This Week’s Harvest

• Beets
• Butternut Squash
• Cabbage
• Rutabaga
• Rainbow Carrots
• Sweet Potatoes
• Red, white and blue potatoes
• Black Spanish Radish
• Purple and Red Daikon Radish
• Onions (grown by our co-op partners, Shared Legacy Farm)

Farm News

With this final delivery under our belt we can officially make the shift to winter mode on the farm. This is time spent maintaining all the vehicles, tractors and equipment from a season of wear and tear. It’s catching up on office work such as inputting all of our paper copies of harvests in a database so we can easily see and analyze yields and completing farm finances. We’ll have a few planning sessions were we will go over what worked and didn’t for 2020 and what we’d like the 2021 season to look like. We’ll “go” to conferences (this year all conferences will be online), make our budget, launch our 2021 CSA, hire for 2021, and wash and pack a few more large wholesale orders of winter roots. We will also allow ourselves to take a break, sleep in, read a book, play games with the kids, and address much neglected house projects.

From the farmer’s perspective 2020 was a good year. While there was a point in the season that our riding lawn mower, John Deere tractor, and delivery van were all broken at once, we didn’t have any out of the ordinary malfunctions (last year, for example, the irrigation well went out). We did have disappointing crop yields and new disease problems show up in the sweet potato, potato, and rutabaga crops, but we planted enough to have all three of these crops available for CSA, 2nd Street Market, and wholesale outlets. From a purely numbers perspective, 2020 was just fine.

However, we all know that 2020 was anything but fine! We are still in the midst of a pandemic that has been with us the entire season. While we busied ourselves planting, harvesting, weeding, and washing, too many Americans were out of work. On top of the pandemic, social unrest swept across the nation this summer, causing the country to confront its racist past; a past which inevitably infiltrates aspects of current life. For example, past government policies certainly play a role in present farming demographics, which include dwindling numbers of African American farmers and historic low levels of black land ownership. Just last year I learned things I was shocked I hadn’t known before, such as a 1997 lawsuit against the USDA for discriminating against black farmers in loan applications and other assistance programs. I wrote about a few articles I read on the subject in this blog post from 2019.

For me winter is a time to reflect on the season, brainstorm and take necessary steps to improve. Thirteen years in, I am realizing that I can grow as a farmer not just by learning about soil health and plant disease management, but also by thinking critically about land ownership and land use. I don’t pretend to have any answers but just being a mindful citizen is important. I enjoy organic farming and its relevance to so many facets of life! Turns out, our direct to consumer small farm model is a good way to get food to people during a pandemic as well. Thanks for supporting our farm this season!

Recipes

• Fast Japanese Pickles
• Rutabaga Hash Browns
• Rutabaga and Potato Gratin
• Butternut Squash Bharta

A few years back, while I was cleaning out the hoophouse and listening to the radio, I got really annoyed at a food writer’s take on seasonal eating. She spent the entire time complaining about winter vegetables. She was feeling the pressure to eat seasonally and was frankly making accuses not to. I distinctly remember her calling winter vegetables sad and boring. I don’t mean to box people into one way of eating, I just thought the food critic’s piece, which felt mostly like an exercise to make herself feel better, didn’t need to be out in the world. If anything we should be encouraging people to eat vegetables period- and winter vegetables, several of which are unknown to many households, should be celebrated! Plus they are very versatile! They can be mashed, roasted, pureed, fried, hidden in baked goods, or even enjoyed raw in grated salads and slaws. Come March I will be craving garden fresh tomatoes as much as anyone, but until then there is lots of time to enjoy winter roots!

A month ago, 2nd Street Market staff asked me to teach a class on root vegetables for them to video tape. I brought in vegetables that are in season in Ohio right now, discussed simple ways to cook them and store them, and brought in 2 favorite recipes. The video is up on YouTube now! If you know everything there is to know about root veggies you can skip ahead to minute 8 for the recipes- a cheesy carrot casserole and a kohlrabi and radish salad with cilantro and ginger!

If you are wondering how to get your hands on these winter vegetables, we are having a sale this Saturday! Orders must be placed ahead of time from the webstore and picked up at the farm (10786 Mile Rd. New Lebanon 45345) on Saturday. We are taking orders until Thursday evening at 8. Visit the store here. This winter, I hope you create a dish or two that you love and discover a vegetable or two that you didn’t know you liked!

