Weekly news from the farm!!!

Greetings Everyone,

Happy Autumnal Equinox!!! We normally like to have a fire in celebration of Fall’s arrival, but we’re a little nervous because we’ve loaded our fire ring with cardboard and wood scraps and with it being dry we didn’t want to cause a forest fire from sparks flying into the woods.  We’ve decided we can wait to celebrate Fall once we have our first rainfall, so hopefully happens sometime this fall.   

It was great for us to see all the youth across the world skipping school to bring awareness that we and our policy leaders need to take action in dealing with our climate change crisis. We farmers feel indebted to Greta Thunberg for taking action and inspiring so many youth who’ll be inheriting this world from the impacts on the Earth that the generations over the past 50 years have caused. We at MHO also feel inspired that a coalition of farmers have sent a letter to Congress urging their support for the Green New Deal, while this group may not be representative of many of the big agribusiness farms, it has had an impact on these farmers and an incentive that they need to take action so they have a seat at the table in formulating solutions for climate change. While Greta doesn’t think our Green New Deal requires enough action to save our planet, us farmers think it is a good starting point for the United States of America. We love this quote from Greta, “No matter how political the background to this crisis may be, we must not allow this to continue to be a partisan political question. The climate and ecological crisis is beyond party politics. And our main enemy right now is not our political opponents. Our main enemy now is physics. And we can not make deals with physics.” 

Your Farmers (and cleaning staff),
Carl and Julie

NOTE: Your’re receiving this eNewsletter because you’ve either been a subscriber to MHO in the past OR if you’ve registered for our newsletters from our website.  Feel free to unsubscribe if you no longer wish to receive this eNewsletter!

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 Tuesday at 8 AM so that we will know what to harvest for your share! Please return your boxes because we re-use them.  Orders will be ready each Wednesday after 8 AM. 

Hakurei Turnips are here!!! This variety is delicious raw in salads or roasted or you might be interested in trying it in a slaw substituting peppers for carrots if you prefer that.  Another favorite of ours is Spring Rolls where most any vegetable can go into these delicious wraps.  They can be mashed with potatoes for a gratin which can be made vegan by substituting butter for New Balance or an oil and nutritional yeast for the cheese.  Occasionally these turnips are sold without the tops.

Napa Cabbage is Here!!! So SWEET you might just consider eating it in a Lemon Coleslaw with sliced bell peppers, lemons and onions. We feel this vegetable is underrated because you don’t see it offered much at restaurants and it is amazing raw in salads or in fried rice.  For another main entree, consider this salad with crispy tufu.  We frequently enjoy napa slaw salad or asian peanut noodles while napa cabbage is in season.  In fact, while hosting Lenny Boy Brewery, many of their staff used the Napa Slaw Salad as a topping on their hamburger.  Isn’t that a creative way in using this delicious salad?  Tell us some of your favorite ways to use this vegetable!

Broccoli is here and will probably sell out quickly!!!  The groundhog has been munching on half this succession so we don’t expect to harvest enough for all shares.  This seems to be one of the groundhogs favorite crops.  We’ve taken some advice from Homesteaders Betty and Dave in mounting a camera out in the field in hopes of understanding the groundhogs schedule so we can evict it off the farm.  There is a possibility that we can catch it in a live trap if we figure out which burrow it lives in.

Above is romaine caesar salad with some of the prettiest romaine of the season, along with coutons made from toasted Kalamata Olive bread from Annie’s Bakery. We had planned on including it in the Farmer’s Choice Shares, but the heads are so large, that if we included it, there wouldn’t be space for any other farm fresh goodness!!! 

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. )

• Lettuce: Butterhead for the veggie shares and Summer Green Leaf for the veggie & meat shares..
• French Filet Beans (Mixed Colors):  Mix of green, yellow and purple
• Mixed Braising Greens:  Special for the Farmer’s Choice share is a mixture of Arugula and also Mizuna and Scarlet Frills greens.  We normally just wrap these greens fresh and uncooked in corn crepes.
• Radishes – Red Round:  These are amazing roasted!!!
• Turnips- Hakurei White:  These are amazing raw in salads or roasted with the Red Round Radishes!!!
• Basil: Thai Basil:   Excellent for seasoning spring rolls. 
• Garlic: We can’t live without this and add it to every meal!!!
• Hot Peppers:  A couple serrano peppers for seasoning your meals!!!

The following are included only in the veggie share:

• Greens: Napa cabbage.  This cabbage is super sweet.
• Spaghetti Squash. A very versatile winter squash!!!

The following are included only in the meat share

• Ground Beef: Hamburger:   Just in case you’re making cabbage rolls!!!  This recipe for Asian stuffed cabbage rolls may be interesting to you.

These adorable baby australorp chicks arrived last week!  Of all the chickens we’ve raised over the years, this heritage breed, along with the Rhode Island Reds are our favorite.  It seems that these chickens are hearty and have escaped many of the predators that have prayed on our chickens over the years.  While it would certainly be less expensive for us to buy eggs rather than keep a flock of chickens, chickens give us so much enjoyment watching them scratch around, they (and our vermi-compost worms) love eating our unsold greens, and we enjoy their manure as it provides essential nutrients for our soil.

Look at this adorable chick checking out me and my camera!!!   The first day we had the chicks, Argus spent the entire day lying by their coop.  Perhaps he’ll be able to keep the predators away, because rather than them becoming a snack for the foxes, we hope they provide us with hours of enjoyment and one day lay eggs for us, you and our guests.

Those of you who pick up at the farm, will notice that the two bays next to our unloading/loading area have been cleaned out.  We haven’t seen that bare ground in over 15 years because it has been used as storage for all the farm field inputs and supplies needed for crop production.  This space will be used for a public bathroom for the Pizza Farm, a small laundry area as is required for preparing food on the farm, and also additional storage for all the things we accumulate over the years.

We totally filled up the shelving we built a few weeks ago, so in order to fit all our farm equipment into that area, we’ll need to build a few more shelves!!!  It feels great to be making better use of our vertical space.

Alice McVey and Farmer Julie last Friday at the Asheville Rally for Climate Action!!! We felt the need to support our youth in their courageous effort in asking us to change our policies in order to address climate change.