CSA #22

Dear CSA-ers,
This week’s preassembled bag will contain radishes, romaine, arugula, icebox melons, cherry tomatoes, oregano, and garlic. Custom orders may be placed between now and Tuesday evening on the website at https://magneyfarm.locallygrown.net/market

The warm dry air and incessant wail of cicadas tell us that it is late summer here on the Magney Farm. Yet crisp mornings and the spicy fragrance of autumn asters in the air betray that Fall is just around the corner. September is what we call a “shoulder season,” the intersection point of two distinctly different seasons where the weather can go either way.
Historically, shoulder seasons have been our most difficult times for production. Summer vegetables are beginning to wind down, suffering from shorter day lengths and becoming erratic in their production. Autumn vegetables have yet to mature and struggle to get established while enduring the onslaught of high temperatures and peak pest insect populations. For this reason it is sometimes hard to put together CSAs during these shoulder seasons (if you were wondering, May is the equivalent shoulder season during Spring). Nevertheless, we are in a better position than we have ever been to face this time of year, thanks largely to a strong set of root crops.
The featured vegetable this week is garden arugula, known in Europe as “roquette” or “rocket.” Arugula can be eaten as salad or cooked as a green. Its flavor is tart and peppery, and it is particularly rich in Vitamin K and the mineral Calcium. This is the earliest we’ve dared to try a rotation of garden arugula, and likewise, this round will show some insect damage. Its flavor is nonetheless excellent and it will be double washed at the time when it gets to your door. Sometimes cosmetic imperfection of vegetables is the trade off for growing them organically. We hope that you understand and will enjoy this most piquant green.
As always, we thank you for your enduring support of our farm. Your support makes possible our growth as both a business and a part of your community. We invite you to connect with us and share your recipes, input, and creations. We can be tagged on facebook with “@Magney Legacy Ridge Farm” if you’ve liked and followed our page. Best to you and those you hold dear in this coming week!

Sincerely,
The Magney Legacy Ridge Farm Team

CSA #21

Dear CSA-ers,

This week’s preassembled bag will contain Malabar Spinach, Muir Head Lettuce, Mixed Hot Peppers, Mixed Eggplant, Icebox Watermelons, Opal and Genovese Basil. Custom orders may be placed between now and Tuesday evening on the website at: http://magneyfarm.locallygrown.net/market

It’s amazing how quickly the summer has clipped by. It seems like just yesterday we were talking about needing more shade cloth and then suddenly we are more concerned about Fall crops getting sunlight hours. Nonetheless, the cool weather is quite welcome. It bodes well for our brassica family vegetables like Cauliflower, Kale, and Broccoli. We should also be able to finish with strong bloom sets on our tomatoes. On that note, we’d like to apologize to anyone who was expecting fresh tomatoes in the preassembled bag last week, but instead received sundried ones we prepared during a time of more abundance. Predicting weekly vegetable yields is extraordinarily challenging. As we grow and learn as a farm, we hope to get better at this.
The waning days of summer are a bittersweet time. Eric has been working on a carpentry job at the University of Kentucky Research Farm in Princeton and Hannah has returned to Lexington to finish her Sustainable Agriculture degree at the University of Kentucky proper. Though we are happy for them both, their presence on the farm will certainly be missed. Angela, Caroline, and Patrick will have to take over their responsibilities for the time being, but this is just the way of things.
This week, our featured vegetable (or more properly fruit) is icebox watermelon! We are so excited to have succeeded with an organic watermelon crop. This was an extraordinarily challenging grow, requiring a great deal of space, timing, and maybe even some luck. The melons themselves are softball sized, but quite ripe and delicious. Watermelon has significant amounts of Vitamins A, B6, & C as well as the electrolyte mineral Potassium. Mostly though, it is fun and delicious. Our watermelons do contain seeds, which seems to be increasingly rare in store bought melons. We hope these bring you as much joy as they have brought us here on the farm.

As always, we thank you for your support as we learn and grow as a farm. We are striving to always be bringing you, our customers and community, a better CSA experience. If you have any input, recipes, or just want to reach out, please do. We love hearing from you!

