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!

    I've been thinking all week about something I heard an African farmer on an NPR story last week about the challenges facing him and other farmers in his country: "Farmers, our heads are full of sawdust: we work so hard and then lose everything, but instead of giving up we start all over again".

This weekend I attended a harvest festival nearby and visited with several of my organic farmer colleagues that I don't get to see very often. One after another, they repeated the same question that has been on all our minds lately: "Why are we doing this?".

These are not a bunch of crotchety old farmers, but rather, "new agrarians" like myself who for years felt they had signed a tough but fair contract: work like crazy, achieve reasonable success in the brave new world of organic, direct market agriculture. Demand seemed to always keep going up for the products we grew, and prices were covering our costs and allowing for enough profit to invest back into our businesses. Meanwhile, we were doing something good for the planet. Mother Nature seemed to be on our side.

That contract was broken in the fall of 2010, not by the recession, but by the weather. Since the big freeze of December 2010, farms in our area have suffered almost continuous weather related disasters. At Terra Firma, our sales income -- and profit -- peaked in 2008 at a level we have not seen since.    In the years since, we have planted and tended the same amount of crops. But due to the weather, we have lost one or more of those crops each year since. Meanwhile, our expenses have continued to rise with inflation.

Last year, 2011, was by far the most catastrophic for us: we lost almost as much money that year as we made in 2008. Because we are farmers and not Wall Street bankers, we had saved all that profit "for a rainy day". By June of this year, that savings was gone, but we were highly optimistic about being able to rebuild it this summer. That hasn't happened. And as I found out last weekend, we are not the only local organic farm in this position.

By now everyone is probably familiar with the term "underwater on your mortgage" -- the phenomena whereby millions of people borrowed more against their home equity than they could ever pay back. Farmers have a longer history of doing this; after all, we are famously "land rich and cash poor". Across the U.S. right now, livestock growers by the thousands are borrowing money against their land and herds in order to purchase grain at record high prices. Dairy farmers are going bankrupt right now at the rate of several hundred per week.

Here at Terra Firma, we are not "underwater" yet. For years we struggled to build our farm with borrowed money, but it's been years since have used a loan, and we're not eager to start again. The last few years have hammered home to us a message that most farmers have always known: we are not in control and hard work is not always rewarded in agriculture.

Or maybe I am just seeing the state of the world through the lens of our farm. All over the world, two of the main themes of life these last three years seem to be the same: weather disasters and economic struggles. Like everyone else, we had high hopes that this year we would see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it has turned out to just a mirror at a turn and the light is still a ways off. We'll keep chugging along for a while, keeping an eye on the fuel gauge.

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.

At this time, a few tickets are still available 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
The first of our winter cooking greens are in your boxes this week: Collards. Collard greens are in the cabbage family and are loaded with vitamins and minerals. They are traditionally cooked in a broth until quite soft, but can also be used the same way as kale: sauteed, stir-fried, or even eaten raw. They are not bitter, but have a strong flavor that lends itself to other strong flavors: onions, garlic, salt, black pepper and chile. If you are not a vegetarian, they are delicious cooked with a little bacon or pork fat.

We are just finishing up harvest of Butternut Squash this week and we are sending one to everyone. Butternut is our staple squash -- it grows well here, stores well into winter, and has fewer pests than most varieties. You can prepare many different ways, from grated raw to boiled, but the simplest way to cook it is to cut it in half and bake it. It can be substituted for "pumpkin" in any recipe, but the flesh is creamier, less stringy and generally sweeter. Winter squash does not need to be refrigerated.

The Carrots in today's boxes are the first of our new fall crop, freshly harvested. They have the tops still attached, but you will want to remove them before storing the roots in plastic in the fridge. The new carrots should be more tender than the ones you've been receiving lately, but with the recent hot weather they are not at peak sweetness yet.

This will almost certainly be our last week of Tomato harvest of 2012. Most of what we harvested this week are Romas, simply because they are the only variety that seems to resist the mold that is so common this time of year.

You may notice that Large boxes received both Broccoli and Cabbage this week in their boxes. Those crops are just starting to produce and will show up in the other box sizes starting next week. In particular, broccoli is a staple of our fall and winter boxes and you can expect to see it most weeks during the season.

Recipe: Southernish Stew
A soupy combo of vegetables and broth for a chilly fall night. Carnivores may want to add a small amount of bacon or cured meat along with the oil.

Dice 1 large or 3 small onions. Heat 3 T. olive oil in a large pot and add the onions. Saute for 5 minutes, then add 2-3 diced sweet peppers and 1 clove minced garlic. Continue sauteing until the peppers are soft, then add 2 diced tomatoes (fresh or canned), a couple of bay leaves, and 8 C. water or vegetable broth. Bring to a boil, then simmer.

Dice 4 carrots and 2 lbs.of potatoes (or butternut squash) and add to the broth.

Trim and dice 1/2 lb. green beans. Remove and discard the stems from 1 bunch of collard greens, then cut the leaves into 2 inch pieces. When the potatoes are tender but not soft, add the beans and the collards. Cover the pot and cook until they are tender, or keep cooking until they fall apart.

Season with salt, pepper, and vinegar and serve in bowls with hot sauce on the side.