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Greetings Everyone,
CSA Shareholders, this is our first delivery for our fall CSA!!! We can’t thank you enough for joining our CSA. We had plans to attend the North Asheville Tailgate Market, but when our space was again reserved for another vendor, you’ve “stepped up to the plate” (bad pun intended) to eat the food we’ve so carefully grown and raised.
Normally our newsletter is sent to our entire distribution list, but for this week only we’re sending it to those of you who wanted to receive a fall share for the weeks of Friday September 21st through October 26th. If you’re receiving this eNewsletter and aren’t interested in one of our shares, please respond to this email and let us know. We still have a couple of shares available, so if you have a friend who may be interested, then feel free to pass our contact information along to them.
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
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 Thursday at 8 AM so that we will know what to harvest for your share! Please return your boxes because we re-use them. 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.
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What is new and abundant this week!
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| We’re roasting peppers for you this week!!! Our pepper roaster does an amazing job at roasting peppers, much better than either the grill or the stove, so we’re going to have several varieties available in the shopping cart!!! These are the sweetest peppers we grow! These are great roasted or raw in salads, on pizza, or sliced for snacks. Compared to bells, they are thinned skin, which is why they are well suited for roasting. Using roasted peppers, we make this vegan spread and sometimes this creamy spread.
Sold as a half pound which is normally two large or three medium sized peppers. Depending on the variety being harvested, either red and yellow colors may be included in this order.
This list is among our favorite recipes for using roasted Peppers: In salsa, romesco sauce, in pasta , on burgers, in hummus, with eggs, ,with potatoes, roasted pepper sauce, guacamole, chili, creamy pepper dip, red pepper dip, roasted poblano enchiladas. |
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| Zucchini Squash!!! We love that this wonderful tasting summer squash is making an appearance in your Fall CSA share. We are growing these in the greenhouse and we were hoping that the pickleworm who normally makes it’s appearance in the fall, wouldn’t discover this crop. However, it did, but we’ve tried to grade any squash out where we noticed pickleworm damage, so your squash should be pickleworm free. It is very hard to organically control this pest, so feel good that your farmers aren’t spraying the plants with pesticides that would hurt our bee population!!! Zucchini is a very versatile vegetable and always included in our weekly meals while they are in season. Every season we look forward to zucchini pancakes for a complete meal. Paired with either garlic or garlic scapes, you might consider making noodles with your zucchini tossed with pesto. Another favorite is a recipe shared with us by CSA Member Frieda for curried zucchini soup. In the middle of summer, we love chilled zucchini soup, as it is especially refreshing. You may consider these fritters substituting roasted leeks for scallions when possible. Our “go to†preparation for squash, is grilling it, as we enjoy cooking outdoors during the summer because our house is kept cooler when we aren’t heating up the kitchen. When cooking indoors, roasting squash in the oven, or simply sauteing it with other summer veggies is delicious. Summer squash (or winter squash) is excellent in enchiladas, in quesadillas, or in burritos because you can adapt these recipes to almost any vegetable that is in season. You can’t let a summer go by without making a squash casserole or ratatouille. Then of coarse, this veggie is great in a gratin or in a torte. |
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This Weeks Farmer’s Choice Veggie Share
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| While we’re not harvesting enough paste tomatoes for your share, above is a batch of tomatoes that was made into fresh sauce for Eggplant Parmesan. Alice McVey mentioned that she made a batch, and we had to make it because we can’t let a summer go by without making this delicious dish at least once. It is a labor of love, and the best we’ve had was made by Annie and Joe at Annie’s Bakery and Meagan McGoldrick who once apprenticed with us.
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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| These Two are always hanging out together!!
Each week we are amazed how patient Kaiser is with Argus because Argus is always right at Kaisers side. You’d think that Kaiser would correct Argus and ask Argus to mind his space, but that has only happened once in the past couple months. |
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The importance of biodiversity!!!
We’re excited to be harvesting 10 different vegetables for your share this week!!! As we walk the fields early in the week to determine your share contents and estimate inventory levels for the online store, we are reminded of all the different cultivars of food that are grown here at MHO, and are thankful that you are buying into Community Supported Agricuulture (CSA) and supporting this highly diversified farm. Just last week, this article popped into our news feed, that reads, “A new study published last month in the journal PLOS ONE, shows that U.S. crop diversity is significantly lower today than it was 30 years ago. So while it’s been a commonly held belief that U.S. farms are moving toward monoculture, and away from crop diversity, now there’s solid evidence to support that claim.” |
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| Above are the highly diversified fields at MHO from where your shares are being harvested!!! Having diversity is incredibly important for a resilient food system. That is because in any given year, the weather may not be well suited for growing all crops, but normally a few crops will prosper and thrive, while others may not do too awfully well. When there are acres and acres of one crop, the pests that feed on that crop are more likely to become a nuisance; yet when having highly diversified fields of crops, not any particular pest will become dominant. Not to mention, highly diversified fields are important for our pollinators, because at any given time throughout the season, there should always be something for our pollinators to feed on. It is astounding that in the California almond fields, they are required to bring in bees to pollinate the trees, because there isn’t enough diversity to support the bees year round. Although the farmers at MHO would love to frequently purchase almonds and almond milk, we don’t indulge in these often because we feel the current growing practices for these crops are not sustainable for either the sustainability of water, our pollinators, and all other biodiversity. It is our belief that soon these large farms will be required to diversify their operation so that their fields support more living organisms.
On the other hand, maybe if we at MHO were mono-cropping, we’d not support enough biodiversity for the crows, coons, foxes, groundhogs and deer to prosper. It almost seems that being a commodity farmer would be less frustrating. Although the point in becoming organic CSA Farmers was so we’d be a part of the solution to climate change, so we’re trying our best to happily accept all the diversity MHO supports. |
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| The above photograph is MHO CSA Shareholders celebrating a season of diversity at the annual Killing Frost Celebration!!! The article cited above suggests, that while it is important to have farm policies that reward highly diversified farms, it is very complicated to change those policies from supporting commodity crops to offering support for organic farmers. The article states, “Consumers also play an important role in shaping the future outlook of U.S. harvests. Consuming conventionally farmed animal products such as meat and dairy, for instance, contributes less to diversity than fruits and vegetables since much of the corn and soy grown in the U.S. goes to feed animals. Similarly, processed foods made with corn and soy by-products are likely supporting the current trajectory. As Gramig puts it: “Farmers are growing what consumers want to buy.†We thank you CSA Shareholders for supporting our local farming community in choosing to spend your dollars supporting our highly diversified farms. You are contributing to positive change in making the planet safer for both us, our pollinators and the other critters that require a lot of diversity to survive. |
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