun Americana-Folk-Country with acoustic guitars, banjo, uke and stand up bass 

COST: $75-$150 per ticket (all inclusive)* 

Early Morning Dinner - Purchase Tickets!

Base Price $75.00 USD  Friend of Healthy Food For All (ticket + $25 donation) $100.00 USD  Hero of Healthy Food For All (ticket + $75 donation) $150.00 USD

 

*The meal is made possible through generous donations from the farmers, chef and winery so when purchasing your tickets please consider making a donation to Healthy Food For All too!

 

 Menu

Reception

 Selection of Passed and Displayed Hors d’oeuvres 

~   2011 Village White ~  

First Course

 Fall Squash Consommé 

with Fresh Herbs and Brown Butter

  ~ 2011 Traminette ~

  

Main Course (Family Style) 

Duck “Crepinette”

Duck confit, Napa cabbage, Tomato Coulis

Crispy Pork Belly

Cayuga Pure Organics Freekeh Risotto,  Roasted Pepper Relish, Natural Jus

Keuka Gold Potato and Fennel Gratin

Apple & Autumn Vegetable Salad

  ~   2010 Cabernet Franc ~

Dessert 

Raspberry & Plum Tart

Streusel,  Honey and Vanilla Cream

~   2010 Late Harvest Vignoles ~

Gourmet Food and Wine

 

Fine Dining Outside

 

Farm Week

Hello again!

I hope that everyone is doing well. The farm feels like it is humming along again. We've gotten maybe 2.5 inches of rain in the past couple of weeks and it feels good. We are still irrigating a lot, but it doesn't feel so dire. One indicator of this is that the chard is back on the free choice side. Hurray!

A couple of people have emailed and asked when payments are due. The share is due in full by Columbus Day (Monday October 8th). I send out balances starting about 3 weeks before the due date. The official farm policy (as stated in the member handbook) is that we want payment to reflect the number of weeks that we have distributed. We are heading into the 12th week of the CSA, so to date everyone should have paid at least 12 x $21.66/week= $260 on their share. 

Vegetable Forecast:

tomatoes

summer squash - the recipe I mentioned last week: start some oil or butter heating in a skillet, chop up onions, throw them in the pan, chop up summer squash super thin and throw it in too. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pour enough water in the bottom of the pan to cover - about 1/3 inch. Cover and cook on high until the vegetables are limp, then uncover and cook on high, stirring once in awhile until they are nice and caramelized. Sometime I have to add a little more water or fat to keep them from burning. Fantastic. The key is to really make sure that they are caramelized before you call them done. 

basil

spinach

head lettuce

salad mix

chard

kale

escarole/endive

beets

carrots

onions

celery

u-pick:

unlimited:

cherry tomatoes - these are absolutely fantastic right now. Now is the time to pick pick pick. 

basil, flowers (pick those gorgeous sunflowers!

edemame - go for it! Their time is here.

beans! Now this patch is what our beans usually look like - closing the rows and heavy with crop

limited:

paste (sauce) tomatoes - 2 gallons

See you soon!

Home on the Range

Hello out there!

This week's veggies: (Remember, this is, and always has been, a forecast ONLY. Additional News Flash: We aren't a grocery store. We don't source all this food from a wholesale distributor who can pull our weekly order from 10 different farms.  Instead, we grow it!! All the food comes from right here, so if we've got it, we've got it, if we don't, we don't. But by gum, usually we've got it.)

Tomatoes

Summer Squash - how I love thee. (I am not being sarcastic, I basically eat just zucchini for about 2 months every summer. And, believe it or not, the only way I cook it is with that squash recipe that was up on a chalk board in the shed for a couple of weeks). 

