Hello Winter CSAers,

Here is what you should be getting in your box tomorrow:

• Hot peppers, (dried)
• Spinach
• Green split peas or lentils
• Turnips or beets
• Red Delicious apples
• Horseradish
• Parsley, cilantro or arugula



In your box. We have two spices this week. The hot pepper is Cheyenne which is a red, hot chili pepper used to flavor dishes. It was grown on our farm and dried last fall. The second is horseradish which is a perennial plant in the same family, as mustard, wasabi, broccoli, and cabbages. It is mainly cultivated for its large root. The intact horseradish root has hardly any aroma but when cut or grated, it produces a mustard oil, that can irritate your sinuses and eyes. So beware. You can store this root in your refrigerator for several months. You are also getting either green split peas or lentils that are grown by some friends of ours over on the Palouse. Even though the weather is warming up, it stills gets cold at night so both of these would be great in a soup or stew. If the weather holds we will hopefully be able to get your spinach from the field. Both the turnips and beets are from our greenhouse. The beets are mainly red but there are a few yellow ones left.

This is the first time we have harvested horseradish and it is a bit of an unknown to us. This may be the first crop we have harvested without having figured exactly how to prepare it. If you come up with something interesting and special with horseradish, please let us know.

For what it is worth, the peppers, spinach, horseradish, cilantro and oregano are organic.

Add-ons. What to avoid going to the grocery store? Order meat, bread or eggs through our website. Just go to www.schreiberandsons.com and click web store. Simply add what you want and then log into your account to make your payment. Everything will be in the box when you go to pick it up!

Your Farmer,

Alan Schreiber

Hello Winter CSAers,

Here is what you should be getting in your box next week:

• Chickpeas
• Thyme (dried)
• Onions, red
• Potatoes
• Turnips
• Mixed greens
• Cabbage or cauliflower or kale

OOOhhhhh the winter is getting longggggggg. So many days of freezing weather. So much cold weather. I think of our produce that we have stocked piled in the cold room, hung from the rafters, in the green house or in bags on shelves as sort of like a bank account and every two weeks we are writing checks on it. Every two weeks the account gets lower. Payday is not for months away when the warm days of spring come. The produce we have gets lower each delivery. Some of the produce we have stored eventually goes bad (note that we do not have any winter squash this time). I get nervous and think, “what if we run out.” In her book of trying to eat from their farm or from right around their farm in West Virgina, Barbara Kingsolver quoted some old timers who declared “March is the cruelest month.” Her reference was that as you ate up what you had stored for the winter and produce of spring had yet to appear, March was when you started running out of food.

You have to start resorting to things that are not your first preference; hence potatoes, again. Tracy and I are working out this afternoon what will go in the boxes between now the end of March. We know that by the beginning of April, things will start to surge with asparagus leading the way. But for now we are thinking about the upcoming cruel time of the winter season, late winter and the earliest parts of spring.

In your box. We have some chickpeas grown by some friends of ours over on the Palouse. The thyme is from our farm and was dried last fall. Try it with some meat dishes. The red onions are awesome. The potatoes are some very nice baking potatoes. Besides the fact that we are starting to run a little low on some produce items so you are getting potatoes twice in one month, the potatoes will be breaking dormancy and so we have to get them out to you before the sprouts start to come out. We have turnips and mixed greens from the green house. Also, we have an option of cabbage, cauliflower or kale for the seventh choice.

Summer CSA Info. We are just about done ordering seeds.....lots of seed. I make our big seed orders from our main suppliers, one of which is in Pasco and one in Mt. Vernon. This represents about 90% of our seed orders in terms of volume. Then I turn to the catalogs...oh the catalogs. There is nothing I like better than seed catalogs; talk about selling hope, thumb through a seed catalog on a frosty January morning. Notice how none of the pictures show snow, frozen plants or cloudy days. Everything seems possible. I look through catalog after catalog; no seed website is unfamiliar to me. It becomes an obsession. What new color of this, what new shape of that, what cool European melon, Asian green, African gourd is out there. For those of you thinking.... why is he looking for those things when all I want is more cauliflower, apples and carrots. Never fear. I ordered those first, and lots of them. We are going to have lots of fruits and lots of vegetables and not too much of the odd things. Well, just a few odd things. I cannot help it, but I have to keep things a little weird.

What’s Happening On The Farm. As I type this, Tracy is getting the chickpeas bagged and making boxes for Tuesday’s delivery. Someone else is painting the floor. A couple of others have the day off. A lot of seed is being order....we carry a $5,000 limit on our credit card. While I have been traveling some and using it, the main reason it got maxed out on its limit today is that we have ordered so much seed from catalogs and over the internet. We are spending a lot of time making plans for this year. A special challenge for us this year is weed control. We do most of our weed control through cultivation, hand weeding and plastic mulch, but all of these are expensive. Last year we tested some organic herbicides and we are wondering if it is worth trying them. We estimate $30,000 was spent on hand weeding last year. Ouch.

Your Winter Farmer,

Alan Schreiber
Schreiber & Sons

Hello CSAers,

Here is what you should be getting in your box next week:

• Winter squash
• New Zealand blue (winter squash)
• Mixed greens
• Beets
• Swiss Chard or Kale
• Oregano (dried)
• Lentils
• Popcorn
• Potatoes

In your box. Yes, we still have winter squash... there is a reason why it is called winter squash. The mixed greens will be a different type as this will have green Romaine as the base, with four or five other kinds of greens added into mix to provide a broad flavor and to add texture. The beets will be small to medium size, mostly red with some yellow beets. The potatoes will be Russet Burbank potatoes, the mainstay of our (and the state’s) potato crop. You will be getting four pounds of potatoes. You should be getting two pounds of lentils.

Summer CSA Info. The end of the year is a few days away. We are offering a 6% discount if you sign up by the end of the year. We have 40 or so folks signed up for it. As I have mentioned before the Winter Solstice is a key point for me. While there is still a lot of cold weather between now and planting, there is not as much as you think. The days are getting longer (or they are supposed to be). This is a signal to me to get busy. Just yesterday I finalized what we plant to grow for next year. I will submit my big seed orders today. This will represent about 85% of the seed we will plant next year. The seed will arrive in January and February. I suspect we will start planting in the greenhouse in February this year.


The Winter CSA. The plans for the 2012 Summer CSA directly impacts on next year’s Winter CSA. As I type that everyone is getting TWO servings of winter squash for the four time, I wince. “Are they getting tired of the squash?” “I will not mention how much squash we have in storage.” As a result I have been searching for other items that I can grow and get into the Winter CSA. Based on my orderings, we are increasing our brussel sprouts, leeks, beets and carrots to make sure that we have more of these in the CSA. I am going to grow, for the first time, some parsnips, storable green and red cabbages. Each year that I do the Winter CSA we try to learn more and figure out how to do things better. Winter farming is hard, but based on the lessons of 2012, we think there are areas we can improve for the next time we do this.


What’s Happening On The Farm. Very little. I go out to the farm every couple of days to check on things, look for things that we need to be doing in January and generally making plans. Everyone is home with family, resting up, relaxing and recharging their batteries. For us at the farm, it is a good time.

Your Winter Farmer,
Alan Schreiber

Schreiber & Sons

Hello CSAers,

Here is what you will be getting in your boxes next Tuesday:

• Mixed Squash
• Pink Banana (squash)
• Onions
• Dry beans
• Leeks
• Mixed winter greens
• Cooking greens
• Turnips
• Dill
• Garlic

In your box. We have a bin of assorted smaller squash, acorn, white acorn, Sweet Dumpling, Delicata and Carnival. You should expect to get two to three of these squash. Pink Banana is a big fat squash, some of which are too big to go into a box, so you will get a half of a Pink Banana. This will be the last of the yellow onions from the farm this winter. (In a month or two you can expect to get some onions that we get from someone else’s storage). We have some dry beans that we grew on the farm. This will be the first time that we have grown dry beans. Someone told us there is a good market for organic dry beans-we will see. We still have leeks in the field. We have to schedule their harvest for a time that the ground is not frozen. Once again you will have mixed greens (not meant to be cooked) to be eaten like a salad mix and the braising greens (meant to be cooked before eating). The turnips will come out of the greenhouse. The dill and garlic are items we grew this summer and dried this fall.

Winter Farming. Yes, it is a little challenging this time of the year. The greens are produced in a greenhouse that is not heated (think about that). We do some special things to keep the plants warm as possible, but eventually they freeze (these days they freeze every day). You cannot harvest the plants if they are frozen. You have to wait until it warms up and the plants thaw and then they are fine. It is a curious thing, very interesting. Before I got into to this, I did not know it was possible to grow crops like this, but one can. I think we are going to be producing more this year and do it better than last year. Based on what I think is our success of this year, we have plans to further increase the volume and diversity for next year.

It sure is beautiful out here on the farm right now. Things have really slowed down and it is a pleasant time of the year.


More CSA Details. We still have 12 spots left in the Winter CSA so if you know someone who is interested please let them know we still have room. Don't forget if you sign up for the 2012 Summer CSA by the end of this month you will receive a 6% discount! Click here for more details. If you have any questions call (509-266-4348) or email (contact@schreiberandsons.com).

Your local CSA,

Schreiber & Sons

Here is what you will be getting in your boxes tomorrow:

-Green cabbage or yellow beets
-Daikon radish or icicle radish
-Broccoli
-Brussels Sprouts
-Spaghetti or carnival squash
-Buttercup or acorn squash
-Cooking greens
-Mixed greens
-Onions-yellow
-Potatoes-baking

In your box. The cooking greens are what we have previously called braising greens which can be cooked various ways besides just braising them. The mixed greens will consist of red and green leaf lettuce, radicchio, cress and arugula. Those that received green cabbage last delivery will get yellow beets this week. This will be the first and last serving of brussels sprouts for this season and the last of the broccoli.

If you are all out of ideas or just dont know what to do with some of the items in your box don't forget that we have lots of recipes on our website. Just click "recipes" on the right hand side and then the letter your produce item starts with. Or if you have some good recipes that you want to share, feel free to send them to us and we will add them to the website.

Squash tasting. Schreiber & Sons is teaming up with Ethos bakery to host the 2011 Squash tasting. This will take place on Sunday December 11, at 4:30pm at Ethos Bakery (2000 Logston Blvd., Ste. 125, Richland). We will have over 10 different kinds of squash cooked in a wood fired oven for you to taste and judge. The event is free but you will need to bring your own beverage.

Pick up Sites. When you return your boxes please be sure to flatten and stack them neatly in a pile. Keep in mind that the drop-site hosts are generously letting us use their property so we need to be sure to keep it clean.

Pick up site times are set as listed below:

Pasco- 4001 Mojave 3:00 to 6:30
Kennewick- 8807 Grand Ronde 3:30 to 6:30
North Richland- 2009 Harris Ave 4:00 to 7:00
West Richland- 610 S. 54th Ave. 4:30 to 7:00
Farm 2:30 to 7:00

We have asked the drop site volunteers to allow a one hour grace period after the above end time. We ask you to please try and pick up your box during the window, but we know sometimes that is not always possible. One hour after the above end time, boxes will probably be picked up and disposed of. If you have not picked up your box 7:30 to 8:00, you should consider your box gone.

More CSA Details. We still have 12 spots left in the Winter CSA so if you know someone who is interested please let them know we still have room. Don't forget if you sign up for the 2012 Summer CSA by the end of this month you will receive a 6% discount! Click here for more details. If you have any questions call (509-266-4348) or email (contact@schreiberandsons.com).

Your local CSA,

Schreiber & Sons

Hello CSAers,

Tomorrow is the first pick up of the Winter CSA. Below is what we plan to have in your boxes, plus some other information.

• Chinese cabbage or green cabbage
• 2 pounds of fresh Washington cranberries
• Tomatoes, Mixed
• Radishes
• Turnips
• Broccoli
• Cilantro -- this may or may not happen
• Beets, red
• Winter squash – buttercup
• Winter squash – acorn
• Winter squash – either Carnival, Sweet Dumpling or Cream of the Crop
• Braising greens
• Mixed greens

What’s In Your Box. Okay, so farming in the winter presents some challenges. For starter, you simply cannot pick cilantro that is under snow. While the weekend snow has melted in the Tri-Cities, it has not done so at the farm. We have between 1 and 2 inches of snow on the ground. The farm is at 900 feet elevation while much of the Tri-Cities is between 400 and 550 feet elevation. This can make a big difference at times, particularly in the spring and fall. We expect the snow to melt between now and tomorrow by noon-we will know then if the cilantro is a go or not. You are going to get three winter squash instead of the two I said last time. You get the squash that have a shorter shelf life and these are the smaller squash. The buttercup are the ones that are flat on the top and bottom, are dark greenish and have a little cup on their bottoms. Everyone knows what an acorn squash is. Everyone is going to one of the following three squashes; Sweet Dumpling (cupped on the top, whitish and greenish, ribbed), Cream of the Crop (a white skinned acorn) or Carnival (shaped like an acorn but more colorful-a cross between a Sweet Dumpling and an acorn squashe). The turnips are a new variety-probably never seen before in the Tri-Cities-a red skinned turnip. I have eaten a few—they are very good.

Remember, the braising greens are for cooking, the mixed greens do not need to be cooked. The mixed greens will contain lettuce, while the braising greens will not have lettuce. The radishes were grown in the greenhouse. Although the red varieties are the bulb varieties, when grown in the greenhouse they grow into some rather unique shapes.

Winter CSA Details. If you got this email, you probably know the details, but just to go over the basics....it costs $500 for the season ($40 less than the previous two years), pick ups are every other Tuesday, pickup sites are at the farm, North Richland, West Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco. For more information on pick up sites, locations and times, see our website (schreiberandsons.com) or the attached flier. The last pickup will be on April 24th. This is one week before the 2012 Summer CSA starts. Remember to return your boxes each week to the drop sites.

Pick Up Site Details.

Pasco 4001 Mojave 3:00 to 6:30
Kennewick 8807 Grand Ronde 3:30 to 6:30
Richland 2009 Harris Ave 4:00 to 7:00
West Richland 610 S. 54th Ave. 4:30 to 7:00
Farm 2:30 to 7:00

We have asked the drop site volunteers to allow a one hour grace period after the above end time. We ask you to please try and pick up your box during the window, but we know sometimes that is not always possible. One hour after the above end time, boxes will probably be picked up and disposed of. If you have not picked up your box 7:30 to 8:00, you should consider your box gone.


Add Ons. I am running a beef special. It has been selling (or rather not selling) for $8 a pound for roasts, $6 for steaks and $6 for hamburger. The reason for this high cost is that is what it costs me. However at these prices, beef sales have not worked out for us (we collect about 50 cents a pound on it for our handling costs). It is my goal to move the meat that I have inventory this winter and by next spring have a better priced source of meat as it makes little sense for us to carry these products if they are priced too high. Between now and December 15, roasts will be $4 a pound, with steaks and hamburger at $3 a pound. For what it is worth, the meat is very, very good. Also, we have eggs in stock. Let us know if you are interested either of these products. Several members took advantage of the meat sale. If you have ordered meat be sure to pick up our box up early in the pick up window. The meat will be good for several hours outside, but we do not recommend letting it set out for a long time.

We buy our bread through Buhrmaster Bakery. It is very, very good bread and I highly recommend it. Below is a list of his bread and bagels that we have available.

Bread $4.50 to 4.95 depending on type.
California Sour Round
California Sour Deli
Dark Rye
Light Rye
Marble Rye
Caraway Rye
Black Olive Garlic
Pilgrim Wheat hand
Pilgrim Wheat Deli
Pumpernikel Round
Black Forest Pumpernikel Round
Rosemary Parmesean
Sicilian Deli
Sicilian Hand
Walnut Raisin
7-Grain
Jalapeno Cheddar
Kalamata Olive

Bagels 4 per bag ($3.95)
Plain
Apple Cider
Sun Dried Tomato
Jalapeno
7-Grain


Your Winter Farmer,

Alan Schreiber

Hello CSA Members!

Here is what should be in your box next week:

Peppers-the very last of the season
Leeks
Onions
Gala Apples
Sweet Mama winter squash
Yuki Kiri Red winter squash
Gourds
Greens, of some kind


In your box. Not sure what kind of green leafy plant you will get next week, but we will pick something out for you. Before the big freeze hit, we stripped plants of tomatoes (which you got this week), peppers and the last of the eggplant and tomatillo. Most of you will get peppers, and if we run out, we have a few eggplant and tomatilloes to fill out the rest of the orders. The leeks we have are great and supposedly they are only better if they have been nipped by frost, which these have. The same can be said for the winter squash. The two featured squash this year are both Japanese styled kubacha style varieties. I can personally vouch for the taste and qualities of these squash. Medium and large share members will get a third squash.

Gourds. I love gourds. I love there odd and weird shapes, their colors and the wildly divergent colors. Funny thing, some people do not share my love of gourds. Every year we get a couple of gourd haters (who knew such people existed, but they do.) I refuse to let gourd naysayers ruin one of my favorite fall vegetables. A larger, but no less unexpected sector, to me, are the gourd agnostics and gourd virgins. These folks either do not know what a gourd is for or even what a gourd is. For the gourd agnostics and virgins out there, let me say this.................

1) Every year we have people who try to eat gourds. Do not eat the gourds. These gourds are inedible.

2) While gourds were domesticated for the purpose of being used for tools, such as spoons, ladles, bottles, etc, these gourds are for decoration. Their sole purpose is to be pretty. Use them as decorations.

3) Gourds are not a waste, most of us really appreciate them. Enjoy them. Do not trash talk (or email) my beautiful gourds that I grew for you.

4) I love gourds.


Boxes. Please remember to return your boxes—unless they are ratty. This will be the last week for you to return your boxes. After this week, you have to keep your boxes.


Drop Sites. As the season draws to a close, remember to thank your drop site hosts. They volunteer for this duty. We appreciate what they do for us, and you should too.

The Weather. Well, it got pretty cold here this week. It was at least 25 degrees. This pretty much took down corn, squashes, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos and anything else the least big succulent. We were ready for it and really did not suffer from it. In some cases, we benefited from it, as it should make the squashes, leeks and a few other crops better tasting.

Winter CSA. Click here to see the attached brochure for more information or feel free to email (contact@schreiberandsons.com) or call (509-266-4348) if you have any questions.

Your Farmer,

Alan Schreiber

Hello CSA Members!

Here is what should be in your box this week:

Pumpkin
Bok choy
Potatoes
Collard greens
Brussels sprouts
Winter Squash
Tomatoes
Farmers Choice


In your box. I know that the list seems short, but think of the weight and volume of the contents. This week’s boxes were some of the heavier ones of the year. I expect that each box will get one pumpkin that is suitable for eating. We have two kinds of eating pumpkins, one is the Rouge d’ Etampe. This is also known as the Cinderella pumpkin. It is flat, reddish French country pumpkin. I find it to be a beautiful pumpkin, but also is a good eating pumpkin. Most folks use it for an ornamental, but it can be eaten. The medium and large shares will get this pumpkin. The other pumpkin, which will go in the small share boxes, is a New England Sugar Pie pumpkin. It’s sole purpose is for eating. Some of the bok choy is from the field and some is from the greenhouse. The greenhouse bok choy is the smaller variety, a baby bok choy type. The field bok choy will be larger and have white ribs. The greenhouse bok choy will be a little fragile. These potatoes will be some of the fancy kinds, colored or fingerlings. This will be the last of this kind for the year. In a week or two you will get some big baker potatoes. Collard greens, what can I say, they are collards.... This will be the last tomatoes. The cold weather is causing the quality to slip so even though we have a lot and will have them into November, we are shutting off the tomato spigot. We are including the Farmer’s Choice... we will be putting in some odds and ends, such as the VERY LAST, I PROMISE YOU, for eggplant and some other little items. The winter squash will either be butternut or acorn squash. We have two kinds of acorn squash, one is the green, typical usual kind and the other is called Cream Of The Crop and it is a white acorn. It tastes just like the green skinned kind, but looks quite different on the outside.

Boxes. Please remember to return your boxes—unless they are ratty.


Drop Sites. As the season draws to a close, remember to thank your drop site hosts. They volunteer for this duty. We appreciate what they do for us, and you should too.

The Weather. How many times did I curse the cold weather this year. Funny how things change. Now, we need the cold weather. Cold weather makes some plants convert carbohydrates to sugar. The Brussels sprouts, leeks, winter squash and other fall crops taste better once they have become cold. Also, several of the Winter CSA crops that are in the greenhouse are getting big and are endangered of getting too big. We have several of the crops just where we want them and we need cool weather to hold them in place so we can harvest them in just the right stage.


Winter CSA. Click here to see the attached brochure for more information or feel free to email (contact@schreiberandsons.com) or call (509-266-4348) if you have any questions.

Your Farmer,

Alan Schreiber

Hello CSA Members!

Here is what should be in your box this week:

Pumpkin
Bok choy
Potatoes
Collard greens
Brussels sprouts
Winter Squash
Tomatoes


In your box. I know that the list seems short, but think of the weight and volume of the contents. This week’s boxes were some of the heavier ones of the year. I expect that each box will get one pumpkin that is suitable for eating. We have two kinds of eating pumpkins, one is the Rouge d’ Etampe. This is also known as the Cinderella or Fairytale pumpkin. It is flat, reddish French country pumpkin. I find it to be a beautiful pumpkin, but also is a good eating pumpkin. Most folks use it for an ornamental, but it can be eaten. The other pumpkin, which will go in the small share boxes, is a New England Sugar Pie pumpkin. It’s sole purpose is for eating. Some of the bok choy is from the field and some is from the greenhouse. The greenhouse bok choy is the smaller variety, a baby bok choy type. The field bok choy will be larger and have white ribs. The greenhouse bok choy will be a little fragile. These potatoes will be some of the fancy kinds, colored or fingerlings. This will be the last of this kind for the year. In a week or two you will get some big baker potatoes. Collard greens, what can I say, they are collards.... This will be the last tomatoes. The cold weather is causing the quality to slip so even though we have a lot and will have them into November, we are shutting off the tomato spigot.

