Week 13 8/10/2011

Week 13 box

Tomatoes

Cherry Tomatoes: See idea in the garlic section

Cucumbers

Sweet Peppers: We are harvesting all of the peppers at the green stage - they are not ripening into a nice red color right now.

Basil: See idea in the garlic section.

Garlic: The other day I enjoyed a homemade bread brushed with olive oil and minced garlic and topped with halved cherry tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella. Then I broiled it until the cheese was bubbly.

Do you have too much garlic right now? Don’t worry- it keeps a long time!

***Crop note*** We have some baby squash plants growing to replace the older squash and zucchini plants that stopped producing fruits. We hope to have zucchini and squash in the next few weeks. We also have some baby green bean plants in the field, but as you may have noticed, the plants don’t produce well in dry, hot weather.

Remember to wash your vegetables! We use organically approved sprays, but that doesn’t mean that they make good condiments.

Family Visit

This week William’s family was visiting for the first part of the week. We all enjoyed the clear breezy weather, but wished for a little rain to break the dry spell. It has been great to have the extra hands around. They jumped right into helping in the garden, harvesting, mowing, and trellising tomatoes. They even helped with butchering (although some of them preferred to help at a distance by preparing lunch)!

Baby vegetable delivery

This week our babies arrived. Jeff Mast of Banner Greenhouses (the large greenhouses you see around mile marker 90 on I-40) brought about 15 trays of swiss chard and 15 trays of various types of kale. Banner Greenhouses uses Integrative Pest Management to grow their plants without synthetic fungicides or pesticides. We look forward to planting the babies and to growing yummy fall greens. I could almost taste them when I walked out into the cool, dry air this morning.

We also have baby vegetables sprouting in our greenhouse. Lettuce has poked its tiny head above the soil, ready to grow, grow, grow. It is almost a challenge to make sure it doesn’t grow too fast for its own good and become stringy. Still hiding under the soil are some cilantro and dill to spice up our food this fall.

Tomato Blight

Our tomato crop is suffering from tomato early blight. This is the same disease that caused the Irish potato famine by destroying the potato crop there. . A blight spore most likely landed on our plants way back in June during one of the frequent rainstorms. The blight is extremely common in tomatoes in the southeast because of our hot and humid weather. In fact, it is almost always of question of when and how bad, not if, your tomatoes will get the fungus. It shows up as blackened leaves starting at the bottom of the plant and working upward. Black lesions also appear on the stem and fruit. There are very limited options in both conventional and organic systems to slow blight. It is not curable, but we can slow its spread with an organically approved copper fungicide spray. We alternate with an organic bacterial spray. We apply it roughly every week and hope to prolong our yummy tomato harvest for several weeks.

Enjoy the change in the weather, and hope for rain!

Your farmers,

Marie and William

Week 12

Cucumbers- Check out the Tabbouli recipe below. Also don’t forget to try Cucumber Yogurt Salad- see recipe below.

Sweet peppers and sweet bell peppers- Remember, there is a heart shaped pepper called “Lipstick.” It is a sweet and mild pepper. I won’t sneak anything spicy with your peppers!

If you start to get too many peppers you can chop them or slice them and stick them in a bag in your freezer.

Cherry tomatoes- Sweetest little things! Try cutting them in half and putting them on crackers with goat cheese or mozzarella. We like to make all sorts of combinations for a snack like a cracker with…hummus and cucumber, or a cherry tomatoes half and goat cheese, or with a cherry tomato half and chopped basil.

Tomatoes- These babies seem to be doing well right now, and we’ve gotten several good harvest from them since last week. Yay! We are hoping for lots of heavy harvests.

Parsley- Check out the tabbouli recipe below. Parsley is rich in Vitamin K and antioxidents. Check out The World’s Healthiest Foods. http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=100

Basil

Look forward to:

A return of squash and zucchini (a little break from them is kind of nice though)

Just around the corner-fall greens! We will be transplanting kale and chard soon. In the greenhouse we will be starting head lettuce to have ready in September. And finally, we hope the weather will cooperate and make it a little easier to try a fall lettuce mix (you may remember we didn’t have any last year, it was just too hot and dry)

Tabbouli

From Secrets of Healthy Middle Eastern Cuisine, Abourezk

Marie’s comments in italics

Go ahead and switch the recipe up a bit! I recommend adding sweet peppers and cucumbers with feta cheese and basil.

