In your box:

• Broccoli or small winter squash
• Celery or celeriac
• Garlic
• Lettuce
• Onion
• Radishes
• Turnips
• Winter Squash, mostly Butternut but also Pie Pumpkins and others

Farm News

Thank you so much for your support this growing season! This week is our last delivery of the growing season. Some years I’m tempted to keep going for an extra week or two, but not this year! The cold snap this week has brought an instant end to the growing season, and even some of our heartiest crops aren’t able to handle the cold nights we’ve had. I actually had to harvest this week’s box last weekend, when we were above freezing and while everything was still alive. Usually I keep everything fresh by storing it in our walk-in cooler, but for this week I had to rely on a space heater to keep all the veggies from freezing. And it was 80 degrees just last week!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this season and your experience with our CSA this year. It’s been among the more difficult growing seasons I’ve experienced, and I’m tempted to rate it as the worst conditions I’ve been through (although the harvests themselves were average or a little better). I’m so grateful to my parents, Steve and Arlene Kirkman, and Nina’s mom, Julie Healy, for their abundant help with washing veggies and packing boxes this year. And thanks SO MUCH to Josh Borrell for working so diligently as an apprentice with us this year. Josh has a great work ethic and will do very well on his endeavors, and I’m already brainstorming ways that we can keep collaborating in the future.

As we look forward to next season, I don’t have any big changes in mind. We were very short on carrots and beets this year, but that was strictly because of the drought. Brussels sprouts, leeks, potatoes, tomatillos, and ground cherries flopped from lack of water. So next year I’ll give them all another shot and hope we get a bit of rain to help us along.

If you do still have any extra CSA boxes around the house, you can still return them to your delivery site for the next week or so. I plan to do one more round through all the delivery sites to pick up returned boxes so that we can recycle the worst boxes and clean up the others for reuse next season.

The harvest season may be over, but I’ll stay busy with farm work at least through Thanksgiving. I’ve got a mountain of wood chips and compost that need to be moved out to the field, so my wheelbarrow will get a few more miles on it. I’ll remove all the leftover stumps and stalks from the field for composting, send a couple of soil samples to the lab, trim back some trees that are encroaching on the fields, and put away all of my tools and supplies for the winter. And then it’s nothing but pickleball and coffee until spring!

Once again, thank you all so much for your support this season! It’s a privilege to do the work I love–feeding my community, regenerating the soils and environment of our farm, and working outdoors everyday–and I couldn’t fulfill this dream without CSA members like you. Thank you for trying some new crops, working around any bugs that might have hitched a ride from our field to your kitchen, and for your support for local foods. I’ll reach out in January about our next season, and we hope you’ll join again for all that 2023 brings!

Pumpkin Perfection Pancakes

• 1 c. pumpkin or other squash, scooped out of skin (refrigerate the rest)
• 2 c. flour
• 3 TBS brown sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp all-spice
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp ground ginger
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 ½ c. milk
• 1 egg
• 2 TBS vegetable oil
• 2 TBS vinegar

1. Mix together milk, pumpkin, egg, oil, and vinegar in a large bowl.

2. Combine flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, all-spice, cinnamon, ginger, and salt in a second bowl.

3. Stir flour mixture into the pumpkin mixture.

4. Heat on a griddle, medium heat.

Serve with warm syrup, yogurt, or however you prefer your pancakes.

Coming up

Next week, we are expecting tasteless tomatoes from Florida, frozen pizzas, and iceberg lettuce…..