Info for Large Share Members. We did not quite make it to the end of the season with the large share boxes, so we have to switch box styles. Starting this week, the large share members will be getting two boxes per share, one medium sized box and one small sized box.

Add ons. Bear mind the Summer CSA is ending and with the ending of the vegetable supply, you will lose access to the bread, beef, chicken and eggs. If you want to stock up on any of these, please get your order into us. Do not be afraid to stock up.

Pumpkins. If you still want a big pumpkin, we still have some. Call the office (266 4348) and make an appointment Monday through Friday 8 to 5, or this Saturday from 2 to 4 pm. We are out of Jack O’ Lantern style pumpkins-for the first time ever.

Winter CSA. I know we have been repeating this over and over again but don’t forget to sign up for the Winter CSA. Click here to see the attached brochure for more information or feel free to email (contact@schreiberandsons.com) or call (509-266-4348) if you have any questions.

Your Farmer,

Alan Schreiber

Hello CSA Members!

Here is what should be in your box this week:

Jack O' Lantern
Tomatoes
Carrots
Radish or Kohlrabi
Onions, yellow
Leeks
Chard or greens
Peppers, mixed bells
Sweet Corn
Lemongrass


In your box. Let me talk about your box.... the obvious thing in your box will be a relatively large jack o’ lantern pumpkin, very suitable for carving. This is the next to last week for tomatoes—next week will be the last for the tomatoes. Finally, we are getting to the orange carrots. There are a few purple ones in there, but they all taste good. We have radishes (French Country Breakfast) on Tuesday and kohlrabi when the radishes run out, which will be sometime on Tuesday. The onions are the typical, plan old yellow variety. For the first time this year, you are getting leeks. You will have them one more time this year. I love leeks. For greens, you are getting either spinach or chard. This will be the last time for bell peppers (but not the last time you will get peppers.) This is the last time you will be getting sweet corn. For something really, really cool.... something I bet NO OTHER CSA in the NORTHWEST has ever done.... you are getting lemongrass. I know what half of you are thinking right now... lemongrass, what am I going to do with lemongrass! This is a staple in Thai cooking and is commonly used in Asian cooking. This is a crop that cannot be grown here in the field. We got some starts and planted this spring. We are harvesting it tomorrow and when we are done harvesting it, we will dig it up, put it in pots and store the crowns in the greenhouse over the winter and try to plant it next year. Very cool. We have put some lemongrass information below in the email and will get it up on our website.....


Farm Party and PumpkinFest. Okay, the farm party was a great time. Counting the folks who just came to grab a big pumpkin, we had a little over 150 folks. My old disappointment was the rain on Friday night soaked the wood on the bonfire so we did not have as big of a fire as I had planned. Oh well, this Friday night we are having a bonfire for some Cub Scouts and they are going to be in for a treat. Thanks to Nathan Finch for cooking 80 pounds of fowl, Jim and Kim, the Othellians and the rest of you who helped with the farm party. It was a great time.

Info for Large Share Members. We did not quite make it to the end of the season with the large share boxes, so we have to switch box styles. Starting this week, the large share members will be getting two boxes per share, one medium sized box and one small sized box.

Add on. Bear mind the Summer CSA is ending and with the ending of the vegetable supply, you will lose access to the bread, beef, chicken and eggs. If you want to stock up on any of these, please get your order into us. Do not be afraid to stock up.

Pumpkins. If you still want a big pumpkin, we still have some. Call the office (266 4348) and make an appointment Monday through Friday 8 to 5, or this Saturday from 2 to 4 pm.

Winter CSA. I know we have been repeating this over and over again but dont forget to sign up for the Winter CSA. Click here to see the attached brochure for more information or feel free to email (contact@schreiberandsons.com) or call (509-266-4348) if you have any questions. Come on the farm tour and see what we have in store for the 2011-2012 Schreiber & Sons Winter CSA.

Your Farmer,

Alan Schreiber



Lemongrass.

If you want a website with lemongrass recipes, go to....http://recipes.epicurean.com/desc_results.jsp?ingredients=Lemon+Grass

or you can read below.

Make up bundles of the green leaves and toss a bundle into a warm bath after you've run a marathon or dug ditches all day. Very relaxing to the muscles. Add a few sprigs of rosemary if you like.
An infusion of the leaves is antiseptic and will help improve acne. It is used to treat tuberculosis, coughs, fever, colds and flu, gingivitis, headache, leprosy and pneumonia. It is a natural anti-fungal agent, so useful for treating tinea. Chewing on the stalks will help clean the teeth. A cream preparation with 2.5% essential oil is an effective treatment for ringworm.
Used mainly in Asian cookery. Use in any recipe where the flavor of lemon is desired. It is used to flavor teas, soups, stews, marinades and curries. When using it fresh, strip off the tough outer leaves and cut off the bottom root portion. Slice into rings or strips and bruise the pieces to release the flavor before adding to dishes.
Here are some recipes.

Lemongrass Lamb Chop on Sauteed Choy Sum
For each lamb chop:
1 teaspoon lemongrass, finely chopped
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon garlic, minced
salt to taste
Mix ingredients to create dry rub for each lamb chop. Marinate lamb chop overnight. Pan fry to desired taste. [Use spinach or other greens if you can't get the soy sum.]

Curry Paste
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
6 jalapeno chillies
2 lemongrass stems (fresh or dried)
5-8 garlic cloves, very finely minced
3-5 shallots or onions, very finely diced
1 teaspoon galangal, finely chopped
small amount of water if required
Roast coriander and cumin seeds for a few minutes in a dry fry pan, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, cool. Place remaining ingredients in a blender and puree for a few seconds. Add water if necessary and blend a few seconds longer. When using the paste in cooking, fry it over high heat a few minutes before adding other ingredients.

Lemongrass Chicken (1)
750g boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1-2 stalks fresh lemongrass (2 tablespoons minced)
1 1/2 tablespoons honey
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons fish sauce or soy sauce
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 1/2 tablespoons canola oil
3 tablespoons fresh coriander for garnish
Cut the chicken breasts into strips. Combine chicken, honey and 1 tablespoon of fish sauce and marinade 10 minutes. Trim the green leaves and root end off the lemongrass stalk and remove the outside leaves. What remains will be a greenish cream-colored core about 12cm long. Mince finely. Just before serving, heat a large non-stick frypan or wok over high heat and swirl in the oil. Add the garlic and lemongrass and stir fry until fragrant but not brown, about 15 seconds. Add the chicken and stirfry until the pieces turn white. Move the chicken to the sides and add the onion. Stir fry until the onion is tender about 1 minute. Mix the chicken back in the center, add remaining fish sauce, continue frying until the chicken is cooked, 2-3 minutes. Add more honey or fish sauce to taste. Sprinkle with coriander to serve. Makes 4 servings.

Lemongrass Chicken (2)
1kg whole chicken
1 1/4 cups water
salt and pepper to taste
6-8 lemongrass leaves, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon corn flour
milk
Place the chicken on a saucer in a saucepan. Add the water, sprinkle salt and pepper over and heap the lemongrass onto the breast. Cover and bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours, basting occasionally with the liquid. To eat hot, remove chicken and keep warm. Strain the liquid into a small saucepan and stir in a tablespoon corn flour blended to a smooth paste with a little milk. Stir until thickened and pour over the chicken. To eat the chicken cold, put it into a deep bowl and pour the strained liquid over it. Cool, then chill overnight. The liquid will have jelled and there will be a layer of fat which should be removed.

Lemongrass Coconut Sorbet
10 stalks lemongrass
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 cup coconut milk (stir before measuring)
Peel the tough outer layers from the lemongrass and discard them. Cut the remainder into 1cm lengths. In a saucepan over high heat, combine lemongrass, sugar, salt and 2 1/2 cups water. Stir until liquid comes to the boil. Reduce heat, simmer, stirring occasionally, until light golden, about 20 minutes. Pour through a fine strainer, pressing on the solids to extract moisture. Discard solids. Place the bowl in a larger bowl of ice water and stir syrup until cool, about 5 minutes. Stir in lemon juice. Whisk in t he coconut milk. If mixture is lumpy, pour through a fine strainer. Pour into an ice cream maker and freeze. Or freeze in a suitable dish until just firm , 2-4 hours. Scoop into bowls, or scrape with a large form to form a slushy ice. Serve immediately.

Lemongrass Ice Cream
3 cups milk
4 stalks chopped lemongrass, white part only
250g sugar
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and scraped
3/4 cup egg yolks
2 cups heavy cream
In a saucepan, simmer milk with lemongrass and reduce by one-third. Steep several hours or overnight. Strain out lemongrass and heat with sugar and vanilla bean. Bring to scalding. Whisk the yolks. Temper the yolks by adding only a ladle of hot milk to the yolks. Mix well then add tempered yolks back to the saucepan. Whisk constantly over medium heat for 2 minutes. Strain and cool in an ice bath. When mixture is cooled add cream. Freeze in an ice-cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions. If desired serve with chopped pineapple mixed with chopped mint leaves, and coconut macaroons.

Lemongrass Syllabub
4 stems lemongrass, chopped finely
20g chopped fresh ginger
120g castor sugar
200ml water
300ml thickened cream
1 tablespoon brandy
2 tablespoons lime juice
Place the lemongrass, ginger, castor sugar and water in a saucepan, stir over heat until sugar has dissolved. Boil for 10 minutes, then leave to cool. Strain. May be stored in the fridge for up to 3 weeks. Delicious spooned over ice cream. To make the syllabub, add the syrup, brandy, and lime juice to the cream and whisk together until soft peaks form. Serve in glass dishes with a few gratings of lime zest if desired.
The syllabub can also be used as a filling for Pavlova. Fill a pavlova case with the syllabub, sprinkle over some cubed mango. Sweeten some passionfruit pulp with a little sugar, then drizzle over the mango.

Minted Lemongrass Sorbet
3 stalks lemongrass, outer leaves discarded
3 cups water
3/4 cups fresh mint leaves
3/4 cups sugar
Thinly slice as much of lemongrass stalks as possible, discarding dried thin upper portion. In a saucepan simmer water with lemongrass, covered, 5 minutes. Add mint and simmer, uncovered, 1 minute. Remove pan from heat and add sugar, stirring until dissolved. In a blender, puree mixture and strain through a fine sieve into a bowl, pressing hard on solids. Chill syrup, covered, until cold and freeze in an ice-cream maker. Sorbet may be made 1 week ahead. A piece of ginger root may be used instead of the mint, if desired.

Lemongrass Syrup
sugar
water
sliced lemongrass
lemongrass stalks
Combine equal parts of sugar and water and a generous amount of sliced lemongrass core in a small saucepan. Simmer over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring to dissolve sugar. Remove from heat and cool. Fill a jar with a few lemon grass stalks. Strain syrup into jar. Cover and keep in the refrigerator. Use to poach pears and apricots, or brush over a basic cake, or drizzle some over cold mango and pawpaw.
Stir fried Beef
3 zucchini, cut in half crosswise, then into quarters lengthwise
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 onion, cut in half lengthwise and then into slices lengthwise
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 stalk lemongrass, finely sliced
2 small red chilies, finely sliced
200 g rump steak, thinly sliced
2 tomatoes, diced
2 tablespoons shredded mint leaves
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Steam the zucchini for 5 minutes or microwave on high for 40-60 seconds. Heat a frypan. Add oil and swirl to coat the sides. Add onion, ginger and garlic, stir fry until just colored, about 30 seconds. Add lemongrass and chilies. Stir fry for 10 seconds, add beef and stir fry until it browns Add tomatoes and zucchini, cook for 1 minute. Stir in the mint and soy sauce. Serve immediately with rice.

Thai Green Chicken Curry
90 g coriander leaves
1 stem lemongrass, white part only, chopped
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 green chilies
2 teaspoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons oil
6 curry leaves
1 2/3 cups coconut milk
500g chicken thigh fillets, cut into thick strips
3 hard-boiled eggs, cut into quarters
coriander leaves for garnish
Put the coriander, lemon grass, fish sauce, chilies and sesame oil in a food process and process for 3 minutes or until mixture forms a smooth paste. Heat remaining oil in a frypan, add paste and curry leaves, cook for 3 minutes. Pour in coconut milk and 1 cup water. Simmer gently for 10 minutes. Add chicken and simmer for 10 minutes or until tender. Stir in the eggs and cook for 3-4 minutes until heated through. Spoon onto a bed of steamed rice or noodles and garnish with the coriander leaves.

Tomato Lemongrass Salsa
2 stalks lemongrass
2 green or red chiles, finely chopped
1 large tomato, coarsely diced
1 small red onion, finely diced
2 tablespoons chopped coriander
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
salt
Combine all ingredients and let sit at room temperature for about one hour, then refrigerate. Use within one day.

Lemongrass and Tomato Sauce
3-4 lemongrass stalks
3-4 chopped tomatoes
1 capsicum, cut into chunks
sprig thyme
1-2 chilies, or to taste, chopped
3-4 Kaffir lime leaves
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon lemon-flavored olive oil (optional)
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon sugar
Use only the base of the lemongrass stalks for best flavour. Squash them flat to soften, then slice finely. Put the tomatoes, capsicum, thyme, chilies, onions, Kaffir lime leaves and garlic into an ovenproof dish. Sprinkle over with the lemon olive oil and olive oil, season to taste and stir in the sugar. Bake in a hot oven for 45 minutes. Allow to cool, then put through a blender, then strain through a sieve if desired. Delicious served with chicken, steak, vegetables or over a herb omelets.

Hello CSA Members!

Here is what should be in your box next week:

Jack O' lantern
Tomatoes
Carrots
Cilantro
Onions
Leeks
Chard or greens
Peppers
Sweet Corn


In your box. Predicting what we will have the following week is always a bit of a guessing game and at the beginning and end of the season is more challenging. I am not sure if we will have enough chard or some other things. On the other hand we are at the end of the season of so many items that I want to get in the boxes, it is hard to know what we will be putting in boxes. For example, as I was walking through the fields today I notice that the basil is starting to go down due to the cold weather so I told Tracy to cut whatever we have left that is still good next week and put it in the boxes. Same with several items. Cucumbers, eggplant, melons, basil and all of the other items that cannot take cold temps are going down or are already down for the season. Also, once you put a pumpkin in a box suitable for carving there just is not a lot of room left.... expect to have some full boxes the next few weeks.

Farm Party and PumpkinFest. We have been getting ready for the farm party.... I just got back from the store.... 75 pounds of mixed poultry. Usually the Schreiber family handles this event and we give the employees the weekend off, but this time we need to schedule a few people to work this Saturday afternoon..... We cannot cook the birds, run the tour and give out the pumpkins ourselves.... We have A LOT OF PUMPKINS and some other cool stuff. I bought a cider press and I am going to draft some folks to make cider (I have never done this but always wanted). This may be the last half way warm Saturday left this year. Come out to the farm and enjoy the fall, the fellowship, the fire and last but not least, the curcurbits.

It will be October 15 starting at 3:00. Also we will be having a mixed poultry grill followed by the big bonfire. If you are coming to get a pumpkin but are not able to stay for the BBQ and Bonfire we would recommend coming by before 5:00. Send your RSVP to contact@schreiberandsons.com (reply to this email). Let us know if you are going to want to pick up a big pumpkin and /or if you intend to come to the party. We hope to see everyone there! See the attached instructions. Bring a covered dish that is appropriately sized. I would really like to encourage you to come. This is our last event of the year. Also, this will be the largest bonfire we have EVER HAD. It will be BIG, BIG, BIG.

By the way, I need to make something clear....we have a lot of big pumpkins...they are not 500 pound big, but they are between 100 and 200 pounds.... certainly big enough you will have trouble carrying them.... we have figured out how to do it at the farm, but you may have some trouble with them once you get home. My recommendation is to bring a burlap bag, small rug or blanket (that is sturdy). We will put your pumpkin on your heavy cloth and lift it up with someone at each of the four corners and put it into your vehicle. Do not bring a small car if you want a big pumpkin.


Winter CSA. I know we have been repeating this over and over again but dont forget to sign up for the Winter CSA. Click here to see the attached brochure for more information or feel free to email (contact@schreiberandsons.com) or call (509-266-4348) if you have any questions. Come on the farm tour and see what we have in store for the 2011-2012 Schreiber & Sons Winter CSA. I was just looking in the greenhouses and things have never looked better. It is amazing.... a riot of different shades of greens... begging to be eaten. It will make your mouth water. I cannot wait until it snows and when you come from a cold, frosty snowy outside into a verdant, lush greenhouse environment. It is heaven.


What Is Happening On The Farm. We are hurrying to finish research plots, harvesting CSA crops, cleaning, washing, tilling, mowing, planting cover crops and doing the the 1,001 things you have to do to get ready for winter. Here are some of things going on at the farm today. Packing the CSA boxes, distributing the CSA boxes, picking and washing produce for the Richland farmer’s market, grading onions, spraying some newly planted winter wheat, mowing the lawn for this weekend, irrigating the asparagus for the last time, setting up canopies for this weekend, procuring duck, turkey, chicken and rock game hens, picking sweet corn, repairing some equipment, bringing in irrigation equipment we are done with the weekend, watering the greenhouse, weeding greenhouse, and a few other things I have not kept track of. Typical day.

Your Farmer,

Alan Schreiber

Hello CSA Members!

Here is what should be in your box next week:


Pumpkin- Medium Sized
Potatoes
Apples
Tomatoes
Spearmint and Peppermint
Sweet Corn
Sweet Peppers
Greens
Rhubarb
Carrots
Farmers Choice

In your box. In your box this week you will be getting both spearmint and peppermint. We are doing this to show you the difference between the two. The peppermint is more of a purple color and the spearmint is a lighter green. The sweet corn in the box will be white and the Sweet peppers will most likely be a mix. The apples are the gala variety.

PumpkinFest. Dont forget the PumpkinFest will be on October 15 starting at 3:00. We have a few people helping but need more volunteers. If you are interested in coming an hour or so early to help please let us know. Also we will be having a mixed poultry grill followed by the big bonfire. If you are coming to get a pumpkin but are not able to stay for the BBQ and Bonfire we would recommend coming by before 5:00. Send your RSVP to contact@schreiberandsons.com (reply to this email). Let us know if you are going to want to pick up a big pumpkin and /or if you intend to come to the party. We hope to see everyone there!

Winter CSA. I know we have been repeating this over and over again but dont forget to sign up for the Winter CSA. Click here to see the attached brochure for more information or feel free to email (contact@schreiberandsons.com) or call (509-266-4348) if you have any questions.

Extra Orders. If you are interested in ordering bread, eggs, a chicken or extra produce it is very simple! Just go to our website, click "webstore", click the items you wish to add, it will prompt you to sign in, then just click "check out" and follow the process. We will put those items in your box for the next delivery. If you are ordering bread or eggs please keep in mind we order them from other local businesses so must have your requests by noon on the friday before your delivery. The meat and bread inventory are listed below.

Your Local CSA,

Schreiber & Sons



Meat Inventory

Chuck roast 11
Arm cut 5
Soup Bone 20
Rib steak 21
Sirloin tip 12
Top Sirloin steak 12
Top round steak 23
Round steak 6
Rump roast 4
T-bones 19
Ground Beef 201
Bottom Round 15
Tenderloin steak 3


Happy Lil Homestead has plucked, dressed, frozen chickens.


Burmeister Bakery

ITEM CATEGORY PRICE
Sicilian Deli Bread 4.5
7 Grain Hand Form Bread 4.95
Pilgrim Wheat Hand Form Bread 4.95
Dark Rye Round Bread 4.95
Walnut Raisin Bread 4.95
Rosemary Parmesean Bread 4.95
Pilgrim Wheat Deli Bread 4.5
7 Grain Deli Bread 4.5
Bagels- 7 Grain Bread 3.95
California Sourdough Round Bread 4.95
Jalapeno Cheddar Bread 4.95
Marble Rye Hand Form Bread 4.95
Sicilian Hand Bread 4.95
Kalamata Olive Pan Bread 4.95
Black Olive Garlic Hand Bread 4.5
California Sourdough Deli Bread 4.5
Light Rye Hand Form Bread 4.95
Bagels- Blueberry Bread 3.95
Bagels- Jalapeno Bread 3.95

Hello CSA Members!

In your box this week you should expect:

Small pumpkin
Exotic eggplant
Radish
Tomatoes
Hot peppers
Bok choy
Sweet corn, white
Arugula
Dill
Summer squash, cucumber or something else
Cilantro - until we run out, then something else


In your box. This week you will recieve your first pumpkin of the season so get ready for pumpkins.These will be the small decorative type pumpkins. This will be the last week for eggplant, dill, summer squash, and cucumbers. The eggplant will be a mix of kinds such as Japanese, Indian, Chinese or Italian heirloom. Just none of the kind that you have seen this year. It is likely that a few of you will still get some of these items, but after this week we will not have enough to send out to everyone. The hot peppers will be either jalapeno or cayenne. The sweet corn will be white. I think next week will be the last sweet corn. Carrots, pumpkins, popcorn, gourds and winter squash will be coming in the next few weeks.

Dont forget you can still order local bread, eggs and whole chicken! Just go to our website (www.schreiberandsons.com) and click the webstore. You can add it to your order and then sign into your account. Once we get the order it will be in the following weeks box. Just remember they have to be ordered by noon on the Friday before delivery. The chicken are not on the website so just email us at the email below and let us know you are interested in one. They are $4 per pound and usually run a little over 4 lbs.

