This Week's Vegetable Harvest: Rutabaga Sweet Potatoes - Amish Community Growers, Platteville, WI  Leeks Autumn Frost Winter Squash Salad Turnips and Radishes (topped) Fennel Swiss Chard Fresh Dill Green Pepper Green Cabbage

What's New at the Farm Stand

Soup! Squash! - We feature as many as ten different soup flavors throughout the year, produced by the talented cooks at Bushel and Peck's in Beloit, Wisconsin. We're also bringing out winter squashes for your own creative cooking. Mums are also still available! The farmstand is open year-round with hours daily, 7am-7pm.

Final Two Weeks to Reserve! Reserve Your Local, Pastured-Raised Thanksgiving Turkey  Note: We are taking reservations until the end of October or when we sell out, whichever comes first!   Reserve a local, pasture-raised turkey for Thanksgiving dinner from our friends at Jake's Country Meats. The farmers at Jake's raise their turkeys on pastures with pride and respect. Each bird enacts their natural instincts out on the pasture foraging for grass, bugs, and more. Jake's does not use any antibiotics and they are fed a NON-GMO diet of farm-grown grains. The natural environment promotes the best flavor and highest quality meat for your Thanksgiving holiday feast. Turkeys will be available for pickup on the farm on Saturday, November 18 and Sunday, November 19. Place your reservation here. Thank you for supporting local farmers!

Farm Journal

Good evening from your farm!

This past week, we've cherished the amazingly warm, wonderfully sunny days to prepare for 2024. We're finalizing hoophouses repairs, planting garlic and green garlic, seeding cover crops, monitoring the remaining 2023 crops in the field, and planting winter greens in hoophouses for the farmstand. We are moving quickly as rain, wind, and colder nightly lows are on the horizon. We'll soon pull in the final root crops and delicate greens from the fields before the first killing freeze arrives.  Despite the beauty outside, we are also very busy indoors preparing for the 2024 season. As promised, we will announce 2024 CSA share registration information within the next two weeks. Thank you for your patience.

This past weekend, we enjoyed much-needed family time with our oldest, Owen, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We attended sporting events, toured Owen's dorm and favorite hangouts, and caught up over several meals and long walks together. While he misses his farm life and the farm community, he's also embraced the change and adventure of living in a new location and meeting new people. We brought him plenty of his farm favorites: Gavin's honey, Klug apples, and my homemade muffins.

Our crew will head homeward to Mexico in less than three week's time, so we're taking time to enjoy the end-of-season traditions. Yesterday, we ended the day with a familiar farm tradition: eating tres leches cake made by Cleto's aunt, admiring pictures of our team member's hometowns and family quinceanera dresses, and sharing stories that allow us to all laugh together. Soon, our team will join us in our annual traditions of reflecting on the farm work and crops, and playing a few farm games to celebrate another farming season.

We hope you can also enjoy this beautiful and reflective time of year. Enjoy this week's fall farm shares! Your farmers, ~ Jeff, Jen, Gavin, David, Cleto, Miguel, Anacleto

Notes from the Farm Kitchen

Autumn frost (pictured in the front row) is this week's winter squash variety and it's a beauty! While technically a specialty butternut squash, its unique appearance houses a delicious flesh that is sweet, earthy, and very reminiscent of standard butternut squash. This was another new addition to our crop mix as we've enjoyed eating autumn frost squash at our Thanksgiving dinner table. Use as you would butternut, perfect for roasting, pies, savory dishes and storage well into the winter months.

Rutabagas are creamy and starchy with pale yellow flesh. Rutabagas are rich in vitamin C, dietary fiber, potassium, and antioxidant compounds. They work well for mashing, roasting, and braising.  We like to use in place of potatoes or combine with potatoes for a mashed rutabaga and potato dish. Rutabagas also store extremely well when wrapped in a plastic bag in your refrigerator.

Salad or hakurei turnips are slightly sweeter in fall, and we thank the chilly temps of autumn for this gift! When chilly outside, we generally roast our turnips and add them to our favorite mixed bean and veggie soup, though you can always eat them raw or cooked. They are bagged with radishes which can make a perfect mix of salad toppings or roasting roots!

Seasonal Recipes in the Farm Kitchen Amish Frost Butternut Squash Lasagna Baked Leeks and Sweet Potato Gratin Vegan Cabbage Soup with Fennel Sausage Chard Pasta

• Tags: Cabbage, Leeks, Sweet Potatoes, Swiss Chard, winter squash

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