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Greetings Everyone,
Happy Summer Solstise!!! Normally we celebrate with an outdoor fire, but rather than that, we celebrated in planting another succession of lettuce for your shares. We in Spring Creek feel fortunate that our rain accumulation hasn’t been nearly as much as other places in the region. We’ve seen stories of other farmers having accumulations of 6 inches in a couple days. We’ve been suggesting to guests that it is a great time to run the rapids!!!!
This news article titled, “CSAs: The secret weapon of the lazy foodie” came across my news feed about being a CSA Shareholder. It mentions that the beginning of a CSA membership, it seemed overwhelming to the shareholder because it’s the opposite of how most people plan their meals. Typically, people determine what they plan to make ahead of time, then go to the store and get the ingredients. The CSA is opposite, because first you get the ingredients, and then you figure out what to cook. After being a CSA shareholder for a few years, the author suggests, “the hardest part for the semi-lazy cook is the tedium of meal planning itself. Picking up a cookbook and leafing through it to find ideas for meals sounds great in theory, but in practice, it tends to induce option paralysis. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the infinite number of choices and, in a panic, throwing the book aside and deciding to get take-out instead.” Now that the author has been a CSA Shareholder for some time, they prefer having the ingredients given to them so they don’t have to choose what to cook each week. We’d love your feedback about this?
For those placing weekly orders with us, while our Farmer Choice shares are priced at $20 a share, please know that we’d a minimum order of amount of $15, and you may custom order individual items rather than order the Farmer’s Choice Share. We understand that y’all may be harvesting many of the same things in the Farmer’s Choice share OR the share has too many veggies for most households.
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 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 read each Wednesday at 8 AM.
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What is new and abundant this week!
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Paste Tomatoes are ripening!!! These red paste tomatoes are a San Marzano type, which are known for their meaty flesh with less juice than slicers, making them a great choice for making into tomato sauce. These tomatoes are excellent for bruschetta using bread from Annie’s Bakery. Classic marinara sauce is quick, simple and delicious. During the season don’t even think about purchasing sauce! These tomatoes are perfect for tomato paste, and after making this recipe, you will no longer be wanting to purchase tomato paste. We also love using these tomatoes in salsa roja because they aren’t too juicy. These tomatoes are perfect for fresh picante sauce , that we love to keep a bowl in the frig, because it is perfect eaten as a salad, tossed on scrambled eggs, salads, guacamole sauce, quesadillas, burritos, etc. Some of our favorite summer salads include; cucumber tomato, tomatoes and sweet corn, marinated tomato salad, skillet BLT Panzanella.
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This will be the only week we’re offering Napa Cabbage, hopefully until fall!!! The groundhog ate almost our entire crop, so we feel fortunate just to have a few of these. While they aren’t the prettiest we’ve ever grown, mostly because we normally spray our crop once with a bacteria that will kill the cabbage loopers, but our back pack sprayer has been broken. We’re still hopeful for a better fall crop if we can evict the groundhogs off the farm. What we love about organic farming, is the concept of using natural occurring bacteria to help us protect our crops from pests. The bacteria we use targets specific pests so it doesn’t hurt bees and other pollinators. We’ve learned to live with bug holes on our crops because it is a balance of working with mother nature and accepting that we’re sharing our food with all the critters. However, we believe the groundhog has eaten more than it’s share and should leave the farm for other grazing grounds. Normally we store this cabbage and offer it for your shares during the summer because it is a healthy green, and around here during the summer heat, the temperatures are normally too warm for growing greens.
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The first of the Anaheim Peppers have sized up!!! Most of our pepper varieties we let ripen from green to red/yellow/orange. However, the anaheim pepper is typically harvested green and sold as “green chiles”, so we’re thankful for this early maturing pepper. We use these peppers for seasoning almost any of our meals. If either jalapeno or serrano peppers are too hot for your palate, try substituting with this Anaheim pepper. This chile pepper is used in Mexican and Southwestern cooking. Canned green chiles, mainstays of American-Mexican cuisine, are made from Anaheim peppers milder than a serrano and even milder if you remove the stems and membranes. If your adventurous, you can make chile rellenos or this 4 pepper salsa. We always add chiles to pork chili or this vegetarian chili. Believe it or not, they are excellent stuffed with potatoes. During the summer, when tomatoes and tomatillos are in season, this salsa is a staple that we make weekly. Another staple in our household is guacamole. This stewed tomatoes and peppers are a great dip for chips, pizza topping, spread for bread. During the summer, you might make this burger with chopped anaheim peppers and cook it on the grill!
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This Weeks Farmer’s Choice Veggie Share
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Above, look what the groundhog decided to share with us? Just a few this week but we are hopeful we have enough for your shares next week!!!
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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Argus thinks we built the pavilion for his dog house!!
During the summer, the pavilion is a very cool place because it is set back into the hillside and shaded much of the afternoon. We’ve been taking advantage of this and doing most of the work on the pizza oven during the peak afternoon heat.
Argus also thinks this space is wonderful and has taken to sleeping inside the base of the pizza oven during the day. He thinks that this pizza oven is his dog house. We’ve been having to nudge him out of the way while we work.
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We’ve filled the cores for the pizza oven base!
Once the mortar and block work cured, we took the opportunity to fill the cores for the pizza oven. While mixing concrete, the motor for our mixer gave out. Isn’t that the story of everything on the farm in recent years? Most likely because all our equipment has aged just like us. Above is Carl hand mixing the concrete. The next phase of the pizza oven is to pour the oven slab, but before doing so, Carl is going to call Kobalt Tools and see if they will replace the motor, especially since the next phase will require us to mix 18 x 80 lb. bags of concrete. Right now, our old oven is looking pretty good, as it has served us for over 20 years, and makes delicious pizza!!!
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Here Carl is pouring concrete mix into the cores!!!
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