We've come to the chaotic first week of Fall here on the farm and, well, we find we are a bit tired. Tired of the weeds, tired of the inevitable mess in the fields, tired of the might and mass of the heavy late-season crops. The flip side of a bountiful harvest is that it takes muscle to get it in!  Autumn field days are exhausting:  while there are still buckets of ripe tomatoes to haul, we add digging potatoes, pulling up vines, clearing trellises and gathering in winter squash to the list of tasks. We drink more coffee and walk a bit slower from field to field these days. Thankfully, the days are gorgeous and the weather is easy. The sunrises and sunsets are exceptional and the eating is terrific. As the nights get colder, the greens get sweeter. And there are gourds to decorate the table. Life is sweet as we wind down toward the pause that is winter...

Before we get to winter, though, we will celebrate the cumulative bounty of 2014!  We’d like to invite you o to the farm to join us for our annual Warm and Wooly  Fall Festival on Sunday, October 5, from 3 til dusk. We’ll have woolcraft activities, farm tours, spinning demonstrations and a ginormous, fabulous Potluck Dinner at 6pm accompanied by live bluegrass music with MooGrass String Band! Please do come out and visit, bring friends and family, and bring a side dish or drink to share.  Wear comfy shoes, and layers of clothing, and bring a chair or blanket to sit by the fire.

Now, here's what's in the box:

Salad Mix – In some ways, fall in the garden is like spring all over again, and we are delighted to be enjoying some of those cool season crops again. This is a mesclun mix, with sweet brassicas as well as butter lettuces and bitter chicories. A little bit of everything to celebrate the cold nights.

Cilantro – What a year for cilantro! We hope you have had the opportunity to make a lot of nice Thai dishes and salsas. We often have a difficult time maintaining the cilantro through the summer, but since we had such a cool one, it made it through wonderfully!

Tomatoes – This is really the last week. We’ve been saying that for a few weeks, but now it’s really true. At least for the heirlooms. We will not be picking more heirlooms! We’ve had itJ But there just might be more sweet little cherries to glean from the vines. They seems to still be going gangbusters, producing flowers and putting on height, still.

Summer Squash – That’s all folks! The plants are done – leveled by squash bugs and two nights in the 30s. Enjoy!

Broccoli – Oh, these lovely heads are getting sweeter by the day! DO enjoy the stems as well as the florets – a lot of the mildest, sweetest flavor is in the stems. If you slice the stems relatively
thin, they’ll cook up at the same rate at the florets.  We love this steamed with tamari and sprinkled with sesame and seaweed.

Sweet Peppers – Well, we’ve waited about as long as we can to let these peppers ripen to red, but looks like it isn’t going to happen for us this year. Enjoy these green peppers! The small long ones are spicy jalapeneos.

Salad Turnips – These wonderful, sweet white bulbs are absolutely NOT your grandma’s turnip! In recent years,  American growers have learned to love these Japanese turnips that are more suited for fresh eating than for boiling. Try as-is, sliced into a salad or served by themselves with a yogurt horseradish dip. Also nice lightly sautéed in butter.  Greens are terrifically healthy, so save and use them in a sautee, too.

Yellow Radishes – Absolutely delicious, mild and SO crunchy. LOVE these spread with butter and sprinkled with salt and pepper. A decadent, delicious appetizer, even more decadent if you spread the butter on a baguette slice and then put slices of radish on that. Garnish with a tiny piece of cilantro. EAT the greens, too! Ribbon up into your salad, or eat slightly wilted with warm bacon grease and crisp bacon crumbles on top. Even better, add a tiny bit of warm goat cheese on top of that!

Sweet Potatoes  - We had a gorgeous crop of these, and we’ve only just started digging, so you can expect to see more of these in your boxes in the next few weeks. These, though, will be best if you let them sweeten up for a week or so. As they cure in your warm kitchen, lots of there starchiness with convert to sugar.  Our absolute favorite way to enjoy sweet potatoes is roasted and tossed with chili powder or a curry/cumin mix.

Brussels Sprout Leaves – These were a super hot item with chefs last fall, and with good reason – they are delicious! Our guests at the September Thankfulness Dinner raved about them. Treat just like a collard or kale leaf, only you’ll find these a lot more tender since they are the newest leaves from the top of the plant. To encourage the plants to put their energy into the sprouts instead of more height, we topped the plants this week and this is the harvest. Next week, we’ll get back into the kale and bring you some collards, but enjoy these as your cooking green this week. Try them roasted! For our dinner, we slow-cooked them with apples, apple butter, balsamic vinegar and pears. Garnish with walnuts.

Oregano – You’ll want this for your fresh tomato sauces this week.

