I am starting to feel a shift in the seasons. School is back in session, kids’ activities are ramping up, and while summer will be around for a while longer, it feels like the season has one foot out the door.
As CSA farmers, the shift in schedules brings some predictable changes for CSA membership and farmers market shopping, too. We often see a lot of enthusiasm at the beginning of the season and through the peak summer months, and as the novelty of CSA membership wanes, many folks drop off. But we are just getting started! We aren’t yet halfway through the CSA season, and we’ve extended it to eight months of the year. We are pushing ourselves as farmers to go year-round because we believe we can eat local year-round.
I believe CSA is joyful, novel, intentional, hopeful, and relational. I also long for CSA to be normal and commonplace, a simple and familiar way to eat locally year-round. As a CSA member, you are making a daily choice to prioritize our farm in your purchases and habits, and we know it and appreciate each of you very much.
We’ve added a lot of flexibility to the CSA over the past decade with online customization platforms, shorter payment plans, and the ability to pause memberships, all in an effort to be accessible. If you’ve joined us on a shorter commitment and you see your membership renewal coming up, I want to invite you to dig in and stick with the CSA – even when you think maybe you’ll let it go and come back later. Fall harvests are full of produce like sweet potatoes, spinach, and carrots, which we planted earlier this spring. We’ve planted and planned for a robust CSA community through the full season, and we are counting on you to be a part of it.
The idea of CSA goes back many decades. It is rooted in building a community-accountable food supply while also stabilizing and prioritizing the presence and success of small local farms. In other words, farms cannot exist if we aren’t serious about engaging with each other as farmers and consumers as deeply as we can. CSA is much more than a way to access fresh veggies. It’s an investment in vibrant urban/rural connections, land stewardship, dignified farm work, sustainable consumption, and health!
We’ll be here cranking out CSA shares every week through the end of December, and then we will launch our winter CSA share in the new year. We see you working hard to be engaged and prioritize CSA in your lives, and we are grateful for your partnership for the long haul.
Sincerely,
Bree
Eating and Storing Cherry and Grape Tomatoes
In general, big slicing tomatoes protect their tangy and sweet flesh with their skin. However, cherry and grape tomatoes have thinner skin, and thus a shorter shelf life than slicing tomatoes. You definitely want to fridge your cherry tomatoes and plan to eat them within a few days of receiving them in your share. We’ve also found that the golden cherry tomatoes, which have the highest sugar content, have the shortest shelf life of all. So enjoy these golden morsels, and do it soon.
There’s a big debate about how people should store tomatoes, and sometimes internet advice can backfire and ruin the quality of your produce. We’ve gone to the expert, the current Chief Culinary Consultant at the Serious Eats test kitchen.
Cherry or slicing, if you can’t eat your tomatoes immediately, storing them in the refrigerator improves their lifespan. To bring back that fresh-from-the-vine experience, bring slicing tomatoes back to room temperature to enjoy their full flavor.
Meet one of the Farmers, Tommy!
We’re back this week with another staff spotlight! Tommy, originally from Oldham County, is spending his summer break with us right here at the farm. From planting on the transplanter, weeding, removing plastic, to harvesting almost every kind of summer produce in the CSA, Tommy is keeping pace with the pros and learning a lot.
When he’s not at university in Colorado, Tommy looks forward to swimming and fishing in the Ohio River with his buddies. But don’t worry—Tommy doesn’t have to wait to come home to enjoy the outdoors. He still gets plenty of time to swim and fish in Colorado while he studies geography and natural sciences. “The water is so clear.” Cultivating a love for the outdoors is directly connected to his appreciation for the environment and our work here at the farm.
Every time I ask the farmers what their favorite job is, they always say they like doing everything. Tommy spends some time thinking and says he likes wading through the thick stalky brush to harvest the sweet corn. He’s got plenty of harvests to choose from since he’s worked on procuring multiple plantings of corn potatoes, winter squash, summer squash, basil, green beans, cabbage, peppers, okra, tomatoes, dill, cilantro, and parsley. He also told me that he’s looking forward to our watermelon harvest which is happening later this week!
Since Tommy is here just for the summer, he’s had a jam-packed experience starting in June learning about animal tending with Branner, harvesting with Oscar, and even cleaning up the storage produce here in the pack shed. We’re gonna miss him when he goes back to Colorado for the fall!
More Ways to Try Delicata Squash
Four Tomato Recipes by Frankie Gao
| Tomato Egg Salad Sandwich – Little Fat Boy |
| Tomato Egg Noodles – Little Fat Boy |
| Tomato Fried Rice – Little Fat Boy |
| Summer Tomato Okonomiyaki – Little Fat Boy |
Tomatillo Recipes that Aren’t Salsa Verde
| Fried Green Tomatillo Sandiwch – Eat the Bite |
| Creamy Chicken Enchiladas – Serious Eats |
| Ceviche Verde – Casa Marcela |
| Tomato, Tomatillo, and Avocado Salad – Katherine Martinelli |
Four Hot Sauce Recipes from PepperGeek
| Pineapple Habanero Hot Sauce – Pepper Geek |
| Mango Habanero Hot Sauce – Pepper Geek |
| Simple Habanero Hot Sauce – Pepper Geek |
| The Best Jalapeño Hot Sauce – Pepper Geek |
Butternut Squash is In!
Celebrate Your Peppers, Tomatoes, and Herbs in One Dish
Pepperonata is a perfect, refreshing summertime marinade that uses up all your summer staples. Even though you cook down many of the ingredients, you can serve this at any temperature with a salad, cheese, fresh bread, or your favorite protein.
Lettuce Mix
11 Salad Dressing Recipes to Help You Kick the Bottled Stuff – Serious EatsLettuce is back in the shares this week. This delicate produce needs to be eaten as soon as possible, so find a recipe before you customize your share. We’ve gathered 11 ideas for you in this listicle from Serious Eats. This test kitchen offers different flavor profiles to suit almost all of your needs. If you’re looking for a different salad recipe like marousalata, check out our other blog posts.
