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

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

A friend of mine is in charge of the "organic program" for one of the largest carrot producers in the world. I remember when I first met him I sheepishly asked him about a problem we were having growing the ubiquitous orange vegetable . I assumed that on the scale that he farms on, they would have figured everything out. "Oh no," he said, "we have the same problem. What do you do about it on your farm?"

Nothing about growing organic carrots is easy. Even for the experts.

It's true that there are few insects that bother carrots above the ground. In fact, carrots and other plants in their family (cilantro, fennel, celery) actually attract "beneficial" insects that eat a number of pest insects. Having them growing on your farm tends to reduce bug problems on other crops.

Carrots are also amazingly, incredibly productive. An acre of carrots produces more weight of crop than an acre of potatoes, for example. Because they are narrow, straight and grow vertically, you can pack a hundred of them into a square foot of soil. And yet they do not require lots of fertilizer; in fact, excessive amounts will make the carrots hairy and unattractive.

On the flip side, carrots are exceedingly weak plants when young.

Their seeds take weeks to sprout in the soil, and their leaves are delicate and ferny. This makes them vulnerable to hot weather and wind that can kill them quickly. Ideally one would not plant them at all during the summer, especially not here where it is so hot and dry. But in order to have carrots to harvest in the fall, they must be planted in mid-summer.

The reason our carrots are late this year is because our first fall planting, done in mid-July, was wiped out by the heatwave that month. We also lost most of our third planting, done in mid-August, during the heat over Labor Day.

The only way of keeping carrots alive when they are small is to irrigate them every day. But this also encourages weeds, which grow faster and stronger. In order to weed the fields -- by tractor and by hand -- we have to turn off the water. We have lost numerous carrot fields over the years when faced with this impossible choice.

As I mentioned last week, mechanized carrot harvesters are expensive, hard to come by, and impossible to justify for a farm like ours that grows just a few acres each year. So when it comes time to dig our carrots, we do it by hand -- with a pitchfork. It's a painfully slow task, although not a particularly difficult or unpleasant one.

Even if somehow we came across a mechanical harvester, we couldn't use it. The French carrot varieties that we grow are too fragile and the tops aren't strong enough to withstand the rough treatment. In fact, we can't even wash them with the machine we use to wash beets, leeks, and potatoes. Instead we wash them with a hose, one a bunch at a time. Enjoy.

Thanks,

Pablito

Open Farm Day: October 19th

Tickets for Farm Day are sold out. If your plans change and you can't come, please let us know and we may be able to find a home for your tickets.

Saturday looks to be a classic fall day in the Sacramento Valley, sunny and just a little warm. Be sure to bring a hat, sunglasses, and sunscreen though, as the sun is still strong.

Spoiler Alert, of a sort: Cool weather has delayed the ripening of the berries in the strawberry field. There will be few or no berries to pick.

We will soon be sending an email to ticketholders with other instructions and map to the event.

In Your Boxes

Better late than never, we harvested our first fall Carrots for you this week. As you would expect, they are crisp, tender and sweet. While we try to have carrots for you every week this time of year, we may have a few gaps later in the fall but you can look forward to a steady supply through the body of the winter.

Our first Broccoli of the season is right on time, but is much prettier than usual thanks to the fairly cool weather we've been having. Broccoli is a staple of our fall and winter CSA boxes, and the fields look very nice this year.

With Kale now declared a "superfood" and exploding in popularity, I'm sure some of you have been waiting for it to make its annual appearance in your boxes. Curly Kale grows faster than the darker green Dino Kale, but you'll see that next week or the week after.

Fuyu Persimmons, in all the boxes today, come to you ready to eat. Try slicing them thinly and tossing them with arugula leaves and a light balsamic vinagrette.

Recipe: Caldo Verde de Oro

Another soup recipe with greens and creamy veggies this week...a completely altered, stewy version of a traditional Portugese kale soup. It substitutes navy beans for sausage and acorn squash for potatoes.

Soak 1 C. navy beans or other white beans overnight then drain, rise and cook until tender in salted water.

Slice 1 acorn squash into sections, then use a sharp knife or vegetable peeler to peel the skin off. Remove the seeds and pith. Chop into small pieces.

In a heavy pot, saute 1 sliced onion until tender. Add 2 cored, diced sweet peppers, a dash of hot pepper flakes, and 3 minced cloves of garlic. When the garlic begins to brown, add 6 C. vegetable stock.

Bring the soup to a boil and then add the squash. Lower the heat and simmer. While it cooks, remove the stems from 1 bunch of kale and chop roughly into small pieces. Fry the kale in 1 T. olive oil and a dash of salt until it is tender.

When the squash is soft, remove half the soup to a food processor or blender and puree until smooth. Add back to the pot along with 2 C. of cooked beans and the kale. Cook for another 10 minutes and serve.