Ashley is working her way through the end of summer fruit and said, "Why not go big?!

This week's variation is a crumb top peach and cherry pie with a bourbon infused syrup. Ashley starts by macerating the fruit in a mixture of bourbon and sugar. She then cooks this off to further release the tasty juices then thickens the filling with organic pastry flour and tapioca starch.

The filling is then baked off inside a lard butter crust and topped with a sweet and crunchy oat crumb topping.

LAST CALL for canning tomatoes. Roma tomatoes are great for salsa, sauce, paste and more. We have 50 half bushels available this week (about 22# each) and that will likely be it for the season.

Preorder our half bushel immediately to get some put away for the winter.

This current season goes until the end of October. Immediately following is the Winter Season, which is 3 weeks in a row, then a special Thanksgiving only delivery week, then Winter Week 4 and we skip every other week until spring.

The Winter Season is now open for signup. There was some confusion early on. We had not yet updated the website and it still said Sold Out from last year. That is not true. The 2020-21 Season is not sold out. It is, however, limited to the first 500.

For many of our members Winter Season is a nice "break" from the challenges of dealing with extremely perishable foods in the summer. The winter vegetables include cold hardy crops like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, and lettuce. We also have storage crops like potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, turnips, and rutabaga. And because the bag is every-other-week and larger, we have more budget available to spend on larger cuts of meat and value-added items like cheese and frozen goods.

For us as farmers and producers, it is important to us to plan for just the right number of customers. This helps us determine how much sauerkraut to make; how much grape cider to can; how many tomatoes to process, and the same for corn, beans, and more.

Right now, we are estimating 500 to be a safe number but can re-evaluate that threshhold after the fall harvest all comes in.

For those looking for more info on farming, please follow my Instagram account at instagram.com/wholesomevalleyfarm

One of the things I've learned most in farming is that there is no single right answer. And no single right way to do anything. In fact, everything depends on a variety of factors with one factor being luck.

So this summer I had a spare field that wasn't going to be used for produce. It was getting late to plant it in pasture and it wasn't big enough (or easy enough to get to) to be of value for cash crops like corn or beans.

I knew I had beef and turkeys, both which were going to require a lot of pasture. So I decided to plant it in drought hardy crops like sorghum and buckwheat.

In late June I worked up the soil and by the Independence Day I had the seed packed into the loose soil and waiting on the rains. They came and the seed germinated quickly, beating out any weeds.

Then the summer got really hot and really dry. That's fine, sorghum thrives in that.

By first of September it was 6 feet tall and just setting out the flagleaf. The flagleaf indicates that it's about to go to seed and create a seedhead. I had two choices.

1) Let it go to seed and then let the turkeys into it. I would probably need to knock it down somehow for the turkeys.

2) Graze it now for the beef and hope for some regrowth for the turkeys to peck at in a month.

I chose #2. Why? Mostly because I was nearly out of grass for the beef and the extra week would generate significantly more tonnage on the other pastures following a rain.

Then the lucky part of this whole story. Sorghum-sudan grasses are unique in that they can't be fed immediately after a frost. Sorghum will create a deadly compound called prussic acid (some form of cyanide). The beef eat the plant and the toxins can kill them quite quickly.

I finished grazing this field on Friday. Saturday morning we had a surprise frost. That's the lucky part of farming.

NOTE: EXPECT SUBS OR CHANGES IN BAG CONTENTS. I'm particularly expecting challenges with the tomatoes, eggplant, and corn.

Reminder: Carnivore Share bags are every-other-week based on pick-up location. You will be randomly assigned to a group (A, B, C). Check for the assignment in your last name. By the end of the season, all groups will have received the same amount of all products.

For more recipes, visit our archive at https://freshforkmarket.com/recipes/

Your special order will only be delivered only to your primary location as selected in your profile (see below). Please review this BEFORE placing your order (adjust + save as needed). Please do not email or call to change the location of your special order. It sounds easier said than done. Our software prints a pick list per location for what products we must take along. If we attempt to move it manually there is a high probability that we'll mess it up and no one will be happy.

Please leave the "new" location set in your profile until after you pick up your special order. You will have to log back into your account to change it back to your usual stop BEFORE you place your next order the following week.