What's going on at the farm. We are wrapping up a lot of the field season. We are transplanting leeks for next year. Planting wheat for next year. We are planting an oat/vetch cover crop and green manure crop on our organic ground that has had its final crop taken off. I have my fingers crossed that we will have enough heat units to bring everything to fruition. There are lots of pumpkins, gourds and squash coming and they just need a little more warmth. The carrots, broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower need a lot of heat units. It will be nip and tuck on some of these crops. The irrigation water goes off in about three weeks and we need to make sure we have everything watered correctly going into winter. All of our perennial crops need to have a full water profile and our overwintering annual crops need a lot of frequent, shallow watering. Since we have to order our irrigation water 48 hours in advance, balancing our water needs gets tricky.

Winter CSA. You will be getting a simple Winter CSA brochure in the Tuesday boxes; Thursday members got theirs last week. Please consider signing up for the Winter CSA. Click here to see the attached information about signing up. We have room for 100 members and we have 43 people paid or signed up, so we have room. If you know someone who might be interested, please pass this note on to them.

Farm Party/PumpkinFest. October 15th. Farm Tour, Pick Up A Giant Pumpkin, Potluck, BBQ, The Biggest Bonfire In Our History Of Big Bonfires, Fellowship, And CSA Good Times. Things start hopping at 3:00, the Tour starts at 3:30. I need some volunteers. I work the Pasco Farmer's Market and do not get back to the farm until 2 pm. So I need some folks to help BBQ, set up and help me unpack from the market. Send your RSVP to contact@schreiberandsons.com (reply to this email). Let us know if you are going to want to pick up a big pumpkin and /or if you intend to come to the party.

Your Farmer

Alan Schreiber
Schreiber & Sons CSA

Hello CSA Members!

In you box this week you should expect:

Small pumpkin
exotic eggplant
radish
tomatoes
hot peppers
bok choy
sweet corn
arugula
dill
summer squash
cilantro


In your box. Next week you will recieve your first pumpkin of the season so get ready for pumpkins.These will be the small decorative type pumpkins. This will be the last week of eggplant and the melon season is now over. In the next few weeks you wil start to see the contents of the boxes change slightly. Carrots, gourds and winter squash will be coming in the next few weeks.

Dont forget you can still order local bread, eggs and whole chicken! Just go to our website (www.schreiberandsons.com) and click the webstore. You can add it to your order and then sign into your account. Once we get the order it will be in the following weeks box. Just remember they have to be ordered by noon on the Friday before delivery. The chicken are not aon the website so just email us at the email below and let us know you are interested in one. They are $4 per pound and usually run a little over 4 lbs.

CSA Etiquette. Please remember to keep the pick up sites tidy. Do not let any Winter CSA brochures blow around, if you see any CSA trash around pick up. Be curtousy to the site volunteer. Also, bring back your boxes, particulary if you have a large share box.

Winter CSA. You will be getting a simple Winter CSA brochure. Please consider signing up for the CSA. Click here to see the attached information about signing up. We have room for 100 members and we have 39 people paid or signed up, so we have room. If you know someone who might be interested, please pass it on to them.

Farm Party/PumpkinFest. October 15th. Farm Tour, Pick Up A Giant Pumpkin, Potluck, BBQ, The Biggest Bonfire In Our History Of Big Bonfires, Fellowship, And CSA Good Times. Things start hopping at 3:00, the Tour starts at 3:30. I need some volunteers. I work the Pasco Farmer's Market and do not get back to the farm until 2 pm. So I need some folks to help BBQ, set up and help me unpack from the market. Send your RSVP to contact@schreiberandsons.com (reply to this email). Let us know if you are going to want to pick up a big pumpkin and /or if you intend to come to the party.

Amanda Bragg
Schreiber & Sons

Hello CSA Members!

In this week's box, you should recieve:

• Red Beets
• Eggplant
• Tuscan Kale
• Small sweet peppers, called Yum Yum Mix
• Horn of the Bull Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Melon and/or Watermelon
• Garlic
• Summer squash or Cucumber
• Gala Apples
• Farmer's Choice


In Your Box. This will be the last week that all members will get melons. This is probably the last week for Italian eggplant. Next week we have you slated to get exotic eggplants and that will probably be it for eggplant. The two types of peppers in your box are both sweet peppers. The small ones are a variety called Yum Yum Mix. Kids love them. The larger ones which will be red or orange are an old heirloom Italian pepper. They are a sweet pepper, but oddly, every once in a while I have found one that has some mild hotness to it. I discovered this variety two years ago and fell in love with them. They are simply my favorite of any kind of pepper I have ever eaten. The simplest and one of the best ways to eat them is to clean out the seeds and the fleshly part that the seeds are attached to called the plenum, split them in half and grill them.

Summer CSA. After this week, there will be six weeks of produce left. Starting the first week of October, you will start the four weeks of pumpkins (or until supplies give out). Once you put a pumpkin or a winter squash in a box, you are limited to what else fits in. I consider the first week of October, the beginning of the home stretch.

Over the weekend, I had some time on a plane to think. I sketched out the rest of the summer CSA's pick list. It looks full. If this weather stays with us, the boxes will be fuller and heavier. Sort of makes up for the spring, not completely, but it helps. Two servings of Brussel sprouts, three of carrots, one or two of beets, lots of tomatoes and peppers, a few surprises.

Winter CSA. You will be getting a simple Winter CSA brochure. Please consider signing up for the CSA. Click here to see the attached information about signing up. We have room for 100 members and we have 39 people paid or signed up, so we have room. If you know someone who might be interested, please pass it on to them.

CSA Etiquette. Please remember to keep the pick up sites tidy. Do not let any Winter CSA brochures blow around, if you see any CSA trash around pick up. Be curtousy to the site volunteer. Also, bring back your boxes, particulary if you have a large share box.

Farm Party/PumpkinFest. October 15th. Farm Tour, Pick Up A Giant Pumpkin, Potluck, BBQ, The Biggest Bonfire In Our History Of Big Bonfires, Fellowship, And CSA Good Times. Things start hopping at 3:00, the Tour starts at 3:30. I need some volunteers. I work the Pasco Farmer's Market and do not get back to the farm until 2 pm. So I need some folks to help BBQ, set up and help me unpack from the market. Send your RSVP to contact@schreiberandsons.com (reply to this email). Let us know if you are going to want to pick up a big pumpkin and /or if you intend to come to the party.


Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber
Schreiber & Sons


Kale

Botanical name: Brassica oleracea

Group: Acephala

Kale was grown by the Greeks and the Romans and hasn’t changed much since then. It is probably the most respected representative of the Old World cabbages. Latin culis (stem) is the root of the group of words for cabbage. Acephala (headless) is the designation that separates most kale and collards from other cabbages, for the two grow in the form of a loose bouquet, not in a tight head. The leaves of the kale plant provide an earthy flavor and more nutritional value for fewer calories than almost any other food around.

Nutritional Value: Kale is a leafy green vegetable that belongs to the Brassica family, which has gained recent attention due to health promoting, sulfur-containing phytochemicals. It is virtually loaded with calcium, potassium, indoles (cancer-fighting substances), beta-carotenes, and other antioxidants. Collards have the same nutrients, but in lesser concentration.

Selection: Choose comparatively deep-colored bunches with moist, small to medium leaves. Avoid dried, browned, yellowed, or coarse-stemmed plants. It is best when not too crisp.

Storage: Wrap kale in plastic or an airtight container and keep very cold—near freezing if possible—or it may acquire a pronounced elderly cabbage taste. It should not be refrigerated more than a few days or it loses its fresh green flavor. To avoid yellowing, keep kale far from climacteric fruits (ones which continue to ripen), such as apple, avocado, banana, peach, pear, plum, tomato and most tropical fruits.

Kale is underused except by people of Northern European stock, where these over wintering cabbages have been used extensively in cookery since the Middle Ages. It needs no explanation in Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands and above all Scotland, where “come to kail” meant an invitation to dinner, with or without the green.

Preparation: Kale leaves that are very small or will be long-cooked need not be stripped from the stems; cut off the base of the stems, then slice leaves to suit and wash. For larger leaves or shorter cooking, either hold a stem with one hand and run a knife long each side to cut off the leaf halves; or hold the folded leave halves together and pull them free of the stem.

Use: If they are miniscule, raw curly kale leaves make excellent additions to salad mixes (you may have found some in the mixed greens you receive). When cooked, mature leaves develop a well-rounded, sweetish taste and a springy texture more delicate than is typical for the cabbage group. Whether steamed, boiled, or blanched and sautéed, kale can be cooked until meltingly soft in traditional style, or until crunch-tender in the newer mode.

Schreiber & Sons Summer CSA
It's a Culinary Adventure

www.Schreiberandsons.com

Hello CSA Members!

In next week's box, you should recieve:

• Red Beets
• Eggplant
• Tuscan Kale
• Small sweet peppers, called Yum Yum Mix
• Horn of the Bull Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Melon and/or Watermelon
• Garlic
• Something else, yet to be determined
• Gala Apples
• Farmer's Choice


In Your Box. Next week will be the last melons in your boxes. We had a pretty good run on them this year. Also, this will be the last eggplant. As you can tell what we call the hot crops are starting to wind down and we will transitition to more of the fall crops. Perhaps even more so than eggplant, kale is a love/hate vegetable. I think most folks do not know what to do with kale. When I first started doing the farmer's market six years ago, I took some kale and brought most of it home with me. Now we offer four kinds of kale and we sell a lot of it each week. Kale has become very fashionable, it always kind of puzzled me what folks did with it, so I started asking. One of the most common things mention was green smoothies, or smoothies in general. I have heard 100 different kind of receipes. If you are green smoothie affacinado or have some great kale receipe, send it to us and we will send it out to members and put it on our web site. Another common receipe was kale chips. Being a potato chipaholic (and trying to cut down on that vice) I asked for their kale chip recipe. I gave it to Tanya (my wife) who has to put up with me and the never ending supply of produce that I bring home asking her how to figure how to cook this next odd vegetable we are growing. She made the kale chips and they were, and I am not kidding, really good. I ate all of them and asked her to make another batch, which I completely consumed. So if you have kale chip receipe, send that in as well. The type of kale we are giving you is called Tuscan kale, which is a type of kale that looks quite different from other kales and it is currently a fashion rag in the vegetable variety world. The variety is called Lacinato and the vernacular name is dino or dinosaur kale becuase the leave surface is suppose to resemble that of a dinosaur.

The two types of peppers in your box are both sweet peppers. The small ones are a variety called Yum Yum Mix. Kids love them. The larger ones which will be red or orange are an old heirloom Italian pepper. They are a sweet pepper, but oddly, every once in a while I have found one that has some mild hotness to it. I discovered this variety two years ago and fell in love with them. They are simply my favorite of any kind of pepper I have ever eated. The simplest and one of the best ways to eat them is to so clean out the seeds and the fleshly part the seed are attached to called the plenum, split them in half and grill them. This past weekend Tanya stuff peppers with three different mixes, one was Greek, one Mexican and one Italian; they were great.


Summer CSA. After next week, there will be six weeks of produce left. Starting the first week of October, you will start the four weeks of pumpkins (or until supplies give out). The last three weeks will include winter squash. I am making a quick trip back to Missouri to see my aging parents this weekend. While I am on the plane I will be planning out what goes in the boxes during those six week. We want to make sure that we have the best balance of produce, not too much of anything and that everything fits in a box. Once you put a pumpkin or a winter squash in a box, you are limited to what else fits in. I consider the first week of October, the beginning of the home stretch.

Winter CSA. In your box next week, you will be getting a simple Winter CSA brochure. Please consider signing up for the CSA. Click here to see the attached information about signing up . We have room for 100 members and we have 35 people paid or signed up, so we have room.

CSA Etiquette. Please remember to keep the pick up sites tidy. Do not let any Winter CSA brochures blow around, if you see any CSA trash around pick up. Be curtousy to the site volunteer. Also, bring back your boxes, particulary if you have a large share box.

Farm Party/PumpkinFest. October 15th. Farm Tour, Pick Up A Giant Pumpkin, Potluck, BBQ, The Biggest Bonfire In Our History Of Big Bonfires, Fellowship, And CSA Good Times. Things start hopping at 3:00, the Tour starts at 3:30. I need some volunteers. I work the Pasco Farmer's Market and do not get back to the farm until 2 pm. So I need some folks to help BBQ, set up and help me unpack from the market. Send your RSVP to contact@schreiberandsons.com (reply to this email). Let us know if you are going to want to pick up a big pumpkin and /or if you intend to come to the party.


Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber
Schreiber & Sons


Kale

Botanical name: Brassica oleracea

Group: Acephala

Kale was grown by the Greeks and the Romans and hasn’t changed much since then. It is probably the most respected representative of the Old World cabbages. Latin culis (stem) is the root of the group of words for cabbage. Acephala (headless) is the designation that separates most kale and collards from other cabbages, for the two grow in the form of a loose bouquet, not in a tight head. The leaves of the kale plant provide an earthy flavor and more nutritional value for fewer calories than almost any other food around.

Nutritional Value: Kale is a leafy green vegetable that belongs to the Brassica family, which has gained recent attention due to health promoting, sulfur-containing phytochemicals. It is virtually loaded with calcium, potassium, indoles (cancer-fighting substances), beta-carotenes, and other antioxidants. Collards have the same nutrients, but in lesser concentration.

Selection: Choose comparatively deep-colored bunches with moist, small to medium leaves. Avoid dried, browned, yellowed, or coarse-stemmed plants. It is best when not too crisp.

Storage: Wrap kale in plastic or an airtight container and keep very cold—near freezing if possible—or it may acquire a pronounced elderly cabbage taste. It should not be refrigerated more than a few days or it loses its fresh green flavor. To avoid yellowing, keep kale far from climacteric fruits (ones which continue to ripen), such as apple, avocado, banana, peach, pear, plum, tomato and most tropical fruits.

Kale is underused except by people of Northern European stock, where these over wintering cabbages have been used extensively in cookery since the Middle Ages. It needs no explanation in Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands and above all Scotland, where “come to kail” meant an invitation to dinner, with or without the green.

Preparation: Kale leaves that are very small or will be long-cooked need not be stripped from the stems; cut off the base of the stems, then slice leaves to suit and wash. For larger leaves or shorter cooking, either hold a stem with one hand and run a knife long each side to cut off the leaf halves; or hold the folded leave halves together and pull them free of the stem.

Use: If they are miniscule, raw curly kale leaves make excellent additions to salad mixes (you may have found some in the mixed greens you receive). When cooked, mature leaves develop a well-rounded, sweetish taste and a springy texture more delicate than is typical for the cabbage group. Whether steamed, boiled, or blanched and sautéed, kale can be cooked until meltingly soft in traditional style, or until crunch-tender in the newer mode.

Hello CSA Members!

In this week's box, you should recieve:

• Sweet Corn
• Basil
• Green Onions or Yellow Bulb Onions
• Cilantro
• Tomatoes, Roma
• Melon and/or Watermelon
• Mixed colors of Bell Peppers
• Peaches or Grapes
• Gala Apples
• Farmer's Choice


In Your Box. Next week, or the following week will be the last for melons. It will be the last basil and the last green onions. (As it turns out, we ran out of green onions picking today, so we are having to switch mid week to bulb onions. Sometimes we get inquiries if these are sweet onions-the answer this time is no, these are regular onions. Also, we ran out of peaches, so the Tuesday members and the large and medium share members will get peaches and the small share members on Thursday will get grapes. Everything is organic except for the apples, grapes and the sweet corn. I keep forgetting to mention for the past few months everything you are getting comes from our farm. The basil is great. It smells great and tastes better. Here is some basil trivia. Basil does not do well in cold temperatures so do not put it in your refrigerator. If you are not going to use it with in 24 hours, put it in a vase with just enough water to keep the cut end under water. Before putting it in water, recut the cut end. Leave on the kitchen counter, out of the sun and high temperatures.

Boxes. We have ran out of the large box size. If you have any of the large boxes, we need you to return them. These boxes are pretty expensive and we had hoped to get through the season with what we had. So return them if you have them. By the way, return any boxes that you have, small, medium or large.

Surplus Produce. If you would like to buy some of our surplus produce, go to the webstore on our home page and put an order in. We can put the extra produce in your box. Interested in preserving tomatoes, you can bulk order them... want 20, 30, 40 or 50 pounds, let us know.

Summer CSA. The day time highs are running about ten degrees above average and the night time lows are running about 5 degrees above normal. This is great weather and the 10 day forecast has more of the same. This is great weather for me for most reasons. A lot of our pumpkins are still sizing up and could use these temps to plump up. Our winter squash are still green and growing. We have some late sweet corn that could use a few more days like this. We have carrots, late brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower and a host of other crops that are benefiting from these temperatures. With as many crops as we grow, you know there has to be some kind of problem with unusual weather. I plan my planting based on normal weather which should be cooler than this. Of particular note is the winter CSA crops in the greenhouse. We planted those crops assuming normal weather, so we have some crops such as kale, bok choy and swiss chard that are growing too quickly. If this weather keeps, I win with the late summer CSA crops, but I lose on the winter CSA crops if they mature too soon. It is an interesting dynamic. Overall, I am happy with this weather, but it does have it's drawbacks.

Click here to see the attached information about signing up for the Winter CSA. We have room for 100 members and we have around 30 to 35 people paid or signed up, so we have room. If you are interested in joining the Winter CSA you can sign-up on our website (www.schreiberandsons.com) or call us at 509-266-4348.

Fall Harvest Party and PumpkinFest. I am pretty sure we are going to hold our Fall Farm Party on October 15th. We are going to combine the Farm Party with PumpkinFest. It will start around 3:00. We will have visits to the pumpkin patch for anyone wanting a large pumpkin-one per member. We will have a farm tour followed by a potluck BBQ dinner followed by the biggest bonfire we have ever had. This is going to be a huge bonfire. It should be loads and loads of fun.


Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber
Schreiber & Sons

Hello CSA Members!

In next week's box, you should recieve:

• Sweet Corn
• Basil
• Green Onions
• Cilantro
• Tomatoes, Roma
• Melon and/or Watermelon
• Mixed colors of Bell Peppers
• Peaches
• Gala Apples
• Farmer's Choice


In Your Box. Next week, or the following week will be the last for melons. It will be the last basil and the last green onions. Everything is organic except for the apples and the sweet corn. I keep forgetting to mention for the past few months everything you are getting comes from our farm. Towards the end of the season, we will include some dry pea, chickpea or lentils, possibly a couple of other items we source locally. I am happy with the amount of fruit in the boxes as we met our goal of increasing fruit servings by 50% as compared to last year. Having the raspberry, blueberries, blackberries and strawberries helped. Barring weather problems we should have more fruit next year.

Surplus Produce. If you would like to buy some of our surplus produce, go to the webstore on our home page and put an order in. We can put the extra produce in your box. Interested in preserving tomatoes, you can bulk order them... want 20, 30, 40 or 50 pounds, let us know.

Summer CSA. You would never know it was getting close to fall with these temperatures, however this is just what we needed. Extra degree days. We have a number of crops that need some extended warm temperatures including pumpkins, winter squash, corn crops, tomatoes and few other odds and ends. I am fairly convinced that all of these crops or more correctly the late plantings of these crops will "make." Hard to believe that we are still suffering the effects of the cool spring, but we are.

Click here to see the attached information about signing up for the Winter CSA. We have room for 100 members and we have around 30 to 35 people paid or signed up, so we have room.


Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber
Schreiber & Sons

Hello CSA Members!

In next week's box, you should recieve:

• Sweet Corn
• White Bulb Onions
• Green Onions
• Tomatoes, mixed
• Melon and/or Watermelon
• Mixed colors of Bell Peppers
• Artichokes (medium and large share)
• Gala Apples
• Eggplant, mixed
• Farmer's Choice


In Your Box. Before you start groaning about melons again, just stick with us... we have only a week or two of melons left and that will probably be it for the rest of the season. Remember getting asparagus 8 weeks in a row and by the end some of you were tired of asparagus... but we have not had any since. This is the seasonal nature of local agriculture, when it is here you have to eat it. Same story with the melons. When they are coming off, they need to go some place. I am hoping that you are getting a variety of melons and that reduces the likelihood of any montony. We really have a wide variety of melons coming your way. I love to eat melons and this has been a really good year for them. I am growing a type of melon that can be stored. I hope to pick them late in September and see if I can store them for a month or two and have a late fall or early winter melon. We have started to pick our second planting of tomatoes and with it comes some new varieties of tomatoes. Next week, you should get a mixture of different kinds of tomatoes. We will be doing something similiar with our bell peppers and eggplant. Send a mix of each. There should be a lot in weight, volume and diversity.

Surplus Produce. If you would like to buy some of our surplus produce, go to the webstore on our home page and put an order in. We can put the extra produce in your box.

Summer CSA. After this week, there are nine deliveries left. In a couple of weeks you would start to notice the box contents changing. Melons and some of the other more mid season crops will be gone. You will notice more fall crops such as apples, leeks, lots of onions, tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, eggplant and the like. In October it is pumpkins, towards the end of October, winter squash, Brussel sprouts.

Winter CSA. I am excited about the new greenhouse. It is up, but we still have to install both ends, which should be up by this weekend. We still have to get the heater, the gas, electrical system and and exhaust system involved. However, it is about 90% planted, about 75% of the planted ground is directed seed, some of which has already emerged. The rest of the ground recieved transplants (3 kinds of pak choy, two kinds of chard and two kinds of kale). The remaining 10% will recieve transplanted red or green romaine lettuce next week. By this time next week, two of three greenhouses will be completely planted and the third will be 75% planted. We hold off for the shortest season crops such as radishes and lettuces until later in September.

Please consider signing up for the Winter CSA. Let me give you a few reasons.....

