News from Terra Firma Farm

Greetings!
There are alot of elements that go into producing a high quality CSA box, year round. And here at Terra Firma, we hope to one day find out what they are (pause for laughter). All kidding aside, though, while we will never be able to avoid having individual subscribers receive a smashed tomato or an overripe peach, we put a tremendous amount of consideration into making our CSA the best available.
Be the Subscriber. With over 50 combined years of experience in growing and selling produce to customers both at farmers' markets and in our CSA, we have a pretty good idea what people want to eat. We have reinforced that knowledge by surveying CSA subscribers several times, and the results are amazingly consistent. Given the large seasonal variance, people want a good mixture of salad/raw vegetables, cooking vegetables, "starches", onions/garlic, and fruit. You don't want exactly the same items every week. You don't want to be overloaded with one type of produce (with a very few exceptions), pretty much ever. Some items are more popular than others.
Know how to grow it. We are amazingly lucky to farm in area that can produce so many different crops over 12 months. But it's not just luck. Over 20 years, we have learned from trial and error how to fit all our crops into their temporal slots, like toys in an advent calendar. Planting a crop at the wrong time of year (too early, too late) is missing an opportunity to grow something else. It's a safe assumption that the weather is going to ruin at least 5% of your crops anyway; you can't afford preventable mistakes.
Plan Constantly. In agriculture, it's impossible to play catch up. You need to have a solid plan for what, when, where, and how much you are going to plant of each crop.    We have a very good outline for our CSA boxes for each week of the year, and we use that outline to determine what gets planted 3,4,6 or 9 months before the box gets packed. In the case of the orchards we have planted, we are making decisions 3 years or more in advance of the harvest.
Have a Backup, or three: What happens if we plant ten items for the CSA box the week of May 15th, and one of them suffers a crop failure from heat, rain, or cold. We need to have another item. That's why, whenever possible, we grow more crops than we need. In the best scenario, it enables us to mix up items from week to week to keep the boxes interesting. This is also the reason why we grow more acreage of each item than the minimum we need to fill your boxes; loss is always a possibility. We maintain other customers (stores, restaurants) so we can sell the extra produce if we have it.
As far as we're concerned at Terra Firma, we're not competing with other CSA farms. I believe that the more people that have a positive experience as a CSA subscriber, of any farm, the more popular it will become to join one. So it disturbs me when someone who hasn't tried our CSA tells me how they got a box of mostly radishes or mustard greens from the farm they tried once.   Or how a "Farm Fresh" box of "locally grown produce" from the "family farm" whose CSA they tried featured mangoes and raspberries in the middle of winter. We would never pack a CSA box at Terra Firma that we wouldn't take home and expect our own families to eat, and we would never use our relationship with our customers to just to sell a bunch of imported produce. We have grown our business slowly over the years by growing food specificially for our CSA subscribers, and then signing up the friends and family they recommend us to -- and then doing it all over again.   Because in the end, the single most important factor for any CSA farm is the subscribers who make the commitment to supporting it -- the "community" in Community Supported Agriculture: you.
              Thanks for subscribing,

Pablito

Another Fruit of Fall

Like Charlie Brown's sad little Christmas tree, Fuyu Persimmons tend to lose most of their leaves before their fruit ripens. But first, the leaves turn a stunning reddish gold that makes me pine for real East Coast fall.

Fuyus are the "crunchy when ripe" type of persimmons, and they are never bitter or mouth-puckering. They have a tough skin that can be peeled off if desired, and an edible core.
They are unlike most other fruits in another way: Their ripening is triggered not by a certain number of warm days, but rather by a succession of cold nights. For this reason, Fuyus should not be refrigerated, as it will cause them to become overripe.

Up from Below

A few weeks back, we harvested our 2010 crop of Sweet Potatoes. Like many of our crops this year, they were late in maturing -- almost three weeks behind schedule. All through September we had been concerned that they might not size up in time: it's important to get the roots out of the ground before the rainy season sets in, because getting them out of the ground is impossible if the soil is too wet. You can see why in this video I took last year during harvest. It's also important to get two weeks or so of warm weather after harvest to cure the skins and sweeten them up.
On this one crop, this year's weather helped us out. While it did start raining before harvest, the October heatwave came after, and the sweet potatoes cured nicely. The roots are a little smaller than they were last year -- in other words, probably just about right for most subscribers.
We only grow one variety of Sweet Potatoes, the orange fleshed Dianne. It's a good, all-purpose type that seems to grows much better on our farm than any of the others. It's not easy for us to get the plants (called "slips") each year, and we don't grow all that many. Planting more than one type would complicate the process.
Storage and Care:
We don't wash our Sweet Potatoes before we send them to you, because we don't have the equipment to dry them properly and they rot very quickly if left wet. You can wash them when you get them home, as long as you towel-dry them before storing. Keep sweet potatoes at room temperature: refrigerated air will quickly turn them to mush.

Sesame Roasted Carrots and Sweet Potatoes
-This is my favorite treatment for sweet potatoes, and one that I have included in the newsletter at least once before. It's based on a Deborah Madison recipe from "Local Flavors", and contrasts the sweetness of the vegetable with a salty, garlicky glaze. Carrots are a natural addition.
Preheat the oven to 400.
Wash 2 lbs. sweet potatoes and cut into large cubes.
Wash 1 bunch of carrots and remove the tops. Cut into rounds.
In a bowl, combine 1 T. toasted sesame oil, 1 T. brown sugar, 2 T. sherry or red wine, 3 T. soy sauce, 1/4 C. water, and 1 T. minced garlic.
Place the vegetables in a baking dish and spread them evenly. Pour the sauce over them, then cover with foil and bake for half an hour.
Remove the foil and brush or baste the vegetables with the liquid in the dish. Return to the oven and bake until the liquid has become thick and the vegetables are full tender.
Sprinkle with 1 T. toasted sesame seeds and serve.

Bonus Recipe Link: Cabbage
-If you still have that head of cabbage in your fridge and need more recipe ideas, here's another New York Times collection of interesting recipes all featuring that one vegetable.