Farm Notes

We’re experiencing lovely days here on the farm as fall approaches, sunny and beautiful. The pumpkins are coloring up nicely and we’re getting excited for our Fall Pumpkin Patch and Harvest Festival coming up on October 5^th. (Please plan to join us!) We have a healthy crop of jack-o-lantern style pumpkins, plus some gorgeous cinderellas and a smaller pie pumpkin variety that we plan to put in the fall CSA shares.

We’re starting to put pears in some CSA boxes this week. Our first variety is the Seckel pear, which some call the only American pear, though this seems to be disputed. They originated in the early 1800s near Philadelphia. Seckels are very small, sweet, and butterscotchy in flavor. It can be a little tricky to determine ripeness, but you should use feel rather than color with Seckels. You want to press gently with your thumb close to the stem—if it’s still firm, your pear isn’t ripe yet. When it gives just a little, they are ready to eat. If you keep them too long they will get mushy inside. These pears will probably need 1-3 days to ripen, so check them daily. We are sending them in clamshells so that they don’t get bruised. You can keep them on the counter until they ripen. If you want to extend the time before ripening, you could refrigerate them and take them out a couple days before you want to use them. Think dessert for these beauties—stewed, baked, poached, grilled. We hope to have Seckels for most of you; some are less ripe and we are keeping them until next week. If you don’t end up getting Seckels you will get one or more of our other varieties in the weeks to come. We’re excited to finally be getting our first pear crop into the CSA shares!

We’ve added bulk tomatoes to our webstore. Our supply is limited but steady, so we’ll continue to make them available for several weeks for those of you who like to can or sauce. We have several varieties but have divided them into the larger “beefsteak” types or the smaller “Early Girl/Saladette” types. Both will work well for canning or saucing. Just check the web store persistently if you want them and we’ll post them whenever we have enough. We are also able to put those delicious gala apples from Matulich Farm on the web store.

Many of you are coming up for renewal after this week. The fall session is an abundant time on the farm so please stay with us and enjoy the fruits and vegetables of fall. You can renew on line by making a payment, or send us a check for the 9-week fall session ($216 for veggies/fruit or $288 with the flower option). Contact Sarah if you have any questions.

We’ve had some questions about Winter shares. At this point we are planning to offer winter shares to all members at all pick-up sites. The winter session will be biweekly starting December 4 and any balance left on your account at the end of the fall session can be applied to winter boxes. We’ll have more information about Winter Shares soon.

Thank you for continuing to support our family farm!