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 Items

After a long season, bulk tomatoes are no longer available.

Do you love the Shishito frying peppers that we've been putting in your boxes and can't get enough? Now you can buy them in on the Web Store, 5 lbs. for $25.

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!

There's a bushel of new items in your boxes this week. So many, in fact that the "In your Box" section below takes up most of the newsletter. Enjoy!

Thanks,

Pablito

Farm Day: Saturday, Oct. 20th, 2-5 pm
Terra Firma's annual CSA Subscriber Farm Day is a low-key event that features hay rides around the farm, pick-your-own strawberries, and a tour of some of our fields. For your Halloween needs, there will be an assortment of organic Pumpkins. You are welcome to bring your lunch and picnic in the shade of the orchard. Alternately, you can hang out at the farm for a while and then head to Winters for some wine tasting and an early dinner at one of our excellent local eateries.

Tickets for our annual Open Farm Day go on sale Thursday, September 20th on the Web Store. Tickets are first come, first served. They are $5 and can be redeemed for produce, pumpkins and possibly other items. Children under 12 get in free, but they will need a ticket to get a pumpkin.

Raindate is the following Saturday, October 27th.

In your boxes
Fuji Apples are the second variety to ripen in our small orchard, and they are in your boxes today. While they have had plenty of heat to sweeten them up, we haven't had many (any) of the cold nights that cause the skin of apples to develop their red color -- they are still mostly green. Fujis will be in your boxes for the next few weeks.

Last week we started harvesting the last variety in our table grape vineyard -- Crimson Seedless. These are a very common supermarket variety, sweet and crunchy. We have a bumper crop this year, which means they will show up in your boxes through most of October. These grapes have been dusted with sulfur in the last month to fight powdery mildew. Sulfur dust is a natural material that is approved for use in organic farming, but some people might experience an allergic reaction to it. It washes off easily in clean water.

The recent hot weather has caused big problems for our Green Beans, which are normally a staple of your fall boxes. Green beans don't store well, and must be harvested within a few days of use. Several weeks in September the beans were ready to pick on the weekend (too early to put in your boxes) and then overmature on Monday. This has never been a problem for us in the fall before -- it is much more common mid-summer.

This week we finally got into the right groove with the beans sizing up on Tuesday, which allowed us to put a nice amount in your boxes. We are hoping the weather will cool down now and we'll get plenty of beans for you from the remaining plantings before winter starts. If you are thinking "those beans look different than usual", you might be right. We are testing a new variety ("Inspiration") this fall side-by-side with our usual one ("Bronco") -- it is longer, darker green, with a more defined point at the end. And in our taste tests so far, the flavor is as good or better than the old variety.

Moving down the list of new items we get to Sweet Potatoes. We finally finished harvesting the field on Friday and are sending the first roots out to you today. Sweet potatoes grow as vines -- they are in the morning glory family -- and the roots can go down as much as three feet. To harvest them, we run our potato digger as deep as it can go and it still breaks off numerous tubers. It is a painfully slow and loud process, with the tractor creeping through the field at high RPMs as the machine sifts through yards of soil every foot it moves forward and the operators grab the tubers off the belt.

We grow our Sweet Potatoes in the sandiest soil on the farm, but it is nothing like the beach sand in the fields planted by the large commercial growers. As a result, the roots get dented while they are growing, dinged when we harvest them, and scuffed when we wash them. They're not as pretty as the ones you see in the store, but they taste just as good.

Freshly harvested sweet potatoes

Finally, this week marks the beginning of our 8 month long greens season. As usual, the first item ready for harvest is Arugula and it's in all the boxes today. Arugula is a decently bitter green, so it is best combined with strong flavors like salt and acid. Tossing it with still-warm roasted vegetables also helps soften the bite.

The parade of leafy greens will continue next week with the first fall Collards and possibly Cabbage. Kale and Broccoli will be close on their heels. Our first planting of Spinach burned up in the heat, but the second planting should be ready in two or three weeks.

Recipe: Arugula Salad with Roasted Fall Veggies
Early fall gives us the opportunity to combine ingredients that are not usually in season at the same time.

Heat the oven to 425.

Peel 2 lbs. of sweet potatoes and cut into 1 inch dice. Toss with salt, cayenne pepper, and 1 T. olive oil. Arrange on a cookie sheet and place in the oven. Roast until nicely browned, turning 2-3 times.

On another cookie sheet, spread 1/2 lb. trimmed green beans cut into 2 inch pieces. Core 2 sweet peppers and remove the seeds, then cut into small pieces. Toss the beans and peppers with salt and 1 T. olive oil and place in the oven. Stir every 5 minutes or so once the pan heats up. When the beans are done they will be slightly crinkly and starting to brown.

Dice 1-2 tomatoes, place in a bowl and sprinkle with salt and 1 t. olive oil.

Wash 1/2 lb. arugula and dry, then toss with the tomatoes. When the vegetables are done, allow them to cool for 5 minutes, then add them to the salad.

Crumble tangy blue cheese and sprinkle over the top. Season with red wine vinegar to taste.