Sincerely,
The Magney Legacy Ridge Farm Team

CSA #20

Dear CSA-ers,

This week’s preassembled bag will include Baby Beets with tops, Lovelock Head Lettuce, Spring Mix, Casper White Eggplant, Mixed Tomatoes, Baby Bell Peppers, and Oregano. Custom orders may be placed between now and Tuesday evening on the website at: http://magneyfarm.locallygrown.net/market

As the August heat drags on and the summer rains have abruptly ended, it’s never been a better time to have the water lines up and running again. We thank Ray Magney and his heroic effort, fighting mud, and at times dark, to get the system fully functioning. We cross our fingers for no further issues, and thus far have been able to irrigate (and use water in the house) all week. Consistent irrigation is of particular importance to our summer lettuces and germinating the late rotation of fall carrot seeds. If soil moisture for either of these crops drops below a certain point, they will fail. This has definitely been an important fix.
We’ve struggled with missing some of our team members this week. You never fully appreciate what people do until they’re not around to do it. This is beginning to place us a bit behind with Fall planting, but the transplant seedlings are looking strong, and we seem to have good establishment on our direct seed crops. Hopefully favorable conditions in the coming weeks will give us a chance to catch up. Everything in agriculture is timing, it is keeping time to a rhythm of rhythms.
This week’s featured vegetable is the beet. Beets are in the “amaranth” family, being most closely related to Swiss Chard and Spinach. The beet originates from Southern Europe and the Mediterranean region although it is featured most prominently in Eastern European cuisine. Beets are rich in folate and manganese and may help lower blood pressure. We grow many different types of beets, though the majority of this week’s share will be a traditional red variety called “Rhonda.” All parts of the beet are edible, including the tops which can be treated like Swiss Chard. A simple preparation for baby beets to cut the tops and bottom of the root off, boil them until they fork tender, then cool, peel, slice, and serve them on salad. In Detroit, boiled baby beets are a standard addition to most Greek Salads.
As always, we thank you for your support of our business. If you have great recipe ideas, or a dish made with our vegetables that turned out well, please tag us @magneylegacyridgefarm. We love hearing from our customers, and we look forward to bringing you more healthy local produce in the future.

Sincerely,
The Magney Legacy Ridge Farm Team

This week’s recipe: Ratatouille!
Ingredients:
2 zucchinis
2 yellow squash
2 small eggplants
3 slicer tomatoes
1 (26-ounce) jar of tomato basil pasta sauce
3 bell peppers
2 tablespoons fresh oregano
2 tablespoons fresh parsley
2 teaspoons fresh thyme
2 tablespoons fresh basil (about 7-9 leaves)
1 teaspoon of minced garlic
Salt and pepper, to taste
4 tablespoons of olive oil
Directions:
Step 1: Prepare your veggies. Slice your zucchini into thin coins and repeat for each vegetable. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
Step 2: Prepare your sauce. Saute diced bell pepper in a bit of olive oil over medium-high heat. Once heated (about 3-4min), add your sauce and reduce heat to low. Once warmed, pour sauce into the base of your cast iron skillet (I used a 12")
Step 3: Layer vegetable coins in a spiral pattern around the skillet until the entire pan is covered.
Step 4: Prepare your herb drizzle. Combine the minced garlic, chopped oregano, thyme, basil and parsley with 4 T of olive oil and salt and pepper. Mix well and evenly pour over the top of the veggies.
Step 5: Cover finished dish with tinfoil and bake for 40-45 minutes covered, and remove the foil for the last 15-20 minutes until the veggies are soft.
Step 6: Enjoy!

CSA #19

Dear CSA-ers,

This week’s preassembled bag will include Malabar Spinach, Radishes (last round for a few weeks), Hot Peppers Mix, Listada Eggplant, Romaine, Mixed Tomatoes, Green Beans, and Tulsi Basil. Custom orders should be placed between now and Tuesday evening on the website at: https://magneyfarm.locallygrown.net/market