Ingredients

½ cup bulgur wheat (I’ve used cous cous before too)

½ cup water

4 cups finely chopped ripe tomatoes

½ cup fresh lemon juice

2 tbs olive oil

2 large bunches parsley, about 5 cups finely chopped (1 large bunch is plenty! Chop parsley very fine- almost to a fluff)

1 cup chopped onions

1 tbl dried mint flakes

1. Rinse the bulgur, drain and then add ½ cup of the water and let stand for 15 minutes. Place the bulgur in a large mixing bowl, then add the tomatoes and lemon juice. Chop the parsley (very fine-almost to a fluff). Place on top of the bulgur and tomato mixture. Add the onion, mint flakes, and the oil and mix thoroughly.

2. Tabbouli can be prepared a couple hours ahead of time if you wish. Simply leave out the oil and lemon juice dressing until you’re ready to serve. Adding the dressing too soon makes the parsley wilt and creates too much liquid in the bottom of the salad bowl.

3. In the Arab world, tabbouli is scooped up and eaten with lettuce leaves, rather than with silverware. Putting each serving of tabbouli inside a lettuce or a cabbage leaf rather than displaying them in a flat dish is a very tempting presentation. Or, for an elegant looking and tasting hors d’oeuvre, cut cherry tomatoes in half, remove the center, and fill them with tabbouli.

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.

Farm News

This week we have finally been catching up to ourselves and cleaning up some of the spring crops. The least fun part of that job is cleaning up the old irrigation line. It is a thin plastic tube that we laid out on the nicely tilled ground back in March. Since then dirt has been thrown over the tubing and the weeds have gone crazy. Now we get to not only find the irrigation line in all that mess, but pull it out, without losing the many 6 inch long sod staples we used to hold it in place before the weeds took over. Then we get to do it 36 more times-once for each line! With that out of the way the job gets considerably easier. I hop on the tractor and prepare the ground for a cover crop, plant the seed, and use the tractor to till the seed in.

Before the tractor work could begin though we also had to play a fun game we called “find the black widow spider!” In the spring (and fall) we use a thin cloth covering to help protect our plants from the frost. We hold the row cover down with sandbags. This spring, when we were done using them we just piled them at the heads of the bed. Today we had to move them out of the way of the tractor paths. It turns out that the moist, cool, full of good hiding spaces habitat formed by a pile of sandbags is ideal for black widow spiders. We found 10, most with egg sacks, in only 3 piles! We had previously noticed that we were finding more than usual around our house and farm already. It must be a good year for them. So if you are going our back to move and old lumber pile or clean up the junk heap, be careful!

In addition to planting one cover crop we are busy incorporating another. A cover crop of millet and cowpeas we planted in the spring had reached head high-ready to mow. Some of the crop I had to mow because we needed to chop in down quickly for the imminent planting of fall crops. However, in another section, we are letting the sheep do the mowing. When we first put them into the paddock they were a little nervous because the crop was taller than the grass they were used to. Consequently, they couldn’t see very far. They kept poking their heads up as high as they could reach to try to get a better view. Every time another sheep or Clyde the guard dog would unexpectedly burst through the tall plants they would spook and jump away. Interestingly, they all turned their noses up at the crop for the first few hours. They wanted their regular grass and were having no part of the millet and cowpea mix. The sheep just weren’t sure they believed us when we told them that a book had told us that they would like the cover crop. Fortunately, instead of breaking out of the fence they eventually sampled the available food and decided it was acceptable.

Cherry tomatoes with their friends the marigolds

Marie in the cucumber patch

Week 11 7-27-2011

Week 11

Cherry Tomatoes

Tomatoes- You many receive a green tomato with yellow streaks. It is completely ripe! It is called “Green Zebra, “ and it is wonderfully sweet.

