Small Family Farm CSA

June Fifteenth

The second week of harvesting vegetables on the farm felt like riding a bike down a smooth paved road on a beautiful sunny day in the 70’s. A very smooth start we are off to indeed. This season has felt very methodical and well planned out in comparison to all of our previous years of running the farm so far. This would be our 6^thseason running our little CSA program and the good news is that it’s getting easier as we have slowly been purchasing the machinery we need to make the farm more efficient and gaining the helping hands we need to carry the weight with us.

One of our worker shares today was talking about how much she has learned from her children who are 6 and 7 years old. I often think about how much this farm has taught me not only about myself and who I am becoming, but about physics and mechanics, weather patterns and animal behavior, and leadership and humility. It’s amazing how a place can do all to a person. Because really, I’m just a city girl with too much to say and no patience turned into a hermit that leaves the farm but one day a week to deliver my mature plants to those who find them tasteful.

This environment, these people, this land and these plants will shape you. The ferill cats will teach you trust because they cannot be trusted the wind will teach you how to become calm and a good amount of heavy wheel-barreling will teach you how to drive a pick-up truck. I have so many reflections to offer because I was always the kind of person who had to learn things the hard way.

While I still feel like I’m a long ways from even thinking of taking a bike ride on a 70 degree day when there is so much to be done on the farm, I’m hopeful that one day my lessons become easier like when you’ve been stung by nettles for the 10^th time in one spring that by the tenth time you barely scratch at all.

Sooo....What's in the Box???

Asparagus- We do actually buy this asparagus from an organic neighboring farm of ours. It simply is not spring without Asparagus! Store Asparagus in your fridge standing up in a bowl of water, it will suck up water through the bottoms of its stems and remain hydrated.

Radish- Most members received cherry bell radishes which are a stunning red globe, but our last 40 bunches or so were the french breakfast which are the longer shaped radishes that are red on the top and white on the part of radish that grows beneath the ground. They're on the spicy side, but sliced thinly on a salad you can't tell at all!

Lettuce- The leaves are so tender and they rip easily when they're quite this tender. This field-grown lettuce looks amazing! I'm craving salads, how about you? Lettuce will store best in a plastic bag in the fridge to keep it from wilting. You may have received an oakleaf head of lettuce, romaine lettuce, red leaf buttercrunch, green leaf buttercrunch, or red-leaf lettuce. We harvested quite a collection of varieties!

Pac Choi- This is a form of Chinese cabbage that works great in stir fries or your favorite oriental recipes. Pac Choi is very hard to grow in the early spring as the flea beatles want to attack it an chew on it's leaves. We fooled them by growing it in the greenhouse this year. Boy, did we fool them! This week we took the rest of the pac choi that was in the field, a bit smaller than last week!

Spinach- The second picking of the season was just as good as the first! I wonder what life would be like without spinach like this? Mmmmmm! No need to tell you how to store it because I know it won't last long. This spring we put a row-cover over our spinach beds to warm up the soil and speed growth on the spinach. Not as many damaged leaves this week from the wind, the whole harvest looked beautiful floating in a tank of cool water!

Swiss Chard- Swiss Chard is a wonderful cooking green that is in the same family as spinach and beets. It's NOT RHUBARB for those of you who are new to it! You can use Swiss chard any way that you might use spinach in cooking. We have a fantastic swiss chard fritatta recipe that we love! Some of the chard may have red, pink, yellow, white or orange veins. This highly nutritious green is among the most popular at Farmer's Markets!

Shallots- Believe it or not, these were harvested last August and kept in our cold root cellar storage all winter long. They keep for an impressively long time. These are in the onion family and are a gourmet substitute for onions. Store in a cool, dark and dry place-like your fridge. Because they have been in cold storage for so long, if you transfer them to a warm countertop they will sprout!

Basil Plant- These little plants are potted in biodegradable Dot-Pots. You can plant the whole pot right into the ground! It's an organically certified product and actually adds organic fertilizer as it breaks down. We will be sending you plenty of fresh basil this summer, but it's always nice to pick your own fresh just before dinner.

Recipes

Swiss Chard and Tomato Fritatta

Radish Dip

Asparagus Mimosa

Shallot Tarragon Jam

June Twenty First

The weather on the farm this week has your farmers on a bit of a nervous and cautious alert. While it might be customary for us to check weather.com and weather.gov, one followed immediately after the other, once a day or every-other day during a fair weather sprint, we’re back to checking the radar maps and hourly weather graphs about twice each morning, at least twice over the lunch hour, and several times throughout the evening. You could call us nerds, but really we’re just mildly paranoid with due cause.