This coming week promises to be a really hot one and we are already intending to take some precautions to protect our employees from the extreme midday heat. That also means it’s going to be really hot for our plants, which is unfortunate, but kind of par-for-the-course in August. If you’ve been following the water-line replacement saga, you will be happy to hear that the new line is live and is so far working very well, though we are still chasing down some issues with the recycled frost-free pipes in individual tunnels. With luck that will all be resolved by the extreme heat of Monday.
August and September are challenging months in Kentucky. Summer vegetables are beginning to lose steam and fall ones are not yet big enough to harvest. Historically this has been a real challenge for the farm, but this year we feel we are better prepared. This is partially due to Patrick and Hannah’s efforts to chase down the details and perform the tedious calculations involved with midseason nutrition management for our solanaceous crops. Essentially, crops that grow and produce for many months like tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers begin to use up the soil amendments they were originally given. Using precisely mixed amount of organic liquid fertilizers applied via our water conserving drip irrigation, the plants can be given the boost they need to keep growing delicious vegetables.
This week’s highlighted vegetable is the pepper. We’re growing a wide assortment of peppers this year. We have 3 different sweet peppers, a full bell, a baby bell, and a long horn-shaped Italian heirloom called ‘Corno di Toro’. For hot peppers, we have a hot Jalapeno (green), a Poblano (dark green), and a Slavic heirloom called ‘Czech Black’ which is nearly black. Of those, Jalapenos are the hottest, with the Czech Black and Poblano being less hot respectively. Due to getting a late start on peppers, most will come to you this week tender and green, but as the season goes on, you’ll start to see more color, particularly with the sweet peppers. We hope you enjoy our selection, and we’d really like to hear your input on our pepper varieties at some point. There are so many types of peppers, we’d love to get some customer feedback on which ones you want to see us grow in the future.
As always, we thank you for your dedication and support to our farm. We’re so happy to be a part of your community.
Sincerely,
The Magney Legacy Ridge Farm Team

CSA #18

Dear CSA-ers,

This week’s preassembled bag will contain radishes, spring mix, cherry tomatoes, garlic, peppers, eggplant oregano and chives. Custom orders may be placed on the website between now and Tuesday at http://magneyfarm.locallygrown.net/market
We have put a date on our first Farm to Table dinner at the farm. We are still in the process of putting in our commercial kitchen but are forging ahead with our plans of a fabulous Fall dinner on November 1st at 5pm in the greenhouse of the farm. We would like to extend an invitation to our members to come and join us. Tickets will be $25 per person and our yearly members (if you paid for the entire year $700) will get 2 tickets for free. This is a member only perk until August 20th, and then we will open it up to our Farmers Market folks. We want to make sure you get your tickets first as a thank you for your continued support.
Patience is a virtue in farming and good things always take longer than you imagine. Water lines look so simple on paper but become a lot more complicated 3 feet deep in mud. After another evening without water to the house due to damaging the old line, the time is finally drawing near to take the new line live. The good news is, during the down time Sunday, we were blessed with a timely rain that took care of our outdoor watering. Sometimes, we do catch a break.
Fall crops are going in the ground as seeds and tiny seedling transplants. Some crops, like beets and carrots we put into the ground directly as seeds. Other crops need more of a head-start and are sewn by Caroline in the greenhouse weeks before they go outside. These tiny plants grow to size in seedling trays. Once they have 4 to 6 leaves, they’re ready to be transplanted outside. Some plants we have started with this method include varieties of kale, broccoli, cauliflower, and collards.
This week’s featured vegetable is radishes. Classically radishes are enjoyed raw on salads for their crisp peppery bite. We encourage you to delve deeper with radishes, including Caroline’s favorite radish preparation; painted with olive oil and oven roasted. In addition to containing vitamins and minerals, there is a growing body of research suggesting that radishes have potent antifungal activity. The plant uses this to protect itself from fungal pathogens in the soil, but it is thought that these compounds may be active against the irksome Candida fungal (yeast and thrush) infections humans are sometimes prone to. More research is needed to prove this link, but you can be sure that radishes make an excellent addition to a healthy, preventative, and holistic diet. We hope that you will enjoy them as much as we have.
Radish and Parsley Salad with Lemon
Ingredients
• About 10 medium or 12 small red radishes, scrubbed
• 3 large ribs celery, ends trimmed, peeled
• 1 cup tightly packed fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
• 1 Tbs. fresh lemon juice; more to taste
• 1/4 tsp. kosher salt; more to taste
• 2 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
• Freshly ground black pepper
Preparation
• Trim the root and stem end of the radishes. Halve them lengthwise and then slice them 1/8 inch thick; you should have about 1-1/2 cups. Slice the celery crosswise 1/8 inch thick. Combine the sliced radishes, sliced celery, and parsley leaves in a medium bowl. Add the lemon juice, salt, and olive oil; toss well. Add several generous grinds of black pepper, taste and adjust seasonings, and serve

As always, thank you for your support. We are so pleased to be a part of your community, and serve you and your family through are small sustainable farm.

