Happy Autumn!
Anyone go to the CSA Fall Tour & Pumpkin Picking this year? Email me comments and photos (I may need help with the photos) and I’ll post in the next CSA email.
Got any pets that eat produce? Let us know! Gerbils, Rabbits, Horses, Turtles, Lizards are a few of the critter I know of that eat stray Lettuce leaves and unwanted Carrot Tops (or stray Carrots ). If you could use these for your animal companion(s), ask at the CSA if we have any for you to take home.
Anyone else still interested in Honey??? I ordered 4 extra (that aren’t yet paid for), and Farmer Bill says he as about 10 more, in case anyone didn’t order yet or wants more than they ordered. They make great holiday presents and that time of year is fast approaching! If you’re interested, leave CASH ONLY at the CSA sign-in desk.
To order biodynamically raised Honey from Farmer Bill’s daughter who lives upstate NY near the St. Lawrence River (the same we got last time)…please bring in an envelope with your name on it, the number of jars of Honey you want and the amount in the envelope, and leave it at the Sign-In desk at the CSA. You can also email me to make sure I know it’s there. The Honey is $10 per one pound container and you can pay by cash. Last time is was in Honey Bear plastic squeeze bottles and it will be the same this time (unless we get surprised and get them in glass like we did the time before). Just read that in addition to being antibacterial and antiviral, Honey can be an effective cough suppressant, more than most over the counter medicines and without the side effects or taking pharmaceuticals!
PLEASE CONTINUE TO WEIGH OUT YOUR FOOD CAREFULLY.
SO CLOSE AND YET SO FAR!!! We still need to fill 40 spots to have the CSA filled for the year!!! I’m going to keep talking about this till Farmer Bill asks me to stop. Attached to this email is the contract for new CSA members, the CSA brochure AND a CSA fee sheet for the rest of the season. Please feel free to pass this on to friends, neighbors, co-workers and relatives who might be interested in joining the CSA this season! If we all were able to find one person to join…we’d be done in a minute. Please feel free to suggest places to leave the CSA brochures or names of individuals/groups to contact about CSA (either just to give info or to give a talk about CSA/local eating). I’m happy to do whatever is needed.
Miss the Exchange Table? We don’t have one if there aren’t enough people to staff the CSA. This year, we need to figure out if it’s because we have less members and/or less working members. Hopefully, in the next weeks we can fill the CSA up and not have to contemplate everyone working more hours, or next year, putting a limit on how many non-working CSA members the CSA can sustain.
This email includes…
1. Your CSA needs you!! We’re looking for THREE (3) people to work from 3:30pm to 5:30pm!
2. What you’re getting at the CSA this week (subject to change without notice…farming is like that!)
3. It’s time to weigh our food!
4. Jicama and Sensopai Info From Last Week’s CSA Share
5. BRING BAGS!
6. Order Certified Organic Plants/Seedlings (grown at Green Thumb Farm) for your garden this season…
7. Fun, Cool & Interesting Stuff to Do (new events added weekly)
8. Click on this…armchair activism!
9. CSA member, Meg White, finds local food article on CNN website…
10. File under no good deed goes unpunished…
11. CSA Blogger who’s farm is our farm!
12. Steven Colbert as “Steven Colbert” testifies to Congress about migrant farmworkers…
1. Your CSA needs you!! looking for TWO (2) people to work from 3:30pm to 5:30pm!
If you were sent an email from Judi or me, you are scheduled to work this week. If not, you’re not.
IF you can work, please 1) respond to this email, 2) call 631-421-4864 and leave a message before 1pm OR 3) just show up a little before 5:30pm and offer to help out. You can always show up a little before 3:30 or 5:30pm at the CSA and offer to work if help is still needed…you never know! Everyone that’s scheduled doesn’t always show up on time…or at all.
