| What's Growing This Week: | |
Tomatoes
Onions
Sweet Corn
Melon
Cucumbers
Peaches (S,M)
Padron/Shishito Peppers (M)
Summer Squash (M,L)
Watermelon (M,L)
Carrots (L)
Pluots (L)
Grapes (L)
Red Grapefruit (L)
Items may be substituted without notice.
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Contact Us:
| terrafirmafarm.com
csa@terrafirmafarm.com
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| CSA Rates 2011 | 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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Bulk Items
Now available, 10 lb. boxes of ripe tomatoes ready for saucing, jarring or canning. $15 each delivered to your drop site. You can buy boxes one at a time, or subscribe and a get a box every week. Go to your account page to sign up.
We also have a limited amount of peaches available. These are not first quality, but may be slightly bruised -- perfect for cooking or canning. $15 for ten pounds when available. |
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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
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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!
Cucumbers. You either love them, or well, you just don't pay that much attention to them.
Unfortunately for us, there are two insect pests that love cucumber so much, they are actually named after them. They are both little black beetles -- one with green stripes and the other with green spots -- and which people often assume are related to ladybugs. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Ladybugs are beneficial insects that eat many of the insects that prey on our crops; Spotted and Striped Cucumber Beetles are voracious pests that feed on many of the crops we grow. The list is too long to detail here, but includes beet greens, chard, lettuce, and spinach. Larvae of the beetles burrow into the seeds of sweet corn, beans, peas and winter squash that we plant and hollow them out before they can sprout.
Cucumber beetles eagerly feed on all members of the "cucurbit" family: melons and watermelons, and only slightly less eagerly on winter and summer squash. But they love, love, love cucumbers. They actually love them to death. When cucumber plants are transplanted into the soil, or their seeds emerge, the beetles converge upon them from all directions -- including from the soil as larvae hatch. They chew on every part of the plant, often chewing right through the stem and killing the plants. If the plants survive, the bugs will eat the flowers and munch on the developing cucumbers when they are tiny, deforming the fruit and leaving ugly scars and scabs on them.
Very few things kill cucumber beetles. Cold winter temperatures will freeze them, but only if it gets cold enough to seriously damage our crops. In mild winters they hang out in our spinach or chard fields, chewing away at a slower pace than they do in the summer. If it gets frosty, they hide themselves in our cover crop fields and hibernate until spring.
There are no organic pesticides that kill, suppress, slow down or otherwise control the beetles -- and I've been told that even extremely toxic synthetic pesticides don't control them very well. The one natural predator they seem to have on our farm are swallows, who feed every evening over the cucumber patch. Too bad the birds only stay here for a few months each year.
For years we struggled growing cucumbers -- primarily trying to find varieties that were vigorous enough to outgrow the pest. A few years back we discovered Armenian cucumbers, particularly the Painted Serpent variety. Armenian cukes are not actually cucumbers at all, but actually a melon that when harvested at an immature stage tastes just like a cucumber.
 | Serpents in the field
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Armenian cucumber plants grow much more quickly than their non-Armenian relatives. The cucumber beetles chew on their leaves and stems just like they would any other cucumber, but the plants don't die. They produce more fruit than a regular cucumber, the fruits grow more quickly, and their fuzzy skin seems to deter the beetles from feeding on them (a few TFF subscribers have complained about the skin as well). All these reasons led us a few years back to switch over completely to growing the Painted Serpents.
Sadly, there was no seed for the Painted Serpents available this year, and we used up our old seed early in the season. For the next few weeks, you may get one in your boxes, but after that they will be gone. Instead, we planted regular slicing cukes and are getting a rude reminder of why we stopped.
 | Slicing Cukes with beetle damage
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Believe it or not, the cucumbers in your boxes today are the prettiest ones in the field -- many others were left behind. If the skin is scarred up, you can peel it and it should still be crunchy and sweet, with few seeds.
Thanks,
Pablito
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New Item: Shisito Frying Peppers
Last week in the Large boxes, and this week in the Medium, we sent along a small amount of 2-3 inch long chile peppers. Last week we called them "Padron" peppers, which you may have had at a Tapas restaurant. They are generally pan fried in olive oil and salt until soft and brown, and they have a delicious chile flavor without any heat -- most of the time. Padrons are tricky though, and one in five or ten peppers will be quite spicy.
As a rule, we don't grow hot peppers for our CSA boxes because a significant number of people can't or won't eat them. So we were excited to find that a similar type of pepper from Japan that they call "shishito", which is 100% mild (no heat) but otherwise has a similar chile flavor when pan roasted. See last week's newsletter for more specific cooking instructions.
The Shishito peppers in your boxes today, appropriately named "Mellow Star", are not a bit spicy.
Shishitos, like Padrons, are thin walled and cook quickly over high heat. They don't taste very good when eaten raw. Even if you want to add them to another dish, I would recommend cooking them the traditional way, separately, and then adding them -- it really seems to bring out their flavor. Served by themselves they make a delicious appetizer or side dish.
Where are the rest of our peppers? We think harvest will begin in two weeks at the latest. |
In Your Boxes:
Green Beans have been working hard for us on the farm this year -- we started harvesting back in May and hope that harvest will last through October and possibly into November. One thing the beans really hate, however, is long spells of hot weather like we had a few weeks back and again over the weekend. The beans on a plant can go from perfect to overripe in a single 105 degree afternoon. During extended heatwaves, we just can't keep up.
That's why we take a regularly scheduled break from beans every summer. It used to be a month or even six weeks, but with the cooler summers we've been having, it's gotten shorter. This year the "vacation" started on Monday and will probably last until mid-August. Coincidentally, many of our subscribers also go on vacation during this period. |
Recipe: FattoushThis is a traditional summer cucumber salad from the Middle East. You'll need to procure some parsley and mint since we don't have any of either right now (both these herbs are perfect for a window planter box though). This recipe comes almost straight from the website listed below. If you don't love cucumber, you should cut them as thinly as possible, as they will absorb more flavors that way. Painted Serpent cucumbers do not need to be peeled but you may want to scrub them to remove the any fuzz.Dice 2 tomatoes and place in a bowl. Sprinkle with salt and allow to sit for 5 minutes. Drizzle with 1/4 C. olive oil. Thinly slice red onion to make 2 T., then sprinkle with the juice of 1 lemon. Toast two pita breads (or two slices of other bread) and then break into bite-size pieces (pi-tons, if you will). Peel 1 large or 2 small cucumbers and then slice in half lengthwise and cut into thin half rounds. Toss with the tomatoes. Rinse 1 bunch of Italian parsley and chop all the leaves. Rinse mint leaves and chop to make 2 T. Mince 1 clove of garlic. Toss all the vegetables together well, then add more olive oil and/or lemon juice if necessary. Season with salt and pepper.Adapted from http://www.gracefullmom.com/2011/08/a-tribute-to-sitto-a-lebanese-dinner/ |
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