Extended Season Week 3, November 14th – 18th

This May Be Your Final Delivery of the Season
If you have a 2-week half extended season share that is delivered on the “odd weeks” schedule, this week’s delivery is your final box of the 2017 season. Thank you for being with us this year.

Please Make Sure Your Name is on the Checklist at Your Site
We have had several instances of vegetable and fruit box shortages at community pickup sites. Please make sure that your name is on the checklist before you take a vegetable box, and also make sure that you are signed up for an extended season fruit share by checking the fruit checklist before taking a fruit box. Thank you.

Your Box This Week — Thursday, Friday and Saturday Deliveries:

Please note: this summary is written before we pack your box—be aware that some guesswork is involved. As always, be sure to thoroughly wash all of your vegetables.

Brassicas — Cabbage, Brussels Sprouts

Root Crops — Potatoes, Celeriac (likely) or Daikon Radish

Cooking Greens —Spinach (in bag, likely), Kale Top

Salad Greens — Pea Shoots (in bag)

Fruiting Crops — Popcorn

Alliums — Onions, Garlic

Sign up for the Free Recipe Service
Make sure you sign up for the Local Thyme recipe service we offer with your share. Local Thyme offers storage and handling tips and recipes customized to each week’s share. It has received many great reviews from our shareholders. Check out this sample recipe: Chicken and Pea Shoot Stir Fry.

Celeriac, Potatoes, Garlic and More
As you may have noticed, we gave no celery this year. We had two lovely beds of celery, but they succumbed to the floods. I thought the celery’s sibling, the celeriac, might survive, but most of it did not. We should have enough celeriac for everyone to receive one head this week, though you might get a small one. It will go well with the potatoes in your box. Also, we are giving garlic this week, another pre-Thanksgiving plus. We will also be giving cabbage this week. All of these items will store well until Thanksgiving–if you have the patience to hold them that long.

Pea Shoots
We transplanted a lot of hardy Romaine lettuce for the end of the season. If the Romaine had flourished, there would have been more than we ever could have put into your boxes. At one time, Primo and I calculated we had 3 to 4 heads per box for each week of deliveries from the 17th week until the end of extended season. I gasped when we did this calculation, which was in Week 14 or so. However, the impact of the floods reverberated into this fall, even though the flooding had long since subsided. Due to the rains into August, the flats of Romaine seedlings were held for an extra long time on the wagons, waiting to be transplanted. This caused them to become root bound. I did not anticipate a significant problem from this condition, but I now believe that this root bound condition is what lead the Romaine lettuce to bolt and spoil at a very young age. It was quite a shock to see bed after bed of small Romaine lettuce shoot stalks so early. The majority of it was ungiveable.

We do have a lot of extra pea shoots, however. We will be putting a large bags of pea shoots into your box this week. I know that a lot of our shareholders do not appreciate pea shoots, but we have actually received more raves about pea shoots than complaints, so pea shoots seem like a suitable substitute for Romaine lettuce.

Popcorn
Most shareholders shell the popcorn by hand and pop it in a frying pan or popcorn popper. You may also pop it in the microwave on the cob. Best to let your popcorn dry for a couple of weeks before popping it.

Thankful
The beautiful message of Thanksgiving is to be thankful for what we have. This season provides the opportunity to count our blessings, even if these blessings are not exactly what we had sought.

Delivery Schedule for the Final Week of the Extended Season
Deliveries to community sites for the final week of the season will be the same as for other weeks. This includes the Thursday of Thanksgiving. 

Home deliveries will be made on Tuesday, November 21, rather than Thursday, Thanksgiving Day.

Huh?
Read the following closely. Notice the buzz words—I have italicized them and bolded them. The various buzz words make the practices/services seem almost like gifts from the spiritual world.

National Organics Standards Board Decrees Hydroponics Can Be Organic: Hydroponically grown crops are now eligible for organic certification. 

“By siding with current science and recognizing that existing law purposely leaves the door open for various farming methods, the NOSB is sending a critical message that sustainability and innovation are valuable in U.S. agriculture,” wrote RFC executive director Marianne Cufone in a release. Hydroponics and other types of high-tech farming… can potentially be very energy-efficient and reduce water usage. And there’s rarely a need for pesticides at all, since many of these operations are indoors.”

