Week 21: October 21st

In This Week’s Beet Box:

New Produce of the Week: Spaghetti Squash
Cover Crops and Strawberry Crowns
Remember, No More Abby’s Greens Salad Shares
Fall Farmstand Hours

In your share this week:

Yellow Onions
Carrots
Braising Mix
Parsley
Head Lettuce
Red Potatoes
Radishes
Spaghetti Squash

On Rotation

This means that some pickup sites will receive it this week; others next week or in a future week.

Broccoli

NEW PRODUCE OF THE WEEK

Spaghetti Squash: Probably the most-maligned of all the winter squash (hippy food, sneer!), spaghetti squash deserves a chance in your kitchen. In this day and age of widespread gluten-intolerance, perhaps its day to shine has finally come. It’s different from all the other winter squash in that it does truly resemble spaghetti inside once it’s cooked. You can bake or steam it (some people like to poke it full of holes with a knife or fork and then bake it whole until soft). Once it’s cooked, you can scoop out the “spaghetti” inside and dress it up with good old fashioned tomato sauce, or cream sauce (especially good with chantarelles and herbs), or anything else to suit your taste.

Cover Crops and Strawberry Crowns

You’d think we’d be done planting by this point in the season, but there is one last flurry of seeding and transplanting going on right now. Over the past two weeks we’ve been broadcasting hundreds of pounds of cover crop seed – a mix of rye, oats, red clover, vetch, and field peas – which will grow through the winter and provide erosion control, beneficial habitat, and a lot of nutrients for our soil. Next spring, we’ll till all that biomass back into the field, providing nitrogen and rich organic matter for next year’s cash crops. Our over-wintered cover crops usually grow to 6 feet in height and provide spring forage for bees and other beneficial insects.

We’re also in the midst of our fall strawberry planting. This time every year we plant new strawberry crowns that we order from a nursery in Northern California. We get them established in the fall, which gives the plants a head start and encourages them to begin fruiting more quickly in the spring. In addition to our beloved standby, Seascape, we’re planting two new trial varieties this year that are supposed to be more disease resistant and better tasting than Seascape: Albion and Sweeet Ann. It’s hard to imagine beating the flavor of a Seascape strawberry, but we'll let you be the judge of that next year.

Remember: No More Abby’s Greens Salad Shares

Last week was the 20^th and final week of Abby’s Greens Salad Shares. There will continue to be Abby’s Greens for sale at our farmstand each Wednesday from 10 am to 2 pm. You can also find Abby’s Greens at the Langlois Market, Mother’s Natural Grocery, Coos Head Food Store, and probably at the soon-to-open Port Orford Community Co-op (grand opening November 1^st from 10 am to 5 pm).

New Fall Farmstand Hours

We have switched to our fall schedule and the farmstand is now open on Wednesdays ONLY from 10 am to 2 pm. There is still the stray tomato to be had at the stand and the last of the summer peppers, but autumn food is taking over – winter squash, parsnips, potatoes, bunched greens, radishes, broccoli, and much more.

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball: What MIGHT be in your share NEXT week…

No promises, but your tote might include some of the following: