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Waltham Fields Community Farm
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CSA NEWSLETTER
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Week 11: August 19, 2013  
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NEW T-shirts and cookbooks are in! Stop by the merch shelves in the back corner of the CSA barn. Proceeds support our food access and education work.
Summer Programs in the Learning Garden: Farmer for a Week, Farm Visits and more...
Click here
Drop-In Volunteers welcome Saturdays (all ages), arrive at 9am sharp.
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From Laurie C-M, this recipe yields About 5 half-pints.
4-5 cups husk cherries (paper husks removed)*
1/2 cup water, maybe a little more 1 whole orange, with rind, chopped (seeds removed) 1/2 t cinnamon 1/2 of 1.75 oz. packet pectin for 4 C. of mashed cherries *Putting cherries in water makes it easier to remove husks. Remove husks before measuring cherries. Put cherries in a large stew pot and crush w/ potato masher so that all are at least broken. Heat to a boiling along with enough water to get them to cook without burning, about 1/2 cup. Boil 2 minutes. Measure cooked cherries; this is the amount of sugar to add later (cup for cup). Return husk cherries to the pot. Add the chopped orange with any juice that is oozing away. Add ground cinnamon, if using, and the pectin. Bring mixture to a full boil and boil 1 minute. Add sugar in an amount equal to the volume of cooked husk cherries that was measured earlier. Bring to full boil for 5 minutes.Put into jars, and hot water bath process for 10 minutes.
Do you have a recipe you'd like to share? We love to include your recipes in our next newsletter! Please send it in to Susan Cassidy
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What's In the Share This Week
Each week, we do our best to predict what will be available in the CSA barn and in the fields. The CSA newsletter is prepared before we start harvesting for the week, so sometimes you'll see vegetables in the barn that weren't on the list, and sometimes vegetables will be on the list but won't make it to the barn.
Our zukes and summer squash have slowed down in the cool nights over the past couple of weeks. We'll see what this week's heat brings, but it might be too late for these to recover!
Cucumbers same with the cukes; the next two generations, which were supposed to produce into September, are just not making fruit because of the chilly nights. We may have a few this week, but the plants are going down hill quickly. Eggplant: Our eggplant harvest cpntinued in full swing last week, including the beautiful bell type, the long, grillable 'Asian' style, and the petite and tasty 'Fairy Tale' variety. Zannah grew these at our Gateways field in Weston, and apparently they're very happy there! These crops don't like the cool weather either, though, so we'll have to see what this week brings.
Potatoes Jenny and Bruce at Picadilly Farm in Winchester, New Hampshire, grow our late-season potatoes and our winter squash. The rest of the potatoes for the year will be from Picadilly, and so far they are beautiful! Swiss Chard At least something likes the cool weather. If you want cooking greens, we've got them this week. Kale and Collard Greens also like the cool nights. We'll see how they handle the mini-heat-wave later this week! Bell Peppers: Big green bell peppers, beautiful purple peppers and delicate white 'Chablis" peppers are still hanging on at the Gateways field. Tomatoes from the fields at the Lyman Estate, although cool nights mean fewer tomatoes, especially heirloom varieties!
Pick-Your-Own Crops This Week  Pick-your-own fields are open to all shareholders any day of the week during daylight hours. Please check the pick-your-own stand for maps and a list of available crops, along with amounts to pick. Please harvest only in labelled rows, and pay close attention to the amounts you harvest in order to ensure that there will be enough for all shareholders.
Cilantro Dill Parsley BasilCherry and Plum Tomatoes availability will be weather dependent; cool nights mean tomatoes don't ripen as fast
Husk Cherries
Tomatilloes Green Beans Perennial Garden Herbs & Flowers: Please pick carefully (use scissors), pay attention to signs, and watch your step in the perennial garden.
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FRUIT SHARES AND WINTER SHARES FOR SALE!
Autumn Hills Orchard is a working orchard located in historic Groton, Massachusetts about 35 miles northeast of Waltham. The farm produces over 25 varieties of apples, plus peaches, pears, plums, grapes and raspberries. For over 10 years, Autumn HIlls has partnered with Waltham Fields Community Farm to provide weekly shares in the late summer and fall. Share contents vary by week over the season but are primarily apples with other fruit varieties based on availability including: Concord grapes, Italian plums, Bartlett pears and Bosc pears. Shares may also include the following apple varieties: Paula Red, Ginger Gold, Macintosh, Cortland, Red Cort, Empire, Golden Delicious, Mutsu, Cox' Orange Pippin, Spencer, Rhode Island Greening, Macoun, Kendall, SpiGold, Northern Spy, Sun Crisp, Red Delicious, Fuji, or Braeburn. Autumn Hills' employs Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques, growing high quality fruit and takes pride in producing fruit for customers and CSA subscribers. The farm is open September through October for "pick your own." WFCF CSA customers who visit during that time will receive a special welcome and tour!
Deliveries are scheduled to start in early September with 7 deliveries planned.
The 2013 Fruit share is priced at $56.00. The sign up deadline is September 1. To sign up, just bring payment to your CSA pickup. Please make sure that the name of the primary shareholder is on all payments.
We also have a few WFCF winter shares for sale! Winter shares are the perfect way to extend your CSA experience through the late fall and eat local (and delicious) for the holidays! Winter shares are $200.00 and include three pickups at the farm on Saturday afternoons, November 9, November 23 and December 7. We plan for winter shares to represent the tasty bounty of the season, including carrots, beets, sweet potatoes, turnips, radishes, cabbages, lettuces, spinach, arugula, bok choy and kohlrabi, onions and garlic, and winter squash and potatoes from Picadilly Farm. Sign up at any CSA pickup! Availability is limited, and we'll sell winter shares on a first-come, first-served basis until they are gone!
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Notes from the Field
It's official. It's been a weird one.
We've crossed the line into the second half of the CSA season this week, and while I hear that heat is in the forecast for this week, the past two have felt like fall. This is great for working -- we have lots of energy and we're sleeping well at night. It's not, however, good for the  warm-season crops that we planted in early June and depend on for this August-into-September harvest. Our fall crops are in the ground, but we're not ready for cabbages, cauliflower and winter squash yet; we want to eat tomatoes, melons and peppers and cucumbers and, yes, eggplant. We've been fortunate so far that the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant have continued to produce, but all of the plants are beginning to think it's autumn and slow down their flower and fruit production. On the other hand, the squash, zucchini, cucumbers and melons are not faring as well. These plants are very vulnerable to the cool nights and heavy dews, and in addition to just slowing down, they have succumbed to some of the many diseases that plague crops in this family in the fall. The melons are in another field close by, but their main issue so far seems to be lack of ripening rather than disease. So far, our fall broccoli and cauliflower are looking great, and we''re hoping that the abrupt switch to very hot weather later this week doesn't cause them to "button up", going to flower without producing a usable head. Flea beetles, the tiny black nemesis of the broccoli family, have been particularly virulent this season; they are laying waste to the arugula and braising greens we planted at the beginning of August, and spreading a disease called black rot through the larger members of the family. It's been an interesting season.
At this time of year, when the asters and the goldenrod fill the roadsides and field edges, we are usually able to take a breath and see the rest of the season laid out like a road map before us. The spring and summer can be turbulent, but generally, by late August we can see which of the season's battles we've won and which have been lost, and what the fall and winter will most likely look like. Usually, we can walk the fields at the beginning of September and make a list of what crops will be in the CSA until the end of the distributions in late October. Not this year. It's so hard to say how  this stretch of cool weather, beautiful as it is for people, followed by this hot week, will affect the crops that define the harvest season -- broccoli, red peppers, melons, tomatoes, cauliflower, late roots, lettuce and spinach, cabbage and butternuts. It seems like our squash and cucumber season may be ending, but it's very hard to say what's ahead.
As we've said before in this newsletter, this intense lack of predictability seems to be the new normal for us vegetable growers. Last year's great growing season, which nonetheless saw many organic growers lose their tomatoes to late blight, was followed by one that some farmers are calling "the season from hell". It's a season when we feel like we're constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, when calamity feels like it's just around the corner. This is a feeling that we're used to in the springtime, when conditions can change so quickly from cool and wet to warm and dry, and we're used to making accommodations for the fickleness of that season. Over the past few years, though, the autumn has also become a volatile time of year, with powerful storms and fluctuating temperatures turning what was a celebratory season into one that we enter into with our fingers crossed, hoping that our crops will be healthy and stable in very unstable conditions.
There's nothing wrong with learning to be adaptable and agile as farmers, and the positive result of some of this craziness might be to help keep us from getting stale and stuck in our routines as growers. No, really, I mean it. Learning to cope with change is part of our life's work, some of us more than others. And it's clear that the folks who remain in this business and continue to be successful over the long term will be those who learn to make the changes that this new normal demands -it's just hard to see exactly what those will be right now. The big picture of farming in New England is very difficult to see, and the survival of many of the new small farms that have sprung up here in the last ten years may hang in the balance. If customers will hang in there with farmers old and new as we learn to manage this unpredictability, it will make a big difference in the ability of farmers to have the space and time they need to adapt. Survival and success in this season, and probably the seasons to come, will mean communication and understanding between customers and farmers in order to keep growers from being stuck between the rock of the season and the hard place of an unforgiving market.
If you are a new CSA shareholder this season, thank you for sticking with us through the ups and downs that we have already weathered. All of us on the farm are hoping for a bountiful and uneventful autumn, but as the early  part of the season has proven, ain't nothing guaranteed this year. If you are a shareholder with a long-established relationship with this farm, thank YOU even more. It's your commitment and steadfast support that keeps us going through a difficult season, and helps ensure that we can continue to plan for the next one.
Enjoy the return to summer weather this week. We'll be harvesting storage onions to cure in the greenhouse, planting spinach, and continuing to pick tomatoes, balancing on the edge of summer and fall. Let's see where this bumpy ride takes us next.
Enjoy the harvest,
Amanda, for the farm staff
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Marla Rhodes, Development CoordinatorAmanda Cather, Farm ManagerErinn Roberts, Greenhouse and Field ManagerDan Roberts, Field ManagerSutton Kiplinger, Assistant Grower Zannah Porter, Assistant Grower Andy Scherer, Farmer Hector Cruz, Maricela Escobar, Amber Carmer Sandager and Lauren Trotogott: Field Crew Lizzie Callaghan, Sage Dumont, Alice Fristrom, and Eli Shanks: Weed Crew Mikaela Burns, Andrea Coughlan and Matthew Crawford: Farm Educators
Ashley Kemembin, Forest Foundation Summer Intern
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