Rising River Farm CSA Newsletter
Box 18 ***October18th, 2006
13208 201st AVE SW -Rochester, WA 98579
(360) 273-5368
www.risingriverfarm.com risingriverfarm@yahoo.com

TODAY IS THE LAST BOX FOR THE 2006 SEASON.
Hello,
Yes, today is the last box. Very sad I know. What will you do now that your weekly box will no longer come (until late June of 2007, that is)? Remember, we live in an especially great community where access to organic local food is nearly year-round. The Farmers Market in Olympia is open 4 days/week through October and just weekends in November and December from 10-3:00. We will be there into December with the usual fall array of leeks, squash, shallots, onions, kale, and the like. There is a surprising diversity of local produce right through to the end. There are “warming stations” scattered throughout the market now, so don’t let a bit of cold wind and rain keep you away! There are two food co-ops in town that are chock full of organic produce, sometimes even locally grown. For those of you in the south, Good Health Nutrition center in Centralia is now carrying some organic produce as well.
Jim and I want to sincerely thank you for joining our CSA this year. We hope you enjoyed your boxes and will join us again next season. (You can use the sign-up sheet in the newsletter a few weeks back or go to our website and download a form.) If you liked our CSA this year, tell a friend. If not, let us know how we might have better met your needs.
Though we sell at the market and through the co-ops, the CSA is very much the backbone of the farm. Your spring and early summer payments allow us to pay for start up supplies and personal survival costs long before the market starts. The faith in us that you demonstrate by paying upfront adds a very personal aspect to our work. With the weather always being crazy like it is, farming is a bit of a gamble and we thank you for taking the gamble with us. Our crops and planting times are diversified and staggered enough that an all out crop failure is unlikely, but you as members do bear some risk and uncertainty and we thank you for valuing local food and family farms enough to take that risk.

I want to let you know about a GREAT locally made documentary about CSAs, filmed mostly here in Rochester. It is called “Growing Awareness” and will be playing at 2:00pm November 4th at the Olympia Film Society Theater located in downtown Olympia @ 206 East 5th Ave as part of the Olympia Film Festival. The showing is a benefit for Hunger Free Thurston County. Some of you may remember me mentioning last year that our friend Jade Ajani was making a documentary about CSAs and we asked anyone interested to contact him for an interview. Well, the film is done and is excellent! He featured our farm as well as Helsing Junction, Independence Valley, and Boisfort Valley farms. There is a lot of beautiful field footage, interviews with farmers and members, and some very insightful contrasts between the larger wholesale style of farming and diversified CSA farms. Very educational and inspiring. I highly, highly recommend it. Tell your friends.

Now on to the box content. You have a few new crops to try: celery, spaghetti squash, and popcorn. This is the first time in 9 years that we have grown celery. It is a fickle vegetable that needs lots of consistent water- not such an ideal crop for this past summer. Jim and I were munching on some in the field yesterday and found the few stalks we tried to be very sweet and tasty, but a bit stringy. So the crew harvested a bunch yesterday for you to try. As we did not want to personally sample each stalk, some plants may be tougher than others. We tried our best to pick the nicest 103 plants for you today, but bare in mind this was just an experiment under less than ideal growing conditions. You may prefer to use it in cooking or juicing rather than raw, but check it out for yourself.
Spaghetti squash is the yellow football type thing in the box. The flesh is somewhat sweet and comes out in strings when scraped with a fork. Use it in lieu of pasta. To cook, cut in half, scrape out seeds and pulp, and bake at 350 cut side down in an inch or so of water until the skin is fork tender.
Popcorn. We typically grow popcorn to have something for the market stand in winter and early spring. This year there was a lot so we are tossing a few ears in each box. Leave it out in an airy place (like your kitchen) for at least a month until the kernels are rock-hard. When you want to pop it, pry the kernels off with a spoon or twist off with gloved hands and pop as you would any other popcorn. My personal favorite topping is melted butter and maple syrup or honey.
The purple kohlrabi was ready just in time for this last box, so we put some of that in as well. Peel it and use it as you would a broccoli stem in stir fries and soups or chop it in julienne strips for salads or raw veggie trays.
Let’s not forget pie pumpkins! We are including a pie pumpkin which can be used for pie-of course, sweet breads, cheesecake, squash soup, pancakes, decoration and much more!

Enjoy your fall and winter.
Jennifer and Jim