1) Local produce taste better.
2) Local produce keeps local dollars local.
3) Buying local produce strengthens our local agriculture.
4) Local produce is more nutrious.
5) If you buy mixed greens in the grocery store in December, where do you think it comes from? How far do you think it had to travel to get here. By weight, it probably took twice as much gas or diesel to get here as the food weighs.
6) The produce in the Winter CSA is almost all organic or grown without pesticides.
7) It is an adventure.... okay some folks are looking for a winter adventure when it comes to food, but if you are, this is the place to be. Eat food that no one else gets to have.
8) If you want to eat a healthier diet, being in the Winter CSA is the place to be.
9) Do you want to be THE first people in the Tri-Cities to source local produce in the spring.... asparagus, spinach, rhubarb, radishes, etc.....
10) Keep the option of buying local eggs, beef and bakery goods.

Click here to see the attached information about signing up for the Winter CSA. We have room for 100 members and we have around 30 to 35 people paid or signed up, so we have room.


Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber
Schreiber & Sons


Meat Inventory

Chuck roast 11
Arm cut 5
Soup Bone 20
Rib steak 21
Sirloin tip 12
Top Sirloin steak 12
Top round steak 23
Round steak 6
Rump roast 4
T-bones 19
Ground Beef 201
Bottom Round 15
Tenderloin steak 3


Happy Lil Homestead has plucked, dressed, frozen chickens.


Burmeister Bakery

ITEM CATEGORY PRICE
Sicilian Deli Bread 4.5
7 Grain Hand Form Bread 4.95
Pilgrim Wheat Hand Form Bread 4.95
Dark Rye Round Bread 4.95
Walnut Raisin Bread 4.95
Rosemary Parmesean Bread 4.95
Pilgrim Wheat Deli Bread 4.5
7 Grain Deli Bread 4.5
Bagels- 7 Grain Bread 3.95
California Sourdough Round Bread 4.95
Jalapeno Cheddar Bread 4.95
Marble Rye Hand Form Bread 4.95
Sicilian Hand Bread 4.95
Kalamata Olive Pan Bread 4.95
Black Olive Garlic Hand Bread 4.5
California Sourdough Deli Bread 4.5
Light Rye Hand Form Bread 4.95
Bagels- Blueberry Bread 3.95
Bagels- Jalapeno Bread 3.95

In next week's box, you should recieve:

• Sweet corn
• Red Onions
• Savoy Cabbage or Artichoke
• Tomatoes
• Melon and/or Watermelon
• Bell Peppers
• Arugula
• Dill
• Potatoes
• Farmer's Choice


In Your Box. We are picking red onions for you next week. We picked the last of the cabbage we planted this spring. It is a late variety of Savoy cabbage. We have about 200 heads, not enough for our 315 members. Also, we have (for this part of the world) a pretty good artichoke crop, but not enough to pass out a full serving to every member. So..... although it seems like an odd mix, everyone will get either a Savoy cabbage or some artichokes. We are getting lots of tomatoes so I suspect you will be getting tomatoes most weeks for the next month to six week. Some of the varieties we include Cherokee Purple and Yellow Brandywine. These are big, soft, full flavor tomatoes, but they are terrible, terrible, terrible to pack and ship. If we do not pick them just a little on the green side, they will not hold together. We also have a variety called Carolina Gold and a red round beefstake tomato.

Surplus Produce. If you would like to buy some of our surplus produce, go to the webstore on our home page and put an order in. We can put the extra produce in your box.

Summer CSA. Here is something to think about.... there are ten deliveries left in the summer CSA. I would say for the next three to four weeks, you are going to see a relatively consistent set of produce items including melons, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, some eggplant and other typical late summer mix of crops. By the end of September you will start to see a change in the produce and by the end of October, you should see a big change in what you are getting. We are still significantly affected by the extended cool period this spring. We have our fingers crossed for an extended warm fall. We need this extra warmth to get crops such as some corn crops, pumpkins, squash and a variety of other produce to mature. We are just entering first harvest for our second planting of tomatoes, while our third planting of tomatoes are weeks away from our first pick, normally we would be wrapping up the harvest of the second planting. We have some late melons, peppers and other crops that are a month or more away from harvest. Once we have ten hours or less sunlight, the crops pretty much stop growing, so we need as much heat for as long as possible in the next four weeks.

Winter CSA. We are furiously planting and transplanting in the greenhouse for the winter CSA. Also, we have been putting the roof on our third greenhouse. This will add about 40% more growing capacity. It is a very serious greenhouse with some extra features for winter time production, like a roof with THREE layers. I hope by Saturday that much of our winter CSA planting will be done and by the end of next week we will be 100% planted. Think about signing up for the Winter CSA. I am trying some new items. While I am reluctant to talk about them for fear that some folks may be tempted to join and if they do not work out, one could be disappointed. However, it is hard not to talk about some of this stuff. Following are just two of the new items we are working on for the Winter CSA.

I have 500 Belgian endive plants in the field. The best I can tell this is a crop that has never been grown around here, at least commercially. The plants look pretty good-however, I do not know what a good Belgian endive plant should like around here. If anyone has experience growing Belgian endive, let me know. This is a crop you grow in the field, then at harvest you top it, bring the roots in to a cold room and keep them cold. When you are ready to grow them, you pack them in boxes with sand and keep them in absolute darkness. At various intervals you go into the dark and harvest the leaves. If it works, it should be something interesting. Another thing we are working on for the Winter CSA is dry beans. One of the varieties we will have, assuming things go according to plan are some white cannelli beans.

Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber
Schreiber & Sons

Meat Inventory

Chuck roast 11
Arm cut 5
Soup Bone 20
Rib steak 21
Sirloin tip 12
Top Sirloin steak 12
Top round steak 23
Round steak 6
Rump roast 4
T-bones 19
Ground Beef 201
Bottom Round 15
Tenderloin steak 3


Happy Lil Homestead has plucked, dressed, frozen chickens.


Burmeister Bakery

ITEM CATEGORY PRICE
Sicilian Deli Bread 4.5
7 Grain Hand Form Bread 4.95
Pilgrim Wheat Hand Form Bread 4.95
Dark Rye Round Bread 4.95
Walnut Raisin Bread 4.95
Rosemary Parmesean Bread 4.95
Pilgrim Wheat Deli Bread 4.5
7 Grain Deli Bread 4.5
Bagels- 7 Grain Bread 3.95
California Sourdough Round Bread 4.95
Jalapeno Cheddar Bread 4.95
Marble Rye Hand Form Bread 4.95
Sicilian Hand Bread 4.95
Kalamata Olive Pan Bread 4.95
Black Olive Garlic Hand Bread 4.5
California Sourdough Deli Bread 4.5
Light Rye Hand Form Bread 4.95
Bagels- Blueberry Bread 3.95
Bagels- Jalapeno Bread 3.95

In this week's box, you should recieve:

• Sweet corn
• Onions
• Jalapeno peppers
• Cilantro
• Tomatilloes
• Tomatoes
• Melon and or watermelon
• Cucumbers
• Farmer's Choice
Berries until supplies run out.



In Your Box. We are switching to a new variety of sweet corn, a white variety. Some of you may get the bicolored sweet corn, but when I looked at the corn this morning, most of it was white. I looked at 30 ears and in one ear there was a very nice worm happily munching away. I do not expect to see very many of these in my corn, but occasionally one slips through. When you find one of these, just cut the infested part of the ear off and eat the rest. You might notice the jalapeno, cilantro, tomatillo and onions included in your box are all of the ingredients for a nice salsa. If you need a salsa receipe, check the receipes on our website. As you should have figured out, Farmer's Choice is a mix of whatever we have surplus but not enough to give everybody the same thing. I know the blackberries and strawberries will appear in some of the boxes but we have about a dozen items that will go in. Most of you will probably get a Galia melon. This will be a green fleshed melon with a netted rind that is green and or gold in color. We also have some cantaloupes, but we hope to include some other kinds of melons-so get reading for some interesting melons.

Surplus Produce. If you would like to buy some of our surplus produce, go to the webstore on our home page and put an order in. We can put the extra produce in your box.

Tomatoes. You are getting tomatoes in your boxes next week. Our tomatoes are picked when they are ripe--so these are very vine ripe tomatoes and they will not last in the boxes. We learned the hard way that vine ripened tomatoes do not share the space well with melons and other large and heavy fruit. So when you pick up your box, you need to look for lugs holding bags of tomatoes. If you have a small share, take a bag from the lug reserved for small members, medium share members do the same, large share members pick from the lug reserved for large share members.

Winter CSA. We are taking reservations for the Winter CSA now. We have 100 slots this year which is 20 more than last year. I am hoping that the combination of the third greenhouse and our better growing techniques will allow room for 20 more members and to allow for more produce than the previous two years. The cost this year will be $500, which is $40 less than last year-yes, the price went down. Now that we have more things figured out, we think we can do a better job than last year more cost effectively. The key to make this work is that we need 100 members. I am planting some very unusual Asian turnips (think pink, white and gold colored varieties of the bulbous vegetables.

Add ons. While we do not make money off the add ons, we do like to promote local ag businesses. If you want some local flour, grass feed beef, free range chickens or eggs consider buying some. Interest in meat and bread has dropped off lately. I have included a list of the meat and bread items we have available. For what ever this means, these items have my seal of approval.


Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber
Schreiber & Sons

Meat Inventory

Chuck roast 11
Arm cut 5
Soup Bone 20
Rib steak 21
Sirloin tip 12
Top Sirloin steak 12
Top round steak 23
Round steak 6
Rump roast 4
T-bones 19
Ground Beef 201
Bottom Round 15
Tenderloin steak 3


Happy Lil Homestead has plucked, dressed, frozen chickens.


Burmeister Bakery

ITEM CATEGORY PRICE
Sicilian Deli Bread 4.5
7 Grain Hand Form Bread 4.95
Pilgrim Wheat Hand Form Bread 4.95
Dark Rye Round Bread 4.95
Walnut Raisin Bread 4.95
Rosemary Parmesean Bread 4.95
Pilgrim Wheat Deli Bread 4.5
7 Grain Deli Bread 4.5
Bagels- 7 Grain Bread 3.95
California Sourdough Round Bread 4.95
Jalapeno Cheddar Bread 4.95
Marble Rye Hand Form Bread 4.95
Sicilian Hand Bread 4.95
Kalamata Olive Pan Bread 4.95
Black Olive Garlic Hand Bread 4.5
California Sourdough Deli Bread 4.5
Light Rye Hand Form Bread 4.95
Bagels- Blueberry Bread 3.95
Bagels- Jalapeno Bread 3.95

Hello CSA Members!

In this week's box, you should recieve:

• Sweet corn
• Onions
• Jalapeno peppers
• Cilantro
• Tomatilloes
• Tomatoes
• Melon and or watermelon
• Cucumbers
• Farmer's Choice

In Your Box. Yes, the number of items in your box is not as high as a few weeks ago, but the later summer fruit is heavier-believe it or not, the week of just melons-our truck was getting close to its weight limit. So while the diversity is down the poundage is up. You might notice the jalapeno, cilantro, tomatillo and onions include all of the ingredients for a nice salsa. If you need a salsa receipe, check the receipes on our website. As you should have figured out, Farmer's Choice is a mix of whatever we have surplus but not enough to give everybody the same thing. I know the blackberries and strawberries will appear in some of the boxes but we have about a dozen items that will go in. I am not sure what melons will go on. We are very long on the galia and cantaloupes, both of which are very good.

Surplus Produce. If you would like to buy some of our surplus produce, go to the webstore on our home page and put an order in. We can put the extra produce in your box.

Tomatoes. You are getting tomatoes in your boxes next week. Our tomatoes are picked when they are ripe--so these are very vine ripe tomatoes and they will not last in the boxes. We learned the hard way that vine ripened tomatoes do not share the space well with melons and other large and heavy fruit. So when you pick up your box, you need to look for lugs holding bags of tomatoes. If you have a small share, take a bag from the lug reserved for small members, medium share members do the same, large share members pick from the lug reserved for large share members.

MelonFest. I have been working all week getting melons organized for MelonFest.... get a load of this.....we have 100 different kinds of melons lined up. Yes, a hundred different kinds of melons....a few of these are watermelon, but about 90% are assorted types of melons...eastern shipper cantaloupes (like the cantaloupe you got from us already), western shipper cantaloupes, charantais, canary melons, piel de sapo, Tuscan, Italian netted cantaloupes, green fleshed honeydews, orange fleshed honeydews, a white flesh honey dew, ananas style, crenshaw, casaba and assorted odd, unusual or rare varieties.

I have attached a flyer for MelonFest (Click here). It is this Saturday at 5:00 pm. Imagine a long, long row of tables with 100 different kinds of melons laid out. And you get to taste any or all of them!

Alan provides: Water, cups, a grill, and a few vegetables we can eat, the melons, melon information and melon fellowship.

You: a sharp knife for cutting melons, clipboard (to hold the evaluation form), any food you want to eat beyond melons, your beverage(s) and chairs.

No RSVP. Email me if you need directions.

You can eat as much melon as you like. You can take home one melon per person. After that, you have to buy them.... I cannot forget that I have a business to run.


Winter CSA. We are taking reservations for the Winter CSA now. We have 100 slots this year which is 20 more than last year. I am hoping that the combination of the third greenhouse and our better growing techniques will allow room for 20 more members and to allow for more produce than the previous two years. The cost this year will be $500, which is $40 less than last year-yes, the price went down. Now that we have more things figured out, we think we can do a better job than last year more cost effectively. The key to make this work is that we need 100 members. I am planting some very unusual Asian turnips (think pink, white and gold colored varieties of the bulbous vegetables.

Your farmer,

Schreiber & Sons


Collards

Botanical name: Brassica oleracea

Kale and collards are similar in many respects, differing in little more than the forms of their leaves. Although they share the same botanical name as kale collards have their own distinctive qualities. Like kale, collards are one of the non-head forming members of the Brassica family along with broccoli and cauliflower. The dark blue-green leaves that are smooth in texture and relatively broad distinguish them from the frilly edged leaves of kale.

Collards, usually used in plural, is a corruption of coleworts or colewyrts, Anglo-Saxon terms literally meaning cabbage plants. They have been in cultivation for so long, and have been so shifted about by prehistoric traders and migrating tribes, but are still much the same as they have been for two millennia. Thick-leaved, dense, and cabbage-like in flavor, collards are sturdier and stronger than most kales. Those who know both kale and collards usually consider the latter to have the better eating quality. All varieties of collards appear rather similar, but the kales show interesting diversity: tall and short; highly curled and plain leaved; blue-green, yellow-green, and red; erect and flat-growing; in various combinations and gradations of these characters.

Nutritional value: Nutrition experts in recent years have sought to popularize both collards and kale because they are unusually rich in the minerals and vitamins provided by green leafy foods. As members of the Brassica genus of foods, collards stand out as an anti-cancer food. It’s the organosulfur compounds in collards that have been the main subject of phytonutrient research, and these include the glucosinolates and the methyl cysteine sulfoxides. Although there are over 100 different glucosinolates in plants, only 10-15 are present in collards and other Brassicas. Yet these 10-15 glucosinolates appear able to lessen the occurrence of a wide variety of cancers, including breast and ovarian cancers. Collards have the same nutrients as kale, but in lesser concentration.

Selection: Choose small, seep-colored bunches with leaves that feel cool and slightly damp. Avoid dried, browned, yellowed, or coarse-stemmed plants.

Storage: Keep collards very cold, or they may acquire a pronounced elderly cabbage taste. Wrap in ventilated plastic. Store for a shorter time than their sturdy look suggests. To avoid yellowing, keep kale far from climacteric fruits (ones which continue to ripen), such as apple, avocado, banana, peach, pear, plum, tomato and most tropical fruits.

Preparation: Small leaves can be left whole or sliced into ½-inch pieces. If collards are large, strip stems from leaves and discard; stack leaves and halve lengthwise, then cut into ½-inchstrips. Generally, most stems will soften if cooked more than 10 minutes.

Use: In parts of the South, collards are cooked pretty much the same way they have been since they were introduced: boiled until tender with some pork part. They can be cooked slow and long to yield a soft, mellow mass, or they can be simmered in broth for 15-30 minutes for a texture that is medium-firm, like sautéed cabbage. Thin-sliced leaves can be cooked very briefly for a greener flavor and chewier texture. Mix collards with softer leaves (spinach or curly mustard) for a more complex taste.

Hello CSA Members!

In this week's box, you should recieve:

• Sweet Corn
• Summer Squash
• Collard Greens
• Potatoes
• Tomatoes
• Bell Peppers, assorted colors
• Melon

I know that collard greens are a challenge for some folks.... if you ask folks from the south they will tell you to boil them into they turn to almost mush, throw in a bony piece of meat that has a lot of flavor; but there are a thousand ways to eat collards. We listed a few of them on our website... go to the receipe section to the left of our home page, click on it and then go the C section and select collards. Bear in mind that they are highly nutrious vegetables. If you want to know more about collards read the info at the bottom of this email. I am going to try and give you a Galia melon, but we do not have enough to go around. If you get a melon that looks like a cantaloupe, but it is a little yellowish in the rind and has green flesh-you got a Galia. Those that do not get a Galia, should get some other kind of interesting melon.

Tomatoes. You are getting tomatoes in your boxes this week-but after a few years we learned that we literally cannot send our tomatoes in your boxes. Our tomatoes are picked when they are ripe--so these are very vine ripe tomatoes and they will not last in the boxes. So when you pick up your box, you need to look for lugs holding bags of tomatoes. If you have a small share, take a bag from the lug reserved for small members, medium share members do the same, large share members pick from the lug reserved for large share members.

MelonFest. When I see the melons that we are picking that will end up at MelonFest, it gets me really excited. Let me describe three melons.. all of which I tasted today. Eel River Melon.... a WWII serviceman who was stationed in Japan at the end of the war found a Japanese melon that he really liked and looked different. He brought it back to his farm (Eel River, CA) and grew it. A few years ago he gave some seed to Seed Savers Exchange and I got a few seeds (50) and planted this. This is likely the only planting of this variety in Eastern Washington. Very unusual melon. Honey Orange Honeydew. An oranged fleshed honeydew. It looks like a honey dew on the outside, but on the inside it has a deep orange flesh and an out of this world flavor. Edonis. A French charantais melon... the famous melon of France. This is considered the ultimate type of melon, but has a flavor that does not always appeal to those who want a traditional muskmelon flavor.

Alan provides: Water, cups, a grill, and a few vegetables we can eat, the melons, melon information and melon fellowship.

You: a sharp knife for cutting melons, clipboard (to hold the evaluation form), any food you want to eat beyond melons, your beverage(s) and chairs.

Starts at 5:00 pm and goes on until we leave. No RSVP. Email me if you need directions.

Winter CSA. We are taking reservations for the Winter CSA now. We have 100 slots this year which is 20 more than last year. I am hoping that the combination of the third greenhouse and our better growing techniques will allow room for 20 more members and to allow for more produce than the previous two years. The cost this year will be $500, which is $40 less than last year-yes, the price went down. Now that we have more things figured out, we think we can do a better job than last year more cost effectively. The key to make this work is that we need 100 members. I am planting some very unusual Asian turnips (think pink, white and gold colored varieties of the bulbous vegetables.

Your farmer,

Schreiber & Sons


Collards

Botanical name: Brassica oleracea

Kale and collards are similar in many respects, differing in little more than the forms of their leaves. Although they share the same botanical name as kale collards have their own distinctive qualities. Like kale, collards are one of the non-head forming members of the Brassica family along with broccoli and cauliflower. The dark blue-green leaves that are smooth in texture and relatively broad distinguish them from the frilly edged leaves of kale.

Collards, usually used in plural, is a corruption of coleworts or colewyrts, Anglo-Saxon terms literally meaning cabbage plants. They have been in cultivation for so long, and have been so shifted about by prehistoric traders and migrating tribes, but are still much the same as they have been for two millennia. Thick-leaved, dense, and cabbage-like in flavor, collards are sturdier and stronger than most kales. Those who know both kale and collards usually consider the latter to have the better eating quality. All varieties of collards appear rather similar, but the kales show interesting diversity: tall and short; highly curled and plain leaved; blue-green, yellow-green, and red; erect and flat-growing; in various combinations and gradations of these characters.

Nutritional value: Nutrition experts in recent years have sought to popularize both collards and kale because they are unusually rich in the minerals and vitamins provided by green leafy foods. As members of the Brassica genus of foods, collards stand out as an anti-cancer food. It’s the organosulfur compounds in collards that have been the main subject of phytonutrient research, and these include the glucosinolates and the methyl cysteine sulfoxides. Although there are over 100 different glucosinolates in plants, only 10-15 are present in collards and other Brassicas. Yet these 10-15 glucosinolates appear able to lessen the occurrence of a wide variety of cancers, including breast and ovarian cancers. Collards have the same nutrients as kale, but in lesser concentration.

Selection: Choose small, seep-colored bunches with leaves that feel cool and slightly damp. Avoid dried, browned, yellowed, or coarse-stemmed plants.

Storage: Keep collards very cold, or they may acquire a pronounced elderly cabbage taste. Wrap in ventilated plastic. Store for a shorter time than their sturdy look suggests. To avoid yellowing, keep kale far from climacteric fruits (ones which continue to ripen), such as apple, avocado, banana, peach, pear, plum, tomato and most tropical fruits.

Preparation: Small leaves can be left whole or sliced into ½-inch pieces. If collards are large, strip stems from leaves and discard; stack leaves and halve lengthwise, then cut into ½-inchstrips. Generally, most stems will soften if cooked more than 10 minutes.

Use: In parts of the South, collards are cooked pretty much the same way they have been since they were introduced: boiled until tender with some pork part. They can be cooked slow and long to yield a soft, mellow mass, or they can be simmered in broth for 15-30 minutes for a texture that is medium-firm, like sautéed cabbage. Thin-sliced leaves can be cooked very briefly for a greener flavor and chewier texture. Mix collards with softer leaves (spinach or curly mustard) for a more complex taste.

