October 6, 2015          Common Thread CSA
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Dear Common Thread CSA Members,

It's October!  Our last distribution day is on Halloween this year, so we have four more weeks of CSA, including this one.  Those who don't want the veggies to stop can sign up for a winter CSA share.  Winter shares will start on November 5, with two boxes in November, two in December and one in January.  Each box is a good amount of food for two weeks.  Veggies include storage crops like potatoes, onions, winter squash, garlic, carrots, beets and other root crops as well as hardy veggies from outside including spinach, kale, chard, lettuce, brussel sprouts and leeks.  We are planning to deliver to Dewitt and Utica if we get enough members signed up at those sites and we will also have an on-farm pick up.  To sign up, please fill out our Winter Share Agreement Form and mail it in or bring it to the on-farm CSA distribution. Printed forms are available in the distribution room.

We are planting garlic this week!  Garlic gets planted in the fall and is one of the first plants to emerge in the spring.  Each clove of garlic is separated and planted 5 inches apart and each clove will develop into a head of garlic.  We are doing spacing trials with our garlic this year to see if we plant at 10 inches or an average of 7.5 inches apart, will we get bigger heads of garlic?  In the picture above, Asher explains the garlic planting process to Sophia, Dan and Bianca.

The End of Season Potluck is this coming Sunday, October 11.  We'll give a tour at 4 pm, do pumpkin carving at 5 pm and start the potluck at 5:30 pm.  We hope you will join us!  An rsvp is helpful so Wendy knows how much pumpkin pie to make.  We'd love it if you can bring or send a favorite memory from the farm season to share at the potluck.

We have a few more people helping to bring the vegetables to you!  We are glad to have several folks who have joined us part time for the fall, mostly helping with the harvest.  Molly is helping us a couple days a week and we have several Colgate students for a few hours a week: Mariah, Anna, Taite and Nezar.

You can find out what the vegetables for the week are by going to our "What's In" page on our website and checking out the PYO page on our website.  

We are starting to pull out the pie pumpkins this week.  These are the small orange pumpkins good for baking (as opposed the big ones which are good for carving).  Our family loves pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie.  We also like pumpkin added to our pancake and waffle batter.  Here is the pumpkin pie recipe from the Joy of Cooking that we use (slightly adapted):

Pumpkin or Squash Pie
Line a pan with a pie dough of your choice.
Preheat oven to 42 degrees
Mix until well blended:
2 cups cooked and pureed pumpkin or squash
1 cup milk
1/2 cup cream
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp nutmeg or allspice
1/8 tsp clovers
2 slightly beaten eggs
Pour the mixture into the pie shell.  Bake 15 minutes at 425 degrees, then reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake about 45 minutes longer or until an inserted knife comes out clean.  
Serve with sweetened whipped cream.

Here's a link to a fun and tasty looking pumpkin soup served in a pumpkin:

One thing we love about our cool climate here in Central NY is how well spinach grows here!  It was too hot in Poughkeepsie for spinach in all but the earliest and latest parts of the season but we've been growing nice spinach all season long! We've just been experimenting with summer spinach, growing it in smaller quanitites since we weren't sure about how it would do in July and August but it's done pretty well.  We are now harvesting our larger fall plantings and hope to have plenty of spinach for October and for the winter shares.  We love spinach sauteed with garlic, in our omelettes and in one of our favorite meals from the Moosewood Cookbook:
Spinach Ricotta Pie
The crust:
6 Tbs. butter, cut into small pieces
1.5 cups flour
1 tsp salt
about 4 Tbs cold water, milk or buttermilk
The filling:
1 tsp butter
1 cup minced onions
1 lb spinach, stemmed and finely chopped (stemmed chard also works well)
1/2 tsp salt
freshly ground pepper, to taste
1 tsp basil
1 lb ricotta cheese
2 or 3 beaten eggs
3 Tbs flour
1/2 cup (packed) grated sharp cheese of your choice
a dash of nutmeg (optional)
Optional topping: 
1 cup sour cream, lightly beaten
paprika

1. Use a pastry cutter, 2 forks or a food processor to cut together the butter and flour until the misture is uniformly blended and resembles coarse cornmeal.
2. Add just enough liquid (water, milk or buttermilk) to hold the dough together.  Roll out the dough and form a crust in a 9 or 10 inch pie pan.  Set aside.
3.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Melt the butter in a medium sized skillet, add the onion, and saute for 5 minutes over medium heat.  Add spinach, salt, pepper, and basil and cook, stirring, over medium-high heat until the spinach is wilted.  Remove from heat.
4.  Combine all filling ingredients in a large bowl, and mix well.  Spread into the unbaked pie shell.  For an extra rich pie, top with sour cream, spread to the edges of the crust.  Dust generously with paprika.
5. Bake 40 to 45 minutes, or until firm to the touch at the center.  Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature.

Yours in the field,
Wendy and Asher