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In the share this week: 1 bag salad mix 1 lbs mixed sweet potatoes 1 bunch salad turnips 1 bunch celery 1 head cabbage or 2 kohlrabi 1 head garlic 1 bunch carrots I'm bad about remembering to take pics of the veg, so please enjoy Pierre the cat in a nest of straw left over from our house build :) Thoughts from Farmer Anna: The end of the season is always a time to reflect. Thinking over the basics of what crops produced well, which didn't, which crops sold well and which didn't, what areas we could improve our efficiency, or make our daily work more enjoyable. Thinking over bigger questions, like, is our farm serving it's mission of growing community with fresh, local organic vegetables? And how do we achieve better work/life balance? (ha!) I think we have gotten really good at vegetable production over the last 11 years. We even added 10 weekly shares on top of the number I had thought was our max production capacity, and it felt like we were able to give some really great shares all season, without any tight spots in production. This feels like an awesome achievement to me, but it means that I'm often not left with any time for the important piece of community building. And boy, do I really feel the profound importance of community right now. Modern life doesn't offer up many places and spaces for the personal connections that we all need. Connecting around food is so core to our humanity, and I really want to figure out how to make space for more of it here at the farm! That is one of the big goals that I'll be noodling on while I plan for the 2025 season. It's possible that I'll need to make some production shifts on the farm to make that happen. Our production capacity and community building goals, will also largely be determined by whether I can find the farm employee(s) that I need to keep this farm chugging along. Along with more volunteer and possibly a part-time opportunity, I'm hoping to find a full-time employee that wants to learn the ins and outs of small scale organic veg farming and will commit to two years with us, before perhaps moving on to start their own farm? It's a tall order, but that is the person I'm hoping to manifest :) I'll send out specific job description and details soon, if you may know someone who would be interested! We are finishing the season off with some really great veggies! I'm sorry (not sorry) to be giving salad turnips again this week. I know you've had them a lot this fall, but they have been such excellent quality that I felt I needed to give some more. We just eat these up so fast in our house - they are awesome raw, dipped in hummus or ranch if you haven't given that a try yet. Today, for farm lunch I roasted some, along with carrots. Then sauteed onions and peppers and threw all these veg together in a wrap with hummus and feta cheese. So simple and delicious! You could also chop up the turnips to eat with your salad mix. They are so mild and sweet, they pretty much pair with anything! This week we are giving a mix of the orange and white sweet potatoes. They would be so pretty cut up and roasted together as a side dish. Or you could use them along with your cabbage/kohlrabi and garlic in an amped up version of pad thai: https://inspiralized.com/sweet-potato-and-cabbage-pad-thai/ If you aren't sure whether you'll use your celery up this week, you could chop and freeze it for use later (maybe in a Thanksgiving stuffing, perhaps?). I've really been enjoying the celery in soups these last couple of weeks. Thanks to each and every one of you for your support of our farm this season! We hope you enjoyed your veggies, maybe tried a new one (or a new recipe), and connected with the people you love over some honest good food. Have a lovely winter season and we'll be in touch!

