Winter Farm Share Newsletter - Week 2

First, a quick reminder that you will have until tomorrow (Wednesday, Nov 11) evening at 8:00 to customize your share. This is for shares that will be delivered next week, November 18/19. This is our planned schedule for the reminder of the winter season.

After a nice week-long fling with summer, I hear freezing rain coating the farm with ice as I write this - classic November yuck. Regardless, we were grateful for that warm weather window to finish up most of our remaining field projects. Aside from planting garlic, it has been a week focused on cleanup - an unglamorous but necessary process each fall. There were routine annual tasks, such as breaking down and collecting irrigation lines and pulling up drip tape, plastic mulch, and landscape fabric. And semi-annual jobs like taking down the caterpillar tunnels, which we move to a new field every couple years to allow for crop rotation. But the biggest project was the dismantling of our increasingly ineffective electric fence, which had, at one time, kept deer out of our fields. This clears our field perimeter for construction of a 10-ft woven wire fence, which (fingers crossed!) a contractor will install by the end of November. Check out this semi-load of posts that arrived last week!

First delivery reflection and Thanksgiving Share last call

Overall, the first Winter Share distribution went fairly smoothly. We added a few new pickup locations, and split our deliveries into two shorter days rather than one marathon. We didn't hear of any major issues, but there are a couple of things I'd like to clarify:

1. For members who also received a summer share, please make note of the pickup hours, as most have been adjusted because of our new delivery schedule. You can find this information in the second of the two weekly emails (subject "Your Sogn Valley Farm Share is on the way") and by logging in to your Harvie member dashboard and looking under Delivery Details.
2. Second, in regards to the aforementioned email, it's a bit misleading in its subject line. This email is automatically sent out by Harvie when we "finalize" the shares and print out the labels ahead of packing, which is typically 1-2 days before delivery. However, the subject line kind of implies that the shares are actually in the process of being delivered, which could lead to confusion. I wish we could change this, but as of now, it's out of our hands. Again, your Winter Share delivery day will remain consistent (Wed or Thurs) unless adverse weather forces us to adjust; and the day and time of delivery are specified in the email.
3. We had a couple of inquiries about the amount billed by Harvie for the first delivery. Many members have chosen the multiple installment payment plan, and the second 25% installment occurred with the first delivery. Going forward, you should just be charged for half of the cost of your share ($20 for Family Shares and $12.50 for Personal Shares). Please direct any questions about billing to Harvie support (support@harvie.farm) as that process is totally managed by Harvie and they are best equipped to answer questions and field requests.

We also wanted to announce a last-call to sign up for Thanksgiving Shares that will be delivered on Tuesday, November 24th. We will be closing down signups at the end of this weekend. Right now, we are planning to offer the following items in that share: carrots, garlic, salad mix or spinach (depends on how much snow we get tonight!), onions, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and gold potatoes.

Notes on items in this week's shares

• Delicata is my favorite type of winter squash - sweet but with superb, distinct flavor. They needn't be peeled, as the skin is fairly tender when cooked. 
• Sweet potatoes this week are the smaller size class of our harvest, so some of these will be closer in size to standard potatoes than the large tubers typically sold in stores. We are saving the large ones for Thanksgiving shares and later winter shares, since they typically have a longer storage life than the smaller tubers. The small ones are still great to roast whole, if that's your MO - I like to poke them all over with a fork, coat them with oil, and bake for 1-2 hours on a rimmed baking sheet. Occasionally, you may receive one with a freshly cut surface - this is because sometimes the tuber breaks off the plant during the digging process, and we prefer to slice the rough broken end to clean it up. These have all been cured at high temperature and humidity, which makes them sweeter and improves storage life.
• Rutabaga is one of my favorite winter roots to add to soups. This year's crop produced some jumbos, so some of this week's shares may be just one single large rutabaga, while others will receive 2-3 smaller ones.
• Watermelon radishes are quite tasty eaten raw because of their crunchy texture and relatively sweet and mild flavor compared with other radishes. They're great on salads or grated in slaws. We also like roasting and stir-frying them. Remember the whitish/greenish rind is fibrous and should be peeled before eating.
• Salad mix in the field survived the last round of snow and cold mostly unscathed - there is a small percentage of leaves with some cold damage, but we'll avoid those during harvest. We have minor trepidation putting salad mix on the share list given that we are forecast to receive 3-5 inches of snow today. But it appears we are likely to get enough warm weather by next Tuesday to melt the snow and allow us to harvest the greens as planned before next week's delivery. 

This week's Hot Sauce/Salsa Add-on is Aces & Eights Salsa from Double Take Salsa. They describe it this way: "Plenty of TLC goes into the making of Aces & 8s corn salsa with a list of ingredients that includes orange bell pepper, roasted garlic, tomatillos and green onion. Its beautiful consistency also lends itself to serving as a relish or mix it with an avocado for a great guacamole."

Bi-weekly subscribers to the Kimchi Add-on Share will receive a quart of their chosen spice level in their share this week.

What's coming up?

See below for our best guess as to how the remaining winter shares will look. Keep in mind two things: first, this is tentative and subject to change. Second, as shares are personalized to your preferences, you won't necessarily have all the items listed for a given week actually put in your share by Harvie's algorithm (especially for Personal Shares that receive fewer items). Note that "Greens" may be salad mix, spinach, or kale from the high tunnel). There may be smaller quantities of additional items also available some weeks, depending on availability.

All for now - have great week!

Dana