News from Terra Firma Farm

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

Pledge of Authenticity

Terra Firma is a real farm. We grow 99% of the produce that goes into our boxes on our 220 acres of certified organic land in Winters. If we do buy produce from other farms, it's almost always from a neighboring farm and we give them full credit in the box list.
The owners of Terra Firma are involved in every aspect of making your boxes a reality: walking the fields, planting the crops, selecting and checking what goes in the boxes and finally delivering them to you. We eat the crops from our fields every day, just like you do. Thanks for supporting our efforts and enjoying the food we grow.
Paul, Pablito, & Hector

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

News From Terra Firma Farm

Community Supported Agriculture

Greetings!

We don't mess with Thanksgiving at Terra Firma. Sure, some of our more adventurous subscriber-chefs will probably experiment with less filling, carb-heavy versions of the traditional holiday meal. But since we grow so many of the standard seasonal vegetables featured in the fall harvest feast already -- spuds, "yams", "pumpkins" -- why not stick to the playbook?

As most of you know, TFF potatoes don't need to be slathered with sour cream or butter. Our sweet potatoes are actually offended by the presence of corn syrup and marshmallows. And our winter squash is sweet and creamy enough that you can cut the amount of sugar and fat in a standard pumpkin pie recipe in half when you're using it. This week is your opportunity to prove to family and friends that healthy food can still taste good, whether you're cooking the whole meal or just bringing a vegetable side dish.

Still, if you're one of those subscribers who isn't cooking part or all of a holiday meal and isn't leaving town, you may find this week's box to be a bit of a pile-on. "What!, I'm going to eat all this stuff at (Mom's, Dad's, Aunt Bettie's, etc.) on Thursday, why would I want to eat it again in the same week?".

Fact is, all of those root vegetables (and squash) keep quite well for weeks. That's why they are a traditional part of Thanksgiving -- for centuries they were available and abundant in late fall, long after fields in much of the continental U.S. were frozen solid. So if you can't, don't or won't eat them this week, you can store them at the appropriate temperature and pull them out again in a week or three.

As we do every year, next week we will assembly a "Thanksgiving Antidote" box for you, full of greens and light on starches along with a large dose of fruit.

From all of us at Terra Firma, we wish you all a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving and thank you for your support this year!

Thanks,

Pablito

Hey, It's Tuesday, why I am getting my TFF newsletter today?
Attn: Thursday (SF) and Friday (Davis, Sacto) subscribers. In case you may have forgotten, you need to go pick up your box today -- Tuesday -- at the normal time. Wednesday boxes will be delivered as normal.

Mandarins, Just in Time for Turkeyday
Satsuma Mandarins are normally a staple of our Thanksgiving week boxes, but it was a real nail-biter this year as to whether or not they would be ripe enough to pick. Out in the orchard this morning, only 1 in twenty oranges on the tree were ready. Luckily for us then that there's a bumper crop, with hundreds of fruits on each tree. So in spite of all the green mandarins out there we still managed to find a pound of fruit for all the boxes.
As usual at the start of the season, the mandarins are not at their peak sweetness yet, and you may still get fruit with a patch of green rind here and then. Still, we think they are better than none.

Bulk Mandarins: Beginning next week, you will have the option of receiving 5 lb. boxes of Mandarins along with your regular CSA box. If you are interested, you can go to your online TFF account and either 1) order one week at a time under "Orders", or 2) subscribe to get a weekly delivery for the duration of the season under "Change Subscriptions". Orders must be received three days in advance.

In Your Boxes
Swiss Chard at Terra Firma has had a rough fall, along with its close relative Beet greens. We had a horrendous attack of Beet Armyworms this year -- voracious caterpillars that eat during the night and hide in the soil during the day. They literally defoliate the plants, leaving mostly stems with a few patches of leaf. The beets and chard survived the attack, but it has taken a month for the plants to recover. The caterpillars are gone now that cold weather has arrived, but most of the leaves we are harvesting still have holes in them that occurred when they were tiny and have grown in size along with them. We hope you will accept these cosmetic defects, as they truly make no difference in the greens once they are chopped and cooked.
Chard is very similar to Spinach, to which it is also closely related, but it is almost always cooked. The stems are sweet and edible, with a texture similar to celery, but should be removed and cooked for 2-3 minutes separating before adding the leaves.

Parsnips have been waiting for Thanksgiving for a long time. Planted way back in May, they take all summer and most of fall to size up. The frost we have two weeks back sweetened them up nicely. They are closely related to carrots, but need to be cooked. Once they are, they have a dense, creamy texture with aromatic overtones.

Preparation and cooking Notes: Parsnips need to be peeled before cooking.They are nice combined in a vegetable roast with other roots: potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, etc., but they take much longer to cook. To facilitate the process, parboil them first until just tender. At this point, if you can't cut through them easily, you should remove the tough core at their center.

Recipe -- Roasted Vegetable Mole
You can throw folks for a loop by bringing this along to a T-giving potluck, or just make the sauce the next day and drizzle it over all your leftovers (vegetables and turkey) the Day After.
You can use any combination of the vegetables listed for the roast. If you start them first, they will be done at the same time as the sauce.
For the Sauce: Place 8 dried Ancho or Pasilla chiles in a large bowl and cover with 6 C. boiling water. Cover and soak for 1/2 hour.
Saute 1 diced onion in 1 T. olive oil. When it is soft, add 4 minced cloves of garlic and cook until lightly browned. Deglaze the pan with 1/2 C. chile broth.
Remove the chiles from the broth (reserving it) and then pull out the stems and seeds.
Pour the onions/garlic/chile broth into a blender or food processor with the chiles, 1 canned tomato, 2 toasted pieces of bread (crumbled), 1 t. dried oregano, a pinch of cloves, 1/4 t. each black pepper and cinnamon, 1 T. sugar, 1 t. salt, 1 T. cocoa powder, 1/4 C. fresh squeezed orange juice, the zest from one mandarin, and 1/2 C. of the chile broth. Puree until smooth.
Pour the mole into a saucepan and simmer for 30 minutes. The sauce thicken and get darker in color.
For the Vegetables: Cut Delicata squash in half and scoop out the seeds, then slice in thin half rounds. Dice sweet potatoes, potatoes, and/or turnips. Slice carrots in thin rounds or slice in half lengthwise. Peel parsnips and parboil until just tender, then slice in half and pull out the core. Chop.
Toss the vegetables with 3 T. olive oil and salt generously. Arrange in single layers (Important!) on baking sheets. Bake until nicely caramelized.
Serve the vegetables with the sauce drizzled over them or alongside.