Hello CSA Members!

In next week's box, you should recieve:

• Sweet Corn
• Summer Squash
• Collard Greens
• Potatoes
• Tomatoes
• Bell Peppers, assorted colors
• Melon

I hope a week of mostly melons was not too much for you; hoped you liked them. If you have a strong opinon and want to share it with us, go ahead. We will back off to giving you a single melon next week. Next week should be your first serving of sweet corn, collard greens and bell peppers. You should be getting a lot of sweet corn and bell peppers for the next few weeks. Everything you should be getting is organic except for the sweet corn and some of the melons. The sweet corn and the melons that are not organic have no pesticides.

I suspect we will be sending you some additional items such as strawberries and blackberries. We do not have enough to give some to everyone but we are trying to work our way through the drop sites so eventually every gets the same amount.

MelonFest. In 2007 I got bit by the melon bug and have been in search of the perfect melon. One of the interesting things that I have learned is that the rest of the world does not eat muskmelon (what we call cantaloupe) as their primary melon. (Bear in mind that in the melon world, things are divided between watermelon and everything else. Watermelons are called watermelons and all the rest of the melons are called, simply melons.) The UK has galia melons, France has charantais, Italy has Tuscan melons and so on. I have one acre of melons where I tried to plant 50 plants of every kind of melon I could get my hands on... that ended up being about 103 different kinds; 18 melon varieties, the rest are melons. We are right in the thick of picking them. It is pretty crazy what is coming out of there. A lot of these melons are very similiar to each other or have only superficially different characteristics, but there are about 20 or so melons that are just outstanding.

I am keeping MelonFest simple. We are going to set up a long row of tables and have as many melons as I can get on all lined up in a row. I will try to have some information on each melon in front of each fruit. I will have an evaluation form. We will rate them on appearance and taste. If we can get it through it, we will crown one variety as THE PERFECT MELON. I am making all of this up as I go, so who knows how it will turn out. I do not think one can come close to objectively evaluating this many kinds of melons (think of a wine tasting event.... you can judge 24 wines very well, what about 100!) May be we will divide up into teams.

I have to do the Pasco Farmers Market, get back to the farm, unload the truck, unload the Walla Walla Farmer's truck, do my regular tasks and get set up for MelonFest, so we cannot start until 5 pm. And, I will not have time (or the energy) to do anything fancy. If you have been to the Asparagus Tasting--it will not be like that.

Here is what you need to bring...a clipboard to hold your evaulation form, a sharp knife for cutting a melon, food if you want to eat anything other than melon, your own drinks and chairs. I will have water, a grill if you want to grill anything and will probaby have some kind of vegetables left over from the market.... and melons, lots and lots of melons. I am sure we will also have melons for you to take home.

This will be simple. No RSVP necessary. Show up at the farm, go to the walnut trees by the shop. Call or email if you need directions.

Winter CSA. We are taking reservations for the Winter CSA now. We have 100 slots this year which is 20 more than last year. I am hoping that the combination of the third greenhouse and our better growing techniques will allow room for 20 more members and to allow for more produce than the previous two years. The cost this year will be $500, which is $40 less than last year-yes, the price went down. Now that we have more things figured out, we think we can do a better job than last year more cost effectively. The key to make this work is that we need 100 members. I am working on some things to make it more interesting this year. I have some Belgian endive growing in the field, but it is tricky and I have never done this before so no promises that we will have endive-but we are trying. Click here for the Winter CSA Brochure.

Your farmer,

Schreiber & Sons



MELONS:

melon Samba
melon Robust
melon Fonzy
melon Florentino
melon 9427
melon 351
melon TZ1079
melon Summerdream (Europe)
melon Marlene (Europe)
melon 07H105
melon DU01
melon SC01
melon, Delicious
melon, Bolero
melon, ananas Dove
melon, ananas Tamera
melon, ananas Antoinette
melon, ananas Anastasia
melon, ananas Ahlam
melon, ananas San Juan
melon, ananas Ananas
melon, ananas, orange Rownena
melon, canary Dorado
melon, canary 1938CN
melon, canary ACX 2047CN
melon, canary ACR 1056CN
melon, cantaloupe Lilliput
melon, cantaloupe Da Vinci
melon, cantaloupe Ariel
melon, cantaloupe Verona
melon, cantaloupe Solstice
melon, cantaloupe Sugar Cube
melon, cantaloupe Summerdream (Europe)
melon, cantaloupe Gandalf (Europe)
melon, cantaloupe Haogen
melon, cantaloupe Canoe Creek Colossol
melon, cantaloupe Eel River
melon, cantaloupe Zuckermelonen gandalf
melon, cantaloupe Zuckermelone Magenta
melon, cantaloupe Magenta
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper ACR 4246XWS
melon, cantaloupe, eastern Grandslam
melon, cantaloupe, eastern Homerun
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper ACR 4067ES
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper Gold Doubloon
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper Moneylopue
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper ACX428ES
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper Dutchess
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper 05H105
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper ACX 1058XES
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper Gold Bullion
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper 2100
melon, cantaloupe, Eastern shipper like Athena Ariel
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper 9000
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper ACR 3507XES
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper 9276
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper 515
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper Magellan
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper ACX 3497
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper ACX 113WSX
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper, early Origami
melon, casaba Golden Beauty
melon, Charantais Edonis
melon, Charantais E818141
melon, Charantais Charentais
melon, Charantais French Charentais
melon, crenshaw Lily
melon, galia A Cut Above
melon, galia Sembol
melon, galia Tracey
melon, galia Visa
melon, galia ACX 425G
melon, honeydew Dewlightful
melon, honeydew Super Nector
melon, honeydew 272HQ
melon, honeydew 252 HQ
melon, honeydew Saturno
melon, honeydew, white Snow leopard
melon, honeydew Megabrew
melon, honeydew Earlidew
melon, honeydew 262HQ
melon, honeydew Honey pearl
melon, honeydew, orange Honey orange
melon, honeydew, orange Honey gold
melon, honeydew, white Sensation
melon, hybrid 30
melon, hybrid Valencia
melon, hybrid Harper
melon, misc Carousel
melon, misc Vine peach
melon, misc Mango
melon, piel de sapo Alandro
melon, piel de sapo Chatoyant
melon, piel de sapo St. Nick
melon, piel de sapo Sapomiel
melon, Tuscan 351
melon, Tuscan ACX 1075 TMX
melon, Tuscan Magnifecenza
melon, Tuscan Majus
melon, Tuscan Eminenza
melon, Tuscan Tirreno
melon, Tuscan Bella Tuscana


watermelon Marlene (Europe)
watermelon Congo
watermelon Rattlesnake
watermelon Navajo
watermelon Crimson sweet
watermelon Savion
watermelon Sorbet
watermelon Yellow bird
watermelon Yellow Buttercup
watermelon Poquito Grande
watermelon Olympia
watermelon TW-14
watermelon C-25
watermelon TW-12
watermelon Royal Star
watermelon Golden Crown
watermelon 5158 mini watermelon
watermelon Crisp N sweet

Hello CSA Members!

This week you are going to get something different. We are giving you as many melons as will fit in to your box. We will be putting in some other items (strawberry and blackberries) as well as trying to sneak in a squash or a cucumber or other odds and ends. Below is a list of all of the melon varieties that we are growing on the farm, most of which are in a variety trial-so we have a limited amount of a huge amount of melons. We are writing the name of the melon variety on each melon-you can then check it against the list to see what kind you got. Bear in mind we are writing the names, the best we can on the rough skin of the melons, and doing so on hundreds of melons-so the writing is a little hard to read on some of them. Enjoy your melons. There are 23 different kinds of melons and a half dozen kinds of watermelons coming.


MelonFest. MelonFest is the new son of PumkinFest. Instead of coming out to get a pumpkin, you can come out to the farm and see, learn about and most importantly taste more kinds of melons than you ever knew existed. On Saturday, August 27, I am going to have more than 50 kinds of melons and 15 kinds of watermelon. Each one has a story to tell...some stories are much more interesting than others. We have just started our own private tastings as each variety comes off. This melon variety project, which has 100 different kinds of melon in it, has the purpose of finding THE PERFECT MELON. Attached is the list of melons that we are growing and we will have as many of these kinds at the melon tasting as we can. Also, we will have a lot of melons for folks to take home.

I am going to have people show up at 5:00 pm. The only thing I am going to provide is a great location, all the melons you can eat and content. If you want to bring chairs, something to eat and your own drinks, you can. (I have water here). We are going to set up under the walnut trees by the shop-same place as the Farm Parties. No tours, no pig BBQ, no bonfires. Just melon tasting, melon information and melon fellowship. I think it will be very interesting. I suspect this will go on until dark or later. No RSVP necessary.

Winter CSA. We are taking reservations for the Winter CSA now. We have 100 slots this year which is 20 more than last year. I am hoping that the combination of the third greenhouse and our better growing techniques will allow room for 20 more members and to allow for more produce than the previous two years. The cost this year will be $500, which is $40 less than last year-yes, the price went down. Now that we have more things figured out, we think we can do a better job than last year more cost effectively. The key to make this work is that we need 100 members. I am working on some things to make it more interesting this year. I have some Belgian endive growing in the field, but it is tricky and I have never done this before so no promises that we will have endive-but we are trying.

Your farmer,

Schreiber & Sons

MELONS:

melon Samba
melon Robust
melon Fonzy
melon Florentino
melon 9427
melon 351
melon TZ1079
melon Summerdream (Europe)
melon Marlene (Europe)
melon 07H105
melon DU01
melon SC01
melon, Delicious
melon, Bolero
melon, ananas Dove
melon, ananas Tamera
melon, ananas Antoinette
melon, ananas Anastasia
melon, ananas Ahlam
melon, ananas San Juan
melon, ananas Ananas
melon, ananas, orange Rownena
melon, canary Dorado
melon, canary 1938CN
melon, canary ACX 2047CN
melon, canary ACR 1056CN
melon, cantaloupe Lilliput
melon, cantaloupe Da Vinci
melon, cantaloupe Ariel
melon, cantaloupe Verona
melon, cantaloupe Solstice
melon, cantaloupe Sugar Cube
melon, cantaloupe Summerdream (Europe)
melon, cantaloupe Gandalf (Europe)
melon, cantaloupe Haogen
melon, cantaloupe Canoe Creek Colossol
melon, cantaloupe Eel River
melon, cantaloupe Zuckermelonen gandalf
melon, cantaloupe Zuckermelone Magenta
melon, cantaloupe Magenta
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper ACR 4246XWS
melon, cantaloupe, eastern Grandslam
melon, cantaloupe, eastern Homerun
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper ACR 4067ES
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper Gold Doubloon
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper Moneylopue
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper ACX428ES
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper Dutchess
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper 05H105
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper ACX 1058XES
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper Gold Bullion
melon, cantaloupe, eastern shipper 2100
melon, cantaloupe, Eastern shipper like Athena Ariel
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper 9000
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper ACR 3507XES
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper 9276
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper 515
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper Magellan
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper ACX 3497
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper ACX 113WSX
melon, cantaloupe, western shipper, early Origami
melon, casaba Golden Beauty
melon, Charantais Edonis
melon, Charantais E818141
melon, Charantais Charentais
melon, Charantais French Charentais
melon, crenshaw Lily
melon, galia A Cut Above
melon, galia Sembol
melon, galia Tracey
melon, galia Visa
melon, galia ACX 425G
melon, honeydew Dewlightful
melon, honeydew Super Nector
melon, honeydew 272HQ
melon, honeydew 252 HQ
melon, honeydew Saturno
melon, honeydew, white Snow leopard
melon, honeydew Megabrew
melon, honeydew Earlidew
melon, honeydew 262HQ
melon, honeydew Honey pearl
melon, honeydew, orange Honey orange
melon, honeydew, orange Honey gold
melon, honeydew, white Sensation
melon, hybrid 30
melon, hybrid Valencia
melon, hybrid Harper
melon, misc Carousel
melon, misc Vine peach
melon, misc Mango
melon, piel de sapo Alandro
melon, piel de sapo Chatoyant
melon, piel de sapo St. Nick
melon, piel de sapo Sapomiel
melon, Tuscan 351
melon, Tuscan ACX 1075 TMX
melon, Tuscan Magnifecenza
melon, Tuscan Majus
melon, Tuscan Eminenza
melon, Tuscan Tirreno
melon, Tuscan Bella Tuscana


watermelon Marlene (Europe)
watermelon Congo
watermelon Rattlesnake
watermelon Navajo
watermelon Crimson sweet
watermelon Savion
watermelon Sorbet
watermelon Yellow bird
watermelon Yellow Buttercup
watermelon Poquito Grande
watermelon Olympia
watermelon TW-14
watermelon C-25
watermelon TW-12
watermelon Royal Star
watermelon Golden Crown
watermelon 5158 mini watermelon
watermelon Crisp N sweet

Hello Members!

Alot of you have been asking about the Winter CSA so here is a little information...

Winter CSA. Here is the plan for the Schreiber & Sons Winter CSA. 12 deleveries, weather permitting. We provide more produce than we did last year. (Tomorrow I am ordering a third greenhouse to increase production!) The first delivery is November 21 and you will get a shipment about every other week. It will go until the last week of April. My goal is to shoot for a full medium share box--now that is not always possible in the cold of winter, but we want to give you enough provisions that you have something that last two weeks. The portions in the box are usually bigger, such as five pounds of potatoes or onions, a large winter squash or larger portions of mixed greens (16 oz instead of 8 oz); however, you have twice as long to get through a box. I have misgivings about doing this, but I have attached a proposed workplan of when the delieveries would be by date and POTENTIALLY what would be boxes and maybe when they would be available. This something for me to work towards. However, I know folks want to know what they would get in a Winter CSA.

I have to say that the Winter CSA is not for the faint at heart, you have to be pretty dedicated to eating local as this is no picnic. It is a lot of braising greens, spinach, mixed greens, potatoes, (hopefully parsnips and rutabagas), carrots, winter squash and the hardier vegetables. You should get some good servings of leeks and brussels sprouts. In the spring you will get the first asparagus in the state. You will also be the first in Eastern Washington to get fresh local produce. The question is what is the price? I am working on that. I am thinking about making it $500 (now that I put it in print, it is kind of hard to back away from it). This is $40 less than last year.

If you are serious about supporting local ag, this is one way to do it.

Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber

Hello CSA Members!

Next week you are going to get something really different. The inspiration for this idea came from a CSA member I ran into yesterday at the FedEx drop off site at the airport. She said "can't you find a way to get a watermelon in the small share size boxes?" Well I am not sure if we have enough watermelons of that size for everyone, but we will see what we can do. We are going to put as many melons in your boxes as we can. We will put some other produce in your boxes to fill up the spaces (yes, you are likely to see squash, beets or cucumbers), but we are going to put as many melons in as we can. We have a lot of different kinds of melons right now, so everyone should get a few. If members do not want melons, let us know and we will put in other kinds of produce. If I can find the time to do this, I am going to send out a list of the different kinds of melons we have to the Choice Members-so those who have signed up for the Choice Option can pick the kind they want. All of these melons are very good, so do not think you are really missing something if you do not have the Choice Option.

Armenian Cucumbers. So you are wondering what that long, ribbed, tapered think was.... I really try to tell you what you are getting if it is something a little off the usual, this time it slipped by me. This is an Armenian cucumber and it can get twice as big as what you got and still be perfectly edible. You giganitc cuke should be as tasty as any other cucumber and desipite it's size, should be crunchier than a regular slicing cucumber. Go ahead and eat it. If you feel the skin is a little tough, peel it; however, I almost always eat the skin.

MelonFest. MelonFest is the new son of PumkinFest. Instead of coming out to get a pumpkin, you can come out to the farm and see, learn about and most importantly taste more kinds of melons than you ever knew existed. On Saturday, August 27, I am going to have more than 50 kinds of melons and 15 kinds of watermelon. Each one has a story to tell...some stories are much more interesting than others. We have just started our own private tastings as each variety comes off. This melon variety project, which has 100 different kinds of melon in it, has the purpose of finding THE PERFECT MELON. Yesterday, I tasted some of the best melons I have ever tasted (not Red Moon Melon good, but still pretty good). Today I tasted the absolute worst melon I have ever put in my mouth. The funniest thing was the second worst tasting melon I tried was named Tracy (same name as the CSA Manager-very funny at the time.) I am going to have people show up at 5:00 pm. The only thing I am going to provide is a great location, all the melons you can eat and content. If you want to bring chairs, something to eat and your own drinks, you can. (I have water here). We are going to set up under the walnut trees by the shop-same place as the Farm Parties. No tours, no pig BBQ, no bonfires. Just melon tasting, melon information and melon fellowship. I think it will be very interesting. I suspect this will go on until dark or later. No RSVP necessary.


Your farmer,

Schreiber & Sons

Hello CSA Members!

We are planning to put the following in your boxes this week:

1. Cucumbers
2. Squash
3. Cantaloupe or Watermelon
4. Cilantro
5. Eggplant
6. Potatoes
7. Kohlrabi
8. Wax Beans (Tuesday), Thursday folks will get tomatillos
9. Jalapenos or Bell Peppers
10. Farmer's Choice

In Your Box. This will be your first eggplant of the year. In the past eggplant has ranked as one of the favorite and one of the least favorite eggplant. If you do not like eggplant or do not know what to do with it, then I suggest you go to our website and check out the recipes. We grow a lot of eggplant and it is one of my favorite crops to grow, but I am a bit of an eggplant agnostic. My wife loves eggplant and she knows how to cook it. (Which helps). Oddly enough one of the eggplant recipes that I like the best is an eggplant pizza. Yes I know that sounds strange, but it is good. If you have a good eggplant recipe, let me know, we may put it up on our website.

We are into the melon season... you can expect at least a melon a week for until September. I suspect the large share members and perhaps the medium share members may get watermelons, but the small share members have boxes that may be too small for this variety of melon. The variety is called Blacktail Mountain. This is the first year we have raised it. It was bred for short seasons, specifically for Idaho. It is dark green, red, round and seeded.

Schreiber & Sons Winter CSA. Also please keep in mind that we are trying to get an estimate of how many people will be joining the Winter CSA so if you are interested let us know! The Winter CSA will start in late November and will go over every other week. I think it will be for 13 weeks. This will be our third year for the CSA and if the trend for the past two years are any indication, we should have a better year than last year. Let us know if you think you might participate.

Farm to Fork Dinner Series. Some folks that I know are hosting a Farm to Fork Dinner Series. Their kick off event is at our place. They are doing this, at least, in part, to generate some money for Fields of Grace, a gleaning charity. The event is pretty spendy, but it is a pretty fancy deal. Our part of the event is going to be very cool. today is the deadline for getting tickets and I know they have about 10 tickets left. If you get this before too late today and want to join in, let them know. If you are interested, check out the attachment. by clicking here.

Your Farmer,
Alan

Hello CSA Members!

Things have been very busy here at the office so I am helping Alan out with the newsletter.

We are planning to put the following in your boxes next week:

1. Cucumbers
2. Squash
3. Melon or Watermelon
4. Cilantro
5. Eggplant
6. Potatoes
7. Kohlrabi
8. Wax Beans
9. Jalapenos or Bell Peppers
10. Farmer's Choice

We are starting to see that very soon we will have a few different varieties of eggplant to harvest. Also we are starting to get Galia melons (which have a yellow rind and are a honeydew melon) and watermelon (red seeded). Everything in your box this week is organic except the kohlrabi.

Bread. We order the bread from a local bakery. It is very good! If you order bread please get your order to us by Fridays at noon. We have also added the subscription for those of you who have not seen it but would like a weekly order of bread.

Order a Benton County Raised Chicken. You can now order local pasture raised, free range chickens. They are not our chickens, but rather the same source as our eggs (Happy Lil Homestead). The chicken costs us $3.85 a pound and we are charging $4 pound. The chickens will come to you frozen in your box just like the beef. The deadline for ordering is Friday noon, the week before. We are open for orders. You cannot order the chicken off the webstore because we cannot calculate a price because each chicken weights a different amount. A 3 pound chicken will cost $12.00, a 2.75 pound chicken will cost $11. If you want to order a pasture raised, free range chicken, you have to order it from us via email. For those of you who ordered chickens this week, let us know how you liked them. We will provide feedback to the other members.

Also please keep in mind that we are trying to get an estimate of how many people will be joining the Winter CSA so if you are interested let us know!

The Web Store. If there are extra items that you would like to have, you can order them from us. You can go to our website and pick from a list of items if you would like to purchase additional produce. You can pick up an extra bunch of carrots, or beets, or garlic or if you are looking for bulk prices, you go the section where you can buy in larger quantities at a lower price. Just go to our website (www.schreiberandsons.com) and log into your account. Click "Web Store" on the top right of the screen. This will take you to the Web Store where you can add produce, bread or eggs each week. Click "Add" on each item that you wish to purchase. It will automatically add it to your order (If you change your mind about an item or clicked the wrong item just click the “X” next to the item under the “Your Name Order” list on the right). When you are ready to check out, just click “Check-Out” at the bottom of the “Your Name Order” list.

Your local CSA,

Schreiber & Sons

1-Cantaloupe
3-Beets
4-Lettuce
5-Green or Savoy Cabbage
6-Potatoes
7-Summer Squash
8-Yellow wax beans (Thursday members)
9-Onions
10-Swiss Chard
11-Farmer's Choice

I might add that this week marks the 14th out of 28 weeks. It seems like we have been doing this for a long time, but in reality we are only half done after this week. You have a lot of product still in store.

