Fall Festival This Saturday!

Everyone on the farm crew is delighted that broccoli's back again this week, as well as some new appearances by leeks, arugula, and bok choy. It's always fun to harvest new crops! The beautiful and colorful beets in this week's share are coming to us from Freedom Food Farm in Raynham, courtesy of Farmer Chuck.

Our fabulous Fall Festival is on for this Saturday! Join us for some pumpkin painting, farm animal visiting, good music, delicious food & fun games--see you there!

Farm reminders: Tuesday is Farm Fresh Yoga day for the rest of the season! Come to the Yellow House on Tuesdays at 5:30pm for your weekly yoga fix! Free for CSA members and sliding scale donation to our Food Access Fund for friends and neighbors and coworkers.

This winter we'll be putting together a Weir River Farm CSA cookbook with recipes for all the veggies of the season. If you have a recipe you love and you'd like to share, please email me or bring a copy to CSA pickup any time. We're looking for delicious, seasonally-inspired, relatively simple, and fool-proof recipes. Thanks!

Broccoli in the early morning
photo: Chris Hendershot

And lastly, our end-of-season harvest celebration will be Tuesday, October 27th, starting at 6pm. Potluck and BYOB, it's a fun and DELICIOUS evening--mark your calendar!

In your share this week: Leeks, broccoli, radishes, onions, kale, bok choy, chard, hot peppers, arugula, beets from Freedom Food Farm in Raynham, and PYO herbs sage/thyme/chives.

Recipe of the Week

Simple Stir-fried Bok Choy

1 Tbs coconut oil
1 tsp sesame oil
2-3 tsp garlic, finely minced and rested for 10 minutes
1 tsp grated ginger
1 lb baby bok choy
1 Tbs fish sauce

Heat the two oils in a large skillet (or wok) over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and ginger and brown, about 1-2 minutes. Trim the thick, white end of the bok choy stalks and chop heads in half lengthwise. Add the bok choy to the skillet and cook, stirring frequently for 3-5 minutes. Add the fish sauce and cover to steam the bok choy, about 2-3 minutes. When the leaves are wilted and the stalks are semi-soft, it's done!

Old Colony Montessori School stopped by the fields last week for a tour and were impressively veggie-literate!
photo: Janet Walsmith

Most of the onions are finally out of the greenhouse!
photo: Chris Hendershot

One of my favorite crops. Thanks to Lynn Anderson for the pretty herb & flower signs!
photo: Chris Hendershot

The Greens of Fall

Gorgeous broccoli!

Fall is my favorite time to be a farmer. Fall crops are my favorites to have for dinner and the cooler weather is lovely to work in. With the bulk of the season at our backs, it feels like we're running downhill. This week is shaping up to be a great eating week--I love the overlap of the last of the summer crops and the delights of fall crops--as well as a great weather week.

Joining us this past week is a new crew member, Chris Hendershot. Formerly an apprentice at our sister farm, Appleton, in Ipswitch, Chris has several years' experience on different veggie farms all over New England. He just finished up work on a degree in Ecological Design at the Conway School, which included a fascinating project creating a farm plan for 10 acres of perennial food crops, among other interesting projects. In addition to being a hard worker with lots of farming experience, he's delightful to chat with!

New guy Chris

Our fourth annual Farm to Table dinner on Saturday night was a great success. With a beautiful, breezy evening, delicious food and drink from JAM Gourmet and Tosca, and lots of good company, we toasted the farm as the sun went down. BIG thanks to our awesome team of volunteers and community partners for all their good work in pulling this challenging event off!

Reminders this week: Tuesday is Farm Fresh Yoga day for the rest of the season! Come to the Yellow House on Tuesdays at 5:30pm for your weekly yoga fix! Free for CSA members and sliding scale donation to our Food Access Fund for friends and neighbors and coworkers.

This winter we'll be putting together a Weir River Farm CSA cookbook with recipes for all the

Red onions ready for your kitchen.

veggies of the season. If you have a recipe you love and you'd like to share, please email me or bring a copy to CSA pickup any time. We're looking for delicious, seasonally-inspired, relatively simple, and fool-proof recipes. Thanks!

And lastly, our end-of-season harvest celebration will be Tuesday, October 27th this year, starting at 6pm. Potluck and BYOB, it's a fun and DELICIOUS evening--mark your calendar!

In your share this week: Red onions, hot peppers, one last bell pepper, a few tomatoes, radishes, a choice of collard greens or chard, broccoli(!), kale, sustainably-grown carrots from Powisset Farm, Certified Organic potatoes from Langwater Farm, PYO flowers and PYO herbs. Mmmm-mmm I love September harvests!

Recipes of the Week

Both recipes this week come from the Diana Shaw treasure The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook, and both are for greens. As a bonus, this collard greens recipe has many of these week's share veggies in it too! Alternatively, the kale would work well as a sub for the collards.

