Cinderella Pumpkins & Moapa Squash

I love this time of year! We woke up this morning to the freshness of a morning rain. The air was clean and still. The colors of the earth, the crops and the sky were richer and more vivid than usual. The temperature was brisk, cool not cold. I felt that I was being nourished with each breath.

One of my favorite things about fall, aside from the weather, is winter squash and pumpkins! I love to grow them. I love their variety and diversity. The winter squash that you had this week in your share basket is my absolute favorite! I found this squash three years ago from an older local farmer. The seeds of this squash were brought to our valley from the early pioneers and have been handed down and saved since then. I had never seen this beautiful, unusual squash in any seed catalog before. I named it Moapa Squash for our valley. (Pictured in the very middle of this wagon.) With a little investigation, I have since found out that this is an old heirloom Cushaw winter squash named Tennessee Sweet Potato. It is listed as one of the endangered varieties in Slow Food's Ark of Taste. The outside of the squash perfectly fits the description, but the meat of our squash is a bit different. The flesh has a beautiful light-salmon color to it and is very delicious!!! I am sure that through the years this squash has cross-polinated with other varieties making it our very own unique "Moapa Squash". It is delightfully mild and a very hardy squash for our area. One of the great things about this squash is that the plants are not affected by the wicked squash bugs! I hope you are enjoying it this week. Cook it as you do any other winter squash. It also makes great soups and pies! (I will have seeds available at our Local Seed Exchange event next month.)

Next week in your share baskets you will be receiving a portion of a famous pumpkin. It is nicknamed the "Cinderella Pumpkin" because the Walt Disney animator of Cinderella patterned her coach after this old french pumpkin. It is named Rouge Vif D'Etampes. For those of you who speak French you can tell me what this means. (Sonia, help!) Last year I did not have much luck with it but I thought I would give it a try again. We had much better success with it this year as you can see in the picture below. This is the most gorgeous pumpkin I have ever grown! It is a brilliant red-orange color with deep ribs around it. (I can just see the country field mice hiding under the vines ready to be turned into handsome coachmen.) We did not have enough of these pumpkins available for our pot luck dinner, but we will have plenty to share next week. This squash can also be baked into pie for the holidays.



Enjoy the fall harvest and this wonderful weather!
Laura

Potluck, Pigs and Pumpkins

This weekend we had the most marvelous time at our farm! My favorite part about our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is the "Community" part. I love the agriculture part of growing and tending to living things, and producing healthy crops, but community is what it is all about. This weekend on our farm we got to play, visit, laugh, and eat incredible food together with many members of our "community". We all have a common interest of appreciating fresh, local, organic, sustainable, nutritious, wholesome, "slow food." This is where it gets really fun for us (your personal farmers.) We get to know and love the people that share in this community. We are not just growing food for a market, we are growing food for Jason and Kelly and McKinley and Megan, and on and on. We are literally growing families! How great is that!!!


For this years potluck we had tables set up to accommodate different food preferences. We had a raw, vegetarian, carnivore and everyone's favorite table, dessert. All of the different dishes were excellent this year! We all found ourselves throughout the night going back for more. (It doesn't hurt to have some professional chefs among our shareholders!)





In addition to the great food we enjoyed, we were also treated to some excellent entertainment from Blue Grass and modern music to classical guitar. One of the highlights of the evening was an impromptu dance performance by some of the children dancing to Bach's Chaconne and the ever popular Blue Grass "Stone Soup" song.






During the evening, every child or family got to pick a pumpkin to take home.






We were pleased to have the chapter President of Las Vegas Slow Food, Bill Wypyski and his wife with us for the evening as well as several "Slow Food" families. Bill is also one of our QHF shareholders and a great advocate of local, sustainable food in Las Vegas.









We are so grateful for everyone who made this evening so wonderful!!!

Sweet Honey

This summer Monte and I jumped head first into beekeeping. For the last several years we have always had a hive or two, but this summer a dear friend and local beekeeper asked us to take over his bee business as he is no longer able to care for it. We now have 25 active hives and all of the equipment necessary to produce a lot of honey! In July we moved the bees to Panguitch, Utah where they have been working the alfalfa fields and wild flowers for the last few months. We have tended to them from time to time adding new supers (the boxes that hold the honey frames,) as they have needed them. We have been very pleased with their progress over the last several weeks. They have literally been busy little bees. This week we loaded them up and brought them home for the winter. It is honey harvest time now!!



I love the smell of warm beeswax! Monte is uncapping the honey frame to extract the honey by centrifugal force in the honey extractor. This allows us to keep the honey in its raw state. The cappings will eventually be melted down into pure beeswax which we will make into tapered candles for the table. Nothing better than candlelight dinners. We are quite fond of them! After the honey is spun from the cells we simply filter and bottle it, or in the case of our cut comb honey we simply cut it from the frame and place into the containers, literally untouched. The cut comb honey is Montes favorite. He loves the chewiness of the soft wax, especially as it melts over hot biscuits. It is a great treat! (Much to Monte's dismay, I do not have a picture of melting honey over warm biscuits - maybe tomorrow "honey.")

We now have fresh, pure, raw honey available for purchase. We have packaged the honey into 1 pint glass jars with a sliver of cut comb, 1.5 & 3 pound squeeze bottles, or 1 pound cut comb squares. Let us know which you would prefer. Look in your email for prices and availability.






While I have been writing this blog, I have noticed Monte quietly fixing up my candle mold for me. I know he has "better things" he would rather do.
I guess I had better go make some biscuits!

Morning Musings

I have finally embarked into the blogosphere. Pretty scary stuff! I hope to use this as a way to keep you connected to what's happenin' on the farm.


I love to do my routine farm chores in the morning. Everything literally appears to be coming alive. There seems to be something magical about watching the first rays of sunlight hit the slumbering plants. You can almost see the leaves stretch to meet the sun and feel the warmth of the new day. It makes me feel happy and content.


This week on the farm we have been busy continuing our fall planting. Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, pac choi, radishes, arugula, and mizuna have been planted into perfectly straight, linear rows. Ok, I exaggerate here. It drives Monte crazy when I can't seem to till a straight line. Its all he can do to keep from digging it all up to fix my mess. I on the other hand look at it as being, well, creative. Yeah that's it! Anyway, I love to see the new crops coming up and growing each day. (They don't care if the row isn't straight!) Now the fight is on to keep the wild rabbits and a few pesky chickens who have figured out that there wings can be useful away from the emerging plants. No the garden is not always a pastoral scene. Sometimes it can be downright war! It seems that we have won the battle, at least for today.



What I am most excited about this week is the arrival of our two new interns!!! Kylee and Elise have arrived on the scene and boy are they helping to shape things up around here. Elise is from Salem, Utah and Kylee from Meridian, Idaho. They are here to learn not only about organic farming, but also the skills of sustainable home production. In addition to learning to raise small farm animals and vegetable crops, they will also be learning to make candles, soap and cheese, to bottle, pickle and preserve the harvest, and the management of the farm. They both have an infectious enthusiasm for what they are learning, and have each expressed a desire to have a CSA of their own some day. I am not only enjoying there company, but am thrilled to have two wonderful women to share my passion with. Life is good!!!

From the farm,
Laura Bledsoe