2. What you’re getting at the CSA this week (subject to change without notice…farming is like that!)
Veggie Tip Sheets attached to this email for everything on the list this week
October 28, 2010
Week #28
1. Sweet Potatoes
2. Lettuce: Leaf, Red
3. Beans: Romano – 1 bag
4. Chives OR Mizuna – 1 bunch
5. Broccoli
6. Tomatoes, Mini – 1 pt
Total Items: 6 (?)
3. It’s time to weigh our food!
Yup! It’s that time of year. Sounds easy right? Put food in the scale and weigh it, right? Not exactly .
A. Bring reading glasses if you need them OR have the person by the scale read it for you
B. Please follow the instructions given by the person(s) at the scale. There may be more than one food item that needs to get weighed at the same time on the same scale. It may not make sense to you or seem necessary but our farmer has asked us to do so. Will be glad to explain if you want to know the specifics.
C. Most important…If you can’t get an exact weight (it happens), DO NOT GO OVER THE WEIGHT POSTED ON THE CSA WALL CHART!!!!
I can’t emphasize this enough. All we need is a few people thinking that it’s no big deal to be a smidge over the amount and….it becomes a big deal! Just think about it…1 oz…what’s that? Two Green Beans? So what???? Ok…we have 82 CSA members and if 32 of them go over by that 1 oz that adds up to 2 pound and it may mean that one or two people don’t get ANY Beans at the end of the night. Serves them right for coming late, huh? That’s not how the CSA works. Everyone paid the same amount to receive the same amount of food so it’s up to each one of us to make sure that happens.
D. Please stand directly in front of the scale and make sure the red line (weight indicator) has not “disappeared” behind the colored tape on the readout part of the scale. If you stand to either side of the scale…you can still see the red line but you’re going to go over the correct amount (it’s the customer’s equivalent of the story about the butcher that keeps their finger on the scale to skew the weight).
E. There may be a plastic bag in the scale…if there is, don’t take it with you! We use it to keep the vegetables from falling out of the bowl and, believe it or not, keep the weight consistant. Different plastic bags weigh different amounts. So, weigh it in the bag that’s in the scale and then dump the food into your own bag/basket/carrier. Thanks!
F. Please don’t drop the scales…the top sometimes sticks to the bottom and lifts it up when you’re getting your food out of the measuring bowl and so the bottom then drops on the floor and breaks…just be aware and please be careful…thanks!
4. Jicama and Senposai Info From Last Week’s CSA Share
Jicama
Wiki…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%ADcama
more info…
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/healthnutrition/foodrecipeactivity/food/jicama.htm
You can juice it!
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-jicama.htm
every one of these darn things has a little different piece of informations…
http://www.foodreference.com/html/art-jicama-history-facts.html
Fascinating! Just in time for the Day of the Dead on November 1st…
http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/economicbotany/Pachyrhizus/index.html
How simple is this?
http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/jicama-appetizer/Detail.aspx
Similar…
http://renegadehealth.com/blog/2010/06/02/raw-food-recipe-for-spicy-jicama-fries/
Kid friendly…
http://www.starchefs.com/kids/abcs/html/abcs_j.shtml
Easy-peasy…
http://www.examiner.com/low-carb-in-national/low-carb-jicama-hashed-browns-recipe
Love Chowhound…
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/491652
Senposai
I find this fascinating. Farmers are extremely hard-working busy people, often solitary, often not so verbal. And somehow, many end up planting the same new peculiar thing without having read about it or talked to other farmer’s about it. It’s like some collective consciousness thing…
They were getting this last year in Bed Sty!
http://conucofarm.blogspot.com/2009/05/senposai_08.html
From a CSA in Pennsylvania!
http://www.anchorrunfarm.com/sm_db_item.php?id=10&featuretype=veggie
Couldn’t figure out what CSA she belongs to (though I have emailed her and found out it’s one in Pennsylvania but not the one above) but we’re clearly not alone!
