November is here and the harvest continues!  If you haven’t signed up yet but want to participate in this 3-week CSA extension, reply to this message or send an email to [email protected], and be ready to come to the farm on Friday for the first November pickup.

Sweet potatoes headline this week’s distribution!  Sweet potatoes are one of just a fewcrops that we do not start ourselves here in the greenhouse at Massaro.  We bring in sweet potato seedlings (known as “slips”) from a farm in North Carolina, where conditions are warmer earlier in the year, allowing the sweet potato plants to get an early start, before sending them here in mid to late May, ready to be planted.  Well, not only was it a cold, wet spring in New England this year, but it was also cold,wet in the southeastern part of the US.  As a result, our slips were delayed, and when the did arrive, conditions here were still colder and wetter than normal.  While the plants did seem to recover, the yield was below what we would like.  All that being said, the sweet potatoes are as delicious as ever, and with fewer of them for us to enjoy, be sure to savor these precious beauties.

A mix of greens, roots and truly the final harvest of eggplant and peppers fill out the rest of this week’s harvest.  The kale we are harvesting comes from one our high tunnels, and we hope you have been noting how exceptionally tender and sweet this kale is.  Check out the recipe section below and consider making a kale salad with sweet potatoes, or a kale pesto.  We’ll be harvesting a few different types of radishes and turnips over the coming weeks, which add beautiful colors to your dishes when sliced, have great storage capability and a wide range of culinary potential.  Thin slices on toast with butter or cheese is my most common use, with chopping in to a salad or making a quick pickle being my next favorite uses.  Please let me know if you have any favorite uses or recipes that we can share with the community.

Best,

• You can still sign up for our 3-week November CSA extension, with pickupat the farm on Fridays, 2:30-6:30pm (no Tuesday farm pickup); or at the New Haven farmers’ markets we attend: Wooster Square on Saturdays,9am-1pm; at Edgewood Park on Sundays market 10am-1pm.  Price: $90 credit card/paypal, $85 check/cash discount.  To sign up, please email[email protected] or simply bring payment to the farm. Crops you can expect in the November CSA extension include lettuce, kale, salad/braising greens mix, spinach, arugula, chard, carrots, beets, radishes, salad turnips, garlic, potatoes, broccoli, kohlrabi, bok choi and dandelion greens.   Pickup dates will be as follows:
  • on the farm, Fridays, November 3, 10 and 17; 2:30pm–6:30pm
  • at Wooster Square, Saturdays, November 4, 11 and 18; 9am-1pm
  • at Edgewood Park, Sundays, November 5, 12 and 19; 10am-1pm

• Registration for our 2018 CSA is now open!  CSA registration forms will be available at the farm or you can download, fill them out and bring them to the farm or mail them on. You can also sign up online at our website.  Note that there is a discounted rate for paying by check/cash and a special discounted rate if you pay in full by December 1st, and if you pay in full before the end this year’s CSA, we’ll also give you free jar of our Green Tomato Salsa!  We are offering you this to thank you for the commitment you have made to your community farm, and because it is extremely helpful to us when you sign up early for the CSA.  When you sign up early for our CSA it allows us to focus on the farm in the spring having already completed a heavy load of marketing, paperwork and administrative tasks over the winter months.  With that in mind, in the weeks ahead please consider making a deposit, full payment or payment of any amount towards next year’s CSA.