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Greetings Everyone,
We’ve had requests from several previous CSA subscribers to receive our weekly eNewsletter, so we are now sending these to our entire distribution list. Just know your’re receiving this eNewsletter if you had been a subscriber to us in the past OR if you’ve registered for our newsletters from our website. Feel free to unsubscribe if you don’t want to receive this eNewsletter!
For those CSA Shareholders, you can access our online store using this link, if using a desktop you will log in by clicking the icon of the person in the top right hand side of the web page, if you are using a phone click on the menu icon and choose the login option. All orders need to be placed by Thursday at 8 AM so that we will know what to harvest for your share! Please return your boxes because we re-use them.
We’re pleased to have had a few days of sunshine this past week allowing us to transplant greens. While these greens may mature after our markets and the CSA has ended, we’re hoping we’ll be fortunate to eat these in the middle of winter. We planted these in a greenhouse that blew apart this Spring but we are hopeful to cover this greenhouse before winter sets in so that they survive cold temperatures.
You will probably need to white list our email to receive correspondence from us because we have changed our email from farmer@MountainHarvestOrganic.com to Farmer@MountainHarvestOrganics.com (our email is organics plural).
Your Farmers (and cleaning staff),
Carl and Julie
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What is new and abundant this week!
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| We’re excited to be harvesting cantaloupes this week!!! The farmers ate theirs right in the field because we couldn’t wait until breakfast. We believe we have enough for all subscribers, but we originally planted these for us. They weight anywhere from 2 up to 5 pounds. We harvest these ripe, just when they slip from the vine, but they’re are no guarantees of the texture nor flavor. Cantaloupe is normally eaten as a fresh fruit, as a salad, or as a dessert with ice cream or custard. Melon pieces wrapped in prosciutto are a familiar antipasto. If you happen to get one that isn’t peak flavor, you can make cantaloupe mojitos. |
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| Full Sized Bok Choy!!! We hate to say this, but this bok choy is our favorite of the choy’s, especially for salads. The stems of this choy are crunchy like celery but with an exceptional sweet flavor. This choy can be substituted in recipes that call for either the baby or large bok choi, is this vegan rice noodle salad. Another favorite is Bok Choi Risotto which is delicious as a meal! As always we are including CSA member Lorraine Connard’s refreshing salad. During the fall, one of our favorite stir-fries is bok choi with butternut squash and turnips. A slaw is always great, and we tend to include peppers, turnips and carrots in ours, but the ginger dressing makes the salad delicious and adaptable for seasons when turnips aren’t available! This recipe ginger tahini salad dressing is vegan and one favorite of ours and works for salads made with either greens or lettuce.
Other greens you’ll find in the online store include Komatsuna!!! We love vegan peanut noodles, and ate that as a meal in a bowel this week. In the version we made this week you can pretty much use your entire share becuase we used sweet bells, bok choy, komatsuna, scallions and onions. |
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| Fingerling potatoes are washed!!! We’re providing you with a mixture of these delightful potatoes. The purple potatoes are Magic Molly Fingerlings, the white potatoes are Austrian Crescent Fingerlings and the reds are French Fingerlings. Be sure to indulge in making yourself a batch of hasselback potatoes, don’t let the name of the recipe name fool you into believing it is a “hassel†to make, it is so simple and delicious that we find ourselves making almost monthly. Fingerling potatoes are also well suited for roasting with herbs and garlic and for skillet roasted potatoes! This fingerling potato salad is sure to satisfy your potato craving and the NYTimes suggests this grilled fingerling potato salad. When roasting, we love mixing all these fingerlings for the color combination as well as for variations of flavor and textures. While we scrub our potatoes, and cut the spots out, we nearly always leave the skins on. |
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| At one time it made us nervous that our devices could hear us talking, but recently we’ve come to a realization that it is pretty convenient. We’ve been harvesting eggplant, and this recipe came into our news feed after we mentioned that wouldn’t eggplant topped with tomatoes be delicious? You can’t go wrong with this recipe from Smitten Kitchen for eggplant caviar, and this reicpe seems appropriate and one you may consider fr your meal planning. |
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| Our priorities this week was spending time hosting guests, so we weren’t able to harvest summer squash every couple days like we normally do. That means the squash will be large, and cosmetically challenged with a few “bug signatures”, but still delicious!!! They are perfectly suited for Frieda’s Zucchini Curried Soup that can easily be made vegan, Summer Squash Fritters, or Zucchini Pancakes. |
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This Weeks Farmer’s Choice Veggie Share
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| Above is a “groundhog” approved cantaloupe. As you can see, it ate the entire cantaloupe, pulp and seeds!!! P.S. It ate the large cantaloups so we will be offering you the smallest ones.
This week’s Farmer’s Choice Share includes: (share contents are subject to change based on our actual harvest.)
We’re offering both a Farmer’s Choice Veggie and Farmers’ Choice Veggie & Meat Share. Items common in both shares are listed first, followed by items specific to the veggie share the finally the veggie/meat share. The Farmer’s Choice Veggie & Meat share normally has smaller portions of vegetables. )
The following are included only in the veggie share:
The following are included only in the meat share
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What’s Happening on the Farm
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| All photographs have been contributed by Jenna Omann.
We had the most wonderful people stay with us again this past week!!!
Last week we hosted the Omann’s, whom we really connected with because while they are living in Charlotte right now, Shane grew up on a small farm in Iowa. They had sheep, corn, soybeans, and they’re probably other things they’ve grown and raised over the years that we failed to mention.
They brought Hazel their toddler and Olive their infant to visit the farm!!! We loved watching Hazel eat cherry tomatoes right off the vines and realize that is just one reason we are proud to be growing organic food. We are sad that we didn’t get a photograph of how adorable it is to watch Hazel gorging on tomatoes. A learning experience for us is to always be taking photographs. |
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| While doing evening chores, everyone staying on the farm got to meet Ms. Daisy May and Ms. Sassy, as we were walking them up to their pastures. Growing up, Shane’s farm was like ours, in that they had rotational pastures for their livestock. Naomi, a teenager staying in the Barn Loft, has experience riding horses and was excellent with Sir Bud in walking him around. Her confidence was excellent in making him mind her as she asked him to walk with her. |
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| We had hoped that Hazel would be able to fish in Meadow Fork creek, but as you all know, we’ve had a lot of rain here in these mountains so the creek was flowing much too fast and the water too high so our guests weren’t able to jump in the water. We love that guests have been enjoying the pollinator gardens so we hope to expand those for 2019!!! One can’t have enough pollinators on a farm. |
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| All our animals are certainly glad we are offering Farm Stays as they seem to be enjoying all the attention from guests. A couple weeks ago, young Maxine’s friend Andreaus, who we nicknamed the “Animal Whisperer” because he was excellent with animals. As you all know, Kaiser doesn’t always warm up to guests very quickly; however, Andreaus befriended him almost immediately upon his arrival at the farm. It is difficult for us to give Kaiser his well deserved attention anymore because Argus always wants to steel the show. |
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