Starts Monday, October 17

While the current harvest season is still going, we encourage you to renew your Fox Creek Farm CSA share for 2023. Our early sign-up campaign starts Monday, October 17, and runs until Friday, October 28.

Sign up now and lock in your 2023 CSA share at the best price we can offer – we have no idea how national and global dynamics will influence our costs for labor, seeds, fuel, and supplies, but we foresee a continuation of an upward trend. We expect to have to increase the 2023 share price between now and the start of the harvests in June of next year.

All it takes is a small deposit, and you’re locked in at our current price. And renewing your share is easy on our website (which will update with all the new information early on Monday)

Farm News

Fall harvests continue. And we’re having fun! Last week almost went completely ‘as planned’, without too many emergencies. That makes for some good farming: like finishing up digging potatoes, and getting those fields seeded to cover crops the next day. Staying ahead of the rain to plow up another bed of carrots. And by the end of the week, even the 2023 garlic crop got planted!

We know it could all be just a bit different. Hard frosts. Snow. Too much rain, and very slow drying grounds. Nothing like that so far. Not to jinx ourselves, but after the rain came back in August, we’ve had some real nice farming weather – a good trade for all the stress that we went through earlier this season, worrying about irrigation priorities and more.

And overall, the late season crops are beautiful, as you can see in the weekly CSA shares. Of course, the long season crops (like the winter squash and potatoes) show the signs of the heat stress in the middle of their growing – there simply is no way to recover from almost two months without measurable rain. But we think the later planted crops (like the fall brassicas, for example) make up for more than the difference. There’s something to say for a resilient and diversified farming operation like ours!

We’re hoping for another stellar week farming!

Enjoy this week’s harvest,

Raymond and Sara

Expected harvest & U-pick update

For this week, we’ll bring you Fingerling potatoes, Red and Yellow onions, Garlic, Lettuce, Nantes carrots, Winterbor kale, Winter squash, and Sweet potatoes.

A note on Sweet potatoes: these are fresh dug, and have not been cured. Please use soon, as they might not store well. For example, as sweet potato oven fries, or as a filling for a sweet potato pie (recipe follows).

U-Pick update: Well, it’s been a nice run this season. We hope you’ve had a chance to visit – if not, maybe next year?

We’ve started to clean up the garden to get it ready for winter. We’ll be in the garden this week with our equipment to take out what needs to come out, and to plant the field back to cover crops. Sorry. That’s a lot of words for what we’re trying to say: the U-pick season has come to an end.

Recipe: Sweet potato pie

The addon of the baking powder keeps the filling of this pie light!

Ingredients:
About 1.5 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled
5 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoons ground nutmeg
1 large egg
½ teaspoon vanilla
2¼ teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons evaporated milk
Unbaked pie shell, 9 inches

Instructions:
Place sweet potatoes in a large saucepan, and add water to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer until very tender, about 45 minutes. Drain well.

Mash the potatoes in a bowl. The potatoes should yield about 2¾ cups mashed potatoes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add butter to hot potatoes, and mash until smooth. Add sugar, nutmeg, egg and vanilla, mixing well. Combine baking powder with evaporated milk, and stir to blend. Add to mashed potatoes. Whisk mixture until velvety.

Mound into pie shell, then spread evenly to edges. Bake until pie has set and is lightly browned on top, about 55 minutes. Cool to room temperature before serving.

Questions, suggestions, remarks ...

We love to hear from you! Let us know your questions, suggestions or remarks. Either give us a call at 518-872-2375 (we will return your phone message), or send us an email:

farmer@foxcreekfarmcsa.com