In Your Box. The melon in your box will still be the personal sized muskmelons. It will be a couple of weeks before we get a different style of melon. Who knows what kind of beets these will be, we have five different kinds and we could probably get any kind (of course if you signed up for the Choice Option, you can pick your kind). We have regular red round beets, elongate cylindrical red beets, yellow beets, Chioggia beets (red and white concentric circles) and Bulls Blood beets (like regular red round beets but with red leaves). One of our farm's long suits is melons (and eggplant and asparagus). You will be getting cantaloupes for this week and next week. But sometime in the next two weeks you will start getting some other kinds of melons. I expect that most weeks you will be getting some kind of melons, probably until the end of September. We have many, many different kinds of melons and they come off at varying times, so we never know exactly what we will have each week. The one thing that you will not get much of is watermelons. They are so big that often it is difficult to get much else in the box. We are working with some small to medium watermelons to see if that will work.

Order a Benton County Raised Chicken. You can now order local pasture raised, free range chickens. They are not our chickens, but rather the same source as our eggs (Happy Lil Homestead). The chicken costs us $3.85 a pound and we are charging $4 pound. The chickens will come to you frozen in your box just like the beef. The deadline for ordering is Friday noon, the week before. We are open for orders. You cannot order the chicken off the webstore because we cannot calculate a price because each chicken weights a different amount. A 3 pound chicken will cost $12.00, a 2.75 pound chicken will cost $11. If you want to order a pasture raised, free range chicken, you have to order it from us via email. For those of you who ordered chickens this week, let us know how you liked them. We will provide feedback to the other members.

CSA Etiquette. A gentle reminder to the members at the Battelle drop site. We leave two boxes at the drop site for you to return your flatted boxes. If you are returning your boxes make sure you put your box in in the appropriate box neatly. We are concerned that we could lose this site if members leave their boxes strewn about the site.

Winter CSA. We are making plans for the Winter CSA. If you think you might be interested in the Winter CSA please let us know. We are trying to gauge how much to plant. Even if you are not sure or are curious, let us know. We will start a list of those who are interested. At this time, we assume the CSA will be along the same lines as last year.... start in late November, before Thanksgiving and go until April of next year. It will probably have 12 delieveries, roughly every other week.

The Web Store. If there are extra items that you would like to have, you can order them from us. You can go to our website and pick from a list of items if you would like to purchase additional produce. You can pick up an extra bunch of carrots, or beets, or garlic or if you are looking for bulk prices, you go the section where you can buy in larger quantities at a lower price. Just go to our website (www.schreiberandsons.com) and log into your account. Click "Web Store" on the top right of the screen. This will take you to the Web Store where you can add produce, bread or eggs each week. Click "Add" on each item that you wish to purchase. It will automatically add it to your order (If you change your mind about an item or clicked the wrong item just click the “X” next to the item under the “Your Name Order” list on the right). When you are ready to check out, just click “Check-Out” at the bottom of the “Your Name Order” list.

Your farmer,

In your box this week you should receive:

1-Cantaloupe
3-Beets
4-Lettuce
5-Green or Savoy Cabbage
6-Potatoes
7-Summer Squash
8-Yellow wax beans (Thursday members)
9-Onions
10-Swiss Chard
11-Farmer's Choice

I might add that this week marks the 14th out of 28 weeks. It seems like we have been doing this for a long time, but in reality we are only half done after this week. You have a lot of product still in store.

In Your Box. The melon in your box will still be the personal sized muskmelons. It will be a couple of weeks before we get a different style of melon. Who knows what kind of beets these will be, we have four different kinds and we could probably get any kind (of course if you signed up for the Choice Option, you can pick your kind). We ran out of lavender-sorry Thursday members. We are getting in to the wax beans so we will send them to the Thursday members. One might wonder how do you figure that you would substitute yellow wax beans for lavender... because that is what we have. Enjoy them.

Hopefully this will not result in a land slide of emails, but if you have some feedback for us, send it in.

Order a Benton County Raised Chicken. You can now order local pasture raised, free range chickens. They are not our chickens, but rather the same source as our eggs (Happy Lil Homestead). The chicken costs us $3.85 a pound and we are charging $4 pound. The chickens will come to you frozen in your box just like the beef. The deadline for ordering is Friday noon, the week before. We are open for orders. You cannot order the chicken off the webstore because we cannot calculate a price because each chicken weights a different amount. A 3 pound chicken will cost $12.00, a 2.75 pound chicken will cost $11. If you want to order a pasture raised, free range chicken, you have to order it from us via email.

The Web Store. If there are extra items that you would like to have, you can order them from us. You can go to our website and pick from a list of items if you would like to purchase additional produce. You can pick up an extra bunch of carrots, or beets, or garlic or if you are looking for bulk prices, you go the section where you can buy in larger quantities at a lower price. Just go to our website (www.schreiberandsons.com) and log into your account. Click "Web Store" on the top right of the screen. This will take you to the Web Store where you can add produce, bread or eggs each week. Click "Add" on each item that you wish to purchase. It will automatically add it to your order (If you change your mind about an item or clicked the wrong item just click the “X” next to the item under the “Your Name Order” list on the right). When you are ready to check out, just click “Check-Out” at the bottom of the “Your Name Order” list.

Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber

In your box this week you should receive:

1-Cantaloupe
3-Beets
4-Green Romaine Lettuce
5-Green or Savoy Cabbage
6-Potatoes
7-Summer Squash
8-Cauliflower
9-Leaf Lettuce or Mixed Greens
10-Tomatoes
11-Berries/cherries-Blueberries or Red Raspberries
12-Lavender
13-Something Else

In Your Box. Do not think of your cantaloupes as being small, think of them as being a personal melon. Nothing seems to have changed in regards to the contents of your box. We have lots of melons, summer squash and beets. The summer squash is a mix of patty pans (yellow and round), crook necked (slender neck, bulbous body), green or yellow zucchini, Eight Ball which is a round green zucchini or an Italian heirloom ribbed summer squash. We have a mix of beets we have a golden beet, red round beet, a red cylindrical beet and the Chioggia beet. The potato is the Bintji. The tomatoes are a beef stake. This is probably the last of the cauliflower for a while. We may have a little left after this week, but the quality is going down in the face of this heat.
Speaking of Quality. As we were picking the lettuce last week, it became very clear halfway through the week that the quality of the head lettuce was going down. As soon as we realized it, we switched to Romaine lettuce. One of the challenges of the head lettuce was that this was a physiological issue not a disease. Often a disease starts from the outside and goes in and is easily detected. This problem started on the end side and was not easily detectable until it got bad. As a result, we shipped out some head lettuce that had some defects. We really try not to do this but it occasionally happens. This is what happens when you grow a lot of different kinds of produce... We are the jacks of all trades, and masters of none. Our specialty is growing a wide vareity produce, doing this causes us to give up being the best at growing anyone thing. So you are trading diversity for close to perfection. Sorry for the defective lettuce.

CSA Issues. Folks are falling down on returning boxes. We normally get close to 80% of the boxes return and we are at less than 50%. Please remember to return your boxes each week. Make sure you flatten them. Also, we have some reports of people looking through other people's boxes of produce. This is a CSA faux pau; the only box whose contents you get to go through is your own. We are starting to source eggs from a second vendor and you will notice that there is a different kind of an egg carton. Very similiar eggs, but different cartons.

Order a Benton County Raised Chicken. You can now order local pasture raised, free range chickens. They are not our chickens, but rather the same source as our eggs (Happy Lil Homestead). The chicken costs us $3.85 a pound and we are charging $4 pound. The chickens will come to you frozen in your box just like the beef. The deadline for ordering is Friday noon, the week before. We are open for orders. You cannot order the chicken off the webstore because we cannot calculate a price because each chicken weights a different amount. A 3 pound chicken will cost $12.00, a 2.75 pound chicken will cost $11. If you want to order a pasture raised, free range chicken, you have to order it from us via email.

The Web Store. If there are extra items that you would like to have, you can order them from us. You can go to our website and pick from a list of items if you would like to purchase additional produce. You can pick up an extra bunch of carrots, or beets, or garlic or if you are looking for bulk prices, you go the section where you can buy in larger quantities at a lower price. Just go to our website (www.schreiberandsons.com) and log into your account. Click "Web Store" on the top right of the screen. This will take you to the Web Store where you can add produce, bread or eggs each week. Click "Add" on each item that you wish to purchase. It will automatically add it to your order (If you change your mind about an item or clicked the wrong item just click the “X” next to the item under the “Your Name Order” list on the right). When you are ready to check out, just click “Check-Out” at the bottom of the “Your Name Order” list.

Joining Schreiber & Sons CSA. It is not too late to join the CSA. We prorate the cost of the CSA on a weekly basis. If someone wants to join they can either sign up through the website or call the office at 509 266 4348 and ask for Amanda.

Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber

In your box next week you should receive:

1-Cantaloupe
3-Beets
4-Green RomaineLettuce
5-Green or Savoy Cabbage
6-Potatoes
7-Summer Squash
8-Cauliflower
9-Leaf Lettuce or Mixed Greens
10-Tomatoes
11-Berries/cherries-Blueberries or Red Raspberries
12-Lavender
13-Something Else

In Your Box. We finally have melons.....this is about the last thing I need for it to be truly summer. The first melons we have are a different kind of cantaloupe. They are a smaller variety and take less time to grow to maturity. What is most notable about them is that they are SMALL!!!!!! However, they are a decent cantaloupe. We have tomatoes, not a lot, but enough for everyone. We are still getting berries-again, not enough for everyone, but hopefully eventually we rotate around so there is an equitable distribution.

CSA Issues. Folks are falling down on returning boxes. We normally get close to 80% of the boxes return and we are at less than 50%. Please remember to return your boxes each week. Make sure you flatten them. Also, we have some reports of people looking through other people's boxes of produce. This is a CSA faux pau; the only box whose contents you get to go through is your own. We are starting to source eggs from a second vendor and you will notice that there is a different kind of an egg carton. Very similiar eggs, but different cartons.

A New Add On. You can now order local pasture raised, free range chickens. They are not our chickens, but rather the same source as our eggs (Happy Lil Homestead). The chicken costs us $3.85 a pound and we are charging $4 pound. The chickens will come to you frozen in your box just like the beef. The deadline for ordering is Friday noon, the week before. We are open for orders.

The Web Store. If there are extra items that you would like to have, you can order them from us. You can go to our website and pick from a list of items if you would like to purchase additional produce. You can pick up an extra bunch of carrots, or beets, or garlic or if you are looking for bulk prices, you go the section where you can buy in larger quantities at a lower price. Just go to our website (www.schreiberandsons.com) and log into your account. Click "Web Store" on the top right of the screen. This will take you to the Web Store where you can add produce, bread or eggs each week. Click "Add" on each item that you wish to purchase. It will automatically add it to your order (If you change your mind about an item or clicked the wrong item just click the “X” next to the item under the “Your Name Order” list on the right). When you are ready to check out, just click “Check-Out” at the bottom of the “Your Name Order” list.

Joining Schreiber & Sons CSA. It is not too late to join the CSA. We prorate the cost of the CSA on a weekly basis. If someone wants to join they can either sign up through the website or call the office at 509 266 4348 and ask for Amanda.

Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber

In your box next week you should receive:

1-Cucumbers
2-Fennel
3-Beets, Red
4-Red or Green Head Lettuce
5-Green Cabbage
6-Parsley
7-Walla Walla Sweet Onions
8-Cauliflower
9-Potatoes, new
10-Chinese cabbage
11-Berries/cherries-Blueberrries, Red Raspberries or Cherries
12-Lavender
13-Savoy cabbage for medium and large share members

In Your Box. We have two kinds of beets that will be in the box next week, you will get one kind or the other. If your beet has red and green leaves with a round root you are getting a variety called Bull's Blood. When smaller, the leaves of this beet are blood red, hence the name. The other variety is called Cylindrica and it is an elongated beet. Both are old, heirloom varieties of beets. You will get either a green (iceberg) head lettuce or a "red" head lettuce. The red head lettuce is a very unusual variety. It is from some seed that I brought back from Austria (do not ask for the details). I have never seen something like this. Once you open the head up, it is green like other head lettuce. The potato variety you will get is one called Bintje. It is a Dutch variety (also heirloom). It is a yellow fleshed potato and it is very commonly consumed in Europe but is not common here. It is a very good eating potato. We are still plugging along with our berry and cherry production. We have a few cherries left over, all of which will end up in the Tuesday boxes. I am sure we will not have enough berries and cherries for everyone next week, but we will stagger the deliveries so they are equitably distributed. The lavender will come to you in a bunch. You can either put it in water or dry it.

A New Add On. Soon you will be able to order local pasture raised, free range chickens. They are not our chickens, but rather the same source as our eggs. Not sure about the price, but they will probably be in the $4 a pound range. The chickens will come to you frozen in your box just like the beef. The deadline for ordering is Friday noon, the week before. We are open for orders.

The Web Store. If there are extra items that you would like to have, you can order them from us. You can go to our website and pick from a list of items if you would like to purchase additional produce. You can pick up an extra bunch of carrots, or beets, or garlic or if you are looking for bulk prices, you go the section where you can buy in larger quantities at a lower price. Just go to our website (www.schreiberandsons.com) and log into your account. Click "Web Store" on the top right of the screen. This will take you to the Web Store where you can add produce, bread or eggs each week. Click "Add" on each item that you wish to purchase. It will automatically add it to your order (If you change your mind about an item or clicked the wrong item just click the “X” next to the item under the “Your Name Order” list on the right). When you are ready to check out, just click “Check-Out” at the bottom of the “Your Name Order” list.

Joining Schreiber & Sons CSA. It is not too late to join the CSA. We prorate the cost of the CSA on a weekly basis. If someone wants to join they can either sign up through the website or call the office at 509 266 4348 and ask for Amanda.

Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber

In your box this week you should receive:

1-Carrots
2-Fennel
3-Beets, red
4-Red or Green leaf Lettuce
5-Cauliflower, Broccoli or Green Cabbage
6-Basil
7-Walla Walla Sweet Onions
8-Garlic
9-Potatoes, new
10-Cucumbers
11-Berries/cherries-Blueberrries, Red Raspberries or Cherries
12-Apricot

In Your Box. There are three changes to the list of product from what I presented last week was we are switching lavender for cucumbers. Okay, so my prediction when the lavender would be ready was off....it should come in your boxes next week, in stead, you are getting cucumbers. We grow picklers, slicers, lemon cucumbers, English cucumbers and some really odd ones that are Armenian cucumbers. I think you will be getting most the slicers and English (elongated) cumbers. The carrots are of the orange variety-same as last week. The cauliflower will be either the regular white variety or a yellow variety that is called Cheddar. The second change is that we have a few more cherries so folks will get either blueberry, red raspberry, Bing cherry or Ranier cherry. This will be the last week for cherries. We should have blueberries and raspberries for the next few weeks. We will never have a lot, probably not enough to have a serving for everyone each week. When that happens we will rotate through the entire membership.

The third addition is apricots. During asparagus harvest when we were getting more asparagus than we could handle, we gave some to a neighboring farmer who sells produce locally and directly. We gave him this produce and credited him with the value of the asparagus. When his apricots were ready, he gave us a like amount of his fruit. I think the apricots are a few days from being ready to eat. If it were me, I would let these fruit set out on the kitchen counter for a few days. They are large and beautiful fruit.

The weight of your box this week will be noticably heavier--we are sending two people with the boxes this week because they are that much heavier than in the past.

Get ready there is a lot coming in your box.

Berries. This is the first time we have harvested raspberries and blueberries. It took some time to train the workers on what constitute a perfectly ripe blueberry. Some of the earlier boxes had some berries that were not quite ripe, so you may bite into a berry that is not yet sweet.

The Difference Between A Small, Medium and Large Share Member. We have historically struggled with how to portion out the produce between small, medium and large shares. The more one pays the more they should get. But we stuggle with diversity versus portion size. My sister-in-law participates in a CSA in a Portland suburb and she talked about getting a single potato in her box. That conversations haunts me! A large share should get more than a medium, and a medium should get more than a small. On the other hand, folks join the CSA in order to have local produce but also to get diversity. What we are trying to do to get all members everything that is on the list, but if possible adjust the portion size. Somethings like mixed greens, carrots and beets, it is easier to do, but it is harder with a melon or cabbage. The second thing we do is when we do not have the full amount needed to give everyone something, we often will give it to the large shares if we have just a few items and to the medium and large shares if we have a moderate amount.

Two of the more common complaints or probably more correctly, feedback, we get are 1) there is not a enough in our box and 2) there is too much in our box. I expect this will be a more common refrain this year as the cool spring prevented many items from being ready on time and now everything is coming ready all at once and your boxes are going to be loaded. We try hard to get you a good mix and decent portion size, but it is a real challenge to get this right for every item for every week.

A New Add On. Soon you will be able to order local pasture raised, free range chickens. They are not our chickens, but rather the same source as our eggs. Not sure about the price, but they will probably be in the $4 a pound range....Too me that seems expensive, but I know the price that comes with raising chickens in the pasture. Selling these chickens brings zero money in to us. Our sole reason for doing so is give our members access to another source of local food.

The Web Store. If there are extra items that you would like to have, you can order them from us. You can go to our website and pick from a list of items if you would like to purchase additional produce. You can pick up an extra bunch of carrots, or beets, or garlic or if you are looking for bulk prices, you go the section where you can buy in larger quantities at a lower price. Just go to our website (www.schreiberandsons.com) and log into your account. Click "Web Store" on the top right of the screen. This will take you to the Web Store where you can add produce, bread or eggs each week. Click "Add" bon each item that you wish to purchase. It will automatically add it to your order (If you change your mind about an item or clicked the wrong item just click the “X” next to the item under the “Your Name Order” list on the right). When you are ready to check out, just click “Check-Out” at the bottom of the “Your Name Order” list.

Joining Schreiber & Sons CSA. It is not too late to join the CSA. We prorate the cost of the CSA on a weekly basis. If someone wants to join they can either sign up through the website or call the office at 509 266 4348 and ask for Amanda.

Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber

In your box next week you should receive:

1-Carrots
2-Fennel
3-Beets, red
4-Red or Green leaf Lettuce
5-Cauliflower, Broccoli or Green Cabbage
6-Basil
7-Walla Walla Sweet Onions
8-Garlic
9-Potatoes, new
10-Lavender
11-Berries-Blueberrries or raspberries

In Your Box. Wow, what a cool list this is! This makes me sort of forget some of the misery of the long cold spring. The berries, onions and carrots are not organic; the berries and onions are pesticide free. The basil is a larged leaf Italian basil and is a type suitable for basil. We should have two whole plants for a small, three for a medium and four for a large. The heat is causing havoc with the broccoli (causing it to flower) and the cauliflower (causing it to turn off white). Even though they may not be all cosmetically perfect, they still eat well. And new potatoes.... not sure yet exactly what varieties you will get, but it should be either a yellow fleshed variety called Yukon Gold (one of my favorites) or Red Pontiac-a red skinned, white fleshed variety. Between now and Monday, I would like some of you who know what to do with fennel to email us and give us your fennel receipe, on Monday we will send them out so those who are fennel challenged will know what to do.

Berries. I am pretty happy that we got all of the Thursday members berries. My goal is to get all of the Tuesday folks berries-pretty sure we can do this, but will not know until Tuesday. This is the first time we have harvested raspberries and blueberries. It took some time to train the workers on what constitute a perfectly ripe blueberrie. Some of the earlier boxes had some berries that were not quite ripe, so you may bite into a berry that is not yet sweet.

No promises on how much berries we will be having, but we should have enough for the Tuesday members. I suspect we will have a few berries for Thursday, but not enough for everyone.

Melons. Nothing says summer to me like melons..... Here is my promise to you... you will get so many melons, so many different kind that by the end of September you will be saying, "oh no! Not another melon, enough is enough." That is my job.....We think we have some of the earliest cantaloupes in the state of Washington. We might have them in boxes in three weeks-which considering the year is pretty good. After a couple of weeks of cantaloupes, we will have some other melons and by mid August, it will be a Melonapooloza. By the way, around mid August, I am going to hold something called MelonFest... I am going to have about 40 different kinds of melons ready. We are going to invite a bunch of folks out and taste them. It is going to be a tour around the world of melons. Stay tuned.


The Web Store. If there are extra items that you would like to have, you can order them from us. You can go to our website and pick from a list of items if you would like to purchase additional produce. You can pick up an extra bunch of carrots, or beets, or garlic or if you are looking for bulk prices, you go the section where you can buy in larger quantities at a lower price. Just go to our website (www.schreiberandsons.com) and log into your account. Click "Web Store" on the top right of the screen. This will take you to the Web Store where you can add produce, bread or eggs each week. Click "Add" bon each item that you wish to purchase. It will automatically add it to your order (If you change your mind about an item or clicked the wrong item just click the “X” next to the item under the “Your Name Order” list on the right). When you are ready to check out, just click “Check-Out” at the bottom of the “Your Name Order” list.

Joining Schreiber & Sons CSA. It is not too late to join the CSA. We prorate the cost of the CSA on a weekly basis. If someone wants to join they can either sign up through the website or call the office at 509 266 4348 and ask for Amanda.

Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber

In your box this week you should receive:

1-Carrots
2-Snow Peas or Sugar Snap Peas
3-Beets, Chioggia
4-Red or Green Romaine Lettuce
5-Cauliflower or Green Cabbage
6-Chives or Dill
7-English Peas for Tuesday, Broccoli for Thursday
8-Garlic
9-Green Onions
10-Cherries
11-Berries-Blueberrries or raspberries

In Your Box. In my quest to respond to your desire for more fruit, some of you will be getting berries this week. We are starting blueberry and raspberry harvest...these are new endavors for us. We will be picking them into one pound clamshells. I noticed that a few of the raspberries have spiderwebs on them and I am not sure how to get them off. We cannot wash them here as we are not set up to do it with damaging the berries or causing them to rot prematurely. I do not know how much fruit we will have, but you will be getting either raspberries or blueberries. If you do not get at least one of these this week, we will keep track of who did not get them and when we pick again next week, we will get you berries by then. Hopefully everyone will get at least one serving of berries and if we are lucky two servings.

