This Week’s Harvest
Raspberries OR Cantaloupe
Pickling Cucumbers (last of the year!)
Salad Mix
Okra (last of the year!)
Candy Onions
Garlic
Zucchini and/or Summer Squash
Recipes
Kale and Sausage Stuffed Acorn Squash(You can sub candy onions for the leek)
Sweet and Sour Greens (you can use bok choi or kale or both!)
Tomato, Sweet Onion and Celery Salad
Farm News
The thing about having one of our CSA delivery days be Tuesday is that we never get a Monday off. Every year the summertime holidays of Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day are a loaded day of CSA harvest, and if we’re lucky, some left over time to tend to crops. Every year our crew works through these holidays and we are incredibly grateful! This past Labor Day was no exception. We finished the CSA harvest and then hand weeded our fall carrot crop- such an important job to cross off the to do list.
This year we had several part time workers in the summer months who have now gone back to school. We currently have 3 full time employees with us. This week I’ll spotlight Erin, who joined the farm in July. She is in charge of the “Packing Shed” or where all the produce comes in to be weighed, washed, sorted, etc. and stored. She’s often knee deep in bins and vegetables with the power washer and bulk tanks ready to go!
When Erin isn’t washing vegetables, she is packing CSA boxes, cleaning harvest bins, sorting onions, and on and on. We hear a lot how long lasting our produce is, and a lot of that self-life comes from quickly and correctly processing the vegetables. We also hear how clean our vegetables are — often surprising customers that the produce is actually ours. The magic all happens in the packing shed!
Erin contacted us at the perfect time as our packing shed manager from last year, David, was getting ready to start a new career as a middle school science teacher. She and David worked together for 2 weeks and then Erin was on her own! August is really not an ideal time for Ben and myself to train new people, so after David left Erin was pretty much on her own and given little instruction. She has done awesome and we are thrilled!
When Erin is not at Mile Creek Farm, she is taking care of her 12 cats and 2 dogs with her husband, Luis. She and her husband also started a band together, Team Void, and are busy performing, recording and creating art for it. (Luis has been involved in the Dayton music scene since the 90s). Team Void is an instrumental band with its very own unique sound, Lucha rock, inspired by lucha libre, the very popular Mexican “free fight” wrestling. The band members wear masks, just like the luchadors (wrestlers), and the band members become characters on stage. From their website they are “3 dead luchas cursed to rock the living”.
And in fact we were lucky to be rocked by Team Void at Dayton’s LadyFest a few weekends ago. Erin and company played a great set and we enjoyed an evening away from the farm! I recommend you check them out at an upcoming show if you can–Halloween is a favorite time for the band to perform!