http://www.mealsformoderns.com/2010/10/ricotta-gratin-of-senposai-potatoes-and.html
more recipes…
http://www.wildfrontiermusic.com/senposai.htm
and another one…
http://vegetablematter.blogspot.com/2009/10/farro-pasta-with-goat-cheese-eggplant.html
one with Japanese Eggplant…
http://vegetablematter.blogspot.com/2009/10/spicy-tofu-with-asian-greens.html
If you like it you can order the seeds…
http://www.evergreenseeds.com/senposai.html
or from here (best seed company in the northeast)…
http://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/SeedsItem.php?id=3218&SeedName=senposai
This is the guy to thank for growing Senposai in the USA…
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/chatham/ag/SustAg/seedpodweevil.html
Think I’ll get this book…
http://books.google.com/books?id=sLr7AtqDDeYC&pg=PA189&lpg=PA189&dq=senposai&source=bl&ots=Op_7xqjCXd&sig=ODjU11B7mYFq-gk55cw41a1UuCw&hl=en&ei=CXzBTLHKOcOC8ga7ioGCBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCYQ6AEwBTgU#v=onepage&q=senposai&f=false
And of course, CSA godmother Elizabeth Henderson was growing this in 1999!!!
Even though she’d been farming since the mid 1980’s, this was the first season since she divorced from her husband/co-farmer/business partner and had to get her own farm…
http://www.gvocsa.org/web/newsletters/newsletter_1999_jul.html
5. BRING BAGS!
What more can you say about this?
At the CSA, we bag our own food. I’d suggest to bring a selection of plastic bags (especially for things that are dripping wet like Lettuces and other Greens which we get later in the season when they are picked from out in the fields…as opposed to the greenhouse where they are probably coming from now) AND paper bags (for things that don’t like plastic like Tomatoes…the moisture that plastic attracts will make them rot faster).
Keep a stash of bags in every vehicle you own, and replenish when the stash gets low! That way you’ll never be without. AND, if anyone is picking up for you…please tell them about needing bags!
6. Order Certified Organic Plants/Seedlings (grown at Green Thumb Farm) for your garden this season…
Check out the attachment for instructions and plant list. This one has the phone number to the farm AND I put it as a PDF because some folks couldn’t open the Word version.
7. Fun, Cool & Interesting Stuff to Do (new events added weekly)
If you don’t mind trekking into the city, these are two email lists to get on that have a lot of very cool food-based (local/organic) events…
http://brooklynbased.net/
http://www.eatingintranslation.com/
Thursday, October 28th
12pm
Bobby Flay Book Signing
Borders
1260 Old Country Rd
Westbury
For more info:
http://www.borders.com/online/store/StoreDetailView_52
6pm to 10:30pm
2010 Hungerthon Kickoff Concert
Hart Rock Café Times Square
1501 Broadway (at 43rd St)
NYC
$95
To order tickets:
http://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?showcode=2015
For more info call:
Sue Leventhal 212-629-3224
Featuring The Persuations, Garland Jeffreys, Jen Chapin, Tom Chapin and hosted by Vincent Curatola from The Sopranos….and many more!
To learn more about the charity started by Huntington’s own Harry Chapin…
http://www.whyhunger.org/
Friday, October 29th
9am to 10:30am
Morning Meditation with Rev. Ratzlaff
UUFH
109 Browns Rd
Huntington, NY
FREE
CSA member, Rev. Paul Ratzlaff conducts a morning sitting meditation every Friday. The schedule is as follows…
9am to 9:45am – silent meditation
Bell is rung
Poem or Buddhist reading is read aloud
Check in with everyone
Reading a selection out of a collection of Buddhist stories and discuss it
The end!
Sunday, October 31st
6 to 9:45pm
Boorito 2010
Chipotle
Wherever they’re located (Huntington, Farmingdale, Hicksville on LI)
www.chipotle,com/boorito
Come into any Chipotle after 6pm dressed as a horrifying processed food product (think snack foods, cheese goo, weiners) and they will give you a Burrito, Bowl, Salad or an order of Tacos for $2.00!!!
The money (up to $1,000,000) will go to benefit Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution!
