This was our final pick-up of the year. We received 1 butternut squash, 1 bag of red onions, 2 beefsteak tomatoes (not quite ripe), 1 basket of red-skinned potatoes, 1 bag of sweet potatoes, 1 head of broccoli, 1 basket of beets, and 1 bowl of kale (not pictured here… aside from the leaf or two that G. and J. ate on the spot, we fed the rest as a farewell-’til-next-year meal to the sheep and goats).

I think the color of these vegetables really shows how the growing season has wound down. They are dull, and look ready to hunker down for a long winter. I was thrilled to get the patch of green from the broccoli, though. I will continue cooking several beets each week, and keeping them in the fridge to add to salads. Otherwise, roasting is the thing: squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and yes even the broccoli.

I’m thinking of trying to make Onion Jam with the pounds of onions we have from the past several weeks. It would be a great make-ahead side dish (condiment?) for Thanksgiving.

Arugula is not my favorite green, but I do aim to eat everything I get from my farm share. There is almost always a preparation that makes a ho-hum vegetable into something closer to palatable. Several readers told me they love arugula raw in a salad, but that route is not for me. Since I also had a lot of potatoes from my CSA, I thought this light potato salad — Potato Salad with Yogurt, Arugula, and Dill — would be a good accompaniment to a dinner of soup.

J. doesn’t like mayo, so I adjusted the recipe by using a 6 oz. contained of non-fat Greek yogurt plus 2 Tbsp. of apple cider vinegar to thin it out and add some acid. I also used green onions instead of shallots. The combination of yogurt and dill screams “tzatziki!” to me, so I think this side dish would be a nice addition to a Greek-flavored chicken (lots of oregano and lemon) or just to round out a meal of a Greek salad.

The flavor is surprising, because your brain expects mayo when you see a creamy potato salad. But the taste is far from that traditional dish; it’s very springy and light, and super-tangy. We liked it well enough to finish leftovers, but it is probably not a dish I’d repeat. Still, if you like dill and yogurt, you’ll probably like this easy, fat-free dish.

This is our penultimate share of the season. We received 1 butternut squash, 1 big bag of onions, 1 small bag of sweet potatoes, 1 basket of white potatoes, 1 small head of broccoli, 1 bunch of broccoli rabe, 1 small head of arugula (not pictured here, because we fed it to the goats!), 1 quart of beets, and 1 quart of beefsteak tomatoes.

We also received the second half of our beef share, which included 2 packages of ground beef, 1 rib steak, 1 sirloin steak, and a big soup bone:

This was our first year trying out a beef share, and I was very happy with it. I like the idea of getting meat from well-treated cows on the same farm from which we get our vegetables. We paid $115 up front for 18-20 lbs. of humanely-raised, grass fed beef over what should have been four deliveries (but wound up being three), so it was never overwhelming.

J. and I are looking forward to making a huge pot of onion soup. We’ll make a beef broth with with the soup bone, and then try to make a huge dent in our supply of onions. With today’s rainy weather and forecast of flurries, a big vat of soup sounds like just what we need.

Last week I missed our pick-up completely. It was an unusually busy afternoon, and by the time I realized I wasn’t going to be able to get over to the pick-up site, it was too late to ask someone to get our share for me. I was bummed, but I suppose missing just one week out of the season is not too bad a record.

This week, Roxbury Farm let us know that the season would need to end a few weeks early; a result of Irene’s wrath:

The farm season is drawing to a close much more quickly than most years. At this point in the season our barn, cooler, and greenhouse are usually full of produce stored for winter deliveries. Not so this year. This means that the week of Oct. 31-Nov. 4 will be our last week of deliveries for the 2011 season. The last three deliveries are cancelled. We are sorry to do so but we lost the 50,000-60,000 lbs of produce we would need for those shares. To make any deliveries at all, we are using the winter share vegetables as supplement which results in a rather unusual choice of vegetables in your share.