Watermelon (Full Shares Only) – These little sweeties are small, but still a bit much to fit in the Shortie Boxes.

Tennessee Dancing Gourds – We grew these little mini gourds in the edges around our tomato trellis and summer squash. They’ve crawled in and around and insinuated themselves all over the place! They are a great symbol of the creative chaos of fall harvest. Enjoy sprinkled across your autumn table...

Please check out the recipe blog and our Farmer Kriss Pinterest pages for great recipe ideas for this week's box.

Not my usual weekday wear. Here I am in front of the USDA Building in Washington, DC, last week - in town clothes and pumps. Didn't even pack my rubber boots... 

Last week I had the amazing good fortune to join 250 fellow farmers and delegates from the National Farmers Union in Washington, DC, for a fly-in lobbying event.  We met with our elected representatives and senators, along with their very talented aides, and  I was personally amazed at how genuinely attentive these very busy folks were at all of the meetings in their offices. After our morning appointments, these officials headed off to a briefing all afternoon on the ISIS situation. My mind was thoroughly boggled at the sheer volume of information the people who serve in our government have to process. I am all admiration and hope for our democratic process, and you can expect to see more of me in clean clothes, with a clipboard of notes and a datebook full of appointments both in Madison and Washington. 

As part of the National Farmers Union, I also attended private meetings with the heads of the USDA and EPA, as well as with the chairs of many USDA departments. The good news is, sustainable agriculture and local food access is HOT right now at the federal level. In fact, the USDA is particularly proud of it's own weekly farmer's market and the cafeteria there serves terrific fresh, local food. There are a lot of resources allocated in the Farm Bill toward organic agriculture and toward new, minority and beginning farmers. As a first generation woman farmer with less than 10 years under my belt, I am all of those things and I hope to take time this winter to avail myself of more training at very little cost. My weak point as a farmer is definitely business, though I am constantly learning about the practicalities of my land, soil and animals. So I will be looking into those sort of opportunities.

So I left the farm for 5 days and when I came home it was 35 degrees! FALL already? Mornings seem like fall here on the farm, and afternoons are back to summer.  I personally just LOVE this time of year. We get the best of everything, and that is pretty much true in the boxes, too. We’ve got high summer bounty and fall cool crops starting to kick in, too. Most things get sweeter and better the longer they sit through these cool nights. Great examples are the broccoli and greens – this will be their yummiest week yet. Other things start to get a bit weak as their cell walls burst in the nearly-freezing temps we have at night. You’ll notice the tomatoes aren’t as, well,  summery tasting. This is probably the last week for them and for summer squash. But we have certainly enjoyed them! Now it’s time to move toward the rich, warm tastes of sweet potatoes and radishes – with these pretty yellow radishes, you’ve even got the palette of autumn colors.

Speaking of autumn, it is time to think about celebrating the culminated harvest of the 2014 growing season, and we’d like to invite you out to the farm to join us for our annual Warm and Wooly Fall Festival on Sunday, October 5, from 3 til dusk. We’ll have woolcraft activities, farm tours, spinning demonstrations and a ginormous, fabulous Potluck Dinner at 6pm accompanied by live bluegrass music with MooGrass String Band! Please do come out and visit, bring friends and family, and bring a side dish or drink to share.  Wear comfy shoes, and layers of clothing, and bring a chair or blanket to sit by the fire.

Here's what's in the box:


Head Lettuce – Crisp and delicious. These will be our last head lettuces for some time. We’ll be back to salad mix next box.

Cilantro – What a year for cilantro! We hope you have had the opportunity to make a lot of nice Thai dishes and salsas. We often have a difficult time maintaining the cilantro through the summer, but since we had such a cool one, it made it through wonderfully! Of course, the cool summer means we still don’t have ripe peppers to put in your salsa! Oh, well. Win some, lose some!

Tomatoes – This could be it, folks, but we sure did have a nice year for heirlooms. Very little cracking and damage. Nice flavors, little disease. Truly a blessing. The cool weather is shutting down the plants now, but we are grateful for all the fruit they gave.  You should have a nice selection of all the cool varieties we grew – all will be ripe and taste quite different from each other. Ask us if you want to know about a particular variety. We LOVE the matte, sweet Yellow Peaches this week.

Eggplant – Our eggplant plants are gorgeous and lush and full of flowers, but we DO need a bit more heat to convert all the pretty purple flowers to fruit. A small but nice harvest this week.

Summer Squash – That’s all folks! The plants are done – leveled by squash bugs and two nights in the 30s. Enjoy!


Arugula – Back and at it’s best, this is the week to enjoy arugula on pizza, pasta and in pesto, since the basil was turned to goo by the near-frost.