Take a photo of your horrifying processed food costume inside or in front of a Chipotle on Halloween and submit it online on or before November 8th and be entered into a costume contest where the top prize is $2,500!
Monday, November 1st to 3rd
Women in Sustainable Agriculture Conference
Fairlee, VT
$100 to $150 (includes 5 meals and all sessions and materials)
For more info and to register:
http://www.uvm.edu/wagn/?Page=conference/index.html&SM=conference/sub-menu.html
Happens once every 5 years!
The 2010 Women in Sustainable Agriculture Conference will bring together farmers, ranchers, educators, agricultural service providers and activists to to build production and business skills, share educational and organizational strategies, and forge new connections all aimed at expanding the success of women in sustainable agriculture. This conference will celebrate farm women's accomplishments, and through your participation set the stage for even further success.
Tuesday, November 2nd
7 to 9pm
New York City Beekeepers Association Meeting
Seafarers and International House
123 E 15th St (between Irving Pl and 3rd Ave)
NYC
Jeoparbee! The live, TV-style game show will be hosted by Howland Blackiston, author of "Beekeeping for Dummies" and past president of Back Yard Beekeepers Association.
Contestants and audience members will get a chance to win valuable prizes while learning from Howland about bees and beekeeping. Prizes will be awarded for our contestants and one
lucky audience member. This is a meeting combining fun and beeknowledge, so join us and bring your friends and family!
November 13th
11am to 3pm
Basic Urban Beekeeping Course
W 68th St (near Central Park West)
NYC
$250
For more info and to register:
http://www.nyc-bees.org/classes.html
Will be continued on Sunday,, November 14th as well. Urban beekeeping techniques can certainly be translated to suburban settings. Sing to the tune of NY, NY…If they can DO it there, they can do it ANYwhere.
10pm
The Hotline
Gunther’s Tap Room
Main St
Northport
631-754-9659
For more info:
http://www.thehotline.net/Site/Welcome.html
CSA member, John Morina, is the drummer for The Hotline. They rock out doing blues, funk, soul, rock…check out the website for a taste and then see them live to experience the real deal!
Saturday, November 20th
UUFH Services Auction
109 Browns Rd
Huntington
For more info:
Look on the tables on your way into the CSA
Some of the things being auctioned off thru Green Thumb Farm CSA – Huntington are…
1. Seasonal Basket of Plenty from Green Thumb Farm including a cookbook, Honey, and t-shirt
2. Romantic Dinner and BBQ package of Steaks, Hamburgers and Hot Dogs from Dines Farm
3. A year’s pass for two to the Cinema Arts Centre – Cinema Co-Directors Dylan Skolnick and Charlotte Sky are longtime CSA members
Sunday, November 21st
2pm
Healthy Planet Dinner/Lecture Series
16th Annual Turkey Free Thanksgiving Potluck!
Sweet Hollow Hall
Melville
For more info and reservations:
Call 631-421-5591
e-mail: info@healthy-planet.org
http://www.healthy-planet.org/Series/index.asp
Featured speaker will be Howard Lyman, the Mad Cowboy…made famous when he helped Oprah Winfrey when she was sued for saying on tv how she’d never eat a Hamburger again after knowing how they were made and what was in them.
Sunday, December 5th
Green Thumb Farm
Rt 27
Water Mill, NY
Our CSA farm’s farmstand’s last day of operation till May 2011! There might be some pretty good deals to be had.
Tuesday, December 7th
7 to 9pm
New York City Beekeepers Association Meeting
Seafarers and International House
123 E 15th St (between Irving Pl and 3rd Ave)
NYC
To close out the year, bee expert and author Dr. Larry Connor will join NYCBA on Tuesday, December 7 for a talk on "Bee Sex in the City." Mini-Louboutins for your bees will not be provided, but Dr. Connor will review the basic reproduction of bee colonies, the development and mating of queens, and their mating behavior. A question and answer period will follow the talk. For further information about Dr. Connor, please visit www.wicwas.com.