I think Roxbury made a lot of smart decisions about how to handle the effects of that storm. Although the make up of the share has been different than in previous years, I still feel we’ve received substantial amounts of produce each week. The beets have been plentiful and super-sweet; and due to a late frost we’re still getting tomatoes.

This week we received a bag of onions, 1 butternut squash, a bag of sweet potatoes, “as much as you want” beets without greens, 1 quart of white potatoes, 4 beefsteak tomatoes, 1 bunch of turnips with greens, 1 bowl of arugula, and 1 bowl of mustard greens.

Neither J. nor I are big fans or arugula, so if you have suggestions on how to use it I’m open to them. I usually make Pasta with Lentils, Tomatoes, & Arugula but I’m a little tired of that recipe and we haven’t been eating as much pasta as we once did. Ditto on the mustard greens. Help me out?

Today we received 5 plum tomatoes, 2 Carmen peppers, 2 carnival squash (ack! I only took one!), 4 beefsteak tomatoes, 1 basket of beets, 1 bowl of salad mix, 1 bulb of garlic, 3 onions, and 1 bunch of radishes.

I was really excited to see the radishes, which I think of as a spring crop. The goats were equally jazzed for the radish greens; even the shy white goat that rarely comes over for a snack nibbled on a few. The plum tomatoes haven’t been very tasty, but I have saucy plans for them (Linguine with Chicken Thighs) in which they’ll be just fine. The carnival squash is just like an acorn squash. And at the rate we’ve been getting these beautiful beets, I’ll be able to make a huge batch of them for Thanksgiving.

However, we had some good news from our farm: a large island of vegetables in the middle of an otherwise flooded field (from Irene) was cleared by a Cornell Cooperative Extension agent for harvesting, since they had remained uncontaminated by flood waters. The produce in that island includes cilantro, greens, arugula, salad mix, and head lettuce which will now reappear in our share.

We received 3 onions, 1 bulb of garlic, 3 huge beefsteak tomatoes, 6 plum tomatoes, 1 bowl of beets (no greens), a small bowl of salad mix, a small bowl of arugula, 1 bunch of chards, a small handful of cilantro, and 1 basket of green beans.

These beets are huge! I boiled half of them so we could use them in salads, and then wound up giving a couple to my mom to take home. Thankfully, both J. and I like beets a lot, because we’re going to be eating them for a while. The chard was absolutely gorgeous, and I’d planned on sauteing it, but J. has been adding it to his smoothies instead. J. also blended the cilantro into a vinaigrette that we used on Rosh Hashana, which made a beautiful light green dressing for a tomato and sweet corn salad.

On Wednesday we received 1 quart of small potatoes, 1 bulb of garlic, 4 onions, 2 acorn squash, 1 bunch of beets, 4 beefsteak tomatoes, 1 jalapeño pepper, 1 bell pepper, and 1 pint of small tomatoes.

J. made a huge salad this weekend that was mostly grocery-store produce, so that’s where we’re at with the share now — aside from the tomatoes, it feels like fall. I still have a small eggplant from last week to use up, and right now I have a pot of water on the stove to boil the beets for a salad. I’m roasting poblano peppers from last week, the bell pepper, and 1 leftover Carmen together and may combine them with the eggplant as a vegetable side dish. The potatoes from last week and this week are headed to our first Rosh Hashanah dinner, as Crispy Smashed Roasted Potatoes (I made them for Passover and they were a big hit). I’m also going to be using the acorn squash for Rosh Hashanah, with a maple-bourbon topping.

Although I like this season’s vegetables — squash, potatoes, and so on — I do miss the wash and eat easiness of summer crops. As the season gets cooler, more and more of our produce needs to be cooked before eating. I like the idea of “processing” my share all at once: doing a couple of hours of prep and cooking to get everything ready for use in the week ahead.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how hard hit Roxbury Farm, my CSA, was by Irene. So you may be wondering how they’re still providing us with a pretty decent share each week, while whole fields of crops were lost. First, you’ll notice there are no greens left in the share — no lettuces, no kale, no herbs, etc. And, the farm decided to eliminate their separate winter share option — for an extra $100, you could order a substantial amount of storage vegetables such as potatoes, turnips, and so on. Roxbury refunded the money members paid for a winter share, and are instead divvying up those allotted vegetables as part of the 2011 regular share instead. They’re hoping to make up for the shortfall of expected produce by reallocating the vegetables that did weather the storm in this way.

