Newsletter – June 29, 2020

NOTE: This blog is posted by a volunteer. No one from the farm checks or responds to messages here. You must contact the farm directly with any questions, comments, etc.

Dear Friends of the farm,

This week you are getting our first picking of Yukon Gold potatoes. These little morsels are easy to wash and easy to cook. Gently wash them being careful of their skins, they are tender. Then cut potatoes so they are basically the same size. You may find some of your potatoes are roughed up just from pulling them from the ground. You may also find some brown spots from the air getting to the flesh. These can be removed with a potato peeler. Now, just barely cover with water, salt, include a large pat of butter and boil until the water is gone and fry for just a few minutes. Yum! Do not be surprised if these cook faster than expected. There is something about the first few weeks that make them that way! You are also getting peas (either snow or snap), yellow onions, squash, green cabbage, purple kohlrabi, regular slicing & pickling cucumbers and lettuce (could be one of several different varieties).

FYI: If we give you the greens with vegetables, it means they are edible!

Honey: Those of you who ordered monthly and bi-monthly honey will be getting that this week.

Produce Payment: Half of all your remaining fees are now due (except for animals & if making monthly payments). Late fees of $25 will be applied on July 4th or 5th. Please allow 2-3 weeks for me to process your checks (will still get credit for arriving on time). I will do my best to get them processed just as soon as possible.

Hot, Hot Hot!: It is very hot around here,,,hard on the humans, great for the plants! Did you know that May held temperatures at 90% above normal and June is very close to the same. So needless to say, but will anyway….things are ripening very quickly! The farm is beautiful this time of year. We have gotten very little rain. The plants have kept ahead of the weeds and everything is a beautiful green! Unfortunately, it will not stay that way! It is simply amazing how fast weeds grow compared to the plants we eat from. It just isn’t fair! We spend as much time hoeing vs. harvesting this time of year.

Have a fantastic Fourth of July everyone!

Jacquie, Jerry and Kyle, Sam

Squash and Kohlrabi Stir Fry

1 kohlrabi, peeled & cut small cubes
1 sm squash cut in small cubes
1 sm onion cubed
3 cloves garlic, chopped
4 slices of bacon, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
Optional: Cut kohlrabi greens into strips

Cook bacon til crisp; leave everything in pan. Add onion, kohlrabi, salt & pepper and cook five minutes. Now add squash, garlic and kohlrabi greens if desired. Cook until squash & greens are tender around 5-10 minutes depending on how soft you like your squash. Serves 4.

Newsletter – June 22, 2020

NOTE: This blog is posted by a volunteer. No one from the farm checks or responds to messages here. You must contact the farm directly with any questions, comments, etc.

Dear Farm Friends,

Our first week was as exciting as ever, but this week is even better! We are so happy to be giving you peas, kohlrabi, garlic, garlic scapes, squash, (may now include yellow straight neck), a pickle, turnips and Magenta lettuce. The scapes are the tops of the garlic. This has become the new favorite of our members! It is extremely versatile. It can be grilled and eaten as a vegetable, minced and added to salads & eggs (like green onion) and it is wonderful chopped up in lengths for stir-fries. One member told me the best pesto she ever had was prepared with garlic scapes. Another told me she made green garlic hummus made with scapes. Kohlrabi is in the cabbage family. Peel and grate it in salads or coleslaw.

It can be cook either sliced or cubed like a potato and eaten like a vegetable.

Fruit: Kacey Kropp at First Fruits Organic Farms here. We are happy to have nice fruit crops this year after an especially challenging spring for fruit growers on the Western Slope. April 14th and 15th brought historically cold temperatures to Western Colorado. At our orchards in Paonia, we saw a low of 14F on April 15th. This cold coincided with many trees in bloom. We ran wind machines and heat to try to save the crops, and for the most part our fruit was able to ride out the deep freeze. We are grateful to have a bunch of fruit this season; as most Western Slope fruit growers have very little fruit after this horrible April frost! This week, we are supplying organic Brooks cherries. Brooks, a red cherry, one of our earliest cherry varieties, are sweet, crunchy and always popular. Your cherries will be delivered in compostable bags made from sustainable US plant fiber!

Olive oil: There will be a delivery of oil to everyone who ordered it this week.

Pickles: It’s Pickle Picking Time!! If interested in u-pick pickling cucumbers, please call and get on the Wait List. Remember, I need to know when you can come to the farm: weekends, weekdays or both and your phone number. I will not be sending email notices when it comes time to pick pickles.