String Beans – Yummy! These are just terrific tasting this year – and NO STRINGS! Enjoy very lightly cooked, is our recommendation. Our favorite way to enjoy these is lightly sautéed in a lidded skillet, then dressed with bacon and balsamic vinegar.

Broccoli – Oh, these lovely heads are getting sweeter by the day! DO enjoy the stems as well as the florets – a lot of the mildest, sweetest flavor is in the stems. If you slice the stems relatively
thin, they’ll cook up at the same rate at the florets.  We love this steamed with tamari and sprinkled with sesame and seaweed.

Yellow Radishes – Absolutely delicious, mild and SO crunchy. LOVE these spread with butter and sprinkled with salt and pepper. A decadent, delicious appetizer, even more decadent if you spread the butter on a baguette slice and then put slices of radish on that. Garnish with a tiny piece of arugula or cilantro. EAT the greens, too! Ribbon up into your salad, or eat slightly wilted with warm bacon grease and crisp bacon crumbles on top. Even better, add a tiny bit of warm goat cheese on top of that!

Sweet Potatoes  - We had a gorgeous crop of these, and we’ve only just started digging, so you can expect to see more of these in your boxes in the next few weeks. These, though, will be best if you let them sweeten up for just a few days. As they cure in your warm kitchen, lots of there starchiness with convert to sugar.  Our absolute favorite way to enjoy sweet potatoes is roasted and tossed with chili powder or a curry/cumin mix.

Brussels Sprout Leaves – These were a super hot item with chefs last fall, and with good reason – they are delicious! Treat just like a collard or kale leaf, only you’ll find these a lot more tender since they are the newest leaves from the top of the plant. To encourage the plants to put their energy into the sprouts instead of more height, we topped the plants this week and this is the harvest. Next week, we’ll get back into the kale and bring you some collards, but enjoy these as your cooking green this week. Try them roasted!

Oregano – You’ll want this for your fresh tomato sauces this week.

Onion and Garlic


Lots of pins this week over at the Farmer Kriss pinterest pages. Check them out!

It is appropriate today on the anniversary of 9-11 that I give you a short report on my trip this week to Washington, DC, as a representative of the Wisconsin delegation of the National Farmers Union. 250 Farmers Union members from all across the country converged on DC Sunday through Wednesday to lobby individually with our elected representatives and also meet as a group with the directors of the USDA and EPA.  My short report is: “Wow.” There are a lot of extremely smart, savvy, dedicated and receptive folks in DC – despite the general public’s feelings to the contrary. Yes, the wheels of policy and justice turn slowly, but a lot of that has to do with making sure we all have a voice in the decision-making process. I’m hooked on democratic participation now and you can be sure I’ll be spending more time in Madison, in DC, and in the public buildings of my own county and town speaking out for family farms and for rural community issues. “The world belongs to those who show up,” National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson told us delegates as we prepared to venture into offices on Capitol Hill.  I plan to show up.

And speaking of showing up, thanks so much to all of you who came out to see us at the Overture Center Farm To Fork celebration last week. It was a wonderful event, made even more so by your supportive presence in that big group of people! As I said in my talk: “It takes a community to raise a farm” and you are the community that keeps this particular farm on the land. Thanks for making Lafayette County, greater Madison and Wisconsin a good place to grow food. We’ll endeavor to keep doing our best, with your help. We can’t imagine anything we’d rather do.

This week’s box is HEAVY, so please be sure to carry it from the bottom. It’s peak week for tomatoes and broccoli, as well the first of the string beans, so carry it holding the bottom! Bon appétit and viva local food!


Basil – Grew slow this week, so maybe not so much pesto for dinner this time! Try just slivering and use in a basil/tomato salad with feta or fresh mozzarella and olive oil drizzled with balsamic.

Cilantro –  Very generous bags this week! Think salsa, curry and fish tacos! Here’s a great link for using it all up: http://food52.com/blog/7732-one-bunch-of-cilantro-6-summer-dinners.

Tomatoes – Lots of gorgeous cherries and heirlooms this week.  PEAK WEEK! It’s a good week to make some salsa or sauce.

Head Lettuce – Such a treat to have crisp sweet lettuce – this will get even better as we move into fall.

String Beans -  First harvest! We should get you lots of beans in the next box, too, as we’ve still got yellow and purple ripening on the bushes now.

Broccoli – These tremendous heads are tasty and sweet.  We like both florets and stems cut into 1-inch pieces and steamed. Dress with a little tamari, sesame oil and sesame seeds. Delicious!

Summer Squash –  Tapering off – lots of bugs in the field means these are growing back slower. But they’ve had a good run and we are grateful for all we’ve gotten for the past month.

