Lloyd Craft Farms Fresh Produce, Locally Grown

I’ll try to make this quick–info on the Add4Weeks, Honeycrisp Apples, and Winter Co-op–

ADD4Weeks option–we are diligently working on carrots and potatoes- today we bagged 230# of carrots and 240# of potatoes.  We have 500# more of potatoes and 140# more of carrots.  Here’s the delivery plan–We will deliver to your doorstep on Saturday, November 1st…including the people out of town.  I will send an email or a text message to each of you tomorrow.

Honeycrisp Apples–this is a really good deal and even better is that Honeycrisp apples are good keepers.  You can buy a 36# box and keep it in a cool spot and enjoy the apples for several weeks.  These are coming direct from a MT orchard so the ‘enjoy time’ is longer.  I need one more order to meet the minimum.  Email or text me– craftterri@rtconnect.net or 431-1219

Winter co-op–Now that the regular CSA season has come to an end, I’m looking for organics for our own family.  So here is an idea:  A Lloyd Craft Farms Winter Co-op.  It will run from mid-November until the end of June when the 2015 CSA starts up.  Produce would be ordered in bulk from Spokane Produce and delivered weekly–all USDA certified organic, 2/3 Veggie with a ‘greens’ tub and 1/3 Fruit.  Cost is $200 Down-payment and $25 weekly. Open to 24 members. Still working out specifics, but if you are interested send me an email–and include any questions you might have.

Thanks you’all!  The Farmer’s Wife

Anyone interested in ordering a case (36#) of Honeycrisp Apples for pick up next Thursday (November 6th), send me an email, text, or give me a call.  I need to have a minimum of 4 boxes in order to place the order.  Cost is $75 a box ($2.08/#)—  Orders must be placed before Monday, November 3rd.

These apples come from an orchard up north and have by-passed the packing facilities and warehouses.  This calculates into freshness and unadulteration with pesticides or fungicides required for storage.

craftterri@rtconnect.net

Text to 431-1219

Thanks, The Farmer’s Wife

Thursday was the last Pick Up for the 2014 season & Friday was our final Deliveries to those in Thermopolis and along the North Route–Thank you to each and every one of you that hung with us for the whole season–  We felt good about the year and the fresh food we were able to supply you.  We reached our goal of 16 weeks!  (The weather co-operated–Thank you God!)

Please take a moment and send me an email with feedback on the 2014 Season–what you liked, what you’d like to see for next year, how it compared to the past two years for those that have been on this adventure since the beginning– craftterri@rtconnect.net

This last week in October we will be harvesting the potatoes and carrots for the ADD4Weeks option and surplus sales.  

Thanks, The Farmer’s Wife

One more week until Halloween–That time of year that we love to carve Jack-O-Lanterns with a small child…or even a LARGE one!

Lloyd Craft Farms pumpkins are sold at Reese’s & Ray’s IGA.  Also the funky and new ornamental pumpkins called Knucklehead with WARTS and all!

$3.99 per pumpkin, no matter size!  Knuckleheads are $4.99—

Also for sale are all the Winter Squash that you love, price $1.49/#–Delicata, Acorn, Butternut, Hubbard, Kabocha, Buttercup, and Hubbard 

WHY EAT WINTER SQUASH?

*Tasty source of complex carbohydrate (natural sugar and starch)

and fiber. Fiber, which was once called roughage, absorbs water and becomes bulky

in the stomach. It works throughout the intestinal track, cleaning and moving waste

quickly out of the body. Research suggests that this soluble fiber plays an important

role in reducing the incidence of colon cancer.

*Source of potassium, niacin, iron and beta carotene. As a general

rule, the deeper the orange color, the higher the beta carotene content. Beta carotene

is converted to Vitamin A in the body. Vitamin A being essential for healthy skin,

vision, bone development and maintenance as well as many other functions.

Winter Squash, including Pumpkins, can be cooked and froze for use in soups and as ‘mashed potatoes’ throughout the winter months.  The Hubbards and Kabocha are excellent storage pumpkins for ‘fresh’ use.  Other varieties are Acorn, Delicata, and Buttercup.  the small orange and cream colored squash are sweet pumpkins–cute ornamentals but a great meal:  top and scoop out seeds, bake in oven at 350 degrees until tender.  You can add maple syrup, honey, brown sugar to the cavity during the baking process to enhance the sweet taste.

The Farmer’s Wife

The Truck will be in Thermopolis around 10:15.  This is the final share and it includes Leap Frogger’s!  See you Thermopolites then–

The Deliveries North will start at 10:00 from Worland and end around 11:30 in Greybull.  Be prompt in meeting Paula.