This Week’s Harvest

• Braising Mix
• Spinach
• Rainbow Carrots
• Potatoes
• Red Daikon
• Purple Top Turnips
• Cilantro
• Kale
• Brussels Sprouts
• Beets
• Kolrabi

Farm News

Our major fall root harvest is complete and we ended up with a trailer full of food! I was looking through old pictures and came across our “big” root harvest from 2016. I had captioned the picture “yesterday I felt less like a farmer and more like a squirrel”.

Nowadays this haul looks so small. Instead of a few 25 pound harvest bins of this and that we have dozens of 500 pound pallet bins. We have gradually scaled up to our current operation acquiring the necessary equipment overtime. First we needed a new tractor with a front end loader, which we were able to purchase in 2017. We also needed a more efficient way of washing the roots and our pack shed upgrades have included concreting the barn and assembling a wash-line of rinse conveyor, root washer and sorting table. The acquisition of pallet bins has helped make the harvest more systematic. And just last year we purchased a shipping container, which we rigged up with a homemade cooling system, giving us a place to store this increased production.

We have scaled up our winter root production for a few reasons. A main reason is that we are able to grow them well (most of them! still working on a perfect potato crop). They also provide income during the slower winter months and all the washing and packing has been a good job to give our employees to provide more year round employment for some. Their storage capabilities are great and it is a nice to have a product that is more shelf stable for a change. In fact the last 2 years some of our storage crops have lasted all winter and spring and helped bulk out our first CSA shares of the following season! Added bonus- they taste so good!

Recipes

Kohlrabi and Carrot Mash

Kohlrabi and Radish Slaw

Deep Dish Pizza with Cilantro Pesto and Brussles Sprouts

This Week’s Harvest

• Salad Mix
• Spinach
• Brussels Sprouts
• Broccoli
• Carrots
• Sweet Potatoes
• Potatoes
• Beets
• Parsley
• Onions
• Kale

Farm News

Happy Thanksgiving! Of course this time of year we like to reflect on what we are grateful for. We are grateful we get to do this work which would not be possible without dedicated customers, family support, and hardworking employees. We are grateful our family and staff (and as far as we know customers) have thus far stayed safe during the pandemic.

This year has been considerably more exhausting. It is probably a combination of having grown more food and also having the kids home more. Our usual go to of sending them off for sleepovers when we have a particular push to get something planted or harvested was not available to us. I’m grateful our kids don’t seem to be holding a grudge that their parents are incredibly busy.

During this time of reflection we like to look to the future and plan for the next season. While the season is still fresh in our minds we can remember what worked and what didn’t and what adjustments could be helpful moving forward. These last few days have had us running around like it’s the peak of summer and so a thought that is on my mind right now is that we really need to have a full crew through November. Typically we’ve started slimming down the crew in October as the planting comes to an end, crops no longer need to be cultivated, and the frost kills the summer crops. This year I am learning that the start of our smaller crew needs to be delayed. All of November we have been harvesting bulk bin upon bulk bin, washing for large wholesale orders, and filling our direct customer orders as well. It’s taken us a second to realize that we are still quite busy. We’ve had a couple local teenagers help us on Sundays and for about 3 Sundays straight I’d say that this was the last Sunday, only to call on them later on in the week. Of course being so busy that we can keep folks working here longer is a very good problem to have!

Bringing me back to my original thought which was one of gratitude. We can’t say enough how thankful we are to be doing this work and have it sustain us during this unprecedented year. We are grateful for our growth, for seeing what still needs improved upon, and having the capabilities to make required adjustments. If you have any thoughts on what you liked or didn’t like about the vegetables this year drop us a note! We’ll be planning out next year in the coming weeks starting with our seed order!

Recipes

• Carrot Casserole
• Lemon Parsley Stuffing
• Scalloped Potatoes and Kale
• Tumeric Roasted Vegetables with Parsely Almond Gremolata (any vegetable this week would work to roast!)

This Week’s Harvest

• Red Daikon Radish
• Broccoli
• Napa Cabbage
• Red Butter Lettuce
• Green Leaf Lettuce
• Cilantro
• Purple Potatoes
• Japanese Sweet Potatoes
• Multicolor Carrots
• Brussels Sprouts

Farm News

We hope you enjoyed these past 24 weeks of fresh seasonal vegetables–both the kitchen staples as well as the unique items. I enjoyed seeing what everyone was creating on the Mile Creek CSA Facebook Group- lots of delicious looking dishes. I think that the year’s biggest successes were the melons, sweet corn and fall cauliflower. Every year we build on past seasons. Last year we found a cauliflower variety that works well for us but the timing of the planting was just a bit too early, so this year we adjusted the seeding date pushing it back a week and had a really nice run of big blemish free heads. No doubt the weather was on our side when we were able to seed and plant 4 rounds of sweet corn 2 weeks apart giving us 8 straight weeks of sweet corn. What were some of your favorites from the season?

