“When you find your place where you are, practice occurs.”
- Dogen, from “Practice of the Wind” by Gary Snyder

What’s in the box this week: (content differences between Family and Small Shares are underlined and italicized; items with a “+” in Family Shares are more in quantity than in Small)

Family Share:
Strawberries (1 bskt)
"Holey" arugula +
Red beets
Carrots
Cooking greens (chard, kale or collards)
Cucumbers
Green beans +
Mustard greens (red/green, bunched)
Green onions
Peppers
Potatoes
Radishes
Tomatoes (heirloom and early girl)

Small Share:
Strawberries (maybe)
"Holey" arugula
Broccoli
Carrots
Green beans
Mustard greens (red/green, bunched)
Green onions
Peppers
Potatoes
Radishes
Summer squash
Tomatoes (heirloom and early girl)

Extra Fruit Option:
Strawberries, raspberries or blackberries, cherry tomatoes

CALENDAR

Sat. Sept. 23
Fall Equinox Celebration
3pm until dark

Sat. Sept. 30
Seed-saving Workshop
10am - 12:30pm

Sat. Oct 21
Halloween Pumpkin Pallooza

Nov. 15/16
Last shares of the season!

Magic Slice of Pizza. There is a rhythm to every season, and over time I notice my own rhythms mimic those of our farm. During this weekend’s Mini Camp my son David and I slept outside next to the fire for two nights and it was the first time I sensed that summer’s bursting energy has slowed and shorter, cooler days are just around the corner. Camping and sharing a weekend with 10 families slows me down just enough to enter into a more playful relationship with the land and reminds me that farming is not just about managing a business where we produce food to make a profit. Over the years it has become a Mini Camp tradition on the last evening to make pizzas with ingredients gathered throughout the day. After a full day of activities, everybody has developed a good appetite. As the hot pizzas come sliding out of Toastie's belly (our wood-fired oven) and we all indulge on our harvested delicacies, I realize that farms are unique, where linking people, the soil, the microbes, the food, and the animals create a little slice of magic in a hot pizza slice the children just made.

If you’d like to get a Winter Share, sign up soon as we will only be offering 200 of them this year (and about 50 egg shares), and they’ll be going out on a first come, first served basis. We’d like to get all our Winter Share signups in and confirmed by the end of September, as in October we will begin taking early registrations for 2007 (Winter Shares and 2007 Shares are completely separate, and must be signed up for separately.) I made you all a nice web page with all the details plus a form for you to use to sign up, but because our Winter Shares are being made available exclusively to our existing members (not the general public), you won’t see it if you just go looking for it on our website. You have to hand-type the web address into your browser (or click on the link here): www.liveearthfarm.net/WinterShare.html (note the capitalization; if you do it all lower case, it won’t work. You need to type it in exactly as shown). Anyway, I’ve been working on this webpage all day and it covers everything you need to know, so I hope you all will go give it a look-see before you call me with questions! ;-) But meanwhile, let me summarize the high points for you:

• We’re trying to keep this simple, so there will be only one share size, and no fruit outside the box (there’ll be fruit, but it’ll be inside the box). Some weeks the shares will be bigger than others, depending on how long you have to go between shares (see next item), but everybody will get the same thing.

• The shares will not be every week, but as follows: 3 weeks in a row between Thanksgiving and Christmas, then off for the 3 weeks encompassing Christmas and New Year’s, then starting the second week of January there will be a share every other week through the first week of March. A total of 8 shares. Exact dates are listed on the Winter Share webpage.

• We are limiting the pick-up locations to 8 of our bigger, more centrally located sites in Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties (you don’t have to have been picking up at one of these locations already to get a winter share there. Pick any one you want.): Watsonville (i.e. here at the farm), East Santa Cruz (site to be named), West Santa Cruz/Baldwin, Scotts Valley/Skypark, Los Gatos/University Ave., Willow Glen/Chabrant, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. If none of these are that close to you but you’d really like to get a winter share, consider hooking up with other like-minded members and take turns picking up shares for your group! Save gas, save the wear and tear on the environment! (I did this several years ago when a few of us from San Jose got a winter share from Full Belly CSA. The closest pick-up was Mountain View, but since we each only made the trip once a month, it was no big deal.)