In the share this week: 1 bunch carrots 1 bunch celery Mixed kohlrabi Garlic Specialty pepper mix Banana peppers or Green tomatoes 2 lbs orange sweet potatoes Thoughts from Farmer Anna: We had a couple of notable things going on here at the farm this afternoon: we started planting our overwintering onions and we received a shipment with the rest of the materials for the seedling greenhouse we are building off the back of our pack shed. (Also, Brandi and Maria gave out these delightfully imperfect 'carrot creatures' pictured above to trick or treaters at the Ft. Thomas Market this afternoon). It's been awhile since we've transplanted anything, and these onions, along with the garlic we'll be putting in next weekend, will be the last of the planting for 2024. Looking back, this was a pretty amazing year for onions. We are typically sold out of all of our onions by early September, but we were able to keep stocked through most of October. I especially love the overwintered onions because they cure and store so well - we have very few losses due to pests and disease in this crop vs. our spring planted onions. Fingers crossed for another good year in 2025! The seedling greenhouse framing is now complete, so we just have to attached the plastic panels, fan and vents so she'll be ready to go for starting our transplants next season. I can't wait to work in this lovely space! For our farm lunch today I made one of our favorites - sweet potato and black bean tacos! I cube up the sweet potato, toss in oil, salt and adobo seasoning, then roast at 400 for 25 minutes. Load up your corn tortillas with the sweet potato, black beans simmered with oregano, sauteed onions and peppers, pickled banana peppers, avocado and some of Steve's special salsa macha for the fully vegan version of this dish, but you can also top with feta cheese if you are inclined. Here's a full recipe that's pretty similar to what we do: https://cookieandkate.com/sweet-potato-black-bean-tacos/ The hoophouse celery has continued to delight us this year! We are cutting some pretty nice size stalks this time around, and the flavor and texture is really quite nice for homegrown celery. We aren't fully cutting the heads, because I'm hoping we'll continue to get some regrowth and can have some winter celery to enjoy as well! I love the idea of making a pureed soup with your carrots and celery this week. Something like this recipe: https://theclevermeal.com/carrot-and-celery-soup/ Have a great week!

In the share week: 2 lbs watermelon radishes 1 bunch salad turnips 1 head radicchio 1 head mini lettuce Green peppers 2 lbs white sweet potatoes 1 bag spicy salad mix Thoughts from Farmer Anna: The sweet potatoes are here! The first beds Cole dug out were mostly Japanese white sweet potatoes, so that is what you'll find in your share this week, but he just brought up a bunch more orange sweet potatoes, so you'll get plenty of those in the next couple of weeks. I really love the white sweet potatoes. You can use them pretty much interchangeably with the orange ones you are used to. They are particularly good baked or made into sweet potato fries if you are into that. Here's a simple side dish recipe with a sesame glaze: https://sharonpalmer.com/sesame-soy-glazed-roasted-japanese-sweet-potatoes/ I also think the starchy sweetness of the sweet potatoes would be a great balance to the bitter radicchio in your share this week. I know the radicchio can be a somewhat intimidating vegetable if you aren't used to it. It is a relative of lettuce and can be eaten raw in salads, but I really prefer to get some cooking on it first. For our farm lunch today, I made of pot of beans with some aromatic veggies (carrots, onions) and herbs, then roasted some watermelon radishes and a whole head of radicchio and we used those for toppings on our beans. We then topped the whole thing with a balsamic vinaigrette. It was pretty yummy! Treat the radicchio like kale - chop it into big pieces, oil and salt it, then roast for about 15 minutes at 400. Some of the leaves get a little crispy (like kale chips!), the sweetness comes through and the bitterness is tamped down. This would be a great pizza topping too! If you want some ideas for how to put together a sweet potato radicchio salad, I liked the flavors in this recipe: https://thefirstmess.com/2020/11/11/sweet-potato-radicchio-salad-roasted-shallot-dressing/ If you want to read up a little more on the watermelon radishes, this was a pretty good post, with a nice recipe idea too. I don't know if I mentioned it already, but these radishes store a really long time (months) in the fridge. So don't feel like you need to use them right away. They will wait happily in your crisper drawer until you are ready for them. https://withfoodandlove.com/roasted-watermelon-radishes-with-herbed-tahini-sauce/ We are working on getting the first of the overwintered greens planted this week - three beds of spinach. Our fall spinach sadly did not do well at all - it was just too hot and dry during it's first weeks of life. It's possible we may get a cut on it for the last week of the season, but I'm not too hopeful. Thankfully, the winter spinach is almost always really nice. I think it is just more suited to the winter season in our climate. We'll also plant our baby kale, arugula, cilantro and maybe some green onions. The rest of the hoophouse space will wait until late winter to get planted up into lettuce, kale, radishes, etc. Maybe next fall we'll get a big greenhouse built so we can have lettuce through the winter! Hope you all have a great week!