Basil- cherry tomatoes (sliced in half), chopped basil, and fresh mozzarella drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt. Summer simplicity.

Cucumbers- Chopped cucumbers, chopped tomatoes, diced peppers, and minced garlic drizzled with an Italian vinaigrette makes a fine summer salad.

Garlic- “Music” variety, a snowy white type bred for all purposes…ease of growing, storage, peeling, and flavor.

Wax beans- The smallest of these beans are delicious to eat raw. Cooking Idea: Heat a large skillet to medium high. Add about 2 tablespoons of your choice of oil to the pan, and stir fry the beans. Stir often to avoid burning the beans. Add occasional splashes of water and lemon juice (1 tablespoon of each) while stirring quickly. The liquid should steam and evaporate. After about 4 minutes, add 1-2 cloves of minced garlic to the pan. (Adding it later prevents the garlic from burning) Cook for another 3 minutes, turn the heat off, and add a hearty sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.

Peppers- You may start to see other shapes of pepper besides the square bell pepper shape in the next few weeks…a long, curved pepper “Corno di Toro” (Horn of the bull), this is a sweet, mild frying pepper….another type will be “Lipstick,” which is extremely sweet and mild. I love it raw! We will include a notice in this newsletter when you get anything spicy or hot! There are no hot peppers yet!

***Crop info*** Our tomatoes are not producing well yet. All of the tomatoes, especially the heirlooms, are fighting for strength against fungus right now. The tomatoes you’ve been getting are from plants that are resistant to fungus, but bear small fruit. We are hoping the plants with giant tomatoes will do well with some help from an organic fungicide.

***Squash/zucchini- We’ll be taking a break from squash for a little bit, until our youngest succession of plants starts to produce.

Farm News

A little bit of rain helped to ease the heat Monday evening. Unfortunately for us we were trying to harvest vegetables when the storm came. Usually we harvest vegetables in the mornings on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But this morning we were busy bringing the wild escape artist hogs to the butcher (the high-strung pigs allowed themselves to be corralled, loaded, and unloaded very calmly. We are grateful for this small sign of respect we can show the hogs) So we were out in the field starting to pick tomatoes and cucumbers when the rumbles started all around us. Between the rain and thunder we decided to take a little break in the truck until the storm moved through. After about 15 minutes the sky was lighter, the rain had stopped and the thunder was in the distance. So we went back to harvesting. Then, just as my hand brushed against the metal tomato trellis wire there was a huge crack of lightning just across the creek in the golf course. It made us both jump-me especially be because I got shocked! The lightning had been close enough to travel through the ground about a quarter mile (across silver creek), and because I was touching metal, zap me. Needless to say we both headed to the truck-quickly-and decided to put off harvesting until the morning. So just a friendly reminder, don’t behave like Benjamin Franklin or William!

Recently we have noticed something interesting in last year’s vegetable field. This summer’s cover crop is irregular. On the west side of the field the plants are dark green and approaching head high. The plants remain this high for a nice chunk of the field, then there is a section of shorter plants. Then the plants become gradually shorter and yellower (a sign of nutrient deficiencies) the further to the east end you walk. Our best guess is that the tall, dark green section is so healthy because it is where the tomatoes were last year. The tomatoes received an application of manure (almost none of the rest of the field did) and had heavy hay mulch. So that area has higher organic matter and higher nutrients leading to healthier plants. In addition this area received a nice application lime and granite dust for pH and potassium. The next area only received lime and granite dust and looks reasonably healthy. The final section only received lime several months after the other areas. Lime can take some time to actually change the pH. So that area probably has the least healthy soil biology and soil chemistry.

