Week 6 6-25-2011

Please remember to return your boxes each week

Week 6 box

Carrots

Spring Onions

Red Russian Kale

Cucumbers

Squash/zucchini

Large Shares only-Napa Cabbage (Chinese cabbage)-Napa cabbage is a mild cabbage that forms a looser head than European cabbages. When we cook them we like to slice the leaves off the white stem first. We cook the stems in some olive oil with onions until they are almost done. Then we add the diced greens to wilt. Napa cabbage is a great addition to a stir-fry or sauté to serve with rice, cous-cous, or potatoes.

Beets-Never had beets? Don’t like them? I’d say give them a try. Think sweet and earthy when you eat them. See preparation and recipes at end of newsletter.

Basil!!! Don’t refrigerate basil, because it can turn brown and spotty. Store at a cool room temperature. If possible, place stems in water like a flower bouquet. This week the basil is mostly bud trimmings, so they won’t fit in a vase or jar. Don’t worry, basil is still fine to use when it is wilty. Basil ideas: Grilled Zucchini and Squash with Basil. I slice the zucchini and squash into long, flat strips. Then I brush each side with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and chopped basil. Grill. You can also try sprinkling chopped basil over just about anything. In the summer, I always have basil in the kitchen in a little vase, and I love its aroma as I walk into the room.

Parsley- Chopped parsley is very good with cooked beets and a touch of lemon juice.

Barn Rafters of Garlic

Happy summer! Yesterday marked the sun’s nothernmost track in the sky. For a few days the sun will stay in relatively the same place on the horizon, before slowly working its way back south.

Last Monday we harvested all of the garlic. Last week you received fresh garlic in your box. This is a bulb that we dug up, cut off the stalk and passed along directly to you without curing it. The rest of the garlic we have sorted and hung up to dry, or cure in the rafters of the barn. This will ensure that the bulbs dry down slowly so they can keep for as long as possible without rotting. Cured garlic can store for a very long time in a cool, dark, dry place.

When we hung the garlic up we carefully selected the largest, best formed, most even bulbs of each variety to set aside as this fall’s seed garlic. We cure these bulbs along with all the rest and just kind of forget about them. Then, in October, we will pull them out take all the cloves off the bulb and push them into the ground to start the cycle over again.

This is about half of it!

Garlic is an interesting plant because it is planted in the fall in October. In the sprouts up to about 6 inches then waits dormant for the rest of the winter. In the spring it takes off, quickly becoming the tallest, most lush green plant in the early spring. Their growth and vigor begins to slow in May when they start to think about flowering. This is when they send out their garlic scapes. The scapes are the closed blossom of garlic. Garlic reproduces both vegetatively and sexually. However, if it is allowed to fully flower and create seed it invests far less energy in the roots, the part we want to eat. So we cut off the flowers before they open, this is what was in you box several times in May. After the flower is cut the above ground portion of the plant starts to decline. The tips of the leaves begin to yellow and no new growth is seen. Meanwhile, the plant is working to make its bulbs as large as possible to give thee, energy to regrow the next year. Once several leaves have fully died on the stalk we know it is time to dig them up.

In a few weeks, we’ll pull down the cured, dried garlic and put them in your boxes. We’ll have several exciting varieties to taste and enjoy.

Flowering cilantro. Look closely to see all the pollinators it attracts to the garden.

Recipes

Basic Method for Cooking Beets:

Beets, butter, salt, freshly ground pepper, chopped parsley

WASH WELL. Cut off all but 1 inch of the beets top; do not pare or remove the roots. Drop the beets into enough boiling water to cover them, and cook them, uncovered, until they are tender, allowing 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the age of the beets. Drain the beets, drop them in cold water for a minute or two to cool them slightly, then slip off the skins. Leave them whole or quarter them, or slice them. Toss them with butter, salt and pepper to taste, and some chopped parsley, and reheat them, if necessary, before serving.

(from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook)

Beet and carrot salad- a great simple salad with raw carrots and beets

Wash carrots and beets well. Remove tops and roots. Finely grate carrots and beets. Mix. Add salt, pepper, olive oil, vinegar, parsley, and other herbs to taste.