Saturday, January 15th
9am to 5pm
NOFA-MA Winter Conference
Worchester Tech High School
Worchester, MA
For more info and to register:
http://www.nofamass.org/conferences/winter/index.php
Keynote speech by Michael Phillips, author of The Apple Grower: A Guide for the Organic Orchardist. This guy is the go to person for organic Apple growing in the northeast. If you have any interest in growing Apples, it would be very worthwhile to make the trip and attend this. There is also an all day seminar on Herbs for Family Health by master herbalist Nancy Phillips of Heartsong Farm Healing Herbs. I think I’m going to the Apple seminar. Anyone interested in the Herb one and we can share notes afterwards?
Friday, January 21st to Sunday, January 23rd
NOFA-NY Winter Conference
Saratoga Springs, NY
For more info and to register:
https://www.nofany.org/events/winter-conference
Many workshops, many excellent teachers, much partying, much good food.
Friday, January 29th and Saturday, January 30th
NOFA-NJ Winter Conference
For more info:
http://nofanj.org/winter_conference.htm
March 5th
NOFA-CT Winter Conference
Manchester, CT
For more info:
http://www.ctnofa.org/
8. Click on this…armchair activism!
Click on this!!! Petition to protest using tax dollars to fund disinformation about pesticides in food…
http://action.ewg.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=1906&utm_source=natorganicsactionfull&utm_medium=email&utm_content=image&utm_campaign=food
We have the right to know what’s in our cleaning products (no matter what the corporations think)! Click here to register your opinion…
https://secure.consumersunion.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=2213
Stop Genetically Raised Salmon from getting into the marketplace…unlabeled of course…and CLICK HERE…and spread the word!!!
http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4942
Stop Nestle from taking local Oregon PUBLICLY OWNED spring water, labeling it and selling it…
http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4285
UH-OH!!! Recalled eggs that had Salmonella are being USED to make powdered and liquid egg mixes…YUCK!!! Click here to stop this practice…
http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4714
9. CSA member, Meg White, finds local food article on CNN website…
Nice! Check out the video and slide show…nice chicken tractor!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/17/gsif.farm.fresh/index.html#cnnSTCText
10. File under no good deed goes unpunished…
How many vegetables can one have before it becomes “offensive” ????
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-09-16-georgia-farmer-sued-for-growing-too-many-vegetables/
11. CSA Blogger who’s farm is our farm!
Grist blogger, Jennifer Prediger, is a member of the Cobble Hill CSA in Brooklyn and ONE of the farm that services them is Green Thumb Farm. They also have a separate Fruit Share from another farm (they’ve been thru several fruit farms over the years), Dines Farm is there on Tuesdays (their pickup day), and they have a Winter Share of frozen vegetables from yet another farm. I can’t imagine that’s an accurate picture of her share. It seems like a sampling of what she got as opposed to everything (there’s too few Beans in that photo). Farmer Bill has never seen this because he doesn’t “do” computers let alone the internet. However, I will email this to their website (hosted by his nephew) and his brother-in-law, Steve Storch (biodynamic guru ). Check out the latest entry and click on her name to get past ones…
http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-10-08-urbivores-dilemma-week-18-tomatillo-cilantro-hot-peppers
12. Steven Colbert as “Steven Colbert” testifies to Congress about migrant farmworkers…
Someone conservative pundit said this was offensive to migrant workers but they must not have realized the Hispanic man he was sitting next to was the head of the United Farm Workers and HE was cracking up and there WITH Steven Colbert as they worked on this together…
http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-09-24-colbert-to-congress-what-would-jesus-do-about-immigrant/
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12 generations of the Raymond Halsey family have grown and sold fruits and vegetables on the same farm since 1644. USDA certified Organic, NOFA-NY Certified organic LLC since 1989! Today the farm grows over 100 varieties of flowers and over 300 different varieties of organic veggies, herbs & fruits.
