Looking for a sustainable gift to give this holiday season?
 Ploughshare Farm has several, great options:

1. The "Gift Share" includes a gift certificate for a 2012 Mini Share, the MACSAC cookbook, two heads of garlic, a bottle of balsamic vinegar and a bottle of organic olive oil. 
For more information click here.
2. Gift Certificates for $25, $50, or $100 off one of our shares are also available for purchase.
3. Are you looking for a way to give back during the holiday season? Or maybe you can't figure out what to give someone who has everything? Make a $50 or $100 donation to Harvest for the Hungry in the name of someone you care about and help us deliver fresh, nutritious, organic food to the tables of hungry families who often cannot afford the luxury of fresh, locally-grown produce.

Thanks and have a wondeful holiday season!

Gary Brever 

2011 Ploughshare Farm CSA Members:

Drop Sites Changes:
Our plan is to maintain most of our current dropsite locations next year. If there is a specific new dropsite you'd like to request, we will consider it as long as it has at least 15 members and is on or near our current route. Don't have 15 members yet, consider recruiting some friends and neighbors to build your own site. The only drop site that we may possibly eliminating or moving is our Augsburg College Site.  You may still sign up for it though and we will try to find an option for 2012.


Sincerely,
Gary Brever

PS: If you wish to no longer receive updates from Ploughshare Farm please click here.

We are currently looking for individuals with experience growing vegetables on an organic farm.  Please email your resume to gjbrever@midwestinfo.net

Storage shares string.

Storage Tips for Winter Vegetables

Storage Tips

Adapted from Richard Harrison, How to Store Vegetables in a Typical Suburban Home

FIRST, identify the areas in your house that do not freeze and may be suitable for storing vegetables.

Refrigerator, 40 degrees, 30-40% humidity

Carrots, celeriac, beets, apples, pears, kale, bok choi, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, turnip, rutabaga

Unheated entrance or attic or spare room, 40-50 degrees, 10-30% humidity

Winter squashes such as butternut, delicata, acorn squash, onions, garlic

Cellar, cool damp corner, 33-50 degrees, 30-50% humidity

Potatoes, sweet potatoes

SECOND, prepare the vegetables for storing. Each vegetable will be discussed below under its storage area. Before discussing each vegetable observe the following rules of thumb when storing vegetables.

*Never wash a vegetable that you are preparing for storage. Washing shortens storage life, sometimes by months.

*When storing in a plastic bag in the refrigerator make sure that you remove as much air from the bag as possible before storing.

Refrigerator

Beets

Cut the tops off. If the tops are in good shape wash them and cook them. Yum. Don’t wash the beets. Store them in a plastic bag in the back of the refrigerator. The tops where you cut off the greens might be a little rotty. Not to worry. When you peel them the insides will be great. Inside that plastic bag beets in the back of the fridge will keep for months.

Brussels sprouts

We usually cut the little sprouts off the stem and store them in a plastic bag in the back of the fridge like the carrots. They will keep for at least a couple of months. They will usually keep for up to six weeks.

Carrots

Store in a plastic bag in the back of the refrigerator. Carrots will keep for months this way. After being stored a long time there may be a white root substance on the carrot. Not to worry. Just peal it off. As long as the carrots are bright orange underneath they will taste wonderful. Organic carrots actually gain sweetness when stored.

Cabbage

Store cabbage in a plastic bag. When you take it out some of the outside leaves may look mildewed but not to worry. Simply strip off the outside leaves and the inside is as good as new. Cabbage will keep this way in the back of the fridge often for three months.

Celeriac

Tops will probably be off. Store like carrots. If any part is a bit rotty when you take it out merely cut it off. Chances are the rest is just fine.

Collard Greens, Kale

These are not long keepers. Best to eat them within two or three weeks of the delivery. Immerse in cold water, wrap in a cloth dish towel, and place in your fridge.

Turnips, Rutabaga

Store like carrots.

Unheated Entrance, Attic Space or Unheated Spare Room

Make sure that this area doesn't freeze. For example, a bulkhead might freeze.

The rule of thumb that I use for vegetables stored in this category are as follows:

*Store items one level deep on trays, preferably open at the bottom for air circulation. I often use the black trays that you get at garden centers when you buy plants. Great recycled item.