So, this week we received 1 quart of beefsteak tomatoes (small ones), a basket of potatoes, 2 jalapenos, 1 pint of Ping Pong tomatoes, 1 acorn squash, 1 eggplant, 4 Carmen peppers, 2 poblano peppers, 1 bag of carrots, and 3 onions.

We’ve been enjoying eating the Carmen peppers raw — they’re very sweet and perfect for snacking. I made last week’s potatoes into Oven-Baked Potato Chips, and may try that again with a flavor variation. We didn’t get through all of last week’s tomatoes yet, and now we have another large batch, so I am planning to make Smitten Kitchen’s Slow-Roasted Tomatoes today. I think J. will love them.

On this rainy Wednesday, we received 1 quart of beefsteak tomatoes, 4 Carmen peppers, 1 bulb of garlic, 2 jalapeno peppers, 5 medium potatoes, 1 quart Ping Pong tomatoes, 1 eggplant, 3 onions, 1 bunch of huge beets with greens, and 1 green pepper.

I already planned to make Eggplant Pasta Sauce tomorrow night, knowing that I’d be getting at least one eggplant and lots of tomatoes from this week’s share. That single recipe will use up a lot of the vegetables we got today.

I am stumped on what to do with the potatoes. I don’t cook with them often, even though I do like them a lot. I can’t think of any way I can prepare them that would entice the boys, short of cutting them into shoestrings and deep frying them (and I’m not doing that). Baking them and offering shredded mozzarella to sprinkle on top might be the best chance I have at getting them to try one. How do your kids like their potatoes?

My CSA, Roxbury Farm, was hit hard by Irene. In this week’s newsletter, the farmer wrote eloquently about what he and his team had done to prepare for the storm, and what he witnessed after:

Driving over to the farm I noticed that the road was littered with branches and leaves leaving evidence of tropical storm wind force. I drove down the hill to confirm my worst fear; the creek had almost reached its 2009 flood levels. Parts of the field had turned into a lake again. I stood there, speechless, developing a pit in my stomach as I mourned for all our lost labor and the loss of massive amounts of food as it was now standing under a few feet of water. I drove over to the closed bridge at Kinderhook to be close to the culprit of our misery. I walked through the barricades and leaned over the railing. Massive amounts of water surged down the Kinderhook creek. Water, our first and basic need for life on this planet, proved an old rule; too much of anything can be fatal.

If you click on the link to the newsletter above, you can see photos of some of the devastation. Fields of mature crops were underwater, and now they cannot be harvested because of fears of contamination from the flood. Other parts of the farm became islands, unreachable by tractor. On a personal level, I’m sad we’ll be receiving fewer vegetables for the rest of this season. But I’m even more unsettled by this additional evidence of how at the mercy of nature we are. As I write this, four days after Irene came and went, I still have friends without power in my own village, not to mentioned those in New Jersey and Connecticut. Relatives in Vermont had a massive flood in their home. A huge sinkhole developed in a main road in my village, and they had to close the road indefinitely, which will impact the way we move around town for months to come. The reminders of the wrath of this storm will be here for a long time.

Weather aside, we still received 1 eggplant, 1 bunch of beets with greens, 1 onion, 1 bulb of garlic, 1 quart of beefsteak tomatoes, 5 Carmen peppers, 1 pint of Juliet tomatoes, 2 other tomatoes, and 1 delicata squash. The delicata, which Roxbury distributed early this year, has reminded me of Rosh Hashanah ever since I made Maple-Glazed Delicata Squash Rings for the holiday a few years ago. At this point in the summer I am so eager to get back to the routine of the school year! Thinking about the holidays is a big step in that direction.