Rising River Farm CSA Newsletter
Box 11*** August 30th, 2006
13208 201st AVE SW -Rochester, WA 98579
(360) 273-5368
risingirverfarm@yahoo.com www.risingriverfarm.com

Hello,
With September a mere two days away we can feel the change in the air. Yesterday felt like a classic fall day-intermittent sun, crisp wind, and the smell of dry leaves. For the past few days we have noticed the Canada Geese flying overhead honking up a frenzy on the way south. Somehow their departure seems early. Maybe they know something we don’t. Even the summer squash is slowing down! Despite the hints of fall, today’s CSA box says summer. We will be perusing the second corn planting for enough ripe ears. Rita and Rigo got nearly 10 crates of tomatoes yesterday. We have been rotating some greenish-reddish sweet peppers around the boxes for the past two weeks. They are a pimento. It is a new variety since my old standby was unavailable! I like them. Sweet, crunchy, very beautiful.
Every year we gratefully refer to these last two weeks as “The August Lull”. Planting and transplanting are virtually done, the crew knows how to harvest everything with little or no supervision, old plantings are done and therefore there is less to water. We can briefly sit down, catch our breath, and create new lists for what needs doing in fall: ordering and planting garlic seed, planning out the cover crop and next year’s crop rotation, hauling in onions, prepping space to house the winter squash later in September, harvesting dry beans…I could fill the newsletter with our list!
Two weeks ago, I mentioned that we had pulled all of the onions out and laid them in the field to cure. It takes at least two weeks of hot sun to fully dry them. Well it is rare to go 2 weeks in Western Washington without at least threat of rain, but we take our chances and some years we get lucky. So here we are enjoying the hot days happy and how dry the onions look when I hear rumors of showers on NPR over breakfast. Quick shift in the day’s plans! We busted through most of the harvest yesterday and saved a bit for this morning. Then we spent 3 or more hours (that’s 7 of us times 3 hours) cleaning, bagging, and hauling the onions in to a dry covered space. We got through all of them accept the reds as they weren’t quite dry. It was great! (And now it probably won’t rain.) We can now cross the great onion haul off of our to do list. Phew!

I have an easy and amazing eggplant recipe to share. It will solve the problem of what to do with just one eggplant. This makes a great snack, hors’d’ourve, or side dish.
Baked Eggplant with Mozzarella, Parmesan, and Tomato
-Slice eggplant into ¼ inch rounds
-Brush with olive oil and bake at 350 until fork-tender (about 10 minutes)
-Top with grated mozzarella and Parmesan
-Return to oven for 7-ish minutes until cheese is melted and slightly browning
- Slice a tomato into rounds
-Place a slice of raw tomato between two eggplant patties for a delightful sandwich.

We hope you are enjoying the produce. As always we welcome your feedback-positive or otherwise. Your feedback and participation shapes the way we do things and what we offer. So speak up!!!!!
Jennifer