This Week's Vegetable Harvest: Red Radishes Arugula Head Lettuce Delicata Squash Tomatoes Broccoli Scallions Shallots Poblano Peppers Sweet Potatoes - Amish Community Growers, Platteville, WI  This Week's Fruit Harvest (from Mick Klug Farms, St. Joseph, MI) Honeycrisp Apples Bosc Pears Cortland Apples Fresh Apple Cider

What's New at the Farm Stand

Late Summer Broccoli - We only grow broccoli in one season and the time is now! Enjoy the flavor that only late summer and early autumn provide to broccoli. We have summer harvest of broccoli at the farm stand (while it lasts!), open daily, 7am-7pm.

Reserve Your Local, Pastured-Raised Thanksgiving Turkey  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. Weights range from 14-20+ lbs (choices are small - 14-17, medium 17-20, large 20+). We will do everything we can to provide you with a turkey in your desired weight range. Turkeys are frozen and packaged in a vacuum-sealed bag. Heart, liver, neck, and gizzard are included inside each turkey. Reservation: $35 deposit per turkey due at the time of order. The deposit will be deducted from your final total which will be determined by the weight of your turkey. You will be invoiced with your total at $7.75/lb (less your deposit) due upon pickup. 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!

Thank you! The end of tomato season is upon us, and we are no longer selling bulk tomato cases. We are distributing our final harvests to the CSA and we hope you have enjoyed summer tomatoes. Thank you again for your interest and orders this season!

Farm Journal

Good evening from the farm!

As the summer season draws to a close over these next two weeks, we would like to thank our summer members for joining us for a memorable summer season! We focused on growing and providing healthy food for you, our community, throughout even the warmest and driest of summer weeks. We hope you enjoyed the flavors of summer! Later this month, we will transition into the fall share season. Please watch for the fall season email is coming next week. Thank you for your ongoing trust in local farmers!

Alongside our CSA growing, Jeff and his Engineering a Sustainable Future class were also making waves this season. As we mentioned in an earlier newsletter, Jeff was invited to join the teaching staff at Grayslake High School District 127 to chart a new agricultural career pathway. Students at both Grayslake Central and Grayslake North join together 2-3 times per week to learn from Jeff, with the class spending 80% of their time learning through experiences at the farm. Last week, the class studied the history and importance of gleaning. They applied those learnings directly by making donations of fresh produce to the Avon Township Food Pantry located about 10 miles from the farm. Their experiences quickly expanded into a school-wide food drive for the food pantry, and more fall events hosted by these same students.

This fall and winter, the students will dig deeper into topics like the food supply chain, regenerative agriculture, winter growing, and community connections to consider the various intersections of agriculture and sustainability, both now and in the future. Jeff channeled the students' enthusiasm by working with educators from across Illinois to bring back the FFA (Future Farmers of America) group to Lake County students after a 30-year hiatus.

After years of mentoring beginning farmers, Jeff often reflects on how much he is learning in this process of educating high school students. He's found students coming out of their shell, becoming more engaged in each passing class, and coming together as a class community through their experiences at the farm. David, Cleto, Anacletoa, and Miguel help to support the students' experiences at the farm and offer suggestions of focus areas to share with the students. We all find it truly rewarding to share this beautiful, challenging, and wonderful career of caring for the land with tomorrow's environmental and land stewards.

Jeff's hope is that exposing his class to both the breadth and depth of agriculture will help students envision a future that they can engage with directly. As he said this weekend, "Wow, I wish I had taken this class like this in school. I would have realized earlier how much I enjoy growing and working with the land." Here's hoping that passion rubs off on a few!

Enjoy this week's share of the harvest! Your farmers, ~ Jeff, Jen, Gavin, David, Cleto, Miguel, Anacleto

Notes from the Farm Kitchen

Bosc Pears are a more firm, dense pear than a Bartlett. Bosc are ideal for baking and have longer storage life, so are the perfect fruit to stock up for autumn. Our favorite way to use Bosc pears is sliced on a salad with crumbled blue cheese, which is why we also love the recipe featured below.

With the warmer weather, several of our fall crops are ready earlier than we planned! This week, we welcome radishes, lettuce and arugula crops back in the cool seasonal rotation, which bring freshness alongside the warm, hearty flavors of squashes and sweet potatoes of autumn.

Members will receive the final early winter squash in vegetable shares this week. Delicata squash is not a great long-term storage squash (like butternut, for example), so we encourage you to enjoy it within weeks rather than months. The storage squash will soon follow!

Seasonal Recipes in the Farm Kitchen Blue Cheese Stuffed Bosc Pears Scallion Meatballs with Soy Ginger Glaze How to dehydrate poblano peppers Cornbread Stuffed Baked Apples

• Tags: Apples, Pears, Poblano Peppers, Scallions

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