Cilantro

Dill

Basil

onions

garlic

head lettuce - sumptuous

arugula - Paul had a brain wave that maybe we could grow this in the summer heat, and turns out we can. Go Paul! (I was a big ole naysayer.) More delicacies for your gastronomical pleasure.

carrots

beets - Sweet Land is really a beet farm in disguise. This land just likes big beets and it cannot lie. I'll stop there, but you don't have to.

celery - big on flavor for all of your summer soups.

chard

kale

beet greens

U-Pick

unlimited: Flowers (this includes sunflowers), basil, cherry tomatoes, parsley, dill, cilantro

limited: Green Beans, 8 quart season limit. The old patches are pretty worked over, but the new one will be coming on soon.

HARVEST DINNER:

Are you in the mood for some local, tax-deductible, for such-a-good-cause, farm based fine dining? You are?! Great, because here is the solution to your desires:

Join us Sunday, August 26th at Stick and Stone Farm in Ithaca, NY with Red Newt Cellars Winery and Bistro. 

Wine and hors d’oeuvres reception with live music from the String Bean Stringband starts at 5pm with an optional farm tour to frolic in the fields and learn about one of the most successful CSA and wholesale farms in town.

At 6pm guests will enjoy a gourmet menu prepared by Executive Chef Brud Holland of Red Newt in a barn transformed into an elegant dining room. Every bite will feature food harvested from just steps away and will be perfectly paired with locally produced wine. Come savor the seasonal flavors of the Finger Lakes!

Tickets start at $75 (all-inclusive) and can be purchased online at www.HealthyFoodForAll.org or by calling 607-342-8845. Seating is limited so don't delay! For a menu and more info    

please visit www.healthyfoodforall.org or contact harvestdinners@gmail.com.

    You can also find us on Facebook!   

Proceeds go to Healthy Food for All, a partnership of family-owned farms and Cornell Cooperative Extension Tompkins County to make fresh seasonal produce accessible to households with limited income. 

Fine Dining for a Cause. A memorable culinary experience for you. Food security for your neighbors. Thriving local farms to grow food for our whole community.

Harvest Dinners are a part of "Wine, Dine, Play and Stay," a project sponsored by the Tompkins County Tourism Program.

****************************************************************************
For Information on Healthy Food For All:
Contact: Elizabeth V. Karabinakis, Director
Email: evk4@cornell.edu
Phone:  607-272-2292
Website: www.HealthyFoodForAll.org

  Find Healthy Food For All on Facebook
For Harvest Dinners on the Farm Reservations or Ticket Sales:Contact: Samantha Castillo-Davis, Harvest Dinner Reservations Volunteer
Email: harvestdinners@gmail.com
Phone: 607-342-8845
Online purchase: www.HealthyFoodForAll.org
Volunteer Opportunities:

Contact: Samantha Buyskes, Event Organizer
Email: mamared@me.com
Phone: 607-591-1692

Dun da Duuuuun!!

Hello all,

I hope that this finds everyone well and enjoying a respite in the heat. Our crew is happy with the cooler forecast this week. They have manufactured a lot of sweat this summer.

We've been balls to the wall all summer, and are feeling the intensity of the lack of rain and increased insect pressure. We grow about 80 different crops, several varieties each of some of those crops, and up to 16 generations of some of them. So there are all of these generations of crops out there at one time, and naturally they all need different management depending of what crop they are, and what stage of growth they are in. Paul and I are able to walk around the farm together and absorb everything that is going on (with the help of pen and paper), decide what each crop needs, prioritize that list of needs, and then divide it up into jobs and either do them ourselves, delegate them, or train someone to do them. 

The prioritization list can change with a half inch of rain, an absent employee, or a sick kid. In a normal year about half of the crops at any one time are on auto-pilot. We've grown them for enough years, and in enough different weather conditions that we can pretty much look a crop, and know what it needs and how it'll grow for the next week and a half (for example, onions when they are putting on weight slow and steady). Our minds are thus freed up to think about the other half of the crops that need closer attention either because we just planted them, they are a finicky crop, or because they are in some special stage of their growth that requires attentive management (for example - getting the 18 beds of fall carrots to germinate, very time critical, which we did and they look great). This year is different. This year we've had to pay attention to about 3/4 of the crops at all times. This is because of the drought and insane difference in pest pressure. We've kept up, but its taken more energy. It is depressing to see so many crops struggling. Usually we work hard, but then get such pay off in looking at the farm and feeling the richness of great crops. This year there is much more work, and a lot of dusty, stalwart plants to comfort us. 

