Well everybody, we are in the home stretch, as they say. There will only be one box left after this one, so please bring any boxes you’ve been hoarding back to your drop site next week.
Back by popular demand this week is garlic! There has been no other single crop that has been requested so much this year as this little bulbous treat.
Most everything is out of the field now save some root vegetables and broccoli plantings that, sadly, aren’t quite going to make it in time for the last box. If anyone would like a halloween box of 75 heads of broccoli let me know.
The rest of the job is now taking down trellacing, rolling up row cover fabric, pulling out irrigation lines, tilling the fields under, packing away everything for the next season and sleeping a lot.
My apologizes to anyone last Thursday whose box was late for pick up. The truck we use for harvest and delivery broke down two hours into harvest that morning. Luckily there are more vehicles than people on the farm right now, and the family whom we rent from graciously lent us their station wagon to make the deliveries, and Heather has let me swap residential vehicles (my Toyota Tercel for her Honda Element) to get work and deliveries done while I’m fixing the truck. If there are any mechanics who want to do an auto work for vegetable trade next year let me know.
In the box this week:
Mixed Lettuce Winter Squash (butternut, hokkaido stella blue chersunskaya cross, carnival, delicatta, or sweet dumpling) Sweet Potato Onions Rutabaga (full shares) Carrots Garlic Parsley or CilantroSweet potato is a new item to the farm this year. Some of them were pretty rough looking coming out of the ground and a few got stabbed by the pitch fork that dug them out, but no worries, still delicious! The beautiful vining plants were a lovely addition to the garden with their morning glory style flowers and their creeping ground cover habbit. I look forward to planting them again next year and trying various varieties.
Many of you are probably looking for other things to do with your winter squash besides roasting it or cutting it up or sauteing. One of my favorites (which can also be done with the Sweet Potatoes) is making it into gnocchi. Gnocchi is dumpling like but eaten like pasta. Often made with potatoes, squash or sweet potato add extra color and sweetness to this satisfying, hearty dish.
At its heart, gnocchi is a dough made with flour, egg and a starch–squash in our case. The dough is rolled out in “ropes” and cut into 1/2 to 1 inch pieces that are boiled in water until they float. I think this recipe is a little over the top with the chilling of the dough and the boil time (I don’t chill the dough and I take the gnocchi out of the boiling water as soon as they rise to the top–which I’ll admit I’m a little more mystified/excited when this happens than I probably should be), but its a great place to start. The potato in the recipe is also not necessary for it to work or could be replaced with sweet potato. Also, sage will be coming next week if you want to wait to do it with sage–which is a beautiful compliment.
Enjoy!
sleepy root farm 