Dear Farm Friends,
Welcome to the smack-dab middle of October. This morning, after starting coffee and the wood stove, I poked my head out the door and saw that our thermometer on the front steps already showed 29 degrees with another hour or more of dropping temps still to come. I slipped on the my boots and headlamp over pajamas, and went out to the tunnels to manually open all of our drip irrigation valves (normal controlled by a electronic program) before they froze shut. The afternoons still feel hot, but the frosty mornings of fall are here for sure, at least at our place, and this one was a good bit colder than forecast, catching us by surprise. It’s good, though, sweetening up the carrots, and helping push to get all the crops in.
With that seasonal change comes an extra importance of reminding you all that the Hamilton Farmers Market is not over yet! We will be there Saturday morning, 9:00-12:30, just as we have been since that first Saturday of May, and we’ll be there right up through the final Saturday of October, with just so, so, much food for you.
I thought last week (and the week before) was the end of the fresh-flower market bouquets. The flowers had other plans, so they are coming to market again! But this really is the last one; their caterpillar tunnel is moving on, and this was the final harvest.
We still have all the baby greens (salad mix, spicy mix, mild winter salad mix, arugula, baby kale, AND spinach), plus head lettuce, boc choi, kale, chard, 5 kinds of cabbage, and celery. Roots from crunchy radishes to frost-sweetened beets and carrots, to a lovely mix of potatoes. Believe it or not, there are still tomatoes, sweet peppers, and hot peppers, and possibly (we’ll see as we harvest) the last of the strawberries?
But perhaps the most significant news for this fall week is the arrival of the winter squash. If you’ve been entranced by the vivid colors shining through the greenhouse while they cured in the sun you’ll be happy to learn that the squash are ready and coming to market! We grow many varieties, some ready right now and some that get sweeter with a few months in storage. If your squash experience has been limited to grocery store offerings, allow us to introduce you to a few of our favorites:
Delicata: we are lumping together here several variations, including “honeyboat” and “sweet dumpling” but all the shapes and colors have the key features in common: fast-baking, convenient small size, thin skins that are easy to cut open, and most of all the sweetness. Just put away that brown sugar you might usually dump on store-bought acorn squash, because you don’t need it here. Being small, they bake up quickly…just cut them in half, scoop out the seeds, and bake them face-down till they are soft when poked with a fork (can be as fast as 15-20 minutes for the small sizes.) The texture is quite smooth, and the skins on this one are soft enough that another prep method is to cut them in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, then cut them cross-ways into “smiles” to toss with oil and salt and bake like oven fries. They are still probably our number-one favorite, and with a shorter storage life than the others, they are the perfect squash for kicking off the season.
Delicata and honeyboat have been sun-curing in the greenhouse and are so sweet and ready.
Red Kuri and Sunshine: bright orange, with smooth, sweet flesh with a nutty flavor, this squash can go sweet or savory in recipes. Red Kuri are teardrop shaped, the Sunshine are the flattened round pumpkins shape, but inside they are virtually the same. They are not as sugary as delicata, but they are great just straight as baked squash (butter and salt is our go-to), while the leftovers are excellent in a soup or as a squash pie filling (most pumpkin pie is squash, pie, really). They’ll take slightly longer to bake but are still pretty quick to get to the table. You can also make a delicious pudding with these by whipping baked leftovers, scooped out of the skin, with freshly chopped ginger and coconut milk (maybe some honey or maple syrup to taste for extra sweetness); chill for a few hours in the fridge to blend flavors and eat for dessert or breakfast.
Green Kabocha “Cha-cha” : The green skin outside hides a bright orange, dense flesh inside which bakes up to a drier, firmer texture—almost flaky compared to the softer smoother red kuri. Flavor is sweet but savory/ nutty, along the lines of a sweet potato. Consider roasting this one as wedges, and sprinkling with salt, or maybe a gingery-soy dressing and sesame seeds. Or cut leftovers into cubes and stir in to a pasta or a hearty salad.
Spaghetti Squash: we grow both the traditional football size of these, and one called “angel hair” that is great for smaller meals. Cut, scoop, and bake as with all the others, but the insides on these are totally different: instead of sweet smooth flesh, they are bred deliberately to be stringy. After baking, you fluff up the strands and pretend that they are pasta. They aren’t, exactly (fair warning: they do not fuel a long day of hiking or skiing like true noodles would), but they are an excellent vehicle for sauce, pesto, or cheese. We like to use their firm skins as the bowl, and toss the sauce right it the squash-halves, sometimes popping them back in the oven after topping with cheese, to melt.
And in general news from the farm…nope, things are not slowing down yet. That is one of the most common questions we get about now, but we are actually in that crescendo time where the workload accelerates for a while yet, and if we seem frazzled as we greet you it’s true, we are. There’s a lot to handle as we get caterpillar tunnels moved over winter plantings, start to add frost protection to the field, continue watering the pastures to take advantage of the last few weeks of irrigation water and sunshine, get cover crops in and other spaces cleaned up and put to bed, continue the wholesale and market and membership harvests through the end of October, and prepare to launch the winter memberships…phew! Not to mention getting ready to throw ourselves and the team back into the big building project in hopes of getting that packshed space ready for, um, the nine more beds of potatoes and seven beds of storage carrots yet to come out of the ground. Send patience, strength, love, and coffee. (And oh mercy, thanks to those of you who leave surprise meals and treats for us, the morale boost is huge!)
Winter salad greens: the caterpillar tunnel in the background is over this winter salad mix now.
We are so grateful for the long fall window this year—”three weeks of borrowed time” as one of the Moeller's put it in a conversation recently—that is letting us get some of this done without a winter storm bearing down on us. But we know it’s coming sooner or later! But Saturday should be perfect weather for a market, and don’t worry, the Apple Day crowds have long since thinned out, so come enjoy a relaxed market morning for loading up on veggies, food, local products, and take time to visit with your neighbors. We’ll bring a mountain of food to market, and hope to see you there.
And, of course, the farmstore is open self-serve and loaded all week as well!
-Mary, Noah, and the whole SweetRoot team.