CSA Day- Week 13

For those in the CSA-- you know these pictures and you live them each week. For my friends not in a CSA or for those just reading our blog-- I'm sure you can find a CSA near you and try it out. Or you may be interested in joining our CSA next year. Mike and I are still finalizing the details of the CSA for next year -- should we scale back, should we expand, can we have a different business model, can we afford to hire someone, etc, etc.

The process at our farm starts with a visit to the fridge (not pictured) where you get your box and cold items. Then you read the very sophisticated signs and pick the number of items listed. (if you look closely you'll see this is leftover paper from my kids when they were learning to write).

This week in the fridge was Cilantro and Dill (yum), a huge bag of red chard and a small taste of edamame. In the fridge you would get your egg share as well as peppers and a bonus item (leftover items from other weeks).

Then you come out and get 2 Zucchini, 5-6 large potatoes from another farm but the biggest potatoes I'd ever seen (I think a CSA should include items from other farms as one farmer is not going to be great at all items), a bag of our potatoes (this week were purple potatoes mixed with yellow/white potatoes), and 2 garlic.

Then we had sunflowers! They look better in the field and I had a hard time keeping them alive in the water.

Then you get to pick tomatoes!!! 20 tomatoes

Check out that table!!!

I have been making sauce this week. Oh my goodness. I will share my eggs, I will share my garden, I will share just about anything--- except, except my tomato sauce (and my husband- for the record). I have never scraped the bowl of the sauce pan to save the last 1/8 cup of sauce in my life. I know it's in the fridge. I could slurp it up with a straw right now. If you don't know how to make tomato sauce, learn now. It's not that hard and you'll be loving yourself in December.

And on to other pictures. Featured below is Nicky the Naked Neck chicken. As is customary at our farm, we tend to name the 'bonus chick' a female name and then it turns out to be a male. Nicky is a male. But Nicky works.

This is where Nicky lives with his harem. There are about 4 other roosters that live with him as well and I don't think he is top rooster. A Barred Rock rooster is the head rooster.

If you look closely you can see the roosts in the eggmobile. They go up the ladder at night and they roost. We've kept the 5 roosters because we have fox on the farm. The roosters do a good job at keeping the other birds alert when the fox comes around.

Mike is working to get our website updated. The website was connected to our computer that is crashing all the time. So, the following information should be on the front page of the website.

Place your turkey order..... $3/lb. We have 17 left.

We still have chickens for sale.

If you are reading this blog you can have the CSA member prices for chicken -

$15 for a 3.5-4.3 lb chicken that is a slow-grow breed

$20 for a 5.2-6.5lb chicken that has a lot of white meat (cornish cross bird)

Pork is sold-out as of tonight for special cuts. Though if you would like some Whole hog sausage, we still have some of that left to sell. Pigs go to butcher on Monday. My mom asked me how I could feed them and look at the animals and then eat them. I have no idea- the long time blog readers know I thought I'd turn vegetarian. The meat is just so darn good....

We are also starting to take orders for Grass Fed Belted Galloway Beef and Grass fed lamb.

Mike will be putting out prices for the Beef and Lamb in the next few weeks. But if you are interested and not on our mailing list then send us an email. The Beef and Lamb will not be ready until Later October/November. We will also have more pig for sale about the 2nd week of December. So if you missed out this time, you'll have another chance to order pork in December. We'll have 5 pigs to sell for December and so far we still have 4 1/2 left.

Farmers market on Saturday, rain or shine. This week we'll be better prepared with the right size eggs and the right amount of eggs and more information about pastured eggs.

I think I may need to go eat that tomato sauce...