Of course every season has its failures. You probably noticed you never got garlic in your share. In 2019 we had a crop failure because of a really wet winter and early spring. We had enough to give to CSA last year but not enough to save any for planting. So we had to wait until we had it in the budget to invest in a new round of seed stock. The good news is we bought seed garlic this fall and finished planting it last week. The hope is that the 2021 yield will give us plenty for CSA and enough to save for planting going forward. We can’t wait! It was sorely missed!

This year we invested in new equipment. Members who were in the CSA last year heard all about our tractor breakdowns as we cycled through several Allis Chalmers G’s, an ancient cultivating tractor. Ben was able to fix them for the most part, but the truth is that our operation was outgrowing this style tractor. We were offered the opportunity to try out a new tractor from a new company that makes tractors and implements for vegetable farms that is located here in Ohio. They came out and did a video shoot of Ben cultivating and changing out implements. We are able to buy the tractor now. It is really exciting and wild to have a brand new tractor as our newest tractor prior was built in the 80s. Enjoy this video of Ben cultivating the radishes that are in this week’s box!

The true indicator of how the year went is if we gave out 24 weeks of full shares with lots of variety and I’d say we did! We were certainly very busy doing it and I only managed to take a picture of 3 of the shares. It was a pleasure growing this food. We are able to invest in our farm thanks to our CSA member support so thank you so much! If you aren’t ready to say good bye just yet, we hope that you can join us for 3 more weeks for our Extended Season. We’ve been busy harvesting our storage crops for late fall and winter and if the weather holds we still have plenty of fresh greens too! Stay tuned for details!

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Recipes

• Napa Cabbage Salad with Peanut Dressing (I would also add grated daikon radish and carrots to this dish)
• Roasted Carrots and Brussels Sprouts
• Sweet Potato and Carrot Soup

Coming Up Next Year …….. Plenty of delicious certified organic produce!

This Week’s Harvest

• Beets with tops
• Carrots
• Rutabaga
• Bok Choi
• Dill
• Potatoes
• Japanese Sweet Potatoes
• Head Lettuce
• Spinach
• Broccoli
• Red Onions

Farm News

We made it through the wet week and another cold night last night and are looking forward to an unseasonably warm and sunny week! Perfect for continuing our bulk harvests of fall crops and finishing up the garlic planting!

Yesterday we prepped for the cold. Since the forecast was calling for winds of 20 mph all night long we couldn’t easily cover crops with remay so we harvested the most tender crops. We picked all the broccoli we needed for the week and then battled the wind and dropping temperatures to pick the storage cabbage. It even snowed at one point.

We have a large piece of row cover that covers 7 beds that we were able to use and cover cilantro, salad mix, spinach, and head lettuce. We tacked down the west side and just lifted the remay and the wind completely unfurled the giant cover over all the beds.

We were glad for the wind as it really helps dry out the fields. In addition to needing to finish the garlic planting, we are concerned for the crops that have been sitting in water for several days. Carrots are especially susceptible to rot. In hind sight now that we see what the garlic beds currently look like (dry easy to get into) and what the carrot beds look like (still very wet), we wish we had tabled the garlic and just harvested carrots last week. We struggled to get the garlic in and force planted when we really shouldn’t have. At the time the garlic planting had a “now or never” feel to it. We both agree it would have been time better spent harvesting our beautiful carrot crop. Now we are rescuing carrots from the muck and cleaning them will take 3 times as long as they are covered in mud. Ah well, 13 years in and we are still constantly learning! Knowing that we can improve- and how we can improve- certainly encourages and motivates us to keep us going!

Recipes

• Greek Roasted Beets and Garlic Potato Spread (garnish with dill!)
• Fried Rice with Bok Choy
• Rutabaga and Sweet Potato Breakfast Hash

Coming Up Next Week (our best guess….) Napa cabbage, cilantro, Japanese sweet potatoes, carrots, purple potatoes, brussels sprouts, head lettuce, daikon radish

THIS WEEK’S HARVEST

• Cauliflower
• Purple Top Turnips with greens
• Braising Mix
• Spinach
• Parsley
• Fennel OR Celery
• Carrots
• Butternut Squash
• Sweet Onions
• Roma or Beefsteak Tomatoes
• Kohlrabi

FARM NEWS

I wish that I could say today that all the garlic is planted, but I can only report that it is half planted. After such a dry start to fall, we are currently in a wet pattern and juggling tasks between lots of rain. Last week I reported that the garlic beds had been hilled up. With rain in the forecast last Friday night, we were hoping to have the opportunity to till and plant on Friday, but the field was still wet from rain earlier in the week. We waited as long as we possibly could, checking both the soil moisture level and the radar. Finally around 5 we decided we better till the beds. There was no time to plant, but if we got the beds completely ready we could at least jump into planting as soon as possible. You can see in the picture the beds are still wet. A few times Ben had to stop and scrape mud off the tires. Not ideal!

