Week #12 Saturday, Aug 28 – Tuesday, Aug 31, 2010Downloadable Word .doc for printing

In your bag
Onions, Garlic*
Eggplant, Melons*, Carrots
Zucchini and/or Summer Squash
Peppers
Tomatoes (some combination of slicers and/or cherries and/or Romas)
Kale(Lacinato or Winterbor)
Herb Bunch
*The garlic is dry now and no longer needs to be kept in your refrigerator.
*Melons are picked fully ripe (at full slip) and should be eaten right away or stored in your refrigerator.

This Week's Recipies
Creamy, Garlicky Tomato Gazpacho With Crunchy Pecorino

Coming Soon
This is the last of the zucchini/summer squash.
Roma tomatoes are ripening now in the field just as the cherry and slicers in the hoop houses are winding down. This is good! We’ll probably have some potatoes for you next week and some Swiss chard.

Fall Work Day
Spring Hill’s Annual Fall Work Day is Sunday afternoon, September 19th!
Mark your calendars and we’ll get you the details soon!

Farm News
At last I think we’ll have a full week with no rain! It’s the first in a long time. We’ve actually been able to get some field work done this past week. Early crops have now been mowed down and tilled under and it looks like we’ll actually get some cover crops in. This is some of the work that’s been difficult to do this year with all the rain. It is good to get on with it!

Our summer work crew has retired for the year. Several went off to college, including our son David who is now down in Madison. Next week we’ll be joined by Katie’s fiancé, Ben Anderson for the month of September. He joined us last fall and we are so very thankful to have him around once again.

As fall eases its way in, a number of the summer crops are easing their way out. We’re done with cucumbers, green beans and this week will be the last of the zucchini, I think. The winter squash looks amazing and we’ve got some broccoli that’s starting to form heads. The gardens will continue to produce!

A couple of comments after last week’s newsletter
“I agree with you about not buying in produce. This is an agricultural marriage: for better or worse. … folks want to be in touch with the land, and that includes the risks. Now if for some reason a neighboring farm wants to TRADE with you--they have tomatoes and you don't; you have raspberries and they don't--I could see that fitting into the definition of COMMUNITY. But if the farmer spends more money to add to the share, no.” Kate Kysar

“I liked the piece in the newsletter about how to deal with lean years. I think buying from other farmers when Spring Hill crops are lean undermines the concept of CSA. We need to feel the pinch too when times are tough, not just you. I would suspect all members supplement their food supply from the local grocery store so I doubt that anyone would go hungry long enough to do any real harm if our bags were less full. The reminder that ample food supply is not a given in this world (even though we make it appear to be) is valuable. We in the first world try to make access to an always abundant food supply a right but is it really sustainable and at what cost to the planet?” Joe Knaeble

And this piece written by Marian Wright some time ago:
Summer of Hail and Drought
That was the summer that we learned what it meant to not only reap the bounty, but to share in the risks of the farm. "The spinach crop will be scant this year (one of my favorite vegetables), not so many peas as usual. The bags seem a little lighter."
But isn't this the way we begin to understand the words community supported agriculture? The word community means people who have come together around a common purpose and grow in an understanding of each other, the land and our responsibilities toward them. I think that year Patty and Mike really learned that the words used to describe their community supported farm had been understood and embraced by all those members that had become that summer a real communit

Next Week’s Harvesters
Saturday, September 4th – Cindy & Max Harper, Carie Essig, Kate Kysar/Scott Velders, Friedman family, NEED ONE!
Tuesday, September 7th - Claudine Arndt/Mike McCloskey, Hermann Weinlick, Susan Davis, Carrie Pomeroy, Joe Knaeble, Kim Blue