Farmer John Writes . . .
Greetings from Angelic Organics

Extra Special Open House on Sat, Sept 15: Bioblitz
This fall’s open house will take place mostly on the 70 acres of Kinnikinnick woods, stream and meadow, which the Angelic Organics Learning Center recently acquired. Come explore this paradise, a dreamland for kids and adults. There will be hourly hayrides from the Kinnikinnick Woods to the farm for field viewing and pumpkin picking. Check out Bioblitz

A Shareholder Writes
[Dear All at the Farm,] Angelic Organics’ vegetable delivery felt like a spiritual experience last Wednesday. My daughter and I have been going through life in a fog for the last couple of weeks because of the unexpected and sudden death in our family.
On Wednesday morning, I picked up my bags and walked a block to the home for my vegetable delivery. As soon as I transferred the vegetables from the box to my bags, I began to feel different, better, lighter. The scent of the fresh basil seemed to wake me up, the weight of the melons in the bag on my shoulder felt like a happy heaviness. Then when I got home and we started washing the salad and tasting the red ripe tomatoes, we started to laugh.
I don’t know why.
I was having people over for dinner and as we cut up the muskmelon and watermelon, of course we had to taste them. I haven’t tasted muskmelon that flavorful since I was a child. The watermelon was such a bright, bright color and everyone at the dinner table raved about its sweetness and richness of color. Not one of the ears of corn had any signs of worms and each seemed perfectly perfect in its imperfections. Some kernels were smaller than others, OMG 🙂
The sight of the red tomatoes, yellow corn, purple eggplant, yellow squash, red and orange melon, green kale, green basil leaves all mixed together looked better than a morning sunrise.
The picking up, the preparing, the sharing of our/your abundant harvest set the world straight and lifted our spirits beyond our wildest expectations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Mary Mrugalski [Evanston shareholder] Note from Farmer John: Thank you, Mary. This means so much to all of us at Angelic Organics.

Please Note: this summary is written before you receive your box—please be aware that some guesswork is involved. As always, be sure to thoroughly wash all of your vegetables.

 Fruiting Crops – zucchini or eggplant, cucumbers, bagged tomatoes, heirloom tomato, sweet peppers, and watermelon
Cooking Greens – bagged Swiss chard, kale
Salad Greens – lettuce
Root crops – carrots
Allium – onions, leaks
Herbs – anise & lemon balm

Featured Vegetable–Carrots
This week, the featured vegetable is carrots. We have beautiful carrots this year. They are especially beautiful, because they are weed-free. They are weed-free, because our crew diligently weeded them. They weeded them this season, and they also weeded them last year. How did they weed this season’s carrots last year? By keeping the field that the carrots would be seeded into this year weed-free; that was a field of garlic and spring cauliflower. Due to our weeding policy, no weeds went to seed in the field of garlic and cauliflower last year, which kept the weed pressure down in the ensuing carrot field this year. And our crew diligently weeded next year’s carrot field this year. Next year’s carrot field will once again be where this year’s garlic and spring cauliflower grew this season (long since harvested.) No weeds went to seed in this season’s garlic and cauliflower field, so we look forward to a carrot field with low weed pressure again next year. Soon this field will be spread with compost and seeded to peas for fertility for 2013 carrots.

Another thing about our carrots: our soil is clayey; therefore, it is not that easy for carrots to penetrate it deeply. To mitigate this problem, we use the GPS system on our tractor when we subsoil our carrots. We put 3 deep slices through the soil exactly beneath the location where the carrots will be seeded. This gives our carrots a softer, more penetrable growing area for their tips to sink into. You still occasionally receive carrots that are a bit stubby, but our sub-soiling and seeding system (geo-accurate to the inch) does allow the carrots to grow longer than they would otherwise.

2012 carrots, weeded in 2011 and 2012

Warmly,
Farmer John