We had to till in an entire half acre of fall broccoli and cauliflower because the flea beetles hit so hard. There were about forty flea beetles per plant! We sprayed three times with different organic pesticides to no avail.  We limit the amount we spray so that the pest does not build up a resistance to the pesticide and make a super beetle.  As a last resort, we hoed a half acre of broccoli that looked O.K., put out drip irrigation, and covered it with floating row cover, which provides a physical barrier for pests and traps moisture.  

     

Usually we plant out fall broccoli, irrigate,and basically wave hi to it once in a while and it does great. We replanted the half acre that was lost, but all of the work that went in to growing the first round of transplants, making the potting mix, preparing the planting beds, transplanting them, setting up irrigation on them, and weeding them was for nought. To top it off, this new half acre that we just planted on Friday night (during a distribution, 95 degree heat, and our daughter's dance recital) is not a sure thing. We might run out of time or water before winter.  We'll see.

    

We share these stories with you to convey how the weather has affected us this season.  A few items may come up short the next couple of weeks in the shed due to the weather we have been having.  Maybe you won't even notice.  Being a CSA member is about eating with the ups and downs of a season.  We are professional farmers doing our best with the season we have been dealt, but farmers can't shoulder the responsibility of extreme weather and continue to operate a business.  Joining a CSA is about investing in your local food economy.  I think despite our different backgrounds we as a CSA community see the value of eating and growing food in our rich local farmland.  Our mission at Sweet Land Farm is to "run a farm business that helps our family, community and environment to thrive in health, spirit, and economy."

With all this said, we think that the share has been pretty darn good this summer.  I (Evangeline) evaluate the value of the share as compared to Greenstar, the Farmer's Market, and Wegmans several times throughout the summer. In a normal year in August the One Bag Side (not including the free choice and u-pick) is worth anywhere from $30 to $45. That's just the bag!! The share in its entirety costs $21.66/week. The CSA savings is significant. This year the One Bag is worth the same as a normal year!! The only place that we feel the share has shrunk is in the u-pick and free choice side. There are many corollaries I could make with these bits of information, but I will let it go at the above stated.

Vegetable forecast (remember this list always has been and always will be a forecast only):

spinach - 6th generation of the season, it looks good.

arugula - 4th generation of the season, also looking good.

chard

kale

onions - we know that everyone likes this so they're going to be around for the long haul. We plant about 19,000 of them a year.

carrots - these little water suckers are delicious right now. There is a tub for their tops under them.

beets - doing great! These are also water suckers, but irrigating them really pays off.

cabbage -  we didn't plant the little cute single serving kind, but that's what the universe gave us, so lets enjoy little cutie pie cabbages this summer. (We planted the big honkin kind, but they like honkin water to really shine)

tomatoes - ah, now is tomato time, revel in the glory of it all. This year we put all of our tomato production into the newly expanded greenhouses. That means a couple of things. One, we spent about $8000 expanding the greenhouses (just in materials). Two, almost all of the tomatoes that we pick out of those tunnels are #1s, that is, they are top quality. Three, it means that we don't have to suffer the heart break of planting 1500 feet of tomatoes outside in the fickle NY summer (fickle for a tomato, perfect for a beet), and then picking them once or twice and getting hardly anything off of them. 

basil

celery

U-pick:

Limited: 

cherry tomatoes - 1 quart season limit (will probably go up this week)

green beans - 8 quart season limit 

Unlimited:

flowers (word to the wise, there are LOTS of flowers just past the greenhouses), cilantro, dill, parsley, basil

Argh my Hearties,

See you around ye ole farm,

Evangeline