Bags and Boxes: I forgot to tell you how important it is to return your vegetable bags every week. We reuse them as many times as we can. This includes any small produce bags for beans or peas. Distribution Centers will be keeping track of this, so don’t be surprised if they remind you how often you have forgotten or how many bags you have not returned! Stick a box in your car for extra produce not already bagged.

Please Remember: Food safety is everyone’s responsibility. We do not wash anything so the produce you get will be dirty. Please clean it before eating! Do not let produce go bad in the bag and take the time to dump or shake out any extra organic material left in the bottom. Please do not leave bags where animals can get to them or where people can walk on them! And do not store anything else in these bags. Thank you!!!

Facebook/Blog/Website/etc: Please be aware that I do not work from these social media sites; I don’t even have an account. Several members took it upon themselves to start these up and continually update them. Everyone needs to contact me directly by phone when you have any questions or changes. I will not only need your name but also your Distribution Center. Always repeat your phone number. Email is the same; always identify your distribution center. I am very good about answering phone messages, but I do not have time to look at email every day. You can use email for anything that does not need to be answered immediately! FYI: I never look at the Blog; I simply send the newsletter to a member for posting. To register go to Monroeorganicfarms.wordpress.com

Thank you for a great first week. I know a lot of DC’s were on vacation either the week before or the week of our first delivery and you may have gotten a late notice or had someone doing distribution that was not your Distributor. As the summer goes along, things should even out! Jacquie, Kyle, Sam and Jerry

Veggie Wash (Especially for store bought produce!)

• Juice from a whole lemon
• 2 Tbsp vinegar
• 1 cup water
• 1 spray bottle & scrub brush

Mix and spray onto surface of veggies. Let sit for a minute or two. (Longer if trying to remove wax.) Scrub lightly on soft skinned veggies and more aggressively on hard skinned produce like winter squash, cucumbers, root veggies and melons. Leafy greens simply should be sprayed, let sit and rinsed.

Jacquie, Jerry, Sam, Kyle and Crew

Newsletter – June 16, 2020

NOTE: This blog is posted by a volunteer. No one from the farm checks or responds to messages here. You must contact the farm directly with any questions, comments, etc.

Dear Friends of the Farm,

Welcome to our first week of Distribution!! The entire farm is really looking good. This past May was nice & warm and June has been warmer than normal. So far, we have kept up with watering and everything looks terrific! Because of the recent rain, the entire area is a beautiful green color! Crops are rapidly growing and it looks like we may be ahead of schedule on some crops. The farm looks wonderful and we have an exciting year ahead of us!!!

Produce: This week you are getting garlic, garlic scapes, summer squash (either Qball (round zucchini) or regular zucchini), kale, lettuce and oregano. We are hoping all three distribution days will get these crops, but it is the first week and we may be short. We will make it up to you next week if your distribution center is shorted. Oregano can be used fresh or dry. You will need twice as much fresh in a recipe than dry. The easiest way to dry oregano is to rinse with water and place on a paper plate. It will day within a week.

It is very important that you return all your bags every week! Food safety is important to everyone. Please take care of your bag and make sure animals do not lay on it, it’s not left lying on the floor of your car where people can step on it and please remove all food debris before returning to your distribution center.

It is a good plan to pre-wash produce outside to get the majority of the dirt off in the yard (or an extra-large bowl set in your kitchen sink) and not down your drainpipes. Children especially love this task. (They are very good at picking off the worms in your corn too! (Make it a game and see how many they can find.) By getting your kids involved in the pre-prep work, talking about the produce & asking them what they want to eat will help get them motivated to try the different varieties. Did you know children have to try something 9 times before they get a taste for it? It’s true!! So make them eat a bite or two every time it is served!

Your Distribution Center: Please do not forget that your DC is a member too. They have offered to be a DC to make it as convenient as possible for you to get your produce. They too have busy lives and are trying hard to please everyone. A majority of our DC’s have 30 to 40 Members coming by. Respect their hours and if you need to pick up at a different time or have forgotten to pick up during normal hours; please call and make new arrangements; do not just show up after hours! They will hold produce for 24 hours. If there is no contact from you within that time period, the produce will be donated to a place of need; including your fruit. We encourage Members to donate their produce when going on vacation. Last year the Membership donated a whopping 1445 pounds of produce to organizations around the metro area. If you plan on having someone pick up your produce for you while you are gone; your DC will need their name and phone number. This gives them permission to hand out your produce to someone other than yourself and it gives them a contact number when they forget to pick up…which they almost always do! Ask your DC questions! They are a wealth of information and will help you use your share. Get a cookbook. There are ten recipes for every veggie we grow. And, it was put together by members of this farm! It is useful and the recipes are excellent!!! All DC’s normally have an exchange box for produce you do not want. But due to the Covid virus, we have decided to remove this option

4th of July: This holiday will not affect the farm this year and distribution will go as normal.

