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

Bulk Mandarins

Get 5 lb. boxes of Mandarins along with your regular CSA box. 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.

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!

I'm sure most of you have read about Google's driverless car, a Toyota Prius filled with software and sensors that has already been tested on streets around the South Bay. Well, beginning next year, the same technology will be applied to tractors used to plant and harvest wheat and corn in the vast fields of the plains states.

Big farms around the country have been using advanced GPS systems for years to improve their efficiency and reduce operator error. Agricultural GPS is far more powerful than the consumer version, accurate down to 2 centimeters. The new automated tractors simply make the final leap by eliminating the driver entirely, using a computer to control the machine and optical sensors to avoid obstacles.

Meanwhile, in vegetable fields and most fruit orchards, automation remains a distant dream. In trying to create robots that can harvest fresh produce, university researchers have mostly only succeeded at quantifying exactly how many different complex processes are involved. When harvesting fresh produce, unlike grain, you have to avoid killing the plant. And it turns out that trained humans are still better and faster at distinguishing between a partially ripe apple and a fully ripe one. A robot tractor only has to drive back and forth in straight lines, turn at the end of a field, and not run people over.

Then there is the cost. Spending $100,000 on a computerized system for a $200,000 tractor that plants thousands of acres a week might pencil out. The math is totally different with fresh produce, where you would need thousands of robots to harvest the same amount of land -- hundreds of millions of dollars worth of robots. Moreover, a human can do other tasks when needed. Robot technology is not even close to achieving the goal of autonomous multitasking.

IN THE meantime, while outsourcing of U.S. manufacturing and service sector jobs has accelerated, the trend has slowed for agriculture. Ten years ago it was widely agreed that most of the fresh produce consumed in the U.S. would be coming from abroad. But many developing countries have seen wage inflation erode much of their cost advantage. China in particular is exporting very little produce, the result of both higher domestic demand and a severe farm labor shortage due to workers leaving the fields for factories.

Farmers across the U.S. this year saw a shortage of farm labor for a different reason -- immigration crackdowns. And yet despite the high unemployment rate, U.S. citizens have not flocked to fill the available jobs. What would have to happen to get Americans working on farms again? Higher wages, even more extensive unemployment? One thing is certain: there might be driverless tractors planting the cornfields of Iowa next year, but won't be armies of robot pickers picking strawberries in California any time soon.

Thanks,

Pablito

Holiday Gift Baskets
Well the clock is ticking down to the end of 2011, and it's that time again...time to order your Terra Firma holiday gift baskets. That's right, this is the one time of the year that you can share the Northern California organic love directly with your produce-starved relatives in places like Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Orange County. The baskets this year will have pistachios, walnuts, Satsuma Mandarins, and Asian Pears. Baskets are $29 to locations in California and $39 shipped out of state (shipping included).
To order a gift basket, simply head over to your online TFF account and go to the Web Store, then select "Holiday Gift Basket". In the "comments" section, enter the name and address of the recipient, as well as any short message for them. If you are ordering multiple baskets, you must place a separate order for each.
In order to guarantee that everyone gets their basket on time, we need to ship them out on time -- remember, we a farm, not Amazon.com. All orders for gift baskets must be placed by midnight on December 11th. Late orders will not be accepted!

In Your Boxes
Watermelon Radish are large round "daikon" from China. Like their namesake, they are greenish white on the outside and pink to red inside. They are mild and crisp, and are beautiful when thinly sliced in rounds. The skin is slightly tough, and you may want to peel it before slicing. Like most radishes, these are best eaten raw in a salad or quick pickled in vinegar, but they can also be briefly sauteed.

As is often the case, the external color of our Mandarins is lagging behind their internal flavor: the peels are still partially green despite their sweetness. Cold nights are what color their skins, and despite having a few nights of frost in early November, it's been quite warm ever since -- especially at night

Winter Squash: Convenience Food!
That's right. What could be easier than winter squash -- you just throw it in the oven and bake it for 40 minutes, and it's ready. "But wait", you say, "I need something faster when I get home from work and have to make dinner". Here's the trick: bake the squash the night before. (You can even do it at the same time you're using the oven for something else, like that frozen pizza.) Once it's cooked, it can easily be stuffed into a plastic container and stored in the fridge for later. Pull it out and throw into a broth with some quick cooked greens (see recipes below), and you've got a filling and healthy soup in less than half an hour. Top it with grated cheese and stick it in the toaster oven for 5 minutes, and you've got a side dish. Or just eat it plain with a spoon if you need a snack, maybe mashed with a few scoops of yogurt. And I won't even get into the dessert possibilities...

Recipe -- Quick Acorn Squash Soups with Greens
These recipes use pre-cooked squash, as discussed above. If you want to get creative, leave a little squash in the shell of each half and then use them as the "bowls" for the soup. These recipes will use most of 2 acorn squash and serve 4; half the recipe for just one squash.
Southeast Asian Style with Spinach:
Saute 1 thinly sliced onion in 1 T. canola oil. When it softens, add 1 T. each turmeric powder and minced fresh ginger, and a dash of hot pepper flakes. When the onions begin to brown, add 1 C. water and 12 oz. Thai coconut milk.
Puree 1 C. of squash, seeds and strings removed, with 2 C. water and add to the soup. Simmer for 10-15 minutes.
Season with fish sauce (or soy sauce) and lime juice.
Wash spinach leaves and place a handful in the bottom of each bowl (or squash shell) and pour the soup over.

With Bacon and Kale

Wash 1 bunch of kale and remove the stems. Chop the leaves.
Fry 4 pieces of bacon in a pan until crisp. Remove the bacon and blot on a paper towel.
Mince 2 cloves of garlic and saute in the bacon fat until tender, then add the kale and raise the heat. Fry the kale until it is soft and beginning to brown. Add 1 C. water, stir to deglaze, and then transfer everything to a pot.
Puree 4 C. squash, seeds and strings removed, with 2 C. water. Add to the pot and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with crumbled bacon.