We have a mix of two crops ion our cover crop mix, cowpeas (a nitrogen fixing legume) and millet (a small grain in the grass family). Nitrogen fixing plants form relationships with bacteria in their roots that do the actual nitrogen fixing which is the process of taking nitrogen from the air (where it is extremely abundant) and converting it into plant usable compounds in the soil (where it is typically lacking). Interestingly, the yellowness in the millet and cowpeas has started to fade to greens in the last week. This may be because of the bacteria really kicking in and doing their job. In organic farming pulling nitrogen out of the air through biological processes is the most important source of nitrogen. This is because commercial fertilizers (an all animal manures from animals fed grain grown with commercial fertilizers) rely on extremely energy intensive methods to create usable nitrogen from natural gas (they use fossil fuels to turn another fossil fuel into fertilizer). These commercial chemical fertilizers can damage soil life, leach into the water and kill aquatic life (the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is one of the more extreme examples), and volatilize into the atmosphere contributing to the break down of ozone and the formation of acid rain. Fortunately, legume cover crops offer a viable alternative for us to the harmful chemical fertilizers.

Fun fact: besides soil bacteria the only other sources of natural nitrogen fertilizer are snow and…lightning (the extreme energy released causes chemical reactions that turn atmospheric nitrogen into nitrogen usable to plants that falls out of the air dissolved in rain). I just prefer that this natural form of nitrogen fixation occurs a little further away from me!

Week 10 7-20-2011

Week 10

In your box this week you will find:

Sweet Peppers- ‘Tis the season of the sweet pepper! Soon we will have ripe (red and orange) peppers.

Green Onions

Leeks- Mmmmm. A nice sweet, buttery treat. See recipe below.

Squash/zucchini

Cucumbers- Mix it up! Try cukes in a potato salad- see recipe below.

Tomatoes

Cherry tomatoes

Potatoes- This week’s potatoes are a red skinned white potato, Reddale. This variety is a moist waxy potato- that means it has firm flesh and is good boiled, in stews, and potato salads. Check out the tangy and cool potato salad recipe below.

Season of Harvest

Lately it feels like all we’ve been doing is harvesting. All year leading up to this point we’ve prepared beds, weeded, started transplants, set transplants out, weeded some more, watered, trellised, and many other vegetable projects I can’t even remember. Of course we were harvesting, but now we are really harvesting. All the summer crops need to be harvested every other day at least because the fruit just keep on coming. They’re not like greens or root crops that can wait until a planed harvest day. Instead, it’s just harvest, harvest, harvest. It is wonderful to be able to see the fruits of all our hard spring labor coming to harvest.

Thinking about fall

The downside of all that harvesting is that it is hard for us to keep up with other farm tasks, especially planning for fall. Believe it or not we are still trying to do some transplanting. Cucumbers and squash really only produce well for about a month, then they get tired and slowly waste away. About a month ago we started a late round of cucumbers and squash on the greenhouse. Just last week we transplanted them out. We should be enjoying their fruit in September and October right up until frost.

The major baby plant project is for fall greens. Even in this hot weather we have to try to start some greens. Because before we know it the days are getting shorter (if not cooler) this slows down the growth of the greens. If they don’t reach a certain size by the time the days are shortening in September, they won’t be harvestable this fall. In addition to getting the seeds started in the heat we have to get the garden beds ready right in the middle of busy harvest season. It is a challenge, but if all goes well we should be enjoying nice greens all fall and early winter.

Week 9

Week 9 Box-

Remember to wash all veggies.

Potatoes-“Yukon Gold” This a great variety. I (Marie) have never been a big potato fan. However, several years ago I started eating the freshly dug, unusual varieties of potatoes from small farms, and I stopped stabbing at my plate and dug right in!

…Here’s what Wood Prairie Farm http://www.woodprairie.com/ (the farm we bought the organic seed potatoes from) says about “Yukon Gold” potatoes… “Our Yukon Gold seed potatoes are a European-style yellow-fleshed potato renowned for outstanding flavor and dry texture. Perfect baked, boiled, mashed, or fried. Our best seller. Extra good keeper.”

Green onions- “Evergreen Hardy” This variety multiplies into several plants and are perennials in the garden.