Your expectations from the farm: You are sharing the risk of farming with your farmer. This is no different than gardening yourself. Mother Nature does not always cooperate with our plans. It is unrealistic to expect everything to be perfect all the time. We grow varieties for their taste, not necessarily for their beauty! If there is an abundance of produce, you will get it. If there is a shortage of produce, you will see that too. Along with June/July rain we sometimes get hail. Don’t be surprised to get produce with scabs from the damage this causes. We try very hard to catch produce that is badly bruised. But sometimes this slips by us and it will start to mold in your bag from the heat. We apologize ahead of time! We do not intend for this to happen! We love what we do and care deeply about the land we live on, the food it produces and the people it feeds. We are the caretakers and we intend to take care of you and your farm!

Statements: We will send statements each month. Your first produce payment (including fruit, oil and honey) is due July 1st. You may pay these fees in full or in half and the other half is due by September 1st. If you are paying monthly, then continue making your agreed upon scheduled payments.

First year members: This year will be your hardest summer. It takes time to adjust to getting your produce this way! Plan on going to the grocery store after you get your share. You need time to process your produce by sorting and washing. If you are willing to put up with the dirt, don’t wash until you are ready to use it, it will last longer. Produce breaks down as soon as it gets wet. But I also understand you might not want dirt in your crisper drawer! The tenderer a crop is, the sooner it will need to be eaten, i.e. greens, summer squash, peas, beans, broccoli, cantaloupe, cucumbers and tomatoes. I will give you hints on storage as we go through the summer.

Newsletters/Blog: A member with a better Internet system (than I have) will post my newsletters to the blog. Please notify your DC if you prefer to get a hard copy at the distribution site. It is important to read your newsletters because they will inform you of additional “bonus” picking days, other events that may directly affect you or the produce you’re getting and fun things that are happening on the farm. Access the blog by going to: monroeorganicfarms.wordpress.com. Do not forget to check out our Facebook page or Twitter or Instagram (also run by members) for pictures and videos. Jerry and I do not have accounts with any social media sites, so please contact us by email or phone if you have any concerns. We will not see any postings to these sites (or on the blog).

The next u-pick crop coming up is pickling cucumbers and that will be sometime in July. I can start taking names of members who would like to pick pickles for canning. Please let me know if you can come during the week or just weekends or both. This option is for you and your household only. It is not to be shared with another member and especially not with a household that does not have a membership!

How to contact me: I am home on Monday & Friday mornings or Tue/Wed/Thur late afternoons. The best way to reach me is by phone. I am very good about answering phone calls, not so much with email! (Though I am getting better!) I am just not in the house that long! Email me if you do not need an answer right away. But if it is about a change in your share or DC, please call me. We pick veggies on Monday for Tuesday, Tuesday for Wednesday and Wednesday for Thursday. Keep this in mind when you want to make a change! Whenever you call about your share, especially if needing to make changes, always identify your Distribution Center!

Thank you: Welcome to the 2020 farming season with Monroe Organic Farms. We hope you enjoy every morsel! I can’t tell you how excited we are to get started! This is just a sample of what is to come. My family is looking forward to sharing a fantastic summer with you. Thank you for giving us this opportunity; we are very excited about being your farmers!

Jacquie, Jerry, Sam, Kyle and Crew

Are you a physical therapist?

If you’ve kept up with the blog, you’ll know that Jacquie broke her ankle back in April. She recently called her insurance company about therapists in her area for physical therapy to recover from her injury.  Turns out she does not have coverage for PT. 

Jacquie is wondering if there is a member out there that would be willing to come to her house every two or three weeks to show her what needs to be done so she can walk again. She can start with light pressure and work up to full pressure over the next 9 weeks. She would be willing to trade a Half Share for this service. 

Please call her at 970-284-7941 or email her at jacquie@monroefarm.com to discuss options. Thank you!!