Thanksgiving is here again, and we are grateful to celebrate with you, our CSA members. The newsletter and box is reaching you a little earlier than normal this week to make sure as many people as possible receive their box before any major holiday travel. The major harvest is done and the cold weather has officially set in (we had wind chills near zero Saturday night into Sunday morning!) and things are finally starting to slow down a little bit around the farm. We only have three hoops left to plant with spinach and plan to get finish planting them before taking off for the holiday. This

Spinach under row cover inside the hoop

spinach that we are planting now is what is going to go into the spring CSA; all the spinach for fall and winter is already planted and growing. At this point in the year the list of tasks to complete is fairly small. We will continue to weed the spinach, which will also get row covered to protect it from the deepest cold in winter.

We also have several tons of compost coming. We are getting much less compost this fall than we did last fall and last spring, but because we got so much in those loads, we are finally seeing our organic matter levels rise in the field and can afford to get a little bit less this time around.

We have much to be thankful for this past year. Even with the record cold and wet spring we had, we were able to grow more produce than ever before. After a slow start the main growing season was about as close to perfect as we are likely to get. Nothing super hot for super long, a fairly late frost and a nice amount of moisture. We still made some mistakes which cost us money, especially when it came to weeding, but we also learned some important lessons for next year which will help us be more efficient, and encourage the long term profitability of the farm. Despite some of the mistakes, we grew easily 20 percent more food than we really needed to, and began to see on the ground the level of production that has always seemed possible on paper.

The box this week has some great Thanksgiving items. There are carrots, leeks, baby (or adolescent) chard, red meat (watermelon) radishes, red and/or white onions and butternut squash. We know you have been getting lots of winter squash lately. We'll possibly take a break from it next week, but wanted to be sure everyone had it for soups, side dishes, or pies for Thanksgiving. The leeks aren't the best; they taste great, but didn't yield quite as well as we had hoped. Be sure to wash them thoroughly; dirt tends to become stuck in between the layers as they grow. The best way to clean them is to cut the end off, slice the leek in half lengthwise and run under the faucet. After that, you can slice the leeks to the size you want and put into a bowl of water to soak. Drain them well (or run through a salad spinner) and you're good to go.

The baby greens are a treat, even if they are a little bit bigger than "baby". There was a little bit of young growth from the chard and kale, but the weather this weekend would probably have killed it off, even inside a hoop. Instead of seeing it all go to waste, we decided to go through with knives and cut off everything that was big enough to eat. There isn't a whole lot of it, but the size and flavor makes for a great addition to a salad, or could be wilted quickly for a small meal before travel.

Enjoy your holiday and we look forward to resuming deliveries as regularly scheduled next week.