Thanksgiving—Winter Weeks 2 and 3

Picking yummy greens in the wet season means you might find a critter in them. It just means they taste good. It even happens to me. I just took it out and put it outside. No biggie.

Tuesday/Wednesday people will pick up both weeks separately. Weekend people will pick up both weeks’ produce this weekend. There is no pickup the weekend after Thanksgiving. If that doesn’t make sense, please let me know right away. 🙂

THIS WEEK’S SUBSCRIBER MENU:
• “German Butterball” potatoes
• Yellow Onions
• “Acorn” Winter Squash
• Brussels Sprout tops
• Arugula
• Mizuna
• Sweet Peppers
• Baby Fennel

NEXT WEEK’S SUBSCRIBER MENU:
• “Georgia Jet” Sweet Potatoes
• Shallots
• Pie Pumpkin, either “Winter Luxury” or “Baby Pam”
• Beets
• Carrots
• Radicchio
• Tatsoi
• Tonnemaker’s Orchards Apples

Click on the links above for information and recipes about these crops. And click HERE for detailed photos on how to cook greens.

COMING SOON:
Salsify
Mustard Greens
Baby Bok Choi

This week we picked (from l. to r.): Arugula, Brussels Sprout tops, and Mizuna.

Every fall it’s important to prune the Brussels sprouts plants. They grow in a tall stalk (although ours are pretty short this year because we got them planted late) and they make the little sprouts up the stalk at the leaf joints. If they could, they would keep growing up several feet, “ripening” the sprouts gradually as they go up the stalk. However, if you want those sprouts to be sized consistently and get done at one time, they need to be pruned.

Fluffy, leafy Brussels Sprouts plants. We always prune the fluffy tops out of the plants about now, to encourage the plants to concentrate on making the sprouts larger. Otherwise, they’ll just keep growing taller and sizing-up the sprouts from the bottom of the stalk up.

We do this by decapitating them. Really. We just cut that leafy rosette of leaves off of the top of the plants. Commercially, they just toss them to the ground, but they are SO delicious! Tender, sweet, and green. Basically, they’re almost the same as kale or collard greens, or even cabbage. Just sauté or steam them and eat them up. Very tasty greens.

Tiny Brussels Sprouts on the stalk. A baby sprout forms at the junction of each leaf stalk and the main stem.

Amazingly, the pepper plants are still trying to ripen the last of the peppers in the greenhouse. The tomatoes finally died with the cold snap last week, but the peppers are more durable. We are trying to get them used up so they don’t go to waste, AND because we need to move the cows into the greenhouse. You may ask, why would we do that? 1: Because cows don’t like to be wet or muddy, and we don’t have a big barn for them, and we don’t like to scoop a lot of heavy poop. Our cows are spoiled and pathetic and would give anything to be dry and warm. And 2: Because cow manure is magic fertilizer and we get great vegetable production after this manure application. If we just put the cows inside, we don’t need to do any spreading. Especially if we follow the cows with chickens to break up the patties.

Thanksgiving is coming up. Please note the schedule for weekend pickup—pickup two weeks’ worth of produce this weekend, November 17-18, and then no pickup after Thanksgiving, November 24-25. Mike will be at farmers markets both weekends, but many people are out of town or not cooking those few days after the big feast, so it’s simpler this way. There are plenty of different things that will keep well so you don’t have to eat it all at once, but if you’re the one preparing the big meal it is all there for you.