The last three years on the farm were flood years. We picked the grandest time to get into farming, let me tell you! In 2008 we had major Spring flooding in June, in 2009 we had ongoing flooding in July and August when FIMA declared our area a national disaster, and last year was simply non-stop rain that created perfect conditions for the roots of our crops to rot out and the leaves of our plants to all become diseased with blights and mildew. Thankfully, because we are a ridge-top farm, we have better drainage than a valley farm has and were able to keep our CSA boxes full all season, but with a bit lower of quality standards than what we might typically uphold.

So on Saturday night, with no warnings of sever weather on the map, we had 3.5 inches of rain and a pretty wild lightening and thunderstorm. Sunday morning we awoke to a couple nice pools of topsoil at the bottom of our hill and a tree that was struck by lightening on the farm blocking the road. Another inch of rain on Monday night while we await more “severe weather” on Tuesday. Nails all bitten off, we sleep with the window cracked open a bit like a nervous mother sleeping with her door cracked worried about a coughing child in the next room.

On a brighter note, the fields are looking quite nice. The best they’ve ever looked in fact! We’ve managed to keep up with our weeding and planting schedules so far this year and it’s really showing! We have over a dozen worker shares that come at different times during the week to help us fight off the weeds. This time of year the fight is always the toughest. Today, being the longest day of the year, we expect that with our plants getting a bit bigger, waning daylight and *hopefully* waning Spring rains, we may begin to win the battle after too long.

Unfortunatly a positive attitude doesn’t always keep the red off your radar map and the weeds from germinating in your fields but it can keep the creases off your forehead and the worry from your mind. Hail the sunshine!

Sooo....What's in the Box???

Kohlrabi- A funny name for a vegetable, I know! You may have received a purple or a white kohlrabi. They're the same thing on the inside. Peel the tuff skin off the kohlrabi with a pearing knife and eat the white crunch flesh raw with some ranch dip or sprinkled with salt or lemon. Their texture is similar to an apple, but their flavor is closer to cabbage...sort of...but more mild. This is usually a new veggie for some folks. They can also be added to a stir-fry and cooked once peeled. The greens to kohlrabi can also be used. Strip the greens off of their spine and use as a cooking green like you would spinach, kale or chard. It's great when added to soups, stir frys or quiche.

Snap Peas- This is our first giving of spring peas. They're coming on slower than what we would like to see, but we thought we would at least share with you what we picked for this week, even though it's a small amount.

Lettuce- Lotts of lettuce this week! Everyone received at least two to three heads of lettuce! We tried to give everyone a red and green leaf variety for mixing it up a bit. Because of all of the heavy, pounding rains this week the lettuce is a bit more ripped up than usual and also more dirty on the inside! We even found a couple little earthworms in a few heads we were using in our kitchen! With this kind of rain, these are the things we see. So be sure to wash your lettuce good this week as it may be a bit more dirty than usual and even though we soak and wash them, we can't get them 100% clean. But they're sooooo tender, succulent and yummy this time of year!

Kale- Kale is also a new one for many folks. Kale is a cooking green in the same family as broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and kohlrabi (the Brassica family). It's one of those greens that we highly suggest that you become good friends with this summer. Don't judge a book by it's cover and really try to get to know kale better! It's one of those greens that is off the charts as far as it's anti-oxident and chlorophyll levels. Doing a very quick google search I found 2 great websites that promote the extensive health benefits of Kale!!! 9 Health Benefits of Kale, and Worlds Healthiest Foods. We'll do our best to provide you with some of our favorite recipes for kale and you will receive several different varieties of kale this summer. This week you probably received either a green curly kale or a purple curly kale. Yum!

Spinach- Our final picking of spinach for this spring! A smaller giving of spinach this week, but we were happy to still have it this late in the month of June! Spinach is a cool-weather loving plant. So we'll have to say goodbye to this delicious spring green and look forward to its return in the fall! It is still very tender and sweet!