Peanut Curry with Sweet Potato and Collard Greens
serves 4

2 tsp canola or vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 2" piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
4 garlic cloves, minced and rested for 10 minutes
1/2 c. loosely packed minced cilantro
1 red bell pepper, roasted, peeled and chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, roasted, peeled and chopped
1 Tbs ground cumin
2 tsp whole mustard seeds
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, or more to taste
2 large tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and chopped
1 lb potatoes, preferably Yukon Gold, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
1/4 c. coconut milk
2 Tbs smooth peanut butter (with no added oil, sugar, or salt)
1 lb collard greens, stemmed and coarsely chopped
2 c. cooked beans, such as chickpeas, rattlesnake, or tongue of fire, drained and rinsed

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. When hot, add the onion, ginger, garlic and cilantro. Reduce the heat to medium and saute, stirring often until the onion is soft and translucent, about 7 minutes. Add the bell pepper, jalapeno, cumin, mustard seeds, coriander, turmeric, paprika, and cayenne. Stir to blend. Stir in the tomatoes, sweet potato, and potato. Cover and let simmer over medium-low heat until the potatoes have cooked through, about 15 minutes. Combine the coconut milk and peanut butter and stir until smooth. Add them to the skillet along with the collards and beans. Cook until the collards turn bright green, about 4 minutes. Cover and let the curry sit for 20 minutes before serving.

Swiss Chard-Ricotta Gnocchi
serves 4

1 c. ricotta
1 c. unbleached all-purpose flour, plus additional for dusting
4 c. Chard, thoroughly cleaned and chopped
1 large egg, lightly beaten
2 Tbs grated Parmesan cheese
Pinch ground nutmeg
1 lemon

In a large mixing bowl, in a land far, far away, there were two magical ponies named Spylight Twarkle and Porkie Pie Princess the Party Planner...whoops, wrong book -- I've been spending too much time with my niece. In a large mixing bowl, combine the ricotta, flour, chard, egg, Parmesan, and nutmeg. Grate 1 tsp of zest from the lemon and stir it into the mixture. Squeeze the juice from the lemon and set aside. Flour your hands and roll the mixture into walnut-sized balls. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the gnocchi, about 5-8 at a time, and boil until they rise to the surface, about 3 minutes. Let them boil for one minute longer, then scoop them out with a slotted spoon and transfer to paper towels to drain. Repeat this process until all the gnocchi are cooked. Sprinkle with the reserved lemon juice and serve.

Slipping into fall

After a couple additional weeks of 85+ degree days that made it still feel like summer on the farm, lately the weather has been shifting towards fall. The crops, following the weather, are also shifting--summer crops tapering off as fall crops start to come into harvest. Traditional fall crops like garlic and the kitchen herbs thyme, sage, and chives, kick off this week, and we will continue the harvest on kale and storage onions.

The Onion of the Week this week is the beautiful cipollini, a traditional Italian variety with an eye-

Red and yellow cipollinis

catching flattened shape. My culinary guru Deborah Madison has some good general advice on the topic of cipollinis that I posted last year:

"While you can do all those things with cipollini onions you do with your basic storage onion, they're an onion to be featured whole [because of their unique shape], not just used as an ingredient. It makes sense to cook them in a way that showcases their form, such as braised with rosemary and sage, pan roasted, oven roasted, or grilled. They make a special treat to offer friends and family. The only challenge to cipollini is in peeling them. I find it works best to drop them into a pan of boiling water for a half minute or so, then carefully pull back the skins and cut them off along with part of the root. Or you can pour boiling water over them, then slip off the outer skins after taking away a thin slice at the base."
---Deborah Madison, Vegetable Literacy

Along with our own fall crops this week, we also have some treats from local farms. Since potatoes don't do well in our soil here (reasons like soil pH, high organic matter from use of animal-based compost, and the farm-wide presence of the soil-borne potato plant pathogen Streptomyces scabies), we don't grow them. However, on my family's farm in Easton, they grow quite well. So for the second year, we're buying our potatoes in from there. In addition to the lovely red and yellow potatoes, we'll also have delicious and crunchy carrots from Second Nature Farm in Norton--you might know them from the Hingham Farmers Market, where they sell on Saturdays. 

Reminders of the Week

Tuesday is Farm Fresh Yoga day for the rest of the season! Come to the Yellow House on Tuesdays at 5:30pm for your weekly yoga fix! Free for CSA members and sliding scale donation to our Food Access Fund for friends and neighbors and coworkers.

This is the last week for ugly tomatoes--time to get your sauce on! Email me to reserve a box--20lb for $20.

Our end-of-season harvest celebration will be Tuesday, October 27th this year, starting at 6pm. Potluck and BYOB, it's a fun and DELICIOUS evening--mark your calendar!

