Save The Dates!
Save The Dates! Fall is party season out here in the country. The leaves are gorgeous, the harvest is sweet and colorful and the temperature is just perfect for a drive and a day out in the fields and forests. We’ve got a couple of events in the next month that we’d like to invite you to attend.
Delicious Driftless Fare
October 4th and 5th
Mineral Point, WI & Dodgeville, WI
This is the first ever local food fair in our neighborhood, and we’re excited to be a part of it! Farmer Kriss will be mediating a movie discussion in Mineral Point on Friday night the 4th, and Circle M will be serving veggie samples at a booth on Saturday. Also, Kriss’s bluegrass band, MooGrass, will be playing on Saturday at noon! Better yet, there is an old-time Potluck and Square dance that evening.
Oct 4th @ Mineral Point Opera House (139 High Street, Mineral Point)
6pm: Meet the authors of Super Snacks for Super Kids
7pm: FREE screening of documentary Hungry for Change
9pm: Wine and Cheese Reception at Grey Dog Deli, panel with local farmers
Oct 5th @ Folklore Village (3210 Cty Rd BB, Dodgeville)
12 to 6pm: Delicious Driftless Fare with vendors and live music
1pm: Keynote Speaker Steven Deller, UW Madison Professor Ag and Econ
6pm: Potluck and Barn Dance ($7 with a dish, $10 without)
Warm and Wooly Fall Farm Festival
Saturday, October 19th
Circle M Farm (1784 County Rd. H, Blanchardville, WI 53516)
This is our annual fall farm open house – we’ll be here from noon til night playing with wool, building bonfires and touring the farm to eat veggies and pet animals. The evening will culminate with a huge potluck dinner at 6pm and live bluegrass music at 7pm. Smores all night. Meet your farmers and bring friends, blankets, chairs and a dish to pass!
Delicious Driftless Fare
October 4th and 5th
Mineral Point, WI & Dodgeville, WI
This is the first ever local food fair in our neighborhood, and we’re excited to be a part of it! Farmer Kriss will be mediating a movie discussion in Mineral Point on Friday night the 4th, and Circle M will be serving veggie samples at a booth on Saturday. Also, Kriss’s bluegrass band, MooGrass, will be playing on Saturday at noon! Better yet, there is an old-time Potluck and Square dance that evening.
Oct 4th @ Mineral Point Opera House (139 High Street, Mineral Point)
6pm: Meet the authors of Super Snacks for Super Kids
7pm: FREE screening of documentary Hungry for Change
9pm: Wine and Cheese Reception at Grey Dog Deli, panel with local farmers
Oct 5th @ Folklore Village (3210 Cty Rd BB, Dodgeville)
12 to 6pm: Delicious Driftless Fare with vendors and live music
1pm: Keynote Speaker Steven Deller, UW Madison Professor Ag and Econ
6pm: Potluck and Barn Dance ($7 with a dish, $10 without)
Warm and Wooly Fall Farm Festival
Saturday, October 19th
Circle M Farm (1784 County Rd. H, Blanchardville, WI 53516)
This is our annual fall farm open house – we’ll be here from noon til night playing with wool, building bonfires and touring the farm to eat veggies and pet animals. The evening will culminate with a huge potluck dinner at 6pm and live bluegrass music at 7pm. Smores all night. Meet your farmers and bring friends, blankets, chairs and a dish to pass!
In the Box!
Brrrrr. The mornings now are very chilly here in the valley, and while the cooler temps make the afternoons glorious, it is quite hard to make the hands work properly before 10am. Especially when the task is washing beets in cold water tubs! So worth it, though, to finally be harvesting these hearty fall crops. Beets, potatoes and thick crunchy collards! So crisp and delicious, so wonderful in warm dishes on nippy evenings.
Basil – The leaves sustained some damage in the cool nights this past week, so use them quickly before they get soft. Basil is not happy below 50 degrees, so this could be it!
Kriss’ Kick-@$$ Summer Salad Mix – We’ve assembled a crisp and assertive blend this week, with lettuce greens layered with spicy arugula, purple mizuna and peppery nasturtium blossoms. If you don’t want a spicy salad, you can pull those things off the top and use them sautéed. It will soften their bite.