Garlic Scapes- These are the tiny little shoots that come out of the top of a garlic plant. The scapes are the garlic plants effort at making a seed pod. We snap them off shortly after we see them coming on to encourage the garlic plant to put more energy into making a nice sized garlic bulb beneath the ground rather than making seed pods above the ground. Each plant makes 1 scape each year. What's wonderful is that they are edible during a season where our stored winter garlic from the previous year is long gone and it will still be a bit longer until we have the real deal. The most desireable part of the scape is from the bottom of the scape up until the lime-green nodule. The whole thing is edible, but the tops are a bit more chewy. Have fun using it like you would use garlic!

Dill- A modest giving of tender spring dill! Dill is wonderful in egg salad, creamy greens soups, and potato salad! If you can't use the whole bunch of dill while it's fresh, you can always hang it upside down in your kitchen to dry out and then put it in a jar once it's dried to use it in cooking.

Strawberries- These yummy red berries need very little introduction! They are one of the other very few items that we buy to help fill our CSA boxes in the early spring along with Asparagus. You should see them in your box again next week, weather permitting! Fresh Strawberries don't keep well, so eat them up quick!

Recipes

Kale, Mushroom and Dill Triangles

Kale with Red Beans, Cilantro and Feta Cheese

Sour Cream Veggie Dip (for your Kohlrabi)

Home Made Oriental Salad Dressing (farmer Jillian's favorite!) for all of those salad greens

One member sent me her Quick and easy Recipe Idea:

In a pan of boiling water cook Orzo

while orzo is cooking heat Olive Oil in a large pan add: add onion and stalks of Pac Choi and swiss chard (roughly chopped)- season with 'Canadian Steak Sesoning' or 'Montreal Steak seasoning'> which is a combination of coursely ground black pepper, sea salt, garlic

stir until onions are starting to get golden
season again with red pepper and ginger
add: tops of Pac Choi and swiss chard (also roughly chopped), can of tomatoes (or roughly chopped fresh)
add cooked orzo with some of the cooking water (pasta cooking water adds a little starch which makes it kinda creamy)

I also added shredded beef, but would still be excellent w/o it.

Tracy Mullaney

June Twenty-Nineth

The spirits of the farm have lifted this week.  The clouds cleared on Saturday morning and it was as though heaven shone down on us.  We were so happy to see the sun returning to kiss the garden good morning.  All that rain and all this sunshine is making everything take off very quickly this week.  It’s amazing how you can literally watch the plants grow this time of year if you were to take the time to plop a squat in the broccoli patch. 

Harvesting schedules are about to become more demanding.  Many of our favorite summer veggies like broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, zucchini and summer squash need to be harvested every 2 days to prevent over-ripening of the highly perishable products.  The long days and increased heat is wanting to make our delicate lettuce heads bolt for seed production and our bulbing roots swell in size. 

The smells of the garden seem to be coming alive as well.  This week we snapped hundreds of garlic scapes off the tops of the garlic plants covering our harvesting fingers with garlic slime.  We harvested cilantro on Monday evening and enjoyed the fresh, pungent smell of the coriander leaf.  Last week we harvested our first dill plants and were loving even the boring and often excused smell of dill.  We even did our fair share of stand-up hoeing around the fragrant celery and parsley plants this week snapping off a stalk here and a stem there, teasing each other with the delectable smells of summer.  Upon filling our cooler with all of the harvests of the week, we wafted the smells of strawberries, lettuce, garlic and cilantro in one very nice feeling and smelling room. 

Aside from the smells of the fresh produce comes the smells of the earth that rise from the roots of each weed or cultivated plant that is pulled.  The smell of the earth is so real.  Truly it reminds me of my grandmother’s geranium beds which are my earliest memories of playing in the soil and noticing the rich smell it contained.  My dirty work jeans smelled of garlic, cilantro and earth.  Our worn work shirts smell of sweat and labor and sunshine, unique to this time of year.  The smell of fresh-cut grass and peonies.   It is as though someone turned up the volume on the smell lever.  I suppose that it could be a pregnancy thing, but I suspect that you all ‘catch my drift’.

Sooo....What's in the Box???

Kohlrabi- You may have received a purple or a white kohlrabi.  They're the same thing on the inside.  Peel the tuff skin off the kohlrabi with a pearing knife and eat the white, crunchy flesh raw with some ranch dip or sprinkled with salt or lemon.  Their texture is similar to an apple, but their flavor is closer to cabbage...sort of...but more mild.  This is usually a new veggie for some folks.  They can also be added to a stir-fry and cooked once peeled.  The greens to kohlrabi can also be used.  Strip the greens off of their spine and use as a cooking green like you would spinach, kale or chard.  It's great when added to soups, stir frys or quiche.

