Dear CSA members,

Folks who pick at the farm haven't picked up yet.  Remember this is your last pick up.

Yesterday's share should have included:

a pound of kennebec potatoes,
2 pounds of tomatillos
a small bunch of leeks
a large bunch of kale
small to large cucumbers and zucchini

Vancouver shares got a slight half pound of green beans

Farm shares received a slight half pint of tomatoes.

THE LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE.  Diane and Jim were sitting on their front porch the other night, where they've been dining for the last couple months.  Diane sighed in pleasure as she took a bite of her "t-blot" sandwich (turkey-bacon, lettuce, onion and tomato).  Jim replied, "Yes, it's the last of the summer wine."

Over the years we have settled on the second week of October to end our CSA season.  We have found that the summer crops will barely hold on for three weeks after the fall equinox.  At our 45 + degrees north latitude the sun declines quickly after the date of global solar equality.  And so, we, woh have sworn off supermarket hot house tomatoes as not worth the price, say goodbye until next August to the delicious tomato.

A couple nights later, Jim tried out a fall recipe to send you in this e-mail, leek and potato soup.  New recipes take Jim a little longer to prepare so it was after six when he turned on the front porch light pulled on his fall blanket line jean jacket and served the hearty fall soup (we resist giving up dining al fresco).

And so it is fall and the summer share comes to a close, and while we tucked in some potatoes and leeks to ease you into fall, some of you have tomatoes and others have beans, and everyone got lots of tomatillos to hang on to summer one more week.  And so we'll tell you about our leek and potato soup, but also slip in our papas y ejotes recipe, and green enchiladas, in case you want to dine one more time al fresco... under the porch light, and remember...

LEEK AND POTATO SOUP.  Marian Morash's VICTORY GARDEN COOK BOOK recipe makes a vat of soup, so we've roughly halved the recipe.

Melt 2oz. of butter in a sauce pan and saute 2 cups of chopped leeks, a stalk of celery, and a medium onion until soft, but do not brown.  Add 2 cups of chopped potatoes and a quart of water or stock.  Simmer until the potatoes are soft.  Add a cup of cream or milk, pepper to taste and serve.  Morash suggests you may want to add some vegetables, and given this week's share, might we suggest some chopped kale in the last 5-10 minutes of cooking.  The result would be a soup Robert Burns would walk as far his "ayn legs" would carry him to sit down and enjoy.

EJOTES Y PAPAS.  We gleaned this recipe from the California Academy of Culinary Arts - Mexican cook book.  Boil a pound of potatoes, add some green beans in the pot in the last few minutes of cooking.  When potatoes are tender, drain and cool.  Toss in a vinagrette dressing and garnish with cilantro leaves.  For a well marinated salad, refrigerate over night.

ENCHILADAS VERDE SONORAN STYLE (stacked flat).  Clean and boil about a pound to a pound and a half of tomatillos, blend with onions, garlic. mild chiles,  a couple romaine leaves and cilantro to taste.  Place in sauce pan with a cup of stock and simmer until sauce thickens.  In a greased oven proof pan lay a corn tortilla in the bottom of the pan.  ladle a cooking spoon of the sauce on the tortilla, add a spoonful of filling of choice (cheese, chicken, pork, etc), lay another tortilla on top, spoon another spoon of sauce, then filling, and repeat until ingredients are used up.  Pour any remaining sauce over the stack, sprinkle with cheese.

A BURNS HALLOWEEN.  We're hoading the pumpkins for the winter share this year, and Jim felt a little bereft that he didn't have a contribution to CSA member's halloween celebration to send them off with.  And so he turned to his Scottish roots and his favorite poet.  Some of the Vancouver shareholders were thus treated to a silly game of "pull the kale runt (stalk)".

The game is explained in Burns poem, "Halloween".  This poem is a kind of ethnographic account of some of the Halloween traditions of his native Ayrshire.  From the poem, we get the feeling that the Lowland Scots relationship to spirits, was not one filled with frightening ghosts and goblins, but rather one filled with benevolent sprites, fairies and brownies, who could be called upon to fortell your fortune.

And true to the almost adolescent fascination with romance between the sexes that Burns was famous for, his poem discusses the many rituals young folk would invoke in order to predict their romantic future.  First among these is the pulling of the kail runts (kale stalks).  A party of halloween revelers would wander hand in hand out into the kailyard (kitchen garden).  They would close their eyes and the first kale stalk that each came to, they would pull it up out of the ground.  The shape of the plant, whether tall or short, crooked or strait would predict the characteristics of their future mate.  The poem recounts how silly Willy wandered off in to the bow kail (cabbage) and pulled up a stalk that was so crooked it looked like a pigs tail.

The next test was to break open the stalk and taste the pith in the center.  If it was sweet, so would your mate be sweet.  Finally, you took your kail runt home and tacked it up over your door.  The first person who walked through your door would bear the Christian name of your future mate.  If a John walked through a girl's door, her future husband would also be named John.

The poem goes on through several other such hijinks involving props not available here at Hunters' Greens.  To find a copy of the poem and translations of the Scots dialect used, go to www.robertburns.org/works.

COMMENTARY.  As a kale farmer, himself, Jim has been pondering why folks would go out at the end of October and pull up a bunch of kale plants.  He imagines their might be a reason.  In studying anthropology, Jim read some "cultural materialist" authors like Marvin Harris.  Harris was the guy who went out and reasoned that sacred cows in India aren't just sacred for religious reasons, but in the Indian environment it serves a purpose to revere and protect cows.  He reasoned that cows are more valuable as pullers of plows and givers of milk than they are as meat.  The result is that people who keep their cows around, rather than eat them are better adapted to their environment.

So, can we explain why Scottish peasant might pull up a bunch of kale plants at Halloween by a similar reasoning.  Well what about this?  Scotland is at a much higher latitude that we are here in Washington.  Between the beginning and end of October the day shortens from roughly eleven and a half hours to nine hours and fifteen minutes.  In our experience, as days shorten, plants become more susceptible to wet weather diseases like mildew and aphid infestations.  The enemy of these infestations is good air flow.  So pulling up some of your kale plants in October may actually assure a healthier, more productive crop through the winter.   How's that for a bit of arm chair anthropology.

Kale has recently become known as a super food.  Burns often remarked that while the rich laird was dining on mutton, the poor crofter had only kale and leeks and potatoes to eat.  But ah it twas a good life.

Anyone want to come over and pull up some kale plants?

Winter storage share holders give us a call and arrange a time in mid-November to build your share.  Everyone else, we hope to see you in the spring.  Have joyful holidays!

Diane & Jim Hunter, greens@huntersgreens.com
Hunters' Greens CSA, http://huntersgreens.com
Brush Prairie, WA.  (360) 256-3788