Not Sure What to Do With An Item of Produce In Your Box? Go to our website and look up produce information and receipes and see what to do with what you have.
What is going on at the farm? The farm is a very, very busy place. We have to plant, harvest, water and pack produce seven days a week (we have to irrigate 7 days a week). Unfortunately for us, with a Tuesday delivery, we do not get to take July 4th off, so of the 25 people who work here, 22 of us were here yesterday on the 4th weeding, picking, watering, fertilizing, planting, doing all of the things that is required to keep things running.... however everyone took off by no later than 3 pm, so we get a little time off.

You will notice that that the box contents are rapidly changing, I already have the proposed pick list for next week's boxes and there will be virtually no overlap between what was in last weeks box as to what you will get a week from now. We have had enough warm weather that the crops are really coming along. Summer has really arrived for us when you see tomatoes, melons, eggplant and peppers in your boxes. I suspect your boxes are going to be gaining a pound or two a week for the next couple of weeks as the number and weight of the items increase.

The Web Store. If there are extra items that you would like to have, you can order them from us. You can go to our website and pick from a list of items if you would like to purchase additional produce. You can pick up an extra bunch of carrots, or beets, or garlic or if you are looking for bulk prices, you go the section where you can buy in larger quantities at a lower price. Just go to our website (www.schreiberandsons.com) and log into your account. Click "Web Store" on the top right of the screen. This will take you to the Web Store where you can add produce, bread or eggs each week. Click "Add" bon each item that you wish to purchase. It will automatically add it to your order (If you change your mind about an item or clicked the wrong item just click the “X” next to the item under the “Your Name Order” list on the right). When you are ready to check out, just click “Check-Out” at the bottom of the “Your Name Order” list.

Joining Schreiber & Sons CSA. It is not too late to join the CSA. We prorate the cost of the CSA on a weekly basis. If someone wants to join they can either sign up through the website or call the office at 509 266 4348 and ask for Amanda.

Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber

In your box next week you should receive:

1-Carrots
2-Snow Peas or Sugar Snap Peas
3-Beets, Chioggia
4-Red or Green Romaine Lettuce
5-Cauliflower or Green Cabbage
6-Chives or Dill
7-English Peas for Tuesday, Broccoli for Thursday
8-Garlic
9-Green Onions
10-Cherries
11 --- maybe, maybe, maybe blueberries.


In Your Box. For me it is beginning to seem more like summer; we consistently have warm weather and the late spring crops are finally coming on. Carrots! Finally. The first carrots always taste the best. These are a vareity called Sweet Baby Jane. I harvested the first ones for our supper last night and my lunch today. You should like them. We are going to have snow peas and sugar snap peas next week and that will probably be the end of them. Another late spring crop is beets. You can expect beets in your box for the next several weeks. This week was red beets. Next week you are getting something called Chioggia beets. They are something different, special and unusual. These are an heirloom variety out of Chioggia (a proviance in Itally). The are a pinkish red on the outside and if you cut the bulb in half you usually get a red and white concentric circlular pattern-very unusual. This beet does not bleed and has a milder beet flavor but is sweeter. The special thing about this beet is that once you cook it, the flesh changes color and is no longer red and white but some variation of purple and gold. Being an open pollinated, heirloom variety, there is a long of genetic variation so the uncooked and the cooked flesh can be quite variable in color. I am not an eater of beet greens, but these greens are supposed to be good cooked. We have a lot of Romaine lettuce so you will get it again next week and possibly the following week. A lot of things are coming on... garlic, green onions, dill, cauliflower, broccoli, so get ready for some variety.

For those of you who are tired of the mixed greens.... after nine weeks, you are getting a break.

What is going on at the farm? We are watering more now that it is warmer, applying fertilizer and above all else, weeding. If anyone wants to come out and weed, we will take some volunteers. Note that we have cherries on the list. We have a very small cherry crop, about 5% of what we had last year, which was the biggest crop we ever had. The small crop size is due to a spring freeze. I feel fortunate that you are getting even a single serving of them... My goal was to include the number of fruit servings by 50% and cherries were a key part of that. According to my calculations, the heavy strawberry yields are making up for the cherries, so right now I am equal to last year. However, we plan to pick blueberries on Friday or the early part of next week, so I hope to add in some blueberries-but we have to wait until we start harvest to see what we got.

Joining Schreiber & Sons CSA. It is not too late to join the CSA. We prorate the cost of the CSA on a weekly basis. If someone wants to join they can either sign up through the website or call the office at 509 266 4348 and ask for Amanda.

Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber

In your box this week you should receive:

1-Mixed greens
2-Snow Peas on Tuesday; Sugar Snap Peas on Thursday
3-Beets
4-Red Romaine Lettuce
5-Fava Beans
6-Chinese Cabbage
7-Broccoli-Tuesday; working on what you will get on Thursday
8-Swiss Chard

Alan is out of town until Tuesday, he goes every year back to a family reunion in Missouri. The beets in your box are red beets. This is the kind I grew up with and I still remember the stains on my hands from peeling them. The medium and large boxes will receive the white Swiss chard while the smalls are receiving the rainbow color. I saw Rachel Ray on TV this Saturday and she said that chard was one of her “go to veggies” since it was so versatile and nutritious. You are getting something new in your boxes this week-Fava beans. This tan, rather flat bean resembles a very large Lima Bean. Fava beans have a very tough skin, which should be removed before cooking. Fava bean means literally broad beans and it is used extensively in Egyptian homes. For new items or ones that you may not be familiar with, we do have recipes on our website that members and various people have shared with us. If you are a member with a recipe for fava beans-please send it to us.

It is still possible to join the CSA. If you know someone who wants to join they can sign up through our website (www.schreiberandsons.com) or call and ask for Amanda at 509-266-4348.

In your box next week you should receive:

1-Mixed greens
2-Snow Peas on Tuesday; Sugar Snap Peas on Thursday
3-Beets
4-Red Romaine Lettuce
5-Fava Beans
6-Chinese Cabbage
7-Broccoli-Tuesday; working on what you will get on Thursday
8-Swiss Chard


In Your Box. Alas, the asparagus season is over! Today was the last day of harvest. I had what will be my last of the season for supper last night. Almost everything that was picked today went into today's boxes. We have about 100 pounds that will go to the Farmer's Market's this weekend and that will be the end of the asparagus. You will be getting peas for the next few weeks... it starts with snow peas, then shifts to sugar snap peas and hopefully will end up with green/sweet/English peas. We are transtitioning from snow peas to sugar snaps next week. It was a hard spring for our beets. We planted some in March and they just have not done well. We planted a second batch a month later and they are the same size. These beets are going to be a little on the small side, but they are good. Chinese cabbage can be a little challenging for folks who are not familiar with it (first think strip off the outer leaves). Fava or fava beans are more unusual and exotic. If you are unsure what to do with them, turn to our website and look at the receipe that we have there. If that does not work, go the source of all knowledge, the Internet.

What is going on at the farm? The crops have really responded to the warm weather. You will notice by the changing produce in your box. Soon you will be seeing cabbage, cauliflower, beets, carrots, head lettuce and the beginning of eggplant season is not too far off. Unfortunately, melons, tomatoes and peppers are a little ways off. Enjoy the produce you have now and in a couple of weeks you will be eating completely different items (although Swiss chard will be a requiring theme-but not too often). I am not sure exactly when we will be picking blueberries as we have not picked on the farm before, but I expect to be picking in about two weeks. We do not have a lot of blueberries, but I hope to give everyone at least one pound. We lost our cherry crop, but there are about 10% of cherries still present. Even if I have to buy them from some neighbors, I am going to try to get some cherries. Cherries are late and scarce right now. One of my employee's has some family members that own a cherry farm and he brought some to work. They were a very early variety called Early Robbins. They were great. However, due to the season, they were getting $5 a pound for their cherries--the highest prices they have ever recieved. Incredible.... good for them. Strawberry season is pretty much over for us. They will still put out a few berries, but not enough to give them to everyone. We will probably use them from time to time when we run out of something.

Today we are planting in the greenhouse the last of the pumpkins, winter squash and gourds. This week we are planting what will probably be the last of the watermelon and tomatoes. We just past the summer soltice and that reminds me that we need to start planning for the end of harvests. Yes, we just had our first summer time weather and yes, we need to think about wrapping things up. Time is running out to plant a lot of crops such as eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and melons.

Joining Schreiber & Sons CSA. It is not too late to join the CSA. We prorate the cost of the CSA on a weekly basis. If someone wants to join they can either sign up through the website or call the office at 509 266 4348 and ask for Amanda.

Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber

In your box this week you should receive:

1-Asparagus
2-Bok Choy
3-Strawberries
4-Spinach Salad
5-Snow Peas
6-Kale
7-Romaine lettuce
8-Spearmint
9-Oregano
10-Farmer's Choice-Tuesday/Broccoli-Thursday

In Your Box. This is the last of the asparagus for the season. We have already laid by, which is the term a grower uses when the stop cutting their asparagus, most of our asparagus. We end harvest completely on Thursday. By the time harvest is over, everyone is glad to stop harvesting...as it is a lot of work. Also, we harvest seven days a week, so two guys have to come out on Sunday morning, just to cut asparagus. A comment on Farmer's Choice; this is something we use when we have some of several items, but not enough to give everyone. It is causing some confusion because some members do not know what they are getting (e.g. parsley). You get a list of what you are getting in the emails and on the label of your box, but with the Farmer's Choice you do not know what the exact item is. I am sure if you get rhubarb it is clear what you recieved, but if it is parsley, sorrel or thyme it is less clear. We are working to come up with a way to communicate better on the Farmer's Choice. Later in the week we expect to have some broccoli come off, but not enough for everyone. Eventually everyone will get broccoli, but for now, it looks like some of the Thursday members will get that green crop.

Clamshells. As hard as it is to say this...do not return the berry clamshells. The reason for not reusing the clam shells is that if we were to reuse them it would require washing them. It takes too much time, which means it costs too much to wash them to be cost effective.

Add Ons. If you want to order an add on but the webstore does not allow you, go ahead and send an email to us with your order, particularly for bread and eggs. We can take bread and egg orders by email up through 10:00 am on Fridays.

We just had a Jersey cow butchered and recieved the meat last week. Please click here for a list of product that we have in stock. I am offering a fire sale on the flour to move it; $3 down from $5. I want to encourage you to try some of these products. Click here for the Add-on price list. Remember-eat local!!!!!!

Bread Subscriptions. We have now set up a bread subscription option. If you are interested you can go to our website and browse the choices, then log into your account and add Bread under “Options”. Once you have added it to your subscription, be sure to send us an email (contact@schreiberandsons.com) letting us know what bread you want. If you want to try different breads let us know what you want each week.


What is going on at the farm? It is going to get HOT out, for the first time this year. The temperature on Tuesday and Wednesday is suppose to reach the nineties. Get ready for me to start complaining about the high temperatures. This should really kick some crops into high gear. I bet by the following week the box weights will be twice what they were last week. Soon we will start adding a second person to the delivery crew just because of the increased weights. Interestingly, we are heavily planting pumpkins, gourds and winter squash. Once they are planted and transplanted the bulk of the planting will be over for the season. It seems odd to be wrapping up most of the planting while only the week before we were wearing jackets in the morning because it was so cold. What a year!

Pumpkins, Giant and Otherwise. Just to foreshadow... you will get four weeks of pumpkins in October. The first week you will get small ornamental cute pumpkins. The second week you get larger, but still smaller to medium sized pumpkins. The third week you will get a carving type pumpkin. The fourth week you will get a different kind of pumpkin. We are going to give every one another pumpkin that is grown just to eat. Not sure when that will come to you, possibly in October, possibly in November. While it is still a long ways out, we hope that everyone who wants a Giant Pumpkin will get one...still a long ways out for a giant pumpkin-so who knows what will happen. You have to come out to get your Giant Pumpking (way too big for the box). We have something we are starting to call PumpkinFest-which is just you bringing your kids out to pick out their pumpkin. I suspect we are going to have to reserve your pumpkin to keep things under control. As the pumpkins develop, we will let you know how we are proceeding.

Joining Schreiber & Sons CSA. It is not too late to join the CSA. We prorate the cost of the CSA on a weekly basis. If someone wants to join they can either sign up through the website or call the office at 509 266 4348 and ask for Amanda.

Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber


Just some useful information:

Kale

Botanical name: Brassica oleracea

Group: Acephala

Kale was grown by the Greeks and the Romans and hasn’t changed much since then. It is probably the most respected representative of the Old World cabbages. Latin culis (stem) is the root of the group of words for cabbage. Acephala (headless) is the designation that separates most kale and collards from other cabbages, for the two grow in the form of a loose bouquet, not in a tight head. The leaves of the kale plant provide an earthy flavor and more nutritional value for fewer calories than almost any other food around.

Nutritional Value: Kale is a leafy green vegetable that belongs to the Brassica family, which has gained recent attention due to health promoting, sulfur-containing phytochemicals. It is virtually loaded with calcium, potassium, indoles (cancer-fighting substances), beta-carotenes, and other antioxidants. Collards have the same nutrients, but in lesser concentration.

Selection: Choose comparatively deep-colored bunches with moist, small to medium leaves. Avoid dried, browned, yellowed, or coarse-stemmed plants. It is best when not too crisp.

Storage: Wrap kale in plastic or an airtight container and keep very cold—near freezing if possible—or it may acquire a pronounced elderly cabbage taste. It should not be refrigerated more than a few days or it loses its fresh green flavor. To avoid yellowing, keep kale far from climacteric fruits (ones which continue to ripen), such as apple, avocado, banana, peach, pear, plum, tomato and most tropical fruits.

Kale is underused except by people of Northern European stock, where these over wintering cabbages have been used extensively in cookery since the Middle Ages. It needs no explanation in Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands and above all Scotland, where “come to kail” meant an invitation to dinner, with or without the green.
Preparation: Kale leaves that are very small or will be long-cooked need not be stripped from the stems; cut off the base of the stems, then slice leaves to suit and wash. For larger leaves or shorter cooking, either hold a stem with one hand and run a knife long each side to cut off the leaf halves; or hold the folded leave halves together and pull them free of the stem.

Use: If they are miniscule, raw curly kale leaves make excellent additions to salad mixes (you may have found some in the mixed greens you receive). When cooked, mature leaves develop a well-rounded, sweetish taste and a springy texture more delicate than is typical for the cabbage group. Whether steamed, boiled, or blanched and sautéed, kale can be cooked until meltingly soft in traditional style, or until crunch-tender in the newer mode.

In your box next week you should receive:

1-Asparagus
2-Bok Choy
3-Strawberries
4-Spinach Salad
5-Sugar Snap Peas or Snow Peas
6-Kale
7-Romaine lettuce
8-Spearmint

In Your Box. You will see a different kind of bok choy in your CSA box this week. The variety you have been getting is called Ming Qing and it is a baby style bok choy. This week's variety is called Joi Choi and it is a full sized variety. There are a number of crops that are starting to enter into the harvest interval, but some of them will not have sufficient volumes to give everyone. Everything in your box is organic except the strawberries (which are pesticide free).

We do not re-use the clamshells that the strawberries come in so please do not return them to the drop-site for the delivery person to pick up.

Add Ons. If you want to order an add on but the webstore does not allow you, go ahead and send an email to us with your order, particularly for bread and eggs. We can take bread and egg orders by email up through 10:00 am on Fridays.

We just had a Jersey cow butchered and recieved the meat this week. Please click here for a list of product that we have in stock. I am offering a fire sale on the flour to move it; $3 down from $5. I want to encourage you to try some of these products. Click here for the Add-on price list. Remember-eat local!!!!!!

Bread Subscriptions. We have now set up a bread subscription option. If you are interested you can go to our website and browse the choices, then log into your account and add Bread under “Options”. Once you have added it to your subscription, send us an email (contact@schreiberandsons.com) letting us know what bread you want. If you want to try different breads let us know what you want each week.


What is going on at the farm? We are entering a transition period on the farm. We are close to the end of asparagus harvest and we starting to see the early summer crops starting to come off. I did not list broccoli, but I suspect that we start putting broccoli in some of the boxes. When the broccoli, cauliflower and cabbages start coming off then the boxes start to get heavy. We are normally at this point by now, but, you know, the weather this spring. We have four kinds of cabbages, Chinese or Napa cabbage, green cabbage, Savoy cabbage and red cabbage. I suspect we will have some Chinese cabbage by next week and the rest of the cabbages coming off the following week. We save the red cabbage for the fall and the reason why might be interesting to you. Red cabbage takes longer to grow than the other cabbages and by the time it is ready to harvest we already have so many other items to go in the boxes and will have already had green cabbage, Savoy cabbage and Chinese cabbage that a fourth cabbage is too much for most folks. We give you a break from the cabbage and give you a red cabbage late in the fall. We are laying the last of our plastic for the year this week and we will do the last of our transplanting into plastic in the next two weeks. This year I am going to try and raise something called a Christmas melon. In more tropical countries this melon is the last melon planted and is the last melon harvested and it can be stored for short periods of time unlike other melons. If this is done correctly, the melon is available for Christmas time, hence the name. We cannot grow it that late in the season, but I want to see if we can time it right to have it for Thanksgiving or at least the end of the summer CSA.

Joining Schreiber & Sons CSA. It is not too late to join the CSA. We prorate the cost of the CSA on a weekly basis. If someone wants to join they can either sign up through the website or call the office at 509 266 4348 and ask for Amanda.

Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber


Just some useful information:

Kale

Botanical name: Brassica oleracea

Group: Acephala

Kale was grown by the Greeks and the Romans and hasn’t changed much since then. It is probably the most respected representative of the Old World cabbages. Latin culis (stem) is the root of the group of words for cabbage. Acephala (headless) is the designation that separates most kale and collards from other cabbages, for the two grow in the form of a loose bouquet, not in a tight head. The leaves of the kale plant provide an earthy flavor and more nutritional value for fewer calories than almost any other food around.

Nutritional Value: Kale is a leafy green vegetable that belongs to the Brassica family, which has gained recent attention due to health promoting, sulfur-containing phytochemicals. It is virtually loaded with calcium, potassium, indoles (cancer-fighting substances), beta-carotenes, and other antioxidants. Collards have the same nutrients, but in lesser concentration.

Selection: Choose comparatively deep-colored bunches with moist, small to medium leaves. Avoid dried, browned, yellowed, or coarse-stemmed plants. It is best when not too crisp.

Storage: Wrap kale in plastic or an airtight container and keep very cold—near freezing if possible—or it may acquire a pronounced elderly cabbage taste. It should not be refrigerated more than a few days or it loses its fresh green flavor. To avoid yellowing, keep kale far from climacteric fruits (ones which continue to ripen), such as apple, avocado, banana, peach, pear, plum, tomato and most tropical fruits.

Kale is underused except by people of Northern European stock, where these over wintering cabbages have been used extensively in cookery since the Middle Ages. It needs no explanation in Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands and above all Scotland, where “come to kail” meant an invitation to dinner, with or without the green.
Preparation: Kale leaves that are very small or will be long-cooked need not be stripped from the stems; cut off the base of the stems, then slice leaves to suit and wash. For larger leaves or shorter cooking, either hold a stem with one hand and run a knife long each side to cut off the leaf halves; or hold the folded leave halves together and pull them free of the stem.

Use: If they are miniscule, raw curly kale leaves make excellent additions to salad mixes (you may have found some in the mixed greens you receive). When cooked, mature leaves develop a well-rounded, sweetish taste and a springy texture more delicate than is typical for the cabbage group. Whether steamed, boiled, or blanched and sautéed, kale can be cooked until meltingly soft in traditional style, or until crunch-tender in the newer mode.

In your box this week you should receive:

1-Asparagus
2-Bok Choy
3-Strawberries
4-Spinach Salad
5-Farmers Choice
6-Green leaf lettuce
7-Dill
8-Beets, Napa Cabbage or Sugar Snap Peas

In Your Box. You will see a different kind of bok choy in your CSA box this week. The variety you have been getting is called Ming Qing and it is a baby style bok choy. This week's variety is called Joi Choi and it is a full sized variety. There are a number of crops that are starting to enter into the harvest interval, but some of them will not have sufficient volumes to give everyone. We are going to try to get everyone some beets, Napa cabbage or sugar snap peas. You will notice the item called Farmer's Choice. We have a lot of odds and ends of produce such as arugula, spinach, radishes, lettuces, Walla Walla sweet onions and so on. Each of you will be getting one of these items in addition to the other items in your box. Everything in your box is organic except the strawberries (which are pesticide free), if you hapen to get the Walla Walla sweet onions, they are conventional.

Add Ons. If you want to order an add on but the webstore does not allow you, go ahead and send an email to us with your order, particularly for bread and eggs. We can take bread and egg orders by email up through 10:00 am on Friday. I am offering a fire sale on the flour to move it; $3 down from $5. The bread and bagels come from Yakima, although they plan to open a bakery in Richland. I want to encourage you to try some of these products. Click here for the Add-on price list. Remember-eat local!!!!!!

Strawberries. Are the strawberries ever coming off? Right now we have almost 1,000 pounds in our cold room. Get ready for strawberries in your boxes. Small size shares will get three pints, medium share members will get 6 pints and large share members will recieve 9 pints. These strawberries are awesome-they are the best we have ever grown. I want to warn you, these will not last long, so eat them quickly. The short shelf life is caused by two factors. Since we applied no pesticides to them, they do not have a fungicide on them to prevent mold from developing. Also, we pick them at the very peak of ripeness, allowing them to ripen fully. This does wonders for flavor and sweetness, but means they last only a few days in a refrigerator.