Snap/Snow Peas- Our second giving of spring peas.  An extremely time consuming harvest that doesn't reveal the rewards you might like after so many hours bent over.  You may have recevied the snap peas or the snow peas.  Both varieties are edible pod varieties.  We loved them in stir-fry! 

Lettuce- Lotts of lettuce this week!  One member told us that their household now has a new and very strict regimen of two salads per member of the household per day.  Are you using it all up?  Check out our home-made ranch dressing recipe.  Remember that lettuce keeps better in a plastic bag in the fridge to preserve the moisture.  Refrigerators will dry out your greens if they're not kept in the fridge. 

Collards- More cooking greens.  I receive a couple very kind and appreciative e-mails from folks who love all the cooking greens.  Green keep best in a plastic bag in the fridge. 

Garlic Scapes-  These are the tiny little shoots that come out of the top of a garlic plant.  The scapes are the garlic plants effort at making a seed pod.  We snap them off shortly after we see them coming on to encourage the garlic plant to put more energy into making a nice sized garlic bulb beneath the ground rather than making seed pods above the ground.  Each plant makes 1 scape each year.  What's wonderful is that they are edible during a season where our stored winter garlic from the previous year is long gone and it will still be a bit longer until we have the real deal.  The most desireable part of the scape is from the bottom of the scape up until the lime-green nodule.  The whole thing is edible, but the tops are a bit more chewy.  Have fun using it like you would use garlic!

Cilantro- Taco night!  Keeps best in a plastic bag in the fridge to preserve moisture. 

Strawberries- These yummy red berries need very little introduction!  They are one of the few items that we buy to help fill our CSA boxes in the early spring along with Asparagus.  Fresh Strawberries don't keep well, so eat them up quick! 

Recipes

Collards Recipe

Home-Made Ranch Salad Dressing

Week 5, July Sixth

Greens, Greens the magical food! 

If there is one thing that I hope you can take away from this entire experience from joining a CSA farm, I hope it is that you learn to eat more green food.  I’m not really just talking about a side salad with dinner, or even a kohlrabi here and there (although this is a wonderful change in your life to make if even the side salad is a new accomplishment), but I mean rich, loaded, dark-green cooking greens like kale, chard, and collards that have the potential to not only improve your health in drastic ways, but your culinary experience at large. 

Every year, at the end of the season when we send out a survey to get your feedback about your CSA experience, I often hear comments like “too much kale” and “too much chard”.  This is hard for me.   I take information like this on a very personal level and it makes me feel like I’m not doing ‘the educator’ part of my job well enough.  So I’ve decided to devote a newsletters in the honor of green foods to see if I can somehow use words and the enticing beauty of the greens themselves to convince you to get out that chopping board and chop up some chard!

Because you have to admit, they are beautiful.  When you first pulled those shiny, smooth, and colorful chard leaves from your box this week you paused to admire them from just a second, I know you did!  For some of you, I’m sure you thought, “Darnit, what am I going to do with these?”, and for the seasoned green veterans out there, your mouth watered and you thought of quiche, lasagna, or more simply sautéed greens with garlic scapes, olive oil and tamari.  Greens are gorgeous!  We’re drawn to them.  Greens exist so abundantly in nature that they’re screaming out to us “Oooh, OOOH, eat MEEEE!”.  We’re walking on them, yanking them from our flower beds, or even spraying chemicals (god forbid) on them just to make them go away!  We have dandelion greens, lambs quarters, plantain, yellow dock leaves, and so much more that try in every way they can to seduce us into cleaning them up so that they make it onto our dinner table while we turn a blind eye towards the inner aisles of the grocery store shelves to food that comes in boxes. 

I will admit, now this is a real confession; I never used to like chard.  I was prejudice towards it because I thought it had an earthy flavor and truthfully, I didn't know how to prepare it and wasn't willing to try.  This is the real deal here folks, I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO PREPARE IT!  One thing I did know for sure is that I could sell almost 50 nice-sized bunches of it off of my Farmer’s Market table for $2.50 a bunch on nearly any given Saturday morning.  I knew people ate the stuff and ate lots of it and would get up very early in the morning, drive through city traffic, pay for downtown parking and remember to bring their own bags to market just to fill them up with Chard and other leafy greens.  I started taking their suggestions on how they liked to prepare it and tried giving it a second go for myself.  Because truly, anything prepared in the right way can be delicious.  You can even trick a small child into liking broccoli if you pour enough cheese sauce over it.  I believe it has everything to do with how it is prepared! 