Eggplant  – Enjoy sliced and sautéed in an omelette, or enjoy by itself sautéed with Asian or Italian flavors. Both cultures LOVE eggplant, as do African and Indian cuisines. We like eggplant in everything this time of year, and we especially love babaganoush spread. See our Pinterest page for some good recipes.

Peppers – Our peppers are just starting to straggle in this week. It may seem awfully late for these fruits, but in our little valley the cold nights all season long contribute to slow growth.

Onions –  A few more for your salsa and sauce projects this week.

Garlic -  You need this in everything right now!

SAVE THE DATE!

WARM AND WOOLY FALL FESTIVAL HERE AT THE FARM

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, 3 TIL TWILIGHT

Thanks so much to all of you who came out to see us at the Overture Center Farm To Fork celebration last night. It was a wonderful event, made even more so by your supportive presence in that big group of people! As I said in my talk: “It takes a community to raise a farm,” and you are the community that keeps this particular farm on the land. Thanks for making Lafayette County, greater Madison and Wisconsin a good place to grow food. We’ll endeavor to keep doing our best, with your help. We can’t imagine anything we’d rather do.



But this week I will be enjoying a few days off of the farm as I go to Washington, DC, to lobby for rural issues with the National Farmers Union. Legislators are very open to making appointments with constituents this time of year, as November elections approach, and we are taking advantage of that by sending teams of state Farmers Unions from all over the country to converge at the capitol this week. Got lots of appointments, lots of time for training, some opportunities to network and a little bit of sight-seeing, too. Looking forward to learning and lobbying!

This week’s box is HEAVY, so please be sure to carry it from the bottom. It’s peak week for tomatoes and eggplant, as well the beginning of string beans. Here’s what’s in the box:

Aronia Berries – This special treat comes to you from our neighbors and friends at Barham Gardens. Several years ago, Kim and Roberta Barham learned about this native berry bush that packs a huge anti-oxidant punch and they decided to plant some couple thousand of them. Now they are in the middle of a huge harvest and they’ve graciously shared with us, and you! Don’t expect to eat these berries raw – they are astringent and need some sugar to make them palatable – like rhubarb. But wow – in baked goods and juiced they are amazing! We’ve enclosed a brochure with info and recipes. The samples Barham Gardens brought to the Overture Center last night were amazing! Especially the raw aronia ginger bars.  Like their facebook page, and get more recipes  there!

Basil – Grew slow this week, so maybe not so much pesto for dinner this time! Try just slivering and use in a basil/tomato salad with feta or fresh mozzarella and olive oil drizzled with balsamic.

Cilantro –  Very generous bags this week! Think salsa, curry and fish tacos! Here’s a great link for using it all up: http://food52.com/blog/7732-one-bunch-of-cilantro-6-summer-dinners.

Tomatoes – Lots of gorgeous cherries and heirlooms this week.  PEAK WEEK! It’s a good week to make some salsa or sauce.

Head Lettuce – Every box should have a green and a red.  Such a treat to have crisp sweet lettuce on these hot days.

String Beans -  First harvest this week! We should get you lots of beans in the next box, too, as we’ve still got yellow and purple ripening on the bushes now.

Broccoli – These tremendous heads are tasty and sweet.  We like both florets and stems cut into 1-inch pieces and steamed. Dress with a little tamari, sesame oil and sesame seeds. Delicious!

Garlic Chive Blossoms – The spicy florets from Chinese Leeks, otherwise known as Garlic Chives, are gorgeous atop a dip or omelette and taste great, too.

Summer Squash –  Tapering off – lots of bugs in the field means these are growing back slower. But they’ve had a good run and we are grateful for all we’ve gotten for the past month.

Arugula – We just love this for breakfast, lightly wilted under poached eggs. But it’s great sautéed with olive oil and mixed with pasta, great added to a squash bake, wonderful as a bed under grilled meats. Enjoy!

Eggplant  –Enjoy sliced and sautéed in an omelette, or enjoy by itself sautéed with Asian or Italian flavors. Both cultures LOVE eggplant, as do African and Indian cuisines. We like eggplant in everything this time of year, and we especially love babaganoush spread. See our Pinterest page for some good recipes.

Herbs: Parcel and Summer Savory – Shorties have these in little bags of their own, the Full Shares have big bags that also include cilantro. The Parcel is a celery/parsley cross we are experimenting with this year. We find it is a bit bitter and strong on this first picking, so go light and use it for cooking , not raw. The Summer Savory looks like a long version of thyme, and you can use it the same way, though it is slightly more spicy. Great in sausage, wonderful with tomatos and zucchini.

Onions –  A few more for your salsa and sauce projects this week.

Garlic -  You need this in everything right now!