Week of August 29th, 2011

In This Week’s Box

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• Cal Red Peaches

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From Farmer Al

Compost at Frog Hollow Farm

Dear CSA Members,

We’re making compost here at the farm for the first time, and you, our CSA members can help us. We need ingredients like coffee grounds, which are high in nitrogen. These will be mixed with our fruit waste, which is high in sugars, and shredded branches from our orchard operations, which will provide the carbon component of the pile. We’re hoping to create a compost which is biologically active with both fungal and bacterial microbes.

Guiding us in this process is Christophe Kreis, a molecular biologist living in San Francisco, and his wife Monique La Fleur, a bacteriologist. They’ve recently trained under Elaine Ingham, at the University of Oregon, who has been conducting ground-breaking studies in soil microbes and can be found online at solifoodweb.com.

We’ll have lots more details for you as our with Christophe and Monique progresses……Meanwhile, we hope you’ll consider joining us in our quest to enliven the fertility of our most basic resource–soil.

Gather coffee grounds for us– We’ll work to create a way to get them from your CSA site to our farm, or if you have a LOT of grounds, we can arrange a pick-up at your home.

Blog Roll-
We have so many talented members of the Happy Child CSA! Food bloggers, writers, and eating enthusiast all enjoy the CSA and have an active presence online. Follow us on twitter at @froghollowcsa.com and find other members like yourself, and look out for more posts on Faceboo k. Our blog has links to some of the talented members we have.

We’re planning an event this fall for our CSA members and Frog Hollow Friends. We want to thank you for your support this season and will invite you to visit the orchard and meet Farmer Al, as well as the staff who supports the CSA! Stay tuned for more info and specific details here in the news letter. Hint: There MIGHT be Olive Oil or Pears involved!

Veggie Boxes– Farmer Sean at Terra Bella promises to keep sending tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers for the veggie boxes– we aren’t always warned in advance just what’s in the box, but count on these staples from their warm Pleasanton climate in these hot months of August and September.

Cherish the flavor of the season! Hopefully you will relish in the abundance of peaches in this weeks box! This peach, the Cal Red, is one of our signature peaches, and we’ll be sharing peach recipes online all week. I made a small batch of jam last Thursday, 2 jars of which got eaten by Monday! Freeze the fruit you can’t eat or share with a friend. We’ll miss them in January, I predict! Storage tip- I have found in warmer weather, storing in the fridge extends the life of the fruit significantly.

Tuesday Members– due to next week’s Labor Day Holiday, your deliveries will be made slightly later in the day than normal in order to prepare and pack your boxes on Tuesday morning, 9/6/2011.