Broadsheet #18
what's in your share / what's in season
fruit 'Ruth's Red Perfect' tomato
root carrot mix
'Yellowstone' and 'Red-Cored Chantenay'
root 'Clearwater' sunchoke
herb parsley
herb thyme
herb lavender
herb rosemary
vegetable winter squash@
'Red Kuri' pumpkin
'Nutterbutter' squash
'Spaghetti' squash
'Reba' acorn squash
'Tahitian Melon' squash
'Jarrahdale' blue pumpkin
'Sugar Baby' pumpkin
'Kakai Hulless' pumpkin
seeds pumpkinseeds
greens 'Ragged Jack' red kale & 'Lacinato' dinosaur kale
@ Random rotation
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Use first Sunchokes, tomato
Best keepers Winter squash & pumpkins
Cool, dry, & dark places Winter squash & pumpkins
Quick Picks
Pumpkin pie Squash + butter, maple syrup, egg, organic sweetened condensed milk, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, ginger, brown sugar & pastry dough
Roast beef Carrots, sunchokes, tomato, parsley, thyme, lavender, rosemary + grass-fed beef, potatoes, onions
Meatloaf Parsley, thyme, lavender, rosemary + grass-fed ground beef, egg, crackers or breadcrumbs, black pepper, & ketchup
Mango-pumpkin ice cream Cooked pumpkin or squash + pureed mango, cream, egg yolks, sugar, grated ginger or crystallized ginger
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And with this week's share, the delivery season for Broadacre Farm's 2014 CSA is now at a close.
A few pragmatic things first: What should I do with my last share box? I will be reaching out to folks in the weeks following the CSA to make a one-day pickup of any wax boxes you would like taken away. Can I return my box in Menomonie? Boxes may also be returned at Menomonie Market Food Co-op - just mark it with the name “Joe”. Can I store the boxes over the winter? I wouldn't recommend it as the cardboard fiber and wax are flammable. This isn't an issue when the box is used in refrigeration. What's probably the best reuse? They are pretty convenient for hauling groceries, I hear. At the end of their life - are they recyclable or compostable? No, they should be included with other solid waste. Recyclers neither have a use for waxed cardboard nor do they have a way to refine it. I don't have any data to suggest they would compost as the wax makes the cardboard moisture- and microbe-resistant.
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This week, we have the season's last tomato - a Ruth's Red Perfect. We've grown them for three years now, loving their late-season ideal tomato qualities like a maroon interior deceptively darker than the skin and a rich, round tomato flavor. There are other tomatoes - storage varieties and the shelf-ripened rescues - but many fruits cross the line now and we prefer to think of happier days when each ripe tomato was perfect, trusses dripping off the vines, and summer seemed to stretch on forever.
Summer is over. Like in the spring, we again dig in the ground with our hands, this time because everything around has been consumed by cold, extinguished by frost, and our shovel was stolen, so no potatoes or groundnuts. The cold forces root crops to create sugars and hold them - a sweetening. The later in the season they're harvested, the sweeter carrots and sunchokes can get. We were thrilled with the yield and ease of harvest with our new sunchoke, Clearwater. The white skins are easy to see, lack the knobs and creases of wilder, red varieties, and we don't have to grow them in clay anymore. Washing was a snap as the alluvial silt drained away. Sunchokes match the fleeting season with fussy storability - exposed to air, they get pillowy and flat. Stored too wet, and mold will spring up from their sugars. Hope you enjoy these sunchokes, plumper than the last - try them sliced up raw, pickled, mashed or roasted.
The starchiness of the season, with root vegetables and squashes leading the charge, is a wonderful time to introduce aromatics to roasts, baking projects, and buttery root vegetables. Thyme, for it's ubiquity in European foods; rosemary for bridging the flavor race between breads and meats; and lavender as rosemary's doppelganger that adds a mysterious but delicious herbal exclamation point.
Burying the lede, so to speak, but of course this week is winter squash and pumpkin week extravaganza. The original plan was to mete them out one at a time over several weeks, but two things complicated this: Too many tomatoes to serve, and not enough of each squash variety to give each to everyone. We carefully budgeted a colorfully diverse mix of each variety that survived unscathed by the hordes of tiny striped beetles.