• All deliveries will be on Wednesdays (this only matters to Santa Clara County people who are used to picking up on Thursdays).

Cost: $200 for the 8-week share, $45 for the eggs (a dozen/week for 8 weeks).

Notes from Debbie’s Kitchen . . . . . . . . Have a recipe you’d like to share? Contact Debbie.
I had a special request to re-run a story on radishes from 4 years ago. Member Joy Hagen said, “When we next get lots of radishes, you should remind everyone that radish sandwiches are wonderful. A few years ago, we were introduced to radish sandwiches through your newsletter and have been die-hard fans ever since. In fact, I often just prepare an open-face sandwich bar with all the beautiful veggies that come from Live Earth.” How can I turn down a request like that? I, too, became a total convert. Here’s the story. - Debbie

Radish Sandwiches
from member Ron Willams of San Jose (2002)

The short version:
Good radishes with plenty of flavor but not too hot make great sandwiches. The other requirements are real French bread and sweet unsalted butter. Just slice the radishes and pile them on the buttered bread. You can sprinkle some salt on the radishes, but the unsalted butter still seems better than salted butter. A slice of cheese can also be added, or the bread can simply be "buttered" with goat cheese. This is an old favorite in rural France. Try it.

The long version:
In 1953-54 when I was 15, my two brothers, baby sister, and parents spent 10 months driving around Europe in a Studebaker which we had hauled across the Atlantic with us aboard the French liner Liberte. Our luggage was piled high on a roof rack. It would have been too expensive to eat lunches at restaurants so we usually picnicked. Each morning wherever we were, we would make the rounds at the local shops gathering bread, cheese, sausages, and fruit. One time in France we had stopped at a greengrocer for some melons and asked the grocer where to find the charcuterie to get meat for sandwiches. He said we didn't need meat because his fresh radishes would make the best sandwiches. Dad was willing to try it, so that is what we did. I've enjoyed radish sandwiches ever since, and over the years I have seen them mentioned several times in travel magazines as a staple in rural France.

Since we’re traveling down memory lane, here’s another favorite of mine. This was run in the newsletter back in 1999!

Scout Salad
Our dear friends in Austin, Texas had a cocker spaniel named Scout who (they discovered) loved to sneak into their back garden and chow down on cherry tomatoes when they weren't looking. One evening after a summer thunderstorm, we all joined Scout in the garden and plucked rainwashed tomatoes off the vine, picked some fresh arugula that was growing nearby, then combined and devoured them on the spot. Ever since that day, we have always dubbed any combination of arugula and tomatoes "Scout Salad." My favorite version is arugula, tomato, and feta. The salty cheese, the peppery green and the sweet tomato are perfect together. For a group feed, arrange the arugula leaves, tomato wedges (or cherry tomatoes), & cubes of feta on a plate and let people assemble their own!

Tattooed potatoes
edited from SJ Mercury News clipping. Original recipe was from "Olive Oil," a book by Peggy "Knickerbocker

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Pour 1/3 to ½ C olive oil into a glass baking dish. Add salt and pepper. Press a fresh rosemary or parsley sprig into the cut side of each of a bunch of potatoes and place cut side down in the oil. Bake until potatoes are nicely browned and tender when pierced with a skewer, about 30 to 40 minutes. While cooking, use a spatula to gently move them once or twice to keep them from sticking. Serve potatoes face up on a platter so everyone can see the tattoos!

*Click Here* for a link to a comprehensive listing of recipes from Live Earth Farm's newsletters going back as far as our 1998 season! You can search for recipes by key ingredient. Recipe site is updated weekly during the season.