Unfortunately, actually planting is proving to be very difficult with ill timed rains continuing and gray skies keeping that moisture locked in. Yesterday we managed to plant two beds but it was not pretty and is damaging to the soil. This is definitely something we don’t like doing! Tomorrow is a partly sunny day and we’ll just hope we get enough sun in the morning to let us get back in there in the afternoon as Thursday brings another round of heavy rain!

RECIPES

Beef Stew with Root Vegetables (Vegetarian Version)

Lemony Spinach Rice

Butternut and Cauliflower Curry

Kohlrabi and Fennel Slaw with Blue Cheese and Walnuts

Coming Up Next Week (our best guess….) Japanese sweet potatoes, Rutabaga, Spinach, Head Lettuce, Carrots, Broccoli, Potatoes, Butternut Squash, Red onions

This Week’s Harvest

• Napa Cabbage
• Beets with green tops
• Radishes
• Arugula
• Salad Mix
• Green Tomatoes
• Cilantro
• Potatoes
• Sweet Potatoes
• Peppers (mix of bell and sweet Italian) last of the season!
• Cauliflower

Farm News

After another big push this week, it might just be that we are turning the corner to calmer days and dinners at a proper dinner time! On Friday we prepared ourselves for the killing frost. We have a large piece of row cover that can cover 7 beds so we dragged it across the farm and covered our salad mix, head lettuce, spinach and cilantro beds. These are the most tender crops we have left in the fields and a light frost is something they can handle, but a hard freeze can damage them. The wind was really roaring but we needed to cover the beds when we still had employees to help us. We wrestled with the wind and got the row cover to stay in the general right area. Then when it was dark and the wind died down, I went back out and made sure the cover was over all the beds.

We also harvested our remaining summer crops. We picked all the sweet peppers with color and any decent sized bell pepper for the CSA shares. We cleaned out the roma tomatoes and harvested green tomatoes, also for the CSA share. These green tomatoes are so big and beautiful because they came off a brand new planting. Farmer “oops” as we admit that we planted our third and final tomato planting too late. Perhaps in a warmer fall they would have ripened for us, but we won’t be taking any chances and have adjusted the seeding chart for next year!

We worked over the weekend too, washing a large sweet potato order and planting winter rye cover crop ahead of the rain. After the oat cover crop failure, we are glad that it did end up raining and the rye should come up great! Ben also started getting the beds that we will be planting garlic in ready. We’ll aim to plant garlic at the end of October. They are going in beds that housed summer squash this year. Earlier in the week, we pulled out the plastic mulch that the squash grew on. On Sunday Ben had to chisel plow the field and re-hill new beds. We still have to shape and till the beds, but we don’t generally like doing this step before a heavy rain. The stage we got the beds to on Sunday is what we were hoping to accomplish. Can’t wait to update you on the garlic– especially since we didn’t have any this year!!

Recipes

Fried Green Tomatoes with Cilantro Avocado Sauce

Thai Crunch Salad with Peanut Dressing

Roasted Beet, Cauliflower and Farro Salad

Coming Up Next Week (our best guess…) Broccoli, Napa Cabbage, Carrots, Turnips, Braising Mix, Potatoes, Onions, Parsley, Fennel, Kohlrabi!

This Week’s Harvest

• Sweet Potatoes
• Bok Choi
• Caraflex Cabbage
• Cilantro
• Beets with Greens
• Red Round Radishes
• Cippolini Onions (grown by Shared Legacy Farms)
• Arugula
• Tomatoes
• Sweet Italian Peppers

Farm News

The major tasks of harvesting sweet potatoes and regular potatoes can be checked off the to do list! These two crops made up 50 beds and any spare time over the last 4 weeks was spent harvesting them. We had some equipment malfunctions, some cold weather scares, and the super dry soil made for less than ideal harvesting conditions, but we got it done! And we have bulk bins full of produce that we will use in the final CSA boxes, the extended CSA season and for our co-op as well.