It's easy enough to Google Image Search cultivars, but here are some identifiers you'll notice handling them. Speaking of handling, don't use the stem as a handle - broken-stems can drastically reduce the shelf life.
'Red Kuri' pumpkin Flaming orange, a pointed bottom that makes it sit weird and spin like a top
'Nutterbutter' squash Miniature butternuts, with creamy light tan skin, a flat bottom, and bulbous ends
'Spaghetti' squash Shaped like a torpedo or a football, light yellow skin, with flesh that cooks into strands
'Reba' acorn squash Scalloped shape with a definite point, dark green skin and an orange-blush 'ripeness indicator'
'Tahitian Melon' squash Huge to giant, butternut shaped but slightly ribbed, and skin with pearly patina
'Hubbard's Green Improved' Teardrop-shaped and bright green, on the larger side
'Jarrahdale' blue pumpkin Distinct blue-grey skin, shiny like porcelain, deeply ribbed, & squatty or oblate
'Sugar Baby' pumpkin Classic small orange pumpkin
'Kakai Hulless' pumpkin Mostly orange pumpkin with a fading pattern of dark green webbing; dual purpose pumpkin chosen for flesh and dark-colored naked seeds that do not require shelling
Don't forget that with each squash you have the opportunity to harvest your own fresh pumpkinseeds. (We can't offer raw pumpkinseeds because it's a processing and 'cut raw food' step we aren't licensed to perform.) Pumpkinseeds have a similar nutrient profile compared to other oily seeds and nuts, and are tasty sprinkled on salads, rice dishes, or as an ingredient in herbal pestos as a substitute for pint nuts. (Why we substitute local ingredients for pint nuts until we can grow pines ourselves: Pint nuts are mostly imported from China and can be known to cause 'pine nut mouth', a real condition where the eater loses almost all sense of taste for weeks, and everything eaten tastes metallic like batteries until it gradually fades away.)\
Last on the menu is a return of greens, in the form of some really healthy kale, both 'Ragged Jack' (aka 'Red Russian) and 'Lacinato' (a dinosaur kale that also goes by the name 'Toscano di Nero', or Tuscan black.) Kale, like root crops, doesn't turn bitter or unpalatable at the end of the season, and instead sweetens to prevent it's cells from exploding ice crystals that can form in cold weather. The recent cold has helped immensely in producing this kale - the grasshoppers we've been battling are too lethargic to get to our tasty leaves.
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End of the Season Notes
First, a sincere and hearty roar of a 'thank you!' to all of our sharers, volunteers, local businesses, readers and eaters. It has been one of the most gratifying experiences of my life working each week to bring you fresh, natural food. It's important that you know that your support of Broadacre Farm by joining share-by-share to our CSA is what made 2014 possible. Rather than just a list of names and addresses, by following your kitchen adventures and meeting with you each week, by mid-summer I felt like I was with family.
There is still so much we want to share with you, including plans for next-year's CSA, projects we've already begun in preparation for spring, and new varieties already going in the ground. And while the CSA news won't really be ready for primetime until early 2015, I want to talk about meat.
The extreme focus on the qualities and quantities of our CSA shares did not allow us to dive into poultry-raising this year, and so we have had no eggs or chickens to offer. With investments in infrastructure, the plan is to begin pasturing birds in spring of 2015.
In the meantime, our collaborative neighbors at 3D Farm do have pastured lamb and grass-fed beef available, and I am working with 3D to bring these wonderful meats to our CSA sharers. Starting in November, I'll be arranging special sales of beef and lamb for delivery to Eau Claire and Menomonie, as well as a special pick-up in Hudson, Wisc for our Minnesota customers.
You want a sneak peek grab-bag of what next year might look like? Heritage breed chickens, pastured eggs, more onions and garlic, more brassicas and kohl crops, more root crops, microgreens, cultivated fungi, CSA kiosks with share box return, an early bird discount, and plans to relocate to a homebase at the farm that has running water and other modern wonders!
Thank you again for your support and your feedback - we'll be in touch later this year with more thank-you's and a survey, and early next year with the full details of Broadacre Farm's 2015 CSA. Chat us up anytime!
Broadacre Farm is
Barrett Johanneson, Joe Castleberg and Gemma
(home) 715-673-4122 (cell) 715-505-5380
barrettjohanneson@gmail.com
josephcast@gmail.com