Week 14 of the CSA

It's September and the CSA begins to shift to Fall mode!

As the amount of daylight goes down and the number of people working on the farm decreases, we must ask you to be patient with us as we set up for the CSA each day.  We will do our best to be on time.  But, as long as the summer crops call out to be picked, Rob will find himself running short on time.  Things that we may ask you to indulge us on include:

- counting out separate stems of greens (such as chard) if we don't have time to bundle them.  Often we may try to bundle a few at the beginning and try to stay ahead throughout the distribution
- staying out of the way when the whirlwind attempts to set up the distribution area as quickly as humanly possible.  I don't want to step on you or your children in the process.  Offers to help are appreciated, but I must decline.  If we haven't worked together on it already, it is likely I will run over you - and that would make me feel bad.
- there may come a time when you will be asked to weigh a product out, if you need help reading the scale, please ask.

Produce this week: tomatoes, beans (Tues - MAYBE Thus), peppers, hot peppers, eggplant, summer squash, swiss chard, onion, garlic (Thus, MAYBE Tues) and whatever else we have time to pick that is available.

LETTUCE:   This week will be a week off from lettuce.  If you have lettuce left from last week it should still be good (with maybe some bad leaves).  Store your lettuce in a plastic bag with a paper towel around it.  Put it in the crisper.  We have had lettuce last for up to 3 weeks in this fashion.

Eggplant: We have an educational post on eggplant on our blog at this time: http://genfaux.blogspot.com/2011/09/eggplant.html
  You will find links to our website and its recipes and a link to another site with good information on eggplant.

Summer Fest: We had a number of people attend our Summer Festival and a good time was had by all - and lots of good food.  The kids found that there was lots of grass (recently mowed) to pile up and jump into.  Ah....fun.  Apologies to parents who found children with grass clippings attached upon arriving home. http://genfaux.blogspot.com/2011/08/summer-festival.html

DUCKS Available: The ducks go to the park on September 11.  We are ready to begin taking reservations for these ducks.  Interested?  Send us a note.  We are gathering information on processing cost so we can give you a per pound cost.  Last year it was $6.50/lb.  We expect it to be somewhere in the $6.50 to $7.00 range this season.  Feed prices have gone up 25% this year.  We have approx 28 birds available.  Last year weights ranged from 3.5lb to 8lb

Recipes and Things Overheard at Distribution:  Another recent blog post has a little bit for everyone - including recipes: http://genfaux.blogspot.com/2011/08/overheard.html

Crop Reports:  For those who like to see some of the crop data we collect, there are two posts that focus on eggplant and peppers for the season.  While these posts may have more information than some of you want - they do give you insight as to how we try to do things on your behalf.  http://genfaux.blogspot.com/2011/08/by-numbers.html
and part II: http://genfaux.blogspot.com/2011/08/by-numbers-part-ii.html

GFF in the News: Our CSA members are GREAT!  We were unaware that we were featured in two recent articles, but our members were quick to point it out to us.  An upcoming late Fall project is to get all of these goodies together and linked or scanned to the web site.

Tom Sawyer Day Anyone?  We are looking at this coming weekend - Sept 10 in the afternoon.  We have a number of DIFFERENT things to do that include painting, gathering metal to take to a metal fund drive and other such things.  If you are interested, let us know.  Please do not surprise us with an appearance.  We want to know you are coming so we can make this a good experience for everyone (including us!).

UNI Sponsored Farm Crawl:  We are a part of the UNI Farm Crawl being sponsored for September 11 (Sunday).  More details coming.  But, if you wish to learn more - go to the CEEE website and read what is there for the beginning information.

See you at distribution!

Rob & Tammy