From Monsanto: Roundup and Glyphosate Herbicides
“Glyphosate has been a breakthrough for farming. Not only do glyphosate products work really well on weeds, but they also help farmers grow crops more sustainably. For example, glyphosate has helped farmers adopt what is called “conservation tillage.” With conservation tillage, farmers can disturb less soil and drive their tractors less. As a result, farmers can reduce soil erosion and carbon emissions, which is great for the environment. In fact, conservation tillage can reduce soil erosion by up to 90 percent and, in 2014 alone, reduced carbon emissions by an amount equivalent to removing nearly 2 million cars from the road. Climate change is one of the biggest issues facing agriculture and society overall. Glyphosate is helping farmers be part of the solution.”

Blue Apron
“Our food system—the way in which food is grown and distributed—is complicated, and
making good choices for your family can be difficult. We are changing that: By partnering with farmers to raise the highest-quality ingredients, by creating a distribution system that delivers ingredients at a better value and by investing in the things that matter most—our environment and our communities. This will be a decades-long effort, but with each Blue Apron home chef, together we can build a better food system. We are partnering with the foremost sustainability experts to create better standards for growing food and raising animals. This means better outcomes for our environment, guaranteed markets for our farmers and higher quality ingredients for our home chefs. Regenerative agriculture—putting more back into the land than you take—is essential for the long term viability of America’s food system. By building our menus around crop rotations that are best for our farmers, we help replenish their soil and increase their yields, while reducing their reliance on inputs like costly pesticides and fertilizers.”

Humans don’t seem so good at sorting things out. How susceptible are people to the buzz words above?  With a perspective that is narrow enough, and with enough repetition of so-called facts and trendy terms, certain things start to seem true and wonderful, even though in a broader context, they might actually be quite different from the so-called truth and be devastating.

Maybe there is a broader picture here that the conventional scientific method or the general population does not properly embrace, behold or evaluate that would upend these so-called facts that organic hydroponics, Roundup, and Blue Apron are doing their job to save the planet and uplift humanity. For instance, within a narrow framework, Roundup can seem like a gift. In a broader framework, one finds through an internet search scores of references to the carcinogenic attributes of Roundup. Save the planet while killing off humanity? 

Rudolf Steiner said that the impact of a practice—for instance the practice of raising calves in confinement in low light—would often be manifested two generations in the future–that offspring from these calves two generations into the future would be less productive and healthy, due to this earlier treatment of the calves.  A highly mechanistic society with narrow criteria for evaluating outcomes can come up with a justification for almost any practice.

So many practices/movements/trends seem mostly knowable through buzz words, data and graphs generated out of agendas by wealthy funders and savvy marketers. Even though the Angelic Organics web site uses some buzz words similar to those I indicate above, at least, you can easily investigate us further–read Farm News, visit on a Field Day, help with a pack—and get to know your farm personally and truly, not just as an idea or a concept.

Overheard, Farm News, Week 4, 1997
Farmer John (to Daniel, owner of a Rockford hair salon): “Angelic Organics is a fine name–I’m basically happy with it. But people often don’t get it right. They call it Angelic, or Angelics, or Angelica, or Angelic Farm. They just wouldn’t do that with your salon. You have the perfect name for your salon. It just rivets in your memory. No one would call your salon Buzzy or Buzzy’s or Buzz Off or Buzzy Wuzzy. It’s just impossible to get it wrong. It’s Buzz, no mistaking it–Buzz.”

Daniel: “Uh, it’s name is Fuzz.”

Warmly,
Farmer John

Please Fold Your Boxes Properly and Return Them
The farm re-uses the vegetable boxes. Each box costs the farm over $1.50. We appreciate getting them back so we can re-use them. Flaps are easily torn when the boxes are dismantled improperly, and then the box bottom might later burst open with fresh, organic local produce heading towards the floor. Please carefully flatten your box and return it to your delivery site. If you receive home delivery, place it in the location where your box is delivered.

Let us Know
Let our office know anything you’d like to share about this week’s box at email hidden; JavaScript is required. Please note the week and day of delivery, your site, when you picked up your box, and any comments about your box.

More from Shareholders
Visit us often at www.facebook.com/angelicorganics, where we post exciting farm developments regularly, and shareholders post recipes, tips, and photos.