Thanks to all the members!  You are awesome and we are blessed!  So much good happened this year!  We would deem 2014 as a success–

I’ll post more information next week on the Add4 Weeks option for those that signed in the spring.  Your pumpkins, squash, and onions have already been set aside–will be digging potatoes and carrots.  We assume we will have bulk carrots and potatoes and onions for sale to other members, and then non-members, but have to fulfill obligations first.

I have spoke to some about a weekly Winter Co-op which would start up in a couple of weeks.  It would be USDA certified organic produce–2/3 Veggie and 1/3 Fruit with a ‘greens’ tub of spinach, lettuce, arugula, etc.  Checking on the winter-readiness of our cooler, and crunching the numbers.

THANKS– The Farmer’s Wife

A reminder that Thursday is the last Share Pick Up of the season!  Pick Up is from noon until 3:00 p.m.  According to the weather report, we are expecting 12 mph winds to start around 3:00…so you will not want to tarry…wind is difficult out here on the farm–WE WILL NOT BE SETTING SHARES ASIDE IN THE COOLER UNLESS YOU HAVE MADE ARRANGEMENTS AHEAD OF TIME.

Thursday is also the last Fruit Share of the season–more of those Strawberry Papayas and some Strawberries…a Mango, Ginger Gold Apples from last week, and organic Bananas.  I baked Persimmon cookies last night with the Hachiya persimmons from last week–ohhh…so good and easy!  Persimmons give it a natural sweetness and perfect moisture.  Hope you have enjoyed the fruit as much as I have–an experience in discovering new fruit and what to do with it—

ADD4Weeks options will be ready at a later date, hopefully sometime next week–100 acres of tangled Northern beans took precedence this week.  We are 2/3 through untangling the beans from the mess the 45 mph gusts created, and 1/3 through the harvest.  Bring your pitchfork and help–we have to do the hand labor before the combine can do the machine labor.   

I think that is all for now–Please don’t forget! 

See you Thursday– The Farmer’s Wife

We are not going to be able to dig potatoes, and the carrots need another week to grow.  For these reasons the Add4Week option will be passed out the first week in November, or sooner if we can get potatoes and carrots dug before the rain next week. 

This year the potatoes and onions will be bagged in plastic mesh bags best for potatoes and onions.  The carrots will be in 5-10# units in plastic bags.  Below is what we are hoping to include in the Large Add4Weeks options–Small is half that quantity.

LARGE- 40# potatoes (30# Russets/10# Reds or Yukons), 20# Sugarsnax carrots, 10# Yellow storage onions–They dried up beautifully!  Also 4 winter squash including a Hubbard.  Hopefully 2 pumpkins–Powdery mildew put us short on solid storage pumpkins.  We are also adding a green and red storage cabbage that will keep in a cool place for a month, or in a fridge for two.

We should have extra potatoes that will be sold in 20# allotments, and carrots, too.  The Winter Squash is only available to those 27 people that pre-ordered the option in the Spring.  Price of bagged potatoes and carrots to be determined once they are harvested.  If interested, follow the blog for more information.

ADD4Weeks–stay tuned for more information on the delivery date–  Thanks for your patience!

The Farmer’s Wife

I left town in a hurry last week to head to Colorado and didn’t have time to give you additional information on the two Winter Squash that were in your shares last week–

We had Delicata and Buttercup.  Winter Squash develop their flavor when cured–‘cured’ means left in a cool place for a week or two.  Acorn, Butternut, and Delicata do not need to be cured–they are naturally sweet right off the vine.  Hubbards, Buttercup, Kobocha, Spaghetti Squash, etc. are best if ignored for a time after being picked.  Most Winter Squash will store several months as long as the stem is intact and there are not scars and blemishes where spoilage can start.

Week 16 Share will have Kabocha squash and some of the other winter squashes on the Extra’s Table.  The Add4Week option contains winter squash, and the Large Add4Weeks has a Hubbard.  Reese’s and Ray’s IGA is selling our pumpkins and winter squashes–our supply is not large, but after the CSA is over you should be able to purchase more there if your heart desires–  🙂

Below is my response to one of our members in Basin when she asked about the share including the Fingerling potatoes that were added to the Route deliveries:

The little-long striped squash is Delicata.  It is different than most squash that you can slice it up and cook it with other things…cabbage, potatoes, etc…peel and all.  I baked it like you do a squash—cut in half, seeded, filled with butter, covered with foil, baked in the oven for about 30 minutes—but was disappointed.  There is not much meat and it didn’t seem worth the time and effort—THEN, Lindsay was here and sliced the squash like we do zucchini (peel and all) and cooked them in butter with onions and a small garlic.  Then she added some cabbage, craisins, and apple, and cooked all till tender.  IT WAS DELICIOUS!  Hope to add this recipe to the web and post it, but have to take care of some other stuff first. 

