Lloyd Craft Farms Fresh Produce, Locally Grown

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