Baby cucumbers for August fruit.

Cucumber yogurt salad

Wash cucumbers well. Finely slice, dice, or grate cucumber. Mix with plain yogurt (greek style yogurts are particularly good for this recipe). Add as much yogurt as you prefer. This salad can range from being almost purely cucumbers with a yogurt dressing to a bowl of yogurt with some cucumbers in it. Salt to taste. For flavor try adding dill, crushed garlic, diced spring onion, parsley, or another of your favorite herbs.

A bumblebee visits our Echinacea

Week 8

“Does it smell like fish yet?” That was the question of the night Tuesday. At first we weren’t sure if we could smell fish, but in the end we had success-we had stinky fish smell in our irrigation water! Why, you might wonder, would we celebrate malodors in our irrigation water? What it meant is that we had successfully used the siphon system for injecting fertilizer into the irrigation system at the farm. Now, we don’t have to carry heavy backpack sprayers full of fish on our back slowly spraying plants. We are able to practically run up and down the rows fertilizing. We are fertilizing with Neptune’s Harvest Organic fish emulsion, a good product manufactured from fish processing byproducts from the North Atlantic fish industry. In the long run we hope to design a system of cover crops and rotations that allow us to grow much of our fertility in place. But as you all know, new ground sometimes requires short term solutions to bridge the gap to the long term ideal.

Thank you all for your words of support after last week’s email. It is so encouraging to hear your positive energy and commitment to local, fresh, and healthy food. I think of some of your emails and conversations several times a day as we try to work out solutions to each challenge we face. The fish emulsion fertigation (fertilizing + irrigating) is one of those success stories.

If “does it smell like fish?” was the question of the night then “The sheep are out again!” was the exclamation of the night. Unfortunately, the bad sheep have learned the tricks to getting out of our fencing. Part of the problem is the lack of high quality grass, so they are never happy. As many of you have undoubtedly noticed it is rather hot and dry. With our irrigation systems we are able to grow our vegetables with no water issues. However, unlike Colorado, no one in the South East is equipped to irrigate pastures. It is simply an unjustified expense in our rainy climate. We hope to revisit that rainy climate sooner rather than later. We (and the sheep) welcome some soothing, soaking rains to gently wake and invigorate the grass.

Week 8 box

Your first taste of Tomatoes! We have a wide variety of types from slicing tomatoes, to thick, meaty tomatoes for cooked dishes, to sweet cherry tomatoes. We will try to rotate varieties among the whole CSA. If you receive cherry tomatoes please return the pint container clean and dry for reuse. The thick, meaty tomatoes are usually long shaped with thick walls and are small (quarter size) to large (5 inches tall). These Roma type tomatoes are for dicing into pasta but they are also great for quartering and salting- then adding to salads.

Cucumbers

Squash

Scallions

Basil- Thai, use basil for a flower arrangement, but also use the leaves! The purple flowers can be soaked in maple syrup for infused flavor! Drizzle that over some pork or grilled veggies in the last 30 seconds of cooking for a glaze.

Green Pepper- small, but flavorful- those thick walls sure are difficult to obtain!

Half of the boxes will receive Swiss Chard-Next week the other half can look forward to Swiss chard (we have to give it a longer regrowing period in this hot weather)

Large Shares only-Green beans

Cucumber Yogurt Salad

This is one of my favorite quick dishes for a hot day. Flavors can be adjusted for personal taste.

Cucumber

Plain yogurt

Dill- ***Sometimes we also add coriander ***

Salt

Garlic or Scallions

Either Peel and slice or Peel and grate the cucumber. Salt the cucumber and place in a colander to drain for about 15 minutes

Dice or crush several cloves of garlic

Or

Dice several scallions

Add as much garlic of scallion as you like-personal preference for this varies widely

After Cucumbers have drained mix with yogurt

Mix in garlic or scallion

Add dill and salt to taste.

This salad is a great side for a Mediterranean themed meal.