Apples! It will be apples until the end of the season now that it’s the season. Try baking some delicious apple crisps!

• Swap Box: If there is a vegetable or fruit you just don’t want, drop it in the swap box and take something you would rather have. Do not take an extra share of something from the tables!
• Pick up hours are 5:30-7:30 PM at Ansche Chesed. Please do not come early unless you are a volunteer. We need the time to set up signs and supplies. Thank you for your understanding.
• Don’t forget to bring BAGS! We at Ansche Chesed CSA love our planet, and know you do too.
• Need to swap your A or B pickup? See our share swap forum and post your request.
  

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  Latest News from the Farm

  Farm News:  Don’t forget, Winter share signups are open. Some exciting changes to the winter share this year! You will be able to customize the items in your share, switch to other delivery sites midseason if needed, place vacation holds, and add extra fun and tasty extra items from the farm (pesto, jam, yarn) when you want.  The share is pre-boxed, and there will be two pickups in December and monthly Jan-May (total of 7 pickups). Share types include the “Full Diet” Share (veggies and eggs), Personal/Vegan share (just veggies), a “Greens-only” share, Meat, Eggs, Beer, Bread – and Seedlings (which you get in May). Find out more and sign up at  https://gardenofevefarm.com/csa/wintercsashare/

  The good weather (up until this past weekend’s storm) has allowed us to bring in a lot of sweet potatoes and we have them curing in the greenhouse. We were able to harvest over 10,000 lbs of sweet potatoes.  We harvest by undercutting the plant and slicing the vines with one pass of a tractor mounted machine and then carefully removing the plants from the soil and putting in the greenhouse for 10 days to “cure” the sweet potatoes and trigger development of the sugar-creating enzymes.

  We revel in diversity, and enjoy growing many different and unusual varieties! Besides the usual orange types (called Jewel, Beauregard, etc) we also grow white sweet potatoes, purple sweet potatoes, and Japanese sweet potatoes (scarlet on the outside and white inside). Each has their own distinctive taste, while still being sweet, and you can cook them all the same way. Being a semi-tropical plant, they like to sit in the dry heat of the greenhouse at about 85 degrees for a few weeks before storage, which keeps them from rotting over the winter. We are happy to be giving them out to you this week!

  In addition to the more familiar-size big tubers in stores, this week we are giving out the smallest sweet potatoes (we call them “fingerlings”). You do not have to skin them.  Just toss lightly with some oil and cook them on a baking sheet at 350 degrees.  If you don’t feel like cooking them now, just put them in a cupboard drawer and they will store for weeks at room temperature.

  We do celebrate our successes, however unfortunately Mother Nature also deals out plenty of disappointments to the farmer. Due to the continued hot weather through Sept, broccoli and cauliflower (across ALL the farms in NY and across the northeast) had a lot of rot due to humidity. Many area farmers, just like us, planted tens of thousands of little broccolis, but have harvested nothing.

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  Many of you who pick up at the farm have met Tuyen, one of our Farm Market managers this season!

  My name is Tuyen and I come from the central part of Vietnam. This is the second year for me at Garden of Eve farm. My friends asked me if the second year was going to be as interesting for me since I was here last year, and why didn’t I choose to be in another state to enjoy a different atmosphere? I smiled and told them “You might be right somehow.” But now that I’m nearing the end of my second season, it seems like during the first year for I barely knew anything!

  The first year I was very busy just trying to adapt to a new type of working environment, different kind of weather, new culture and friends, and the English language!

  Now, during this second year, I’ve really learned more in depth about the job that an Organic farm is doing.

  I came in March and we started in the Greenhouse with seeding, watering and observing the temperature inside the greenhouse and the germination chamber, to make sure the seedlings develop well. Later on, we opened the Farm Market and Garden Center. This involved a lot of cleaning, setting up goods and potting up plants for sale and making sure everything looks presentable. The most stressful part for me was to handle most of market orders since my Vietnamese accent is quite strong and can be difficult for people to understand. Many thanks for their patience and help in making my orders going through goes to my co-workers Elizabeth, Kamil, Braulio, Joy, and everyone else in helping me with my pronunciation.

  We had a lot of festivals throughout the year. Visitors had great times enjoying fresh berries, watermelons and tomatoes with beautiful sunflower fields and colorful pumpkin patch. Besides us just offering produce to the customers, we had real hayride tours on the farm!

  It’s almost the end of the season now. All I can say is thank you for Eve and Christ for bringing us – international students to experience real farming life and farm markets and all the people who work in the market and in the field for supporting and teaching me this year.