What's in the box?  

Cantaloupe
Watermelon m/l
Peppers
Beets m/l
Radishes m/l
Butterhead lettuce m/l
Heirloom and slicer Tomatoes
Red and yellow Onions
Sweet Corn

Notes on the box.  

Remember that the beet greens are edible. You can add them to soup or just sauté them with some garlic and serve them as a side dish. You can also use them in place of spinach in a lot of recipes.  
Radishes are back!  These little beauties are spicy.  We like them shredded and used as a topping on tacos. Slice them super thin and make fridge pickles with them for salads and sandwiches.  If the spice is too much you can quarter them and roast them.  
This is the last of the sweet corn for the season!  If you have some in your fridge that you haven't gotten to yet, you can cut it off the cob, put it into a freezer bag, and freeze it.  We don't blanch it first and have not been able to tell the difference between the blanched and unbalanced frozen corn.  
There may be a tomato or two next week, but they are all but finished.  
Melons take such a long time to grow!  We are limited in varieties that we can grow that have a short enough day length to ripen in our northern climate.  We are aways a little dismayed when they are ripe after cool weather hits.  You can puree cantaloupe or de seed and mash up the watermelon and make popsicles for next little warm front that we may get as Autumn sets in.  

Cosmic Wheel Creamery Cheese Shares.

More yummy ricotta!  Cool weather has me craving pasta.  This ricotta is great for baked pasta dishes.  It has about a 3 week shelf life in the fridge.  If you want to save it for later than that, you can freeze it.  
I also included some 2016 Circle of the Sun.  These are some of the last wheels from last season.  It's got some nice sweetness to it.  It might be one of my favorite batches of Circle of the Sun that I've ever made.  :D  Hope you enjoy it, too!

Recipes.

Tomato Ricotta Phyllo Tart

Beet Pasta With Ricotta

Cantaloupe Smoothie. You can cube up and freeze your cantaloupe for smoothies later!  

Ricotta, Corn, And Tomato Baked Ziti

Butter Roasted Radishes

On the Farm.

We are seeing the final throes of summer. It's the last of the corn. First frost is quickly approaching. We start picking winter squash next week and finish washing and sorting potatoes. We still have quite a collection of onions that need cleaning, so we are arranging onion cleaning work exchanges with some of the local farms so we can all get this big task done! 

We are under-staffed this month. Three workers have gone back to school or moved on to more permanent work situations. We apologize for the late deliveries. Fair traffic, heavy boxes and being short handed has made us much like the cold grasshopper. We are doing our best! Apologies for any inconvenience.  

And a little encouragement to help you feel inspired to eat those beautiful beets: 
"The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.” ― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Breathe properly. Stay curious. And eat your beets.”  Tom Robbins

All hands on deck for potato digging !

Forecast for the week ahead.  Napa!  Red cabbage coming soon after.

Sadie enjoying everything.

What are these watermelons trying to tell us?  

farm kids farmin'

cheese!  

Liberty with Charlie who was born about an hour before this photo!

Forecast for next week.    

Napa cabbage
Tomatoes
Onion
Peppers
Romaine lettuce
Turnips
Kale? 
Last of the melons
Carrots

What's in the box?  

corn, the best we’ve seen this year. Quote from the field “these are like submarines”
tomatoes
watermelon (red and yellow)
cantaloupe
carrots
green peppers
green beans
bok choy
green butter head lettuce - large
broccoli - large

Notes on the box.

We did a lot of debating for how to deliver these watermelons to you outside of the boxes to leave room for more veggies.  In the end because of logistics and limited space in the van, we weren't able to deliver the melons in separate boxes or to move everyone up to a larger box size.  
Because of that we had to make some tough decisions about what to put in and leave out of the box.  We decided to give more tomatoes and hold onto onions and potatoes for later weeks since the tomatoes are fleeting and don't hold.  This box is about living in the moment.  Stuff yourself with Summer while it's here!  Looks like next week will be pretty much a repeat of this week.  Without the bok choy and probably beets instead of carrots.  

Cosmic Wheel Creamery Cheese Shares.

2017 Antares is here!  This beauty was made in May when the cows were eating lush spring pasture.  The golden color and the grassy flavors highlight those pastures.  It's nice and tangy when it's young and the finish is less aggressive than in the longer Aged Antares. It also has a bit higher moisture when it's less aged, so it's a better melter.  
I also included the flavored quark this week.  It's the easiest cheese to eat in one sitting according to Otto and Sadie who go through a container with some crackers at an astonishing clip.  

Recipes.

Eat a BLT before there are no more tomatoes!

Raw Choi Slaw—Finely slice the choy, and mix with this Miso dressing:
2 tablespoons miso
1/2 teaspoon powdered mustard (or a bit of whatever mustard you have around)
2 tablespoons brown sugar (or honey)
1/4 cup rice vinegar, or whatever vinegar you have around
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon pure toasted sesame oil (optional)
Salt

Tomato and Corn Pie—from Deb (first name basis!) 

Rama’s been enjoying the cantaloupe sprinkled with chili flakes and salt! Delicious. Use more salt than you think you’ll need

On the Farm.

Guest post this week. We’re Andrew and Caroline. We’ve been working here on the vegetable crew since early spring. You may have seen some incriminating photos of us in previous blog posts. 

This week we said goodbye to Madeline, who helped out for the month of August. We’ll miss her color palette, field songs, and extreme appetite for carrot weeding.  

Otto had his first day of Montessori. No homework to speak of, yet.

Wednesday was Rama’s birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY RAMA! We are so lucky to be in the everyday presence of such a magician.

