The week of October 6, 2008 we got chard (big green leaf w/red or yellow stems), Broccoli, Carrots, Turnips, fruit, a leafy green (either bok choy or kale) and Winter squash.

Welcome to your first Fall pick-up. I will repeat the locations and some logistics below. This post will tell you the list of produce for the week and other tidbits including recipes and information about eating locally and organically. You can get your list of produce at pick-up as well.

We attempt to provide this info to you on Sunday evenings. However, we do not always get the list of produce from our farmer in advance. She gets up at 3:30am on Sundays for a 12 hour day to sell at a farmers market in Baltimore while workers at the farm are harvesting and packing our boxes. Sometimes we just don’t get the list until Monday morning.

We are going to discontinue weekly emails after the second week into the Fall CSA and instead post the same info here on the web site. If you don’t want to guess when the web site has been updated, you can use something called an RSS feed. With RSS, instead of you going to a web site, the web site comes to you.

Instead of looking for updates repeatedly, only to find nothing new, we’ll notify you only when there IS something new. In the case of the produce listings, recipes and food for thought, that will be weekly through November 24. After that date, the updates will be infrequent until we begin promoting the 2009 Spring CSA.

Watch this 3 minute video on how to set up an RSS feed in plain English. Don’t forget to turn your speakers on so you can hear it.

Sites and contact information

Pick-up is always on Mondays, including holidays.

If you don’t remember where you asked to pick-up, please contact the coordinator for each site below. The shares come pre-packed in boxes and the correct number of shares is delivered to each of our three sites. You must pick-up at the site you selected for the season. If you go to a different site, there will not be a share for you.

The boxes are part of your share price so we ask you to take care of them. If we run low on boxes because you don’t return them or break them apart, then we will have to purchase more and that money will reduce the amount of produce you receive. Ask someone to show you how to open and flatten them for storage, without destroying them. Each week you should return with your box from the previous week.

Sandy Spring
Hours of pick-up: 1PM to 7PM If you come late to pick-up at Sandy Spring, I recommend you bring a flashlight in case the lighting is low.
Location: See email.
Contacts: Meg Pease-Fye at meg.peasefye at fda.hhs.gov or 301-796-1130 to check that this is your site. For Sandy Spring logistics questions, please contact Gene Klinger at 301-260-1635.

Rockville
Hours: 2PM to 7PM
Location: See email.
Contact: Vanessa Strunk at vandiva at comcast.net or 301-424-9142.

Kensington
Hours: 3PM to 7PM
Location: See email.
Contact: Winnie Holbrooke at winniekh at aol.com or 301-509-8097.

Expectations

Your share will include vegetables and fruit according to when it is harvested in this region. Mother Nature and the weather have the final say as to exactly what gets harvested and when. Click HARVEST (above the farm photo) to view a harvest schedule. This should help you plan menus.

When you pick up…

Each week we will inform you about what you are getting that week. The same information will also be posted at pick-up. If you find something you have never eaten, it is likely that the weekly update will contain a recipe for that item.

Please communicate with your share partner(s) in advance how to handle pick-up. If you go out of town, please send a friend or relative in your place, but fill them in on the process. If you miss your pick-up, your share will get donated. Unclaimed shares at Sandy Spring are donated to Friends House, a low income retirement home. Unclaimed shares at Rockville are donated to Dorothy Day House, a women’s shelter and unclaimed shares at Kensington are donated to Crossways Communities, also a women’s shelter.

Recipes

Each week, you’ll find recipes here for some of the current veggies. Also, go to Epicurious.com and type in several ingredients you have on hand (kale, collards, carrots, turnips) and you will get recipes that use those ingredients. And please send in your favorite recipes and we’ll post them here for all to share.

In general, you can wash and chop any combo of leafy greens (kale, spinach, collards, chard) and saute them in olive oil and garlic for just a couple minutes, just long enough to wilt them. Then sprinkle them with balsamic vinegar or lemon. Takes five minutes and is a great vegetable dish. A reminder that eating cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cabbage) raw is a thyroid inhibitor. So if you have slow thyroid function, you should cook them first.

My favorite way to cook broccoli is from an Indian cookbook. Steam the broccoli for just 2-3 minutes, chop, sauté in olive oil or ghee with garlic and add sea salt. Saute for just a few minutes. Should still be slightly crunchy and bright green.

If you get more than you can eat in a week of something like greens, they store well. Either wash and spin them and store in the frig in a salad spinner where they will last a week for sure or clean them up and get excess water off and freeze. You can also steam them slightly and freeze them in bags. They are great added later to soups and casseroles.

Some squashes like butternut are very hard to peel – especially if you are slightly arthritic. I searched and found no quick tips for peeling. If you have a good butcher knife, you can just cut it in half and steam first, then scoop out the guts. You could try boiling the whole thing, until its pliable enough to cut in half and then scoop.

Food for Thought

The purpose of this section is to give you resources to connect the dots between the CSA experience and living in a local, more sustainable way.

Book recommendations include Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.) (2007) and any books by Michael Pollan, including The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. Another good one is Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean and Fair, by Carlos Petrini, founder of the Slow Food movement.

Sometimes I will provide you with an opportunity to advocate on behalf of independent farmers like our’s. Even though the number of independent farmers is decreasing (not good), the majority of new independent farmers are women, like our farmer, Pam Stegall Roberts. She puts her educational (anthropology) and conference planning background to great use in coordinating the volume of logistics and people (Amish) involved in her operation, along with ten years of organic growing experience.

In case you are interested, a good advocacy site for organic food is Organic Consumers.

Have a bounteous fall,

Erin Johnson, Winnie Holbrooke, Gene Klinger, Meg Pease-Fye, Vanessa Strunk, Robert True