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 Strawberries still available!

You can get half flats (6 baskets) of ripe strawberries for $12 delivered along with your CSA box. Simply go into your account and choose either a weekly subscription or a single purchase.

Ruby Red Grapefruit is also available this way: 10 lb. boxes available for $12.

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!

A few months ago I promised you that we would be making improvements to the Terra Firma website to make it a better resource for subscribers and I am happy to announce that the revamped site will go live this week -- and it may have already by the time you are reading this.

There are two big changes. First, an excerpt from the most recent newsletter and recipe will be posted each week on the home page with a link to the full documents. So if you accidentally delete the Constant Contact email newsletter, or you get it on your home computer but want to read it at work (or vice versa), or a virtual dog eats the email before you see it...you can go to the TFF site and it will be right there to read and enjoy. That said, the entire newsletter will not be reproduced on the site -- just the main article (and any related photos) and the recipe. For example, the box contents list will not be there. For this reason, we will continue to send the email newsletter to all subscribers every week.

The second big change will be that our website is now almost completely searchable. Any content that is contained within the site, including newsletters starting from January 1st of this year, will be included in the search. Over time, we hope to upload all the newsletters archived at Constant Contact, but right now they will not be included in the search results. And all our old archived newsletters prior to the switch to Constant Contact will still be available and searchable as they always have been. In particular, dozens of subscribers have requested that they be able to search for a recipe they remember from last month or last year.

And to end on a more interesting note, here's a sneak preview of summer, coming to drop site near you soon...

: The first few ripe cherry tomatoes and a watermelon sizing up

Thanks,

Pablito

In Your Boxes

This is most likely the final week of Pea season at Terra Firma, and everyone gets one last bag of sweet 'n crunchy Snap Peas. Peas don't like hot weather at all, so we don't even plan on harvesting them much after Memorial Day. Beginning next week, their spot in your boxes will be filled instead by their leguminous summer cousin: Green Beans. Bean season at TFF is much longer than pea season and you can count on seeing them in your boxes regularly through the middle of October and possibly longer.

We are now about halfway through our once-a-year harvest of bulb Garlic (as opposed to green). We dig the garlic plants before they dry out completely and then carefully stack them in ventilated bins in the barn to cure. Once they are fully dried and cured, the garlic usually stores until New Years. We had a disastrous garlic harvest last year, as spring rains spread disease through the field and continued into harvest. Cool and moist conditions afterwards caused a large percentage of the crop to rot without curing. Conditions this year are much closer to ideal.

It's been several weeks since we've sent you any garlic, so this week you get a head or two that is partially cured. Leave it in a well-ventilated spot at room temperature and it will continue to cure -- or eat it all before it does. There will be plenty more where it came from.

Recipe -- Zucchini-Garlic Spaghetti
This is a super easy and quick recipe that will highlight the juicy and mild flavor of the garlic in your boxes today. Mushrooms give a nice texture contrast to the squash and cilantro puts a little different spin on it.

Boil salted water and cook 3/4 lb. spaghetti until just tender. Drain and rinse with cold water to stop cooking.

Peel 3 large cloves of garlic and then slice thinly.

Wash and slice 12 oz. baby portabello or other specialty mushroom. Cut the slices in 2 inch pieces.

Use the larger holes on a cheese grater or a food mill, shred the 3-4 trimmed zucchini in long strands. Place in a colander and squeeze out as much liquid as possible. Salt.

Heat 3 T. olive oil in a pan with a dash of hot pepper flakes. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute, then add the mushrooms and continue sauteing.

Add the squash to the pan and cook for just 1-2 minutes, enough to coat it with oil but not make it mushy. Put the drained pasta in the pan and stir a few times with the heat on. Turn off the heat.

Wash 1 bunch of cilanto and cut off the roots and lower stems. Chop the cilantro and toss with the other ingredients and the pasta while still hot. Add your favorite grated cheese to taste and season with salt.