*With squash don't let the items touch each other

*Make sure that some ventilation is feasible. For example store trays on a rack with some circulation

*Keep the area dark. This is particularly important for garlic and onions that will begin to sprout if exposed to light

*Inspect all items when taking something from storage. If there are signs of spoilage, noted below, use the item as soon as possible

*Always store the best specimens the longest. Use broken stem squash first.

Butternut squash

Has the longest storage life of any squash. It will sometimes last the whole winter if the storage location is cold and dry enough. If you see any spots developing use as soon as possible. Spots develop into rotty areas and eventually the whole core will rot, and the squash will be unusable. If you need to fix too much squash because it is spoiling simply cut up a whole bunch, steam it, and freeze the pieces for consumption later in the winter.

Delicata squash

Delicata does not store well. Use this squash within six weeks of the delivery. If delicata is starting to go it will probably be too late to salvage anything. It is too small a squash to recover rot.

Onions

The length of time that onions will store is highly dependent on the variety – the onions in the multi-farm winter share are storage onions and should last several months, especially if stored in a dark, cool area. When onions start to sprout they gradually become unusable. If you see an onion sprouting use it as soon as possible. If onions become soft they are rotten and should be removed from storage.

Cellar in a cool damp corner

The rules of thumb for the cellar storage are:

*Store items one level deep on trays as above.

*Some ventilation is helpful.

*Keep the area dark. This is particularly important for potatoes that will begin to sprout if exposed to light

*Inspect all items when taking something from storage. If there are signs of spoilage, noted below, use the item as soon as possible

*Always store the best specimens the longest.

Potatoes

Potatoes will usually store 2-3 months. Potatoes specifically noted as a storage variety will often do better. If possible store on flat trays. The benefit is the avoidance of the "bad apple" syndrome, and one can inspect all the potatoes as you use them up permitting you to take ones that are beginning to sprout. A soft potato usually means that it is rotten, but cut it up to make sure.

Storing Fall Vegetables

from Emily HoisingtonWe have enjoyed stocking up on winter vegetables from Ploughshare Farm for a few years now. Each year we've learned from what worked and didn't work the year before. Here's what we've learned works best for us as far as storing winter vegetables. We've gotten some ideas from these books: "Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning" by the gardeners and farmers of Terre Vivante, "Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables" by Mike and Nancy Bubel, and "Four Season Harvest" by Eliot Coleman.

We have an unheated room in our basement that we've converted to a root cellar. We added a vent to an unheated porch that we open in the fall to let in cool air and then close and stuff with insulation to keep from freezing in the winter, and we store the food on metal shelving. Potatoes hang from the shelves in their net bags. Carrots, beets, and other vegetables are packed in slightly damp sand in plastic buckets. We learned that if the sand is too damp they will get a black mold that turns them to mush by the end of the winter, but if it is too dry they will shrivel up. We've gotten the feel for the correct dampness now and keep our root vegetables until early spring. We also learned that 1 or 2 gallon size buckets work best. We tried packing our carrots in sand in large rubbermaid tubs, but they were too heavy to move and too much sand to dig through for carrots. The buckets are the right size that we can just bring one up to the kitchen at a time.

Cabbages and leeks don't keep as long as the root vegetables, but still surprisingly long, maybe a couple of months in the fridge or root cellar. Cabbages whose outer leaves are dried are still good inside.

We keep a thermometer and humidity meter in the root cellar and we know from watching the temperature that it is pretty much a walk-in fridge. We even used it as an easy place to defrost a turkey that didn't fit in the fridge.

Any kale we don't eat right away is easy to freeze or dehydrate. Dehydrated kale is simple to use, we just add it to soups at the end of cooking time, or soak in boiling water and then scramble with eggs.

Onions and winter squash like a slightly warmer, drier place than the root cellar, so we simply keep these in another area of our basement. The onions hang from metal shelves in their net bags, and the winter squash is placed on the shelves with space between them for air circulation. The key to keeping winter squash is to check them all periodically (For example, when going downstairs to do laundry) and if any of them have a soft spot to bring that one up to the kitchen to use. I just cut out and compost the soft spot and then cook the rest.

Along with a few pickled, canned, frozen, and dehydrated things, our root cellar feeds us through the whole winter. It's not until March or April that we begin to buy a few fresh things from the grocery store to help us wait until the first locally grown asparagus and greens come in. We eat a lot of meals of oven-roasted vegetables, raw grated carrot or beet salad, mashed root vegetables, a variety of soups, and filled dumplings such as pork and cabbage or potato and cheese.

Happy winter eating!

Emily Hoisington