Sincerely,
The Magney Legacy Ridge Farm Team

CSA #17

Dear CSA-ers,

This week’s preassembled bag will include spinach, leeks, mixed peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, parsley and mint. Custom orders may be placed between now and Tuesday evening on the website at https://magneyfarm.locallygrown.net/market
For such a rainy start to the summer, it has suddenly become very dry. If you’ve been following along, you will recall that we are amidst a large irrigation infrastructure improvement project. This has inconvenienced some of our vegetable production as there are two plots that currently cannot be watered. The good news is, the project is so far proceeding well. Over 500 feet of trench for waterlines were dug through Ray, Patrick, and Eric’s efforts last week. With luck the project will be completed some time this week.
The plots containing the next rotation of radishes, beets, and carrots look SO good. We are all really glowing with how well they are coming along. Our growing and harvesting process is improving all the time and we are excited to keep delivering the results to you. Peppers and Eggplants are just now beginning to come in. Look for these new items both on the CSA online marketplace and at our Saturday farmers’ market booths in Princeton, Murray, and Paducah.
This week’s highlighted vegetable is the “Eggplant” or “aubergine” (as you will see it referred to in some European recipes). Eggplant is related to the other Solanaceous or “sun-loving” vegetables (tomato, potato, and pepper) and likewise excels in the warm hot days of summer. This year we are growing three varieties, “Casper” a solid white tender variety, “Listada de Gandia” a beautiful purple-and-white striped heirloom, and “Ping Tung” a long purple style from Asia. We hope that you are able to experiment with them all and tell us your favorites. Feedback on the varieties we choose to grow is something we love to hear from our customers.

As always, thanks for your ongoing support of our farm. We are dedicated to bringing sustainably grown, healthy vegetables to Western Kentucky. We couldn’t do it without you.
Sincerely,
The Magney Legacy Ridge Farm Team

CSA #16

Dear CSA-ers,

This week’s preassembled bag will contain Spring Mix, Carrots, Tomatoes, Oregano, Garlic, and Green Beans. Custom orders may be assembled between now and Tuesday evening at https://magneyfarm.locallygrown.net/market

Summer is clipping right along and we’re finally seeing some of the intense heat of a typical West Kentucky summer. This is good news for things like eggplant and peppers, but less good for those crops that prefer cooler weather like lettuce. Believe it or not, we’re just a week or two away from planting our Fall brassicas like broccoli, kale, and cauliflower. Fall will be here before we know it, but for the time being, it looks like things will be hot and dry.
Naturally, fate would have it that a waterline has broken. We are still able to limp through daily irrigation with hoses run from the house, but our farm water infrastructure is in dire need of repair. In some ways, this is a bit of serendipity as it forces us to embark on a much needed improvement that we had been delaying. In other ways, it means a week of digging ditches and tying together larger diameter water lines in the late July sun. Wish us luck!
Our highlighted vegetable this week is the Green Bean. Beans are of dietary significance globally, and the Green Bean is a staple of our own regional cuisine in the Southern United States. They are delicious prepared in a variety of ways and have good nutritional value as they contain both fiber and protein. As a plant, the Green Bean is important to the sustainability and organic goals of our farm. Green Bean plants use their roots to fix nitrogen which helps improve the health of our soil for subsequent plantings. The only downside is that beans are incredibly labor intensive to harvest at the scale of our farm since each bean must be picked by hand. We hope that you cherish and enjoy this wonderful vegetable in your bag this week.

As always, thank you for your support of our farm. You make our vision for healthy, sustainable agriculture in Western Kentucky possible.

Sincerely,
The Magney Legacy Ridge Farm Team

CSA #15

Dear CSA-ers,

This week’s preassembled bag will contain Malabar Spinach, Romaine Head Lettuce, Garlic, Tomatoes (Cherry and Pink Slicers), Dill, Mint, and Swiss Chard. Custom orders can be placed on the site between now and Tuesday evening at https://magneyfarm.locallygrown.net/market
It’s been a week of both unprecedented challenges and successes here on the farm. With Ray, Jonah, Hannah, and Eric visiting family in Minnesota, we were down to the core. This made for extra farm responsibilities for us, and put time constraints on the planting, harvesting, and packing that we ordinarily handle. This caused for some heated moments, but ultimately, we came together and pulled through. We succeeded in fulfilling CSA, ran all three farmers’ markets, and got 14 of our grow beds planted, which may be a week record! Wow!
Even though the oppressive heat, and thick-enough-to-drink humidity makes the cool crisp air of Autumn seem far away, this is the critical time to get Fall crops started and in the ground. One of the most difficult things about farming is getting the timing correct. We must adapt to the uncontrollable elements like weather and find harmony within the rhythm of rhythms. Things being seeded right now include broccoli, veronica, collards, kale, beets, carrots, and radishes. We can’t wait to bring these to you and your loved ones.
On the topic of timings, a vegetable we’d like to highlight this week is our garlic. Growing garlic is truly a year long endeavor. The process began the week of the full moon last October when we planted cloves of garlic. Over the Winter, the cloves made tiny green sprouts and sent down deep roots preparing for Spring growth. Over the Spring, the plants fill out, flower (which you received as scapes), and then go dormant. When the plants go dormant in Late June, we harvest them and begin the “curing” process, which is a means by which the bulbs are hanged and dried for long storage. Now that curing is complete, they are ready for your bags this week and can be stored at room temperature on your kitchen counter. Garlic has been linked to heart health, and we like to believe it’s because so much love goes into growing them. We hope you love them too!