This week we will focus on cleaning up the fields–taking down tomato stakes and twine, pulling up the plastic from the plasticulture beds, cleaning up drip tape and row cover. Then next week it is back to bulk harvesting with carrots, beets, winter radishes, turnips and rutabagas. Grateful for last night’s rain to help size up these final crops of the year.

Employee Spotlight: Nate

This year we were pleased to have Nate join us for a second season. While we didn’t get to know Nate until last year, he has been familiar with our vegetables long before that. His parents joined our CSA the very first year we offered it! The sungold cherry tomatoes in particular left an impression on Nate. This year Nate got to delve into tractor work. He was the main driver for planting days and harvesting done with the conveyor. He also cultivated, mowed, dropped fertilizer, lifted plastic and more! Nate also comes to us with welding experience and we have taken advantage of that skill set!

In addition to the hard work put in all week, Nate went above and beyond and helped us harvest summer squash on Sundays. He enlisted his partner’s help and so during squash season, Nate and Cheri volunteered (!) their Sunday mornings to help us harvest hundreds of pounds of squash! We were SO grateful and can’t really imagine how exhausted we would be if we had had to harvest solo over the weekends.

Nate served our county as a US Army combat engineer veteran. More recently he has been on trail maintenance crews for our National Parks and closer to home worked as a welder. Nate also does custom wood, metal and knife working and you can find his work following The Black Squirrel Workshop on instagram. He made us an awesome sign for the farm which we are very much looking forward to getting hung up soon! We are grateful that Nate’s love of the outdoors and interest in homesteading as landed him at Mile Creek!

Recipes

• Arugula and Caramelized Onion Burger
• Coconut Bok Choy Soup
• Roasted Beet and Sweet Potato arugula salad
• Cumin Cabbage Slaw

Coming Up Next Week (our best guess…) beets, sweet potatoes, radishes, napa cabbage, cilantro, carrots, turnips, sweet onions, arugula, potatoes!

This Week’s Harvest

Bok Choi
Salad Mix
Red Onions
Purple Kohlrabi
Hakurei Salad Turnips
Honeynut Winter Squash
Fennel
Cauliflower
Red Bell Peppers
Purple Potatoes
Tomatoes
Jalapeno Pepper

Farm News

We woke up this morning to the coldest morning yet of the fall. Our thermometer read 34.7 degrees which was cold enough to foster the growth of frost in low lying areas around the farm. Fortunately it did not stay cold enough for long enough to kill any of the summer loving crops. At the same time the numerous cold nights that we have had have slowed down summer crops and all but assured that tomato and pepper season is coming to an end.

Given our harvest list for today that was fine. In addition to fall CSA crops such as cauliflower and salad turnips we had a large order of greens bunches to complete for our coop. These extended harvests of a single crop offer a welcome opportunity to complete a task while partaking of some engaging conversation with our thoughtful employees.

This morning our conversation started with an article that I had been reading about the election of 1920. Thinking about this time period is interesting for me because my grandmother was born in 1917. She lost her father, my great-grandfather, to the pandemic of 1918. She would often remark on this fact mainly because it meant that she had to grow up an only child which was a definite disappointment for her! Additionally it meant that she was raised by her grandmother. This fact was notable because her grandmother still spoke German fluently, but much to my grandmother’s disappointment she refused to pass on this linguistic knowledge because of the political climate of post World War I America.

As we all shared similar recollections of our family history the time passed quickly and we were done with our order in no time. In reality this happened none too soon because after my harvest requirements were met I had to address a mechanical issue with our delivery vehicle. The solitary work of diagnosis and repair was much different from the lively conversation that my morning task provided, but it did provide the perfect opportunity to further reflect on some of the stories and ideas that we all discussed this morning.

Just as the cold temperatures are a reminder that the season is coming to an end so is the rhythm of today’s tasks. For fall farm work is a mixture of harvest with just enough maintenance to get the farm through to the winter when everything can be properly fixed and prepared for the next season. Not surprisingly I know what I will be harvesting tomorrow morning (cabbage and kale for our coop) and what mechanical failure I will be addressing tomorrow afternoon (the John Deere key switch)!

Recipes

Stir Fry Beef with Bok Choi and Turnips

Crispy Potatoes with Red Pepper Sauce (roast your kohlrabi and/or salad turnips with this dish as well!)

Roasted Fennel, Apple and Butternut Squash

Coming Up Next Week (our best guess….) cilantro, bok choi, sweet potatoes, beets, cabbage, arugula, sweet Italian peppers, and more!