Beets- See a new recipe below

Cucumbers- You’ve been getting 2 different types of cucumbers: Short, stout cucumbers and long, dark green cucumbers. You may leave the skin on both types of cucumbers, but I tend to peel and rinse the shorter type because their skins are a bit thick.

Squash/Zucchini-see recipe below

Parsley- Parsley and potatoes, anyone?

Basil

Sweet Peppers-all the peppers you have been getting have been sweet. Some look like regular bell peppers. As you have noticed some of the peppers come to a point, looking a little like a hot pepper. These are a variety called lipstick. It is a very sweet and delicious pepper that just happens to have a pointed tip.

Baby onions-Apparently onions are very challenging to grow. For a second year in a row our onions went from looking great to maturing and dying back in a matter of days. Unfortunately, they do this before getting much size on them. They should be just perfect for the recipe with the zucchinis though!

Upcoming veggies: Green beans (crows ate the first planting, so it is taking longer ‘til we harvest the second planting) and tomatoes (they are starting to ripen, I promise!)

Humidity!

The other night we could have cut the air with a knife, or perhaps stabbed it with our digging forks. We had waited until the sun was safely sinking behind trees to go dig potatoes. But the heat lingered in the sweat soaked air. Trees only 100 feet away were blurry around the edges from the water in the air. It was like digging potatoes while swimming, only not as refreshing. Fortunately, the recent rains had softened the soil so it was relatively easy to dig. Just last week, before the rains, I had dug a few test plants. I had to jump on the fork just to force it into the soil. Now I could easily stab it into the earth with only my arms.

A healthy soil is only about 50% solid material. The rest is airspace that fluctuates between air and water. When the soil is very dry the soil particles are locked together, they do not want to yield to a fork or shovel. Water filling some of those gaps makes the soil more malleable. It will move over so to speak for the tool as it digs in. We certainly appreciated the extra help!

The Lone Ranger

The night before butchering we catch all the chickens and put them in crates so they are ready in the morning. We usually don’t finish crating the birds up until it is dark. This helps to keep the birds calm as we catch them. As usual, after catching the birds this last time Marie and I scanned the pen and the fenced in area to make sure we caught all the birds. No birds in sight. But the next day, and every day since then there has been one large broiler chicken on the loose in the woods. He must have already gone wild when we caught the birds and been sleeping in the woods. So far he has survived by foraging and perhaps visiting the pigs for water. I guess Petunia has kept enough predators away that our little lone ranger didn’t become a fox’s dinner, at least not yet.

Recipes:

Fresh Gingered Beets

Adapted from The Passionate Vegetarian, 2002.

Basic Cooking Method

1. Wash beets well. Cut off and discard root tails and all except 1 inch of stems. Do not peel. Cook, covered in lightly salted boiling water for 40 to 50 minutes or until just tender. Drain. Let cool until easy to handle.

2. Slip skins off beets under running water. Carefully slice each beet into 1/4 inch thick slices, removing and discarding remaining stem ends.

Once the beets are sliced, you may splash them with a bit of olive oil and store for about 2 days before using or creating them into a dish. I like to store beets in Mason jars, so they don’t stain the Tupperware.

Recipe:

1. Heat 1 teaspoon each butter and oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. When the oils are sizzling hot, add the baked beets and toss them in the hot fat.

2. Then add 1 to 2 teaspoons peeled very finely dice ginger. Toss for about 30 seconds.

3. Then add 3 tablespoons brown sugar and 2 tablespoons water. Cook, stirring, until the water and brown sugar have bubbled into a glaze, about 30 seconds.

Teeny Zucchini with Onions

From Better Homes and Gardens Annual Recipes 2001

Note: squash can be substituted for zucchini

Health Note: We like to get include some other form of protein in our meals, when not eating meat with a meal. We tend to eat meat just 3 times a week.

1 lbs baby zucchini or 3 medium zucchini

1 tblsp. Olive oil

1 Small Onion, cut into thin wedges

¼ cup chopped walnuts

½ tsp dried oregano, crushed

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

Rinse and trim zucchini. If using medium zucchini, cut each in half lengthwise, then turn into ½-inch slices

In a large skillet heat olive oil over medium heat. Add Zucchini and onion. Cook for 6-8 minutes until vegetables are just tender, stirring occasionally. Add walnuts, oregano, salt, and pepper to mixture in skillet. Cook and stir for 1 minute more. Makes 4-6 servings.

