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Crop Talk
The Newsletter of Great Country Farms
October 5, 2015: CSA Week 19
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18780 Foggy Bottom Road
Bluemont, VA 20135 |
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Carnival Squash
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While we've become accustomed to thinking about leafy  vegetables as an outstanding source of antioxidants, we've been slower to recognize the outstanding antioxidant benefits provided by other vegetables like winter squash. But recent research has made it clear just how important winter squash is worldwide to antioxidant intake, especially so in the case of carotenoid antioxidants... One cup of baked winter squash will also provide you with approximately 340 milligrams of omega-3 fats in the form of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA)... It's the combination of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compounds in winter squash that have shown this food to have clear potential in the area of cancer prevention and cancer treatment."
Granny Smith Apples
"The Granny Smith cultivar originated in  Australia in 1868. Its discoverer, Maria Ann Smith, had emigrated to the district from Beckley, East Sussex in 1839 with her husband Thomas. They purchased a small orchard in the area in 1856 and began cultivating fruit, for which the area was a well known centre in colonial Australia. Smith bore numerous children and was a prominent figure in the district, earning the nickname "Granny" Smith in her advanced years. According to one story, Smith had been testing French crab-apples for cooking and throwing the apple cores out her window as she worked, and she found that a new cultivar had sprung up underneath her kitchen windowsill."
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CSA Week 19 ~ October 6 -- 12
Shares this week include:
- Greens
- Acorn squash
- Carnival squash
- Potatoes
- Granny Smith apples
- Asian pears
Boxes are Bags This Week!
During weeks 19 and 20, we'll be packing shares in bags so we can recover our empty share boxes for re-use next year. Please put leftover boxes where your driver cal collect them. If you pick up your share at the farm, please bring a reusable bag with you.
Seasonal Bonus
To celebrate the harvest season, all members receive a jack-o-lantern pumpkin, a neck pumpkin, and a bundle of corn stalks as a one-time bonus. When you take yours home, please put a check mark in the Seasonal Bonus column beside your name.
Remember that there's no CSA pick-up or delivery on Mondays.
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Help Us Serve You Better
Dear CSA Members,
We'd be grateful if you could take a couple of minutes to share your thoughts on this year's CSA program. The survey you'll find at
this link includes six questions that go to the heart of the CSA experience, and your answers to those questions will help us improve the program next year. Thanks for asking us to be your farmers in 2015 -- looking forward to another season!
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Fall Pumpkin Harvest Festival
Each of those yellow stars represents one of our celebrity porcine athletes -- Hoglary Clinton, Donhog Trump, Miley Swinerus, Kim Porkdashian, Peyton Hamming, and Tom Boar-ady. These cleft-footed competitors will be racing at 11:00, 1:00, and 3:00 this weekend. Between races, P-Rex, the pumpkin-eating dinosaur, will re-emerge from seasonal extinction to gorge himself on orange globes, and Farmer Bob will be pressing cider on the North Stage, near the marshmallow-roasting pit. Both the pumpkin patch and the apple orchard will be open for U-picking, so come on out and celebrate the season with us!
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Featured Recipes
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Love the carnival squashes! Dry yet moist, crumbly and sweet. Perfect as a stuffed squash because you can eat through the squash at the same time and integrated it into the dish. It might be too crumbly to hold up as large chunks for soups or stews. In the end I ate the skin of the squash, too. It was nice and crispy after all the roasting, so make sure you scrub the squashes clean before you start.
Braised Carnival Squash
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Personally, I think squash is best all by itself, just cooked plain and served - it's naturally delicious. But since I had a second squash this week, I figured I would do something a little bit different.
I used a carnival squash, although you could substitute butternut with this recipe. The flesh of the squash was much heartier than acorn, almost more like potatoes. If you wanted, you could also puree this recipe with some chicken stock and have a yummy winter squash soup."
Granny Smith apples are the key to this crisp, because their tartness is delicious with the sweet, crunchy oat-flecked crumb topping.
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This stew is similar to a Moroccan tagine, which is traditionally served with couscous. But this would be equally delicious paired with crusty bread or steamed potatoes."
Read more here.
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| Week 19 CSA UPICK Bonus: October 6 - 12 6 apples ~ $4.47 Year to date Upick Bonus Value: $184.67
What is this? Each week we offer a bonus u-pick item for members visiting the farm and this ticker tracks the dollar value of the bonuses. Many members find that month picking adds a nice extra value to their CSA share.
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| This Week in the Farm Market
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Pie Pumpkins
Butternut Squash
Buttercup Squash
Carnival Squash
Spaghetti Squash
Delicata Squash
Acorn Squash
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Please Drive Slowly
This is an appeal to slow down when you drive through the tiny village of Bluemont. Recently a Bluemont resident sent an email to several local businesses, informing us that two children were almost hit by a truck in front of the Bluemont General Store a while back. Apparently the incident prompted a police response.
"We want Bluemont to grow and prosper," the resident wrote. "We love the life that new businesses can bring to our sleepy little town, but most of all we want to feel safe, and we want our kids to be safe."
To that end, please drive safely through the village and keep your eyes peeled for children.
Thank you so much!
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