Welcome to delivery #3 of the winter CSA. We hope your shelves are ready for more after a delicious Thanksgiving feast!  Thanks to all everyothers for supporting our farm this winter CSA season. We appreciate your business and hope you’ll join us again for summer and winter 2011. Take care, and stay warm this winter!!!

From the Fields: Last week’s cold weather spelled the end for crops coming from the fields; you will notice few greens this time around. Spinach is the one green you will receive. Some came out of the fields, but most of it came from our hoophouse. You may notice that your Spinach is more damp than your last couple of bags. We use washing machines to spin our loose green dry after washing, and these machines are in our unheated Pioneer shed. With all of the cold, water froze in the lines of both machines and so we had to hand spin the greens dry. As you can imagine, our arms aren’t as effective as a spin cycle on a washing machine!

In other farm news, we are starting to prepare for next season. Our new greenhouse at the home farm is complete. We are mulching our new strawberries at the home farm, hoping to protect those beauties from the winter cold. Meanwhile, the seed catalogs are rolling in, and we’re in full brainstorm mode in regards to how we hope to improve our farm and CSA next season. We’re putting together next year’s brochure. Many thanks to those of you who offerred your homes as a near-west pick-up site! Your response was overwhelming, and we plan to have that figured out by the end of the week.

One of our winter projects is having a sign made to mark our home farm. Many commuters drive past our fields everyday, but don’t know who we are or what we do. If any of you have suggestions of local businesses that do a good job in this sort of thing, please do send your suggestions our way!

Your Share: New this delivery for EO members is kohlrabi and parsnips. New for all members this week are kennebec potatoes, red cabbage, beets, and rutabaga. All of these items are best stored in a plastic bag in the fridge.

• Kohlrabi is the mini spaceship vegetable in your box. It is the light green color of broccoli stalk. Kohlrabi is wonderful for fresh eating. Its texture is crunchy like a radish, but its taste is much sweeter. You can julienne kohlrabi and dip it, or you can slice it up thinly on a sandwich.  See Kohlrabi and Apple Slaw recipe from Delivery #2.
• Parsnips are a real autumn treat. These vegetables take the entire season long to mature, and get sweeter as the weather gets frostier. Roasting them really brings out their sugars
• Kennebec potatoes are a white potato. They have a thin skin that’s easy to peel. They are a great all-use potato. When cooked, they tend to hold together without getting overly mushy. They are great for scalloping, making french fries, or hash browns.
• Rutabaga is a root vegetable that is excellent when roasted with meat or used in soups or stews. Rutabaga mashed with carrots is also a popular rutabaga dish. Botantically speaking, it originated as a cross between a cabbage and a turnip.
• Beets are great roasted along with parsnips and carrots. They are also wonderful shaved fresh on salads or cooked with red cabbage in a borscht soup.

Enjoy your veggies!  Sincerely, Mike, Cassie, Zea and crew