Tomatoes – These are slowing down a bit. Enjoy in combination with the collards, the potatoes, the eggplant for a rich stew.
Eggplant – We have so enjoyed roasted eggplant, peppers and onions dressed up with roasted tomatoes and a bit of goat cheese this chilly week. Do give the recipes a try – you can find it on the Box 8 Recipe Blog and on Pinterest.
Peppers - More turn red everyday. You mostly have sweet peppers, but the jalapeno shapes are a bit spicy, and the fat long reds have very spicy seeds.
Cucumbers - Now we've got the smooth English cucumbers coming on. Some of you will have these, some will have the traditional lumpy type.
Collards – At last, these leaves are beefy enough to make a rich Southerns stew. See the Box 8 Recipe Blog and the Farmer Kriss Pinterest Page for ideas.
String Beans (Full Shares Only)
Beets – I’ve been watching the beets push themselves up out of our sandy soil for weeks now, but I just didn’t feel like eating them. So I didn’t pack them for you either. But now suddenly, the weather has shifted and I feel like beets! Hope you do too. Wonderful roasted, or lightly steamed. We like them rather al dente, before they get mushy. Makes chunky sea salt and balsamic vinegar into heavenly nectar. Don't toss the greens! They are beautiful right now and healthy! Use them in any dish you'd use kale, collards, swiss chard or spinach. They taste just like Swiss Chard but they are a bit beefier and require cooking.
Potatoes – These lovely All Blue and nutty, dry Kennebec potatoes are great for frying or browning.
Herb Bags: Chives and Lovage – You might remember Lovage from the spring shares. It’s our perennial celery and since our spring-planted traditional celery still isn’t big enough to cut, we feel lucky that these perennial plants looks so nice in the herb beds. Chop and use where you’d use celery - stems and leaves are all good to eat.
Basil – The leaves sustained some damage in the cool nights this past week, so use them quickly before they get soft. Basil is not happy below 50 degrees, so this could be it!
Kriss’ Kick-@$$ Summer Salad Mix – We’ve assembled a crisp and assertive blend this week, with lettuce greens layered with spicy arugula, purple mizuna and peppery nasturtium blossoms. If you don’t want a spicy salad, you can pull those things off the top and use them sautéed. It will soften their bite.
Tomatoes – These are slowing down a bit. Enjoy in combination with the collards, the potatoes, the eggplant for a rich stew.
Eggplant – We have so enjoyed roasted eggplant, peppers and onions dressed up with roasted tomatoes and a bit of goat cheese this chilly week. Do give the recipes a try – you can find it on the Box 8 Recipe Blog and on Pinterest.
Peppers - More turn red everyday. You mostly have sweet peppers, but the jalapeno shapes are a bit spicy, and the fat long reds have very spicy seeds.
Cucumbers - Now we've got the smooth English cucumbers coming on. Some of you will have these, some will have the traditional lumpy type.
Collards – At last, these leaves are beefy enough to make a rich Southerns stew. See the Box 8 Recipe Blog and the Farmer Kriss Pinterest Page for ideas.
String Beans (Full Shares Only)
Beets – I’ve been watching the beets push themselves up out of our sandy soil for weeks now, but I just didn’t feel like eating them. So I didn’t pack them for you either. But now suddenly, the weather has shifted and I feel like beets! Hope you do too. Wonderful roasted, or lightly steamed. We like them rather al dente, before they get mushy. Makes chunky sea salt and balsamic vinegar into heavenly nectar. Don't toss the greens! They are beautiful right now and healthy! Use them in any dish you'd use kale, collards, swiss chard or spinach. They taste just like Swiss Chard but they are a bit beefier and require cooking.
Potatoes – These lovely All Blue and nutty, dry Kennebec potatoes are great for frying or browning.
Herb Bags: Chives and Lovage – You might remember Lovage from the spring shares. It’s our perennial celery and since our spring-planted traditional celery still isn’t big enough to cut, we feel lucky that these perennial plants looks so nice in the herb beds. Chop and use where you’d use celery - stems and leaves are all good to eat.