In your box

• Aronia berries
• Beets
• Bok choy
• Broccoli (full shares only)
• Head Lettuce
• Radishes 
• Red Onion
• Salad Mix
• Sweet Pepper

Just a quick note that this week’s box has aronia berries in it.  Later on I’ll describe how to use them, but for now please note that they LOVE to stain anything they touch.  Please be careful loading your box so they don’t spill out of their bin and let any kids know that they are not blueberries.

Farm News

The weather has been brutal for most of the growing season, but September is really trying hard to make up for it. We’ve had abundant rain, good warmth, lots of sun and no humidity for perfect working conditions. It’s been as cold as 40 degrees but we’ve dodged frost so far. I think the weather is ending on a high note just to convince all of us farmers and gardeners to try again next year.

Many of our neighbors have been harvesting their corn over the past few days. The harvest brings some big changes to our landscape–it’s the only time of the year when we get much traffic on our road, and it also opens up the view to houses and trees we couldn’t see through the corn for the past few months.

As we close out the year with two more boxes after today, please remember to keep returning your boxes. Thanks for your help with that this year!

This week’s box

Did you hear about the guy who bit into the aronia berries because he thought they were blueberries? He did it a-rroneously.

Listen, I know you probably don’t want any more awful jokes from your farmer this year. But I just keep coming up with them and you are my only audience. And the fee for such delightful humor is included with the CSA membership, so you’re just getting what you paid for.

Aronia are tangy, astringent, sour, and, thankfully, healthy to make up for it. Aronia berries are a great source of fiber and vitamin C and an especially potent dose of antioxidants that help reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease.  But I will admit, they don’t taste too good no matter how healthy they are. I don’t really eat them raw, but once they are frozen or processed they are quite tasty and enjoyable.  I’ve included a link for my favorite aronia berry smoothie, below.  Blending the aronias and mixing them with so much goodness really helps them pass for blueberries, but they are so much easier to grow and harvest.

If you’re not a fan of smoothies, your best bet is to bake them into any recipe (pancakes, muffins, etc) calling for blueberries or to freeze them and thaw them out later for fresh eating.

This week we welcome back our mixed-leaf Salad Mix once again. If the weather stays as nice as it has been, I hope to keep offering salad mix for the last two boxes as well. And don’t worry–despite the latest conspiracy theories, there is no covid vaccine in our salad mix (yes, that is sadly a real conspiracy).

Aronia Smoothie

• 1/4 cup (or 1/3 of a 1/2 pint) aronia berries, de-stemmed and washed
• 1 banana
• 1/2 c. milk
• 1/2 c. orange juice
• Big scoop of peanut butter
• 2 scoops chocolate whey powder or other protein powder
• ice, as desired

Dump all ingredients in a blender and mix well. Now you are invincible!

Coming up

Next week we are expecting leeks, carrots, baby bok choy, salad mix, Napa cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale, acorn squash and sweet peppers.