| What's Growing This Week? | Sweet Potatoes
Onions
Mandarin Oranges
Pink Lady Apples*
Broccoli
Cabbage
Butternut Squash (M,L)
Carrots (M,L)
Spinach (M,L)
Tokyo Turnips (M,L)
Cauliflower(M,L)
Items are subject to substitution without notice.
* Apples are from our neighbors at Coco Ranch and are CCOF certified organic.
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Get more Mandarins
You can still add a 5 lb. box of Satsuma Mandarins to your order on any given week for $8. Log in to your account at least 48 hours prior to your delivery and go to the Web store.
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Contact Us:
| terrafirmafarm.com
csa@terrafirmafarm.com
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CSA Rates 2010
| Boxes are charged on
Monday for the week's deliveries at:
$14 Small
$24 Medium
$32 Large
For a payment of $300, get a
3%
bonus. Your account balance will be $309.
For a payment of$850, get
a 5% bonus. Your account will be posted as $892.00
For a payment of $1,400,
get a 7% bonus. Your payment will be posted as $1,498.
Vacations are charged weekly when notice is given as a fee, no charges occur during the vacation week.
$4 Small
$8 Medium
$11 Large
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Payments, Billing, and Changes
| Schedule vacations, change box sizes, make payments or sign up for autopay by logging in to your subscriber account at terrafirmafarm.com
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News From Terra Firma Farm
Community Supported Agriculture
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Greetings!
If you're opening this email and wondering why it has arrived on Tuesday, now might be a good time to remember that Thursday and Friday subscribers need to go pick up their boxes today, Tuesday, November 23.
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Giving -- and Receiving -- Thanks
Across the U.S. on Thursday afternoon, tens of millions of people will express their thanks for the wonderful food on their tables. Sadly, most of the farmers and farmworkers who grew the food won't get to hear that appreciation. Our food system has so completely alienated eaters from farmers that most people have no idea where their food comes from. And most producers will never feel the pride that comes from hearing a customer say "thanks for growing such awesome food for my family". I think everyone is worse off for this.
We don't have that problem at Terra Firma, where every week we get wonderful thanks from our subscribers, as well as getting an opportunity to share the joys and disappointments of farm life with them. In the spirit of the harvest holiday, I want to share with you today an email that I got from a very long-time subscriber to TFF:
"I was reflecting upon our relationship with TFF this fall as my oldest has started filling out her college applications (!). I was interested to read one of her essays--on the impact, for her, of growing up in an "environmental" family. Although naturally our lives are shaped around alternative energy, recycling, eating sustainably, etc., we don't really discuss our lifestyle among ourselves--just as most people don't discuss the choices that they make when they get fast food for dinner, drive SUV's, and so on. I was surprised to read that my daughter doesn't, after all, take these choices for granted.
My daughter was 18 months old and I was pregnant with my 2nd child when we first started subscribing to TFF. Given that she was a wee thing then, she doesn't have any memory of not having TFF in her life. Her nearly life-long experience with TFF forms part of her college essay--her relationship to our TFF boxes, our house as a drop site and her love of local organic produce. For our kids, plus for all of the kids who grow up eating the produce of TFF and CSA's around the country, their relationship to their food, what they expect to eat and how they want to live are profoundly different from those who have access only to supermarkets & fast food. My daughter connected her relationship to local food to the environment and society in the larger sense--it wasn't simply about indulging her palate, but about making choices for herself and society based upon what is important and sustainable for all. It was about the connection to others, to the land, to politics and to the future that begins as a simple choice on how to obtain one's daily produce.
It was really moving to me to see that my daughter finds her relationship with local food to be an important part of her conscious identity. It is an ancient and yet thoroughly revolutionary concept in our agri-business world to have an intimate connection with that which sustains us. I hope that she, her siblings and her CSA-raised peers will carry this consciousness with them as they become engaged adults. By nourishing a generation of TFF children with your revolutionary produce, you are nourishing a generation with hearts for positive revolution. Well done!"
At the end of a long, hard year of farming -- with a hard freeze forecast for Thanksgiving morning -- hearing stories like this is what helps me stay positive about the future. As always, it has been an honor and a pleasure for us to feed our subscribers for another season while doing our best to care for the land and provide for our employees, who do most of the work. Thank you all very much for giving us the opportunity.
Pablito
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Holiday Gift Baskets
This year we are once again offering our subscribers beautiful and tasty gift baskets of TFF fruits and nuts, shipped directly from the farm to your friends and family anywhere in the U.S. The baskets will contain Satsuma Mandarins, Pink Lady Apples, pistachios and walnuts. The baskets will be $28 shipped in California and $38 shipped out of state.
To order holiday baskets, log in to your account and click on "Web Store" in the upper right hand corner. Select "Holiday Gift Basket" and then be sure to fill out the address field and include any message for the recepient. You will have to do this multiple times to purchase multiple baskets.
Baskets will be shipped out on December 15th to ensure they arrive in time for the holidays. Orders must be in by Sunday, December 12th at midnight.
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About this weeks boxes...
We had several goals with your boxes this week:
1) To provide some important and popular ingredients for Thanksgiving dinners.
2) To squeeze three days worth of harvest and packing at the farm into two days.
3) To include plenty of items that were not extremely perishable, both because many subscribers would be getting their boxes early in the week and because others won't be doing much cooking at all this week.
In other words, we wanted to pack a box that would please you -- whether you're making a holiday dinner yourself, going to someone else's (and most likely bringing home leftovers), or completely ignoring the holiday -- without violating the laws of physics as they apply to the work schedule of our farm. We think we have achieved this goal and we hope you think so too.
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Dirty Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potatoes are a very specialized crop to grow; in California just a handful of farmers plant the majority of the total acreage grown in the state. They are a storage crop, planted in the spring and harvested in the fall, and stored the rest of the year. The perfect storage climate is warm and dry -- very different from most other vegetables. Moreover, sweet potatoes don't like moisture at all once they are harvested -- they rot quickly if even a small area of their skin gets wet.
Large sweet potato growers have special heated storage for their crop, and have cleaning equipment that uses soft brushes instead of water to remove dirt on them. We have neither of these, which is why our sweet potato season only lasts a few months after the crop is harvested. It is also why we send you the roots unwashed, in a plastic bag. The bag keeps moisture from other items in the box out, while also keeping the sweet potatoes from getting other items dirty. If you wash the sweet potatoes when you get them home, make sure to carefully dry them with a towel and store in an aerated container outside the fridge.
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The Old Standard, or Something New?
As CSA subscribers, I hope you will all do your best to serve as ambassadors for fresh, local organic produce this Thanksgiving. In my opinion, the best way to win converts this time of year is a no-brainer: a simple pan of Roasted Vegetables. This technique has never failed me: even staunt veggie-denouncers will eat up sweet potatoes, winter squash, beets, turnips, potatoes and whatever else you roast as if they were candy. And you don't need to add any sugar, just some olive oil, salt, and pepper. Make sure that the veggies are in small enough pieces, and that the oven is hot enough (400+) so that the roasting process can bring out the natural sugar in the veggies. Want more flavor? Add fresh orange juice, onions or garlic. If you are dying to try something more complicated or unusual, take a look at this collection of vegetarian T-giving recipes in this week's New York Times, with new recipes added daily. There are appetizers, salads, main course and deserts. I am super excited at the Times' continued focus on seasonal produce lately, and I've been trying as many as possible. If you read the attached article, you'll find that much of the inspiration comes from chefs around the country who are truly excited at the possibilities that vegetables offer them -- as well as the growing demands of food enthusiasts for more good vegetarian recipes.
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