Garlic drying in the Red Barn loft

Looking ahead to the winter, we're thinking of putting together a Weir River Farm CSA cookbook with recipes for all the veggies of the season. If you have a recipe you love and you'd like to share, please email me or bring a copy to CSA pickup any time. We're looking for delicious, seasonally-inspired, relatively simple, and fool-proof recipes. Thanks!

In your share this week: the last of the tomatoes and tomatillos, peppers, garlic, cipollini onions, hot peppers, kale, Langwater Farm certified organic potatoes, and Second Nature Farm certified naturally grown carrots. Pick Your Own this week is flowers and thyme, chives, or sage.


Recipe of the Week

Sweet-and-Sour Cipollini, Small Red Onions, and Shallots with Raisins
Deborah Madison in Vegetable Literacy

Deborah's note: Choose large shallots, small onions, and cipollini in whatever size you can find them. Add a few pearl onions as well, if you have them. All the different sizes and variations in shape are handsome together. Balsamic vinegar is a fine choice here because its sugars will contribute to the glaze. Serve the onions warm or at room temperature as a side dish or as part of a meze plate.

Rory's note: We'll have shallots and onions (including small ones) in the share in upcoming weeks, once those kinds are finished drying in the greenhouse. If you want to hang on to your cipollinis until you have all the ingredients, they will last in a cool, dry, dark place for months.

1 lb mixed onions (see headnote)
1 Tbs butter or olive oil
1 thyme sprig
1 bay leaf
4 sage leaves, or 1 tsp minced rosemary
4 large shallots, the sections separated
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1/3 c. port (can be Zinfandel port)
1/4 c. balsamic vinegar
1 Tsp honey or brown sugar
1/3 c. golden or dark raisins, or a mixture of raisins and dried currants
1 c. light chicken stock or water, plus more if needed

Peel the onions and leave them whole except for the small red onions. Cut those in half lengthwise through the root, unless, of course, they're very small. Chances are the layer beneath the papery skin will be stringy and inedible. It will also detach itself from the rest of the onion when it cooks. If you take off that first layer as well as the skin, the stain and flavor of the port will penetrate better.
Select a pan just large enough to hold everything in a single layer and melt the butter with the thyme, bay, and sage over medium-high heat. Add the onions and shallots, jerk the pan back and forth to coat them with the butter, then season with a few pinches of salt and pepper. Add the port, vinegar, honey and raisins, then pour in the stock. When everything has begun to simmer, lower the heat, cover the pan, and cook for 10 minutes. Give the onions and shallots a turn and re-cover the pan. Continue cooking in this fashion until the liquids have thickened to a syrupy glaze, about 20 minutes in all, possibly shorter or longer depending on the size of the onions and shallots. Pierce a few of the larger pieces with the tip of a knife to make sure they are tender. If they don't seem soft enough, add a little more stock, re-cover the pan, and cook until reduced to a syrup. Do this as many times as needed.
Serve the onions warm or at room temperature.

Super spicy Caparino hot peppers!

The Cucurbits Last Stand

With the first full week of September we're going to start turning the corner into fall crops. Up this week: kale and onions. This fall's kale crop has been unexpectedly precocious, surprising me with how quickly it's grown to harvest-ability. But since we haven't had leafy greens in the share for ages, why not enjoy it?

After many hours and lots of effort from the farm crew and our fabulous volunteer crew, we have all of the onion crop in from the field and drying on tables inside the greenhouse. This year's crop is looking like a knockout and we'll be enjoying a plethora of red onions and yellow onions starting in a week or two.  Most of the varieties still need more drying time to be fully cured, but the sweet white variety, Sierra Blanca, is ready to go this week. I didn't plant a lot of this early white variety, so we'll start out onion season slowly, with the bulk of the crop coming later in the month and into October.
Don't worry about the end of summer crops yet, though--we still have a couple weeks to continue savoring tomatoes and peppers and husk cherries!

Farm Fresh Yoga is happening this week! Join us Tuesday at 5:30 at the Yellow House for an engaging class with our yoga-teacher-in-residence, Maureen St. Croix. Bring your mat if you have one and get ready to enjoy a breezy evening class as the sun sets.

We still have LOTS of weeks of veggies ahead of us in the CSA share this year, but I want to make sure you mark your calendars for our end of season Harvest Dinner on Tuesday 10/27 at 6pm. More info coming in the weeks ahead!

Still have some tomato canning you want to get in before tomatoes take a bow? We'll have a limited number of 20 lb boxes of ugly tomatoes available this week for $20. Email me to reserve yours.

In your share this week: the aforementioned kale and white onions, small eggplants, the last of the squash and cucumbers for this year, green peppers, hot peppers, husk cherries, tomatoes, and Pick Your Own flowers.

Congratulations to Farmer Ed & the livestock crew on the newest member of the herd, a boy born on Sunday. Mama and baby are both doing well.

photo: Connor Young