Thanks for being a part of our family,
The Magney Legacy Ridge Farm Team

CSA #14

Dear Farmily-

This weeks CSA bags will include: Cherry Tomatoes, Spring Mix, Muir Head Lettuce, Cucumbers, Basil, Parsley, Summer Squash, and Onions.

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July. Here on the farm, we celebrated by painting our floors of our new commercial kitchen project. We have been cleaning out our garage, stripping and painting floors, and putting up new wall boards. We still must add a ceiling, put up a pony wall for plumbing to be installed, install plumbing, add a new cool storage unit, and get kitchen licensed. We are very excited to get this done though, as it will open possibilities for prepared foods, and having dinners here on the farm.
This week we are featuring our cherry tomatoes. This is my all-time favorite summer veggie! I am including my recipe for Caprese Salad too. They are Sakura variety which is specifically bred for tunnels, which in the summer retain heat and moisture making the tunnels more susceptible to diseases. We are very careful in how we grow tomatoes. We trellis them to the tops of the tunnels and train the tomatoes to climb up these lines. Once they hit the top, we lower the trellis line and let the vine sit on the ground and move the line to the right. At the end of the season we usually have 15 feet of vines on the ground and plenty of space to continue to grow.
CUCUMBER CAPRESE SALAD (OR PASTA SALAD)
This Cucumber Caprese Salad recipe is quick and easy to make with just 5 main ingredients, and delicious on its own or mixed with pasta to make a pasta salad recipe.
INGREDIENTS:
• 1 English cucumber, quartered and thinly-sliced (and peeled, if you prefer)
• 1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
• 8 ounces mozzarella (baby mozzarella balls or diced mozzarella)
• 1/2 cup firmly-packed fresh basil leaves, julienned
• 1-2 tablespoons balsamic glaze, store-bought or homemade*
• sea salt and freshly-cracked black pepper
• optional: 8 ounces uncooked pasta of your choice (I used orecchiette)
DIRECTIONS:
1. In a large mixing bowl, combine the cucumber, tomatoes, mozzarella and fresh basil. Drizzle evenly with 1 tablespoon balsamic glaze. Then toss to combine.
2. Taste and season with salt and black pepper as needed (I used a generous pinch of each) and add more balsamic glaze if you would like.
3. Serve immediately, or cover and refrigerate for up to 1 day.
4. Optional: If you would like to add in pasta, cook the pasta according to package instructions in a generously-salted pot of boiling water until it is al dente. Drain and rinse the pasta with cold water in a colander until chilled. Then stir the pasta into your cucumber salad, adding an extra tablespoon or two of the balsamic glaze plus salt and pepper to taste.
*To make homemade balsamic glaze, just add a half cup or so or balsamic vinegar to a small saucepan. Heat over medium-high heat until it reaches a simmer. Then reduce heat to medium-low and continue simmering, uncovered, until the vinegar reduces into a glaze that is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Remove from heat and serve!

We are working on getting our winter squash into the ground this week as well as our new rotation of root veggies. The continued rains have made planting a frustrating endeavor. Last week we had over 10 inches of rain at the farm, and it rained every day. I am thinking we need to find an ANTI-rain dance and perform it daily this week.
Thank you for your continued support! We love seeing you every week, and hearing about how you used your veggies.
See you Thursday,
Angela and the Magney Legacy Ridge Team

No CSA this week- Happy 4th of July

Just a quick reminder that there will not be a delivery of CSA’s this week, due to the 4th of July holiday.
We look forward to seeing everyone next week and our first delivery of tomatoes!!!