Spinach is looking great and buttery. Squash and zucchini are done and out! We enjoyed our cantaloupe harvest as it enabled us to throw melons at each other and up onto the wagon, working out some interpersonal dynamics! Things got cheeky.

It’s been a cool August for everyone, maybe except for Caroline who is from Northern California and actually doesn’t really like direct sunlight that much. Particularly in the context of Hurricane Harvey, climate change is on our minds as a real threat to smallholder farms and resilient communities at large. It is humbling to have been here for a single season, and hear about years of experienced climate and landscape events that farmers have endured and frightening to think about breaking from these acquainted patterns in movement towards further volatility. Houston received about 51 inches of rain from Harvey. Minnesota receives an annual amount of 18-32 inches of rain. Even with the omnipresence of climate change and weather in our daily work, events like Harvey shock us and we feel for the devastating loss in Texas and South Asia. 

We’re enjoying our days and conversations on the farm. Thanks for supporting the CSA so that we can continue to do this work! As our student coworkers return to school, we are grateful to be able to continue work through the fall and see the winter squash through fruition.

A and C

little farm friend hanging out on a pepper leaf

picking a heck of a peck of peppers

fresh milk is a favorite farm perk  

Thanks from us!

Forecast for next week.  

corn (last week of corn!)
tomatoes (probably last week of tomatoes)
melons (last week of watermelons if we include them)
peppers
green beans?
green top beets

 

What's in the box?  

Sweet Corn
Watermelon - yellow or red
cucumber
dill
tomatoes
sweet onion
bok choy
green beans
bell peppers
fennel - large
broccoli - large

Notes on the box.

Watermelon can be stored outside of the fridge until you cut it.  There will be more watermelon coming!
Tomatoes should be stored out of the fridge unless you plan to cook with them.  
Keep Sweet Corn in the fridge and eat it ASAP.  The fresher the better with the sweet corn.  
This is likely the last of the cucumbers for the season!  Great cucurbit year and we are happy we got some fresh dill to you at the same time as cukes!  We had an early dill planning wash out, so this is the only dill harvest of the season.  

Cosmic Wheel Creamery Cheese Shares.

Cheese curds and Deneb.  Deneb is our gouda style cheese.  It's a great melter!  Time for a nice grilled cheese with a fat slice of tomato!  

Recipes.

Sweet Corn, Cucumber, and Dill Summer Salad
Dressing
1/4 cup sour cream, creme fresh, or buttermilk
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 tablespoon wine vinegar
1 small clove garlic, minced and mashed with a pinch of salt (optional)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Salad
4 ears worth of corn kernels
about 2-3 cups worth of peeled and cubed cucumbers
chopped fresh dill
chopped fresh parsley
2 diced bell peppers - red and/or green
finely diced sweet onion
Whisk together ingredients for the dressing.  Mix Salad ingredients with dressing.  Eat it up!

Bacon Ends, Greenbean, Tomato and Pasta quick Dinner
Cook Bacon ends and chopped sweet onion in a pan together (if you have very fatty bacon, drain off some of the grease). While bacon cooks, boil pasta adding the destemmed and chopped green beans to the pot during the last 3 minutes of cooking.  While pasta is draining, put cooked bacon an onions into the pasta pot.  Put chopped tomatoes into the bacon pan to deglaze the pan and cook the tomatoes down some.  Add tomatoes and pasta and beans back into the pot with bacon and onions and stir well.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Top with hard grated cheese and a nice amount or red pepper flakes.  

Radient Bok Choy

On the Farm.

We had a nice week of picking and packing.  We are excited to bring these wonderful watermelons to you.  Our soil is quite heavy and that's not a favorite for melons.  With all the rain and cool temps we've had we weren't expecting a great season for them, but they are here and looking great!  They are nice and sweet and good sized.  We hope you enjoy them!  There will be more coming as  next week and we have a nice crop of cantaloupe coming,  too.
We watched the solar eclipse and the clouds stayed away until after the peak, which was really great!  Did you get to watch?!   
We are having another visit from Grandma and Grandpa and that means all the things that were broken on the farm that we haven't had time to fix are getting fixed by grandma and grandpa.
We also have a condition around here that one of our farmer friends deemed "harvest house" which is when we are in peak season and don't have time to clean, so our houses get pretty dirty until frost hits.  But this visit gave us total relief with grandmas wizard like cleaning skills!  Their visits are such a blessing and keep us from being overwhelmed and completely swallowed up by the farm.   
This week is the last week that Lily is on the farm!  She is heading back to Northland for school.  Lily has been a fantastically steady worker who shows so much love and appreciation for the land and the farm.  It's nice to have people show that connection to remind us that where we live is amazing.  Her gratitude is contagious.  We will miss her and her humor a lot.  We will also miss the steady flow of delicious  vegan cookies!  Thank you so much for everything, Lily!  Please come back to visit anytime!  
Otto is starting school next week!  Late Summer has officially arrived.  

Lily!  in addition to the baked goods, she also made these flawless flower crowns real quick on her first try!

Wake up!  Time for milking!

Heavy Grazing

Lily viewing the eclipse

Andrew having his turn

Otto checking it out

Grandma and Grandpa's setup so we could all watch together.

Otto and the Sun and the Moon

Perfect Wisconsin afternoon

YELLOW and BLUE!

Forecast for next week.

Sweet Corn
Watermelon - yellow or red
tomatoes
sweet onion
green beans
bell peppers
and whatever else we can fit into the box-  beets?  carrots?  Napa cabbage?  greens?