Spinach stuffed shells (I’m a sucker for Italian food and plenty of cheese), is what did it for me.  We subbed the spinach for swiss chard and I was in heaven.  To this day Chard Stuffed Shells will bring me to my knees.  It’s the dish that I request on my birthday, blanch and freeze greens for to make all winter long for, prepare for honored guests and feel it is my duty to share with the world.  But my pallet has matured to some level and now a simple lightly sautéed greens with garlic, olive oil and soy sauce (no need to mask the flavor with cheese anymore) is a very quick, easy and delicious side dish.  But I will admit that it took some time for me.  I would be very interested in hearing what recipes turned you into a lover of greens so that we can share them with everyone else.  Send me your favorite greens recipes, kid-friendly greens recipes or greens recipes that you grew up with.  Next week I’ll post them in the recipe section.  The recipes can be for chard, kale, spinach, collard, mustard greens, and so forth!  Green up your life!

 Soooo, What's in the Box? 

Kohlrabi-  Now we're picking from our second succession of kohlrabi and some of these guys are looking pretty big!  Peel them, chop them up and eat them with your favorite veggie dip. 

Garlic Scapes-  More scapes off the top of the garlic plants to hold us over until the real thing gets here! 

Broccoli-  Really a nice broccoli harvest this week! We have at least a couple more weeks of broccoli coming up as well.  Stores best in a plastic bag in the fridge.   

Fennel-  A unique licorice flavored bulb for adding to stir fry, roasts, or even shaved very thinly over cold salads raw.  Our fennels were wanting to bolt on us, so you may have received one that was showing some signs of bolting.  We tossed out over 2/3 of the harvest because of this.  See a fennel recipe below from one of our veteran CSA members whome I know happens to be a wonderful chef and mother.

Lettuce-  More lettuce to go around!  Two heads for everyone.  A rich week of romaine lettuce varieties and green leaf varieties.  Lettuce keeps best in a plastic bag in the fridge.

Peas-  We're not positive, but this may be our last pea giving for the season.  All good things must come to an end!  A nice size bag of peas this week compared to the last couple weeks! 

Parsley-  Another green super food to incorporate into your diet raw!  If you don't think you can use it up while it's still fresh, you could dehydrate it in your dehydrator and seal it dried in a small mason jar to add to sauces and soups. 

Zucchini/Yellow Squash/Cauliflower-  The zucchini and summer squash harvest is just beginning.  It's going to be a long season of zucchini, summer squash and patty pans are coming up.  Soft summer squashes like zucchini and yellow squash prefer to be stored in a 50 degree environment.  They may even store better on your counter when they're fresh like this than in your fridge, we've noticed.  They don't seem to like too cool of refrigeration.  If you didn't get a squash, you may have received a cauliflower in it's place.   

Swiss Chard-  The best for last!  Swiss Chard is in the same family as spinach and beets.  It's a nutrient-dense cooking green.  The stems on this green are also quite nice when cooked soft.  Swiss chard is not chewy or bitter once cooked, but can be bitter raw.  It is also high in oxcilic acid when raw and this acid is neutralized when cooked.

Radicchio-  Some of our members did receie a radicchio.  This is a bitter green-not a head of lettuce, that is nice shaved very thinly into salads raw in small quantities, or cooked to reduce some of it's bitter flavor.  We had about 125 radicchio and 175 members.  We tried to give extra on other items for those who did not get radicchio. 

Next Weeks Projections:  (Please keep in mind that this is a guess.  It is never a guarantee, with the unpredictableness of mother nature, what crops will mature or go down hill in one week)

Green Cabbage, Zucchini/Summer Squash, Lacinato Kale, Green leaf and red leaf lettuce, broccoli, garlic scapes, basil sprigs.     

Recipes: 

Fresh Greens Pasta Pie

Cream of Broccoli and Fennnel Soup

Baked Radicchio and Mozzarella Pasta

Spicy Potato Sausage and Greens Soup