What is going on at the farm? We are entering a transition period on the farm. This week is the last week for organic asparagus and next week will be the last asparagus for the season. Enjoy it while you can. While you can expect strawberries for another week or two, you are going to start seeing several new items, including beets, romaine lettuce, head lettuce, snow peas, English peas, fava beans, Napa cabbage, broccoli. In two weeks, your box will look quite different than what it did say one to two weeks ago. In two weeks we will find some cherries-if they are not our own, we will get some from a neighbor. The period of heavy on asparagus and leafy greens is ending. We are in the time interval where we are planting the pumpkins and winter squash and soon will be starting the gourds. Once those crops are out of the greenhouse, we shut down the greenhouse and stop growing transplants. I look forward to that because we have to water the greenhouse two to three times a day and I get the Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday shifts. I do not have any of the employees work on Sunday (except for the two men who harvest asparagus), so water falls to me. I love working on the farm, but being here 7 days a week gets old, I am on day 48 of working without a day off. In two weeks, my family and I will take five days off and travel back to Missouri for a family reunion. I cannot wait. In the meantime, we continue with the tilling, planting, watering, fertilizing, transplanting, weeding, weeding, weeding and picking crops.

CSA Rules. We again had two people that picked up boxes without looking for their name. It is very important that you check for your name on the box before taking it.

Joining Schreiber & Sons CSA. It is not too late to join the CSA. We prorate the cost of the CSA on a weekly basis. If someone wants to join they can either sign up through the website or call the office at 509 266 4348 and ask for Amanda.

Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber

 

In your box this next week you should receive:

1-Asparagus

2-Bok Choy

3-Swiss Chard

4-Mixed Green

5-Cilantro

6-Spinach

7-Radish

8-Herbs

10 Walla Walla sweet spring onions

In the box. Every thing in your boxes this week is organic. When I say organic in this case I mean certified organic or transitional organic. We vary our recipes on the mixed greens based on what is available and what is good. Next week's recipe should be 20% baby leaf spinach, 25% red leaf lettuce, 25% green leaf lettuce, 10% arugula, 5% cress and 10% mizuna. The bok choy is of a variety called Ming Qing and while what you are receiving is a fully mature, the type of bok choy is called a baby bok choy. In a week or two, you will get another type that is a full sized bok choy. Bok choy can also be spelled with pok, pak, choi, so there are lots of ways that it can be spelled. I do not speak Chinese, so I am taking this on faith.. but it is my understanding that bok choy means simply "green plant." This will be your last onions for a while. The onions you have been getting were planted last fall and they will be largely gone after next week. In a few weeks we will have some scallions or green onions.

Farm Party. Attached is a farm party invitation with the agenda, some instructions and directions. We want to encourage you to attend and participate in the farm party. They usually are a lot of fun. We drive around the farm on trailer pulled by a tractor and look at all of the interesting things going on at the farm.... bees pollinating blueberries, greenhouse tomatoes and eggplants, the transplants, fruit trees, farm equipment, green manure crops, a really big melon variety trial, an herb garden, the cold room and lots and lots more. We have ordered a really nice, cute pig to come to the party FOR DINNER! After the dinner we have a bonfire, with hotdogs, and smores for anyone who wants something more to eat. This year we pruned the trees heavier than usual and we have a really big bonfire... probably the biggest we have ever had. (We have what we call a kid's fire that is small and perfect for roasting hog dogs and marshmallows. Yes, I know we said no junk but this is my one exception.)

Joining Schreiber & Sons CSA. It is not too late to join the CSA. We prorate the cost of the CSA on a weekly basis. If someone wants to join they can either sign up through the website or call the office at 509 255 4348 and ask for Amanda.

Your windy farmer,

Alan Schreiber

In your box this week you will receive:

Mixed greens
Radishes
Cilantro
Asparagus
Rhubarb
Green split dried peas
Onions (spring Walla Walla sweet onions)
Fresh thyme

Hello Schreiber & Sons CSA Members,

One of the challenges of a CSA is that there is significant turn over from year to year.... even if you do a good job, we need to add a lot of new members every year just to maintain our membership. One of the challenges that this poses to us is educating members. We have some that have been with us for years, the majority of you have been with us before, but there is a significant number of you that are new to us. So sometimes the more "senior" members will hear some repetition. One of things that I do each year is introduce myself....some of you will probably roll your eyes, groan and reach for the delete key, but for you newer members, read onward.

Know Your Farmer. I was born on a farm....what I jokingly describe as a diversifed farm in Missouri, which for the Midwest meant we grew corn AND soybeans. We also raised alfalfa and beef cattle. I was not groomed to take over the farm, probably more because I was the youngest of six kids. From a small farm outside of a small poor town, off to Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University) for a B.S. in Biology. Then to University of Missouri for a Master in Entomology and Ph.D. in Entomology. After graduate school I went to work for the Office of Pesticide Programs for the EPA in Washington, D.C. I worked there for three years working on a wide array of pesticide issues. From Washington,D.C. to Washington state where I took a job on faculty at Washington State University's Department of Entomology. In 1997, I left the University and started an agriculture research and consulting company. In 1999, Tanya and I bought some land 15 miles north of Pasco and started the research farm. We did research on a wide variety of crops. Within a few years, the research farm seemed to be doing well and we had expanded into doing work on about three dozen crops. We would often have lots of product left over and we would often donate it to the folks who were less fortunate through an outreach program with her church, the First Lutheran of Pasco. We also commonly gave away lots of different kinds of produce to our friends and neighbors. The pastor of the First Luthern Church and his wife came by our house six years ago and explained the concept of what a CSA is. I had never heard of it, but it sounded interesting, and better yet, it gave me the oppurtunity to grow all sorts of different crops. So we started the CSA in 2006, and it was off an running. That is the short story.

Return Your Boxes. We ask that you return your boxes each week. When you come to pick up your box, bring last week's box with you, flatten and leave it on the stack at the drop site. If you skip a week or two, that is okay, as long as you bring them back. The small boxes cost us 80 cents, the medium box cost $1.10 and the large boxes cost $1.50 to replace. Over the course of the season replacing boxes can cost us thousands of dollars. So please let us reuse your boxes. Thank you.

Onions. Apparently, we have run through our Walla Walla sweet onions this week, so at some point, some of you will be getting some other type of onions, most notably, red onions.

Asparagus. You are recieving either typical green asparagus or purple asparagus. The green asparagus is Jersey Knight, the most commonly planted variety in Washington. It is a fresh market variety and is the mainstay of our industry. The purple asparagus is unusual, with only one other grower growing in this area. Our variety is called Purple Passion. It has a little less of a green or an asparagus flavor, it has thick spears, is less fiborous. For me the purple asparagus is great, but it has one downside... when it is cooked, it reverts back to its a greenish color.

Organic. Everything in your box is organic, except for the split peas.

Recipes. If you are not sure what to do with some of your box contents, we have receipes for most of the items on our website.

***Note to the Pasco Farmers Market members***
The Pasco Farmer's Market pick up site is going to be at the Tuesday pick up site this next week.

Your farmer,

Alan Schreiber

In your box this week you should receive:

· Spinach

· Asparagus

· Rhubarb

· Lentils (pardina)

· Chive

· Onions (spring Walla Walla sweet onions)


Hello Schreiber & Sons CSA Members,

Welcome to the CSA and its first delivery next week. Get ready for a steady flow of emails from us describing how it works, but first some general comments.

Until the past two days, the coldest April in eastern Washington on record was 1954, we just eclipsed this record. This weather has been very hard on us, from having to order extra propane to heat the greenhouse to keep our transplant growing, the loss of our entire cherry crop last Friday night to the delayed growth of crops. It has simply been awful and frustrating and depressing. However, if you cannot handle the weather one needs to find another job; may be I could become a barista, although having never even tasted coffee; I am not sure what that would entail. It just sounds warm right now, and easier than this!

In Your Box. Everything in your box is organic with the exception of the lentils, which we get from some farmer friends over in the Palouse. The spinach was planted last year to overwinter and provide us with some early greens. This is our first harvest of rhubarb and it should be great. The onions were also planted last fall and are to provide some early onions. I had some from last night for supper and they were simply delicious. Do not cover them up with some other heavy flavors, let them express themselves.

Choice Option. The way the choice option is suppose to work is that if there are items in your box that you do not like, you would be provided with a longer list of items to choose from. Choice members will recieve a seperate newsletter including this longer list. You let us know by responding to the email what you would like and we remove what you do not want and replace it with what you do want. Unfortunately, at this time we have so little to offer, there is nothing extra to choose from. However, if you want more or less of any of the items that are listed above, let us know and we can, for example can give you extra asparagus and no chives.
Please have your choice requests in by 9:00 AM Monday morning so the CSA staff can harvest accorngly!

Drop Sites, Days and Times. Please double check your drop site, day and location in the list below. If you are uncertain please log into your account and view the drop site you selected or give us a call/ email and we'll check for you.

***Note to the Pasco Farmers Market members***
Farmers market does not start until the second week of may, so unless you have contacted us and specified otherwise we will drop your box off at the Pasco drop site for this first delivery only. We will start your Farmers Market Wednesday delivery on week 2.

TUESDAY DELIVERIES

"East Kennewick"
3205 W 23rd Ave
3:00-6:30

"South Richland"
1262 Llandwood Ave
4:00-6:30


"Pasco"
2921 Road 52
2:30-6:30


"PNNL / Battelle"
2952 Geo Washington Way
4:30-7:00


"ADG"
2621 Ringold Road, Eltopia
2:00-


WEDNESAY DELIVERIES (Starts week 2!)

"Pasco Farmers Market"
Corner of 4th and Lewis
8:00-12:00

THURSDAY DELIVERIES


"North Richland"
2009 Harris Ave
4:00-6:30


"West Kennewick"
8807 Grand Ronde
3:00-6:30


"West Richland"
610 S 54th Ave
4:30-6:30


"Prosser"
1126 Meade Ave
5:00 to 7:00



Sorry this email is so short, but there is lots and lots going on and I have to get this email out the door and move on to some other things that have to get done.

Your chilly farmer,

Alan Schreiber

Hello CSAers,
It is only 11 days until our first delivery--wow, wow, wow. It has been a week since I last talked to you and guess what, it has still been very cold, with repeated frosts, we are flirting with delaying the start of the CSA because virtually everything we have is delayed. We have to make that call next week, but be forewarned, this is the pitfall of farming we are slaves to the weather. This may have taken our peaches and cherries, not sure yet.

We are still confident that eventually it will warm up, mark my words, within a month I will be complaining about it being too hot. We are proceeding as if we it will warm up and that we will have a spring and a summer. We are planting like crazy. Speaking of crazy, what gets me is that while the plants are not growing, some of the seed has rotted in the soil because it has been too cold too long, it has not stopped the weeds from growing. The cool season weeds are growing, like, well, weeds.

I am guessing that you, too, have noticed it has been both cold and cool and if you are in the CSA, you probably already have a high food IQ and more than a passing familiarity or appreciate for agriculture and its linkage to weather. You probably already know that we are hurting out here because of the lack of degree days. Sometimes I think that my grousing about the weather to all of you is my therapy, like talking to your analyst-not that I have one! (Yet). I wonder if I could trade produce for therapy sessions.

A note on the Slow Food Events that we are hosting next week. Attached is the official flier. KEPR TV is going to do a live broadcast two days in advance of the asparagus tasting and make a big splash about of it. I am pretty sure that it is going to sell out, so if you want to participate in it, you probably will want to RSVP before next Thursday the 27th. I know many of you are not interested in wine, but those of you who are, the wine event is going to be very interesting. We are having some wine experts select wines from the Bordeaux region of France and wines of the same variety from eastern Washington. Then we have two wine experts who are from and were trained in Europe, but who have worked for years in the U.S. wine industry, walk us through these the wines and compare and contrast. While it is my goal for this to not be too technical, I think it will be very educational but perhaps more fun than anything. We really have two great experts that most of you will never have heard from walk us through it. [Just so you know, the pours for each are relatively small, so while there will be several wines, collectively there will not be much volume consumed.]

If you know someone who might be interested in our CSA, we have almost exactly 100 slots left to fill, so do not be shy about hawking our vegetables.

2011 CSA BROCHURE

SLOW FOOD ASPARAGUS TASTING EVENT

Hello Members,

The first delivery starts a month from tomorrow. I know the first box will have asparagus, spinach, mixed greens and probably some rhubarb. There will be more items than that, just have not figured it out yet.

Our Big Promotion!!!!!!!!!! We are in the home stretch of signing up members for the 2011 summer season and we want you to help us get members signed up. We have a goal of obtaining 100 more members. Our primary means of marketing is word of mouth from you--our members. Help us... and we will help you. Here is your incentive.

If you refer someone to us starting today, we will give you $20 worth of produce and the new member will get a discount on their membership ($15 for small, $20 for medium and $25 for large). Your $20 can be redeemed either at our farm store, which you would order on line and would receive in your box, or we can email you a coupon that can be redeemed at the Pasco, Richland or Kennewick Farmer's Markets. The new member will have to email us your name (contact@schreiberandsons.com). We will email you that we have received your referral and will ask you if want the $20 for the farm store or the farmer's market.

What's Happening At the Farm. While the weather has not been cold, only one freezing night in the past two weeks, it has not be exactly warm. Things are growing at the farm, but verrry slowly. I harvested one handful of asparagus for dinner Sunday night. The cold season crops are just poking out of the soil. Cold season perennials are emerging such as sorrel, chives, rhubarb and asparagus. We are very busy planting, planting planting. The two big crops this week is asparagus and potatoes, but we are also planting romaine and head lettuce, radishes, cauliflower, broccoli, kales, and some crops that we will plant under row covers.

This is a bit of a nerve wracking time of the year. Will it freeze and take out our peaches? Will it turn cold and everything grow too slowly? Will it turn off hot and some crops bolt on us or get too big too late. So far things are going relatively smoothly, but the weather is always a wild card, particularly this time of the year.

Below are some new features for the CSA this year.

Fruit. Once again the top request in the end of the year survey was for more fruit. Although we increased fruit by 25% last year, we all (including us) want more. We hope to increase the amount of fruit this year by 33%. We plan to double berries, including adding blueberries for the first time. We hope to increase the amount of apples, apricot and necatarines.

Organics. Another important change include switching most CSA production over to organic. I will go into this topic in much more detail in later emails, but here are a couple of thoughts. It was just too much work and too inefficient to do both conventional and organic CSA (just trust me on this). We had to make a decision to go more conventional or more organic. I chose to go more organic for a few reasons (let's not debate this now), but one clear reason was to more clearly differentiate ourselves from other local produce providers. Unfortunately, we cannot grow all 300 plus of our items organically, so we are growing everything we can organically and what we cannot cost effectively (either it is too expensive or we just cannot do it), we grow conventionally.

Pick Up Times and Locations. One of the interesting things that happens by not having two different CSA's, is it means that we do not have to go to each site twice in one week (once for organic and once for conventional), as a result, it allows us to have more locations and gives folks more flexibility in picking things up. Our pick up locations are still Tuesday and Thursdays (we have to do those days for logisticial reasons), we also added a pick up on Wednesday at the Pasco Farmers Market.

We now have the drop sites and pick-up times for the summer CSA starting May 3rd. Tuesdays will have the following drop sites: Farm (2621 Ringold Rd) pickups from 2:00-6:00. Pasco (2921 Rd 52) from 2:30-6:30, E. Kennewick (3205 W. 23rd Ave) from 3:00-6:30, S. Richland (1262 Llandwood Ave) from 4:00-6:30 and PNNL( 2952 George Washington Way). The PNNL drop site in not at a home, it will be under the Hapo sign which is visible from George Washington Way.

Wednesday’s drop site is at the Pasco Farmers Market (4th & Lewis) from 8-12.

Thursday’s drop sites are W. Kennewick (8807 W. Grande Ronde) from 3-6:30, N. Richland (2009 Harris Av) from 4-6:30, W. Richland (610 S. 54th Av) from 4:30-6:30 and Prosser (1126 Meade Av.) from 5-7:00. The Prosser drop site is at a business and members will pick up their boxes through a wrought iron gate leading to a courtyard. Go to schreiberandsons.com for much more information including maps of all pick up site locations.

The Choice Option. Another interesting feature that we are doing this year is you can select an option that allows you to customize your box. There is an $80 fee for this (this works out to $2.85 per week). This feature allows you to go onto our website and select and deselect from your boxes what you want and do not want. For those of you who have strong likes and dislikes, this feature is for you. No more whining about eggplant or begging for melons, you can get what you want (assuming we have it.) For those of you who do not want to pony up another $80, we will continue to have our Trade Box at each drop site, where you can switch out one item from your box for something in the Trade Box.

The Farm Store. Another new feature that we are going to have (it is not up and running until mid to late April) is what we are calling the Farm Store. You will be able to go on to our website and order extra produce. If you liked the asparagus, the mixed greens, the melons or the eggplant and want more, go to our farm store on our website. If we have extra, you can order it and it will come in your next delivery.

The Website. Running the CSA involves a million and one details. It requires an unimginable number of phone calls, emails, letters and the like. We are trying to automate as much as this as possible. While you can still call, email and write us, most of the functions from enrolling, ordering, paying, etc, can now be done online. Check it out.

Members that are new this year should go to our website for additional information and recipes. They will find that now members can talk to us and each other on our Facebook page. We will still offer the same add-on’s as last year: artesian breads, free range eggs, natural beef, and stone ground flour.

Your Farmer

Hello CSAers,

We are only 41 days away from the first delivery of of the 2011 Schreiber & Sons Summer CSA.  The start is Tuesday May 3.  I cannot tell you how excited I am.   We have been planning for this since last year.  Almost every day this winter, Tracy and I, have been doing something getting ready for it.  We incorporated a lot of the feedback recieved from last year's survey into this year.  Once again the top request was for more fruit.  Although we increased fruit by 25% last year, we all (including us) want more.  We recieved a set back with the cold weather on the night of February 28th, but we hope to increase the amount of fruit this year by 25%.  We plan to more than double berries, including adding blueberries for the first time.  We hope to increase the amount of apples, apricot and necatarines.  Other important changes include switching most of production over to organics.  I will go into this topic in much more detail later, but here are a couple of thoughts on this.  It was just too much work and too inefficient to do both conventional and organic CSA (just trust me on this).  We had to make a decision to go more conventional or more organic.  I chose to go more organic for a few reasons (let's not debate this now), but one clear reason was to more clearly differentiate ourselves from other local produce providers.  Unfortunately, we cannot grow all 300 plus of our items organically, so we are growing everything we can organically and what we cannot cost effectively (either it is too expensive or we just cannot do it), we grow conventionally. 

One of the interesting things that happens by not having two different CSA's, it means that we do not have to go to each site twice (once for organic and once for conventional), as a result, it allows us to have more locations and gives folks more flexibility in picking things up.  Our pick up locations are still Tuesday and Thursdays (we have to do those days for logicial reasons), we also added a pick up on Wednesday at the Pasco Farmers Market.  Pick days, times and locations are at the bottom.

 

The Choice Option.  Another interesting feature that we are doing this year is you can select an option that allows you to customize your box.  There is an $80 fee for this (this works out to $2.85 per week).  This feature allows you to go onto our website and select and deselect from your boxes what you want and do not want.  For those of you who have strong likes and dislikes, this feature is for you.  No more whining about eggplant or begging for melons, you can get what you want (assuming we have it.)  For those of you who do not want to pony up another $80, we will continue to have our Trade Box at each drop site, where you can switch out one item from your box for something in the Trade Box.

The Farm Store.  Another new feature that we are going to have (it is not up and running until mid to late April) is what we are calling the Farm Store.  You will be able to go on to our website and order extra produce.  If you liked the asparagus, the mixed greens, the melons or the eggplant and want more, go to our farm store on our website.  If we have extra, you can order it and it will come in your next delivery.  I hope this increases our sales and you get more of the produce you would like.

The Website. Running the CSA involves a million and one details.  It requires an unimginable number of phone calls, emails, letters and the like.  We are trying to automate as much as this as possible.  While you can still call, email and write us, most of the functions from enrolling, ordering, paying, etc, can now be one onlines.  Check it out.

Pick Up Locations.We now have the drop sites and pick-up times for the summer CSA starting May 3rd.

Tuesdays will have the following drop sites:

• Farm (2621 Ringold Rd) pickups from 2:00-6:00
• Pasco (2921 Rd 52) from 2:30-6:3
• E. Kennewick (3205 W. 23rd Ave) from 3:00-6:3
• S. Richland (1262 Llandwood Ave) from 4:00-6:30
• PNNL( 2952 George Washington Way). The PNNL drop site in not at a home, it will be under the Hapo sign which is visible from George Washington Way.

Wednesday’s drop site is at the Pasco Farmers Market (4th & Lewis) from 8-12.

 Thursday’s drop sites are

• W. Kennewick (8807 W. Grande Ronde) from 3-6:30
• N. Richland (2009 Harris Av) from 4-6:30
• W. Richland (610 S. 54th Av) from 4:30-6:30
• Prosser (1126 Meade Av.) from 5-7:00.  The Prosser drop site is at a business and members will pick up their boxes through a wrought iron gate leading to a courtyard.

 

This year we are not doing organic Tuesdays and conventional Thursdays; there will just share that is about 85% organic.  There will still be a small, medium and large size box option. Boxes will be labeled with members names and color coded for each dropsite. Members can choose to customize their boxes for an additional $80. This will ensure that you get more of what you want and less of what you don’t. We also have the new summer brochure which members can download and pass along to others.

Members that are new this year should go to our website for additional information and recipes.  They will find that now members can talk to us and each other on our Facebook page.   We will still offer the same add-on’s as last year: artesian breads, free range eggs, natural beef, and stone ground flour.