The potatoes are fingerlings.  Fingerlings can be baked, boiled, sliced and cooked with butter or olive oil and onion…anything you might do with potatoes, but do not peel them.  Lindsay fried them yesterday morning in a little olive oil with salt and pepper and onions.  I think bits of bacon would have been super.  When you boil them, be careful to not overcook—they can dry out pretty quickly. 

There are 8 Shares in the cooler still to be picked up–We’ll hold them today, and then fold them into the Extra’s for Week 16 Pick Up on Thursday.  Hope you can make it out!-we took the time to set them up for you…please take the time to come and pick them up. 

You may have noted a few changes to the Week 15 Share–No Swiss chard…it, too, along with the lettuce, has been given up to aphids…Those pesky buggars–they are supposed to disappear with the cold…but it really has not been cold enough! Also, no time to dig beets, and onions were white instead of yellow, but I’m sure those changes were okay– 🙂

Some notes on the Sweet Potatoes —

I spent the weekend in Colorado with my grandkids!  Grandma baked up the sweet potatoes in the oven.  But they were not as sweet as Grandma would have liked them. 

I chose the bigger sweet potatoes which it turned out were not cured completely.  They were still yummy-but if you have some larger yams, set them aside in a cool, dark place (50 degrees) for a week to let the starches convert to sugars.  Commercial sweet potatoes are cured for a month or more, but we don’t have the space and use our greenhouse.  Last year the temps were cooler and we kept the potatoes longer–this year’s temps were warmer and we could not keep them as long.  The potatoes have brown patches and are starting to wrinkle because of the heat.  We needed to get them out of the greenhouse.  The smaller potatoes should be sweeter as they are less dense.  (My mind is already rolling on a simple curing facility for next year!)

Another note on sweet potatoes–ours were not sprayed with herbicides or insecticides.  The suggested pest management system for Commercially grown sweet potatoes recommends Admire, Lorsban, and Telone as pre-plants in the ground and Admire again as a soil drench 30-45 days after transplanting the potato slips.  They then recommend the use of 7 insecticides on a 7-14 day plan.

Sweet potatoes do not appear on the Dirty Dozen list because we don’t eat the peels which contain the concentration of ‘cides’.  Keep in mind that the Dirty Dozen is a comparison between produce and their levels of contamination, not a list of what produce is contaminated and what is clean.

Enjoy the fresh produce!   The Farmer’s Wife

Pick up is Thursday, at The Farm–  NOON to 3:00 p.m.  We’ll set up your Share if you can’t make it and will hold it until Monday, but you will not have the benefit of the Extra’s Table.  This week’s EXTRA’s are the last of the Acorn squash, more Hooligan sweet pumpkins, storage cabbage, lots of onions, green bell peppers, fingerling potatoes, new variety of broccoli, and a plethora of other goodies!

Deliveries still on Friday for the North Route and Thermopolis.  This week’s drivers will be Paula and Diana.  For the Deliveries we will add a few items from the Extra’s Table, our choice–

New crop of Broccoli–If interested in purchasing a box for freezing ($25 for 13#), let me know.   Other preserving considerations are Cabbage for Sauerkraut (6 heads @ $.50/#).  Orders will be delivered at the last Pick Up on October 23rd–Wow!  The end of the season!

We are working on putting together the ADD 4 WEEKS option.  It is our intention to pass it out at the last Pick Up–however it depends on getting the storage carrots and potatoes dug, washed, and bagged….and that depends on the weather.  If not ready on the 23rd, we’ll name an alternate time and location.  Thanks for your patience! 

This week’s Share is Swiss Chard, Beets, Carrots, Yellow storage onions, SWEET POTATOES, Delicata squash and a Buttercup squash, and your choice of a Sugar Pie Pumpkin or a small  pumpkin known as Racer for those that would rather carve than bake–Herb of the week is Fennel fronds and head with seeds. 

See you all Thursday at Noon–for those picking up on their lunch-break, we will get you in and out!  Please make every effort to pick up on Thursday– THANKS!

The Farmer’s Wife