Dear Farm Friends,
Are you ready? This Saturday is the very last Hamilton Farmers Market of the season. If you made it out last week, you know that when we say we’ll be there regardless of the weather, we mean it. Thankfully there is no snow in this week’s market forecast, and we will definitely be there on Bedford Street, with an amazing abundance of food for you.
The other big news is that the winter farm memberships are OPEN and ready for signups. The weekly pickups the first Wednesday in November, and we are really excited with the crops we have for winter members. You can learn more or reserve your spot in the winter membership by clicking the button below.
We still think it’s pretty amazing to be able to eat fresh local produce in the winter months here in Montana, and being able to grow and provide it for our community has been a rewarding part of our farm development. One of the favorite things we have heard from farm member families is that they eat healthier through the year with the winter shares. If you are used to good, fresh, local produce, it can be hard to tolerate the limp leaves from the grocery store, and many of us, without realizing it, might just eat fewer fresh vegetables in winter. But with a farm share, you are not only challenged and prompted by the arrival of a dose of fresh veggies every week, but you may just find you are eating more and enjoying them more because they are, well, just a whole lot better. We have room for about 25 more households in the winter farm membership, and we hope some of you will try it out.
It might not be as pretty as when it’s in the field, but this is local food…stored in super cold walk-in coolers for you to eat all winter. Beets, carrots, and cabbage await winter members and farmstore customers.
The theme of this past week has been to “just get it in,” starting last Friday with the potatoes. We were right to push through Friday evening, even though that meant no email last week, heavy loads of potatoes by headlamp, and some bleary-eyed farmers at market. The potato harvester would not have functioned in the muddy fields after the rain that fell Friday night and Saturday. And after many weeks of just mixed bags of early potato varieties, we will finally be bringing you all the greatest potato hits…Russian Banana fingerlings, Russets, Yukon Gems, French Rose Fingerlings, German Butterballs, and the deep purple all-blues.
The carrot harvesting tool (an under cutter bar, also called a bed-lifter) is a lot more forgiving, and carrots are also more tolerant to a little bit cooler of temps, so they were the featured storage vegetable for harvest this week. Seven beds of storage carrots, fat and happy and frost-sweetened, are all now out of the ground and stowed away, in both our cooler on the farm, and the rented cooler over at the Western Ag Research Station in Corvallis. We worried about these carrots when an insect-transmitted disease known as asters’ yellow started showing up all around, so we actually covered the whole planting with protective insect netting, and kept a very close eye on them. They did well. Really well.
The carrots and potatoes will be joined at market by winter squash, salad greens (mild, spicy, spinach, and lettuce mixes), head lettuces, radicchio heads, kale, chard, beets, radishes, salad turnips, the last of the sweet peppers (mostly green), lots of hot peppers, cabbage, napa cabbage, onions, garlic, and more. We hope you’ll come out and load up. There are a few meal ideas below, and we have to confess we look forward already the winter, our best slow eating season and a good time for sharing more food ideas.
Eat well, we hope to see you soon.
Mary and Noah
Half the winter carrots were harvested in very wintery conditions this week. Sloppy wet snow tested the team and made the wood stove in the barn all the more valuable. This was the “little to no accumulation expected” forecast, but luckily we have learned to expect the unexpected.
Some food and recipe ideas for the coming week:
Super-easy hot sauce: We have a LOT of hot peppers coming to this market, as we stripped everything last week before moving caterpillar tunnels. One of our favorite ways to take 4-5 red chilies (especially any of the Asian types like Thai chilies, red rockets, Krimson Lee, etc.), 3-5 cloves of garlic, chop both (remove the seeds for mellower and smoother textured hot sauce or keep them in for extra heat), pour on enough rice vinegar to cover, and blend into a sauce with an immersion blender or food processor. If you like sweet-sour-hot combo, add a dash of sugar or a piece of sweet ripe fruit like a plum, to the blend. Put it on everything.
2. Gingery Squash Soup (extremely fast and easy, worth making sure you have leftover squash for)
2 medium onions (or one large Ailsa Craig sweet onion), chopped
2 tablespoons fresh ginger, peeled and diced or grated.
In a large soup pot sauté the onions and ginger in 1 tablespoon oil until onion is translucent.
2 apples (peeled, seeded, and chopped)
2 cups of cooked squash
4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
Add to pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until squash and apples are tender. Puree in blender or with immersion blender, until smooth. Salt and pepper to taste, garnish with fresh parsley or chives if available (optional).
p.s. and then there is this….one of us from the farm (not yet totally agreed on who) will participate in the downtown association “inflatables” race on Monday, in this chicken costume. We chose the Bitterroot Land Trust as the non-profit to receive any donations you all toss in the jar at the market booth and/ or farmstore in the next few days. They do good, serious, work for preserving farmland…and while we take local food and feeding community seriously, it’s impossible to take an inflatable chicken costume too seriously, so come out to Main Street Monday at 5:30 for some straight-up ridiculousness for a good cause.