Week 8 7-6-2011

Week 8 box

Carrots (the last for now, so enjoy)

Beets- They have a sweet earthy richness that so many people love. Others just can’t understand this diamond in the rough. Once you’ve boiled the beets ‘til fork tender, rinse with cool water, and slip the skins from the beets. Then prepare as you wish. See a recipe below that is a delightfully delicious summer salad. (These are the types of salads we eat when lettuce is out of season.)

Red Russian Kale- I just love the Epicurious website. I peruse the site and then always vary the recipes base on my own whims and the seasonal or available ingredient. Try this recipe: Kale with Panfried Walnuts …http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Kale-with-Panfried-Walnuts-356015

Swiss Chard- I’ve been adding basil and goat cheese to the Chard dishes we’ve prepared lately. Mmmmm…

Cucumbers- Do you put cucumbers in your pasta salad? Try mixing in nice triangular chunks of cucumbers.

Squash/Zucchinis- One other item that I’ve discovered is raw, shredded squash and zucchinis along with cucumber chunks and shredded carrots. I dress this mixture with a basil vinaigrette.

Bell Pepper- The plants are beginning to bear fruit. As the plants mature, we’ll allow the fruit to ripen into nice red and yellow peppers.

Basil- See the vinaigrette recipe below. I know I’ve put it out there many times, but allow your creativity take over as you make it and add your own twists. (I like to crank up the amount of basil and call it a “Basil Vinaigrette.”

On the way!

Cherry Tomatoes

Green beans (snap beans)

Pigs Corralled!

Last Wednesday was a hectic adventure with many pig escapades. The final escape occurred during CSA pickup. A member came down to the house and said “are there supposed to be pigs on the driveway?” Nope! By the time I got fencing supplies in the truck and got up there they were headed toward the neighbor’s yard. Luckily I caught them before they made it there. I herded the 7 or so 250 pound hogs back to their home fence area. Then I fixed there fence-so far it has held. Instead of the one wire that has proved sufficient for the previous 40 or so pigs we have raised these 13 trouble makers required 2 hot wires and a ground wire to make sure they really get shocked! The gang of 13 has taken the title of worst behaved animals previously held by the sheep for their triple escape weekend. We attribute their ability to escape to their athletic prowess. Off to the butcher in 3 weeks (not that we’re counting).

Spiny pig weed

In the garden it is spiny pigweed season. Spiny pigweed is a hot weather weed in the amaranth family. The family includes many not so bad weeds most of which are edible. Spiny pigweed is the bad seed in the bunch. The entire stem is covered in needle sharp, nearly invisible spines. When touched these spines practically jump off the plant into your finger. They will penetrate gloves, socks, or the mesh portion on a running shoe. Once in your finger the spine is almost invisible and breaks off easily when tweezed. In short it is, a highly irritating painful, hard to get pain in the finger. Unfortunately, spiny pigweed is highly tenacious if you simply cut the plant it will grow several branches where there was only one. The only way to deal with this hydra of a plant is to pull it up by the roots. So with gloves and fork I did battle this week. Now where the pig weed had moved in edamame soybean seeds are beginning to germinate! We look forward to their delicious seeds in fall!

Cooling Rain

Today we suffered a setback during chicken butchering. When I went out early this morning to start the scalder up so that it would be ready when we start butchering, it wouldn’t light! Fortunately, we were able to fix it, but not before 7:30-when we were supposed to starting to butcher. Once lit the water takes nearly 2 and half hours to heat up. So we had to go find other things to do for that time-move chicks to pasture, move the horse, clean, relax, eat a snack. We didn’t start butchering until almost 9:30. We had an amazing crew though and we made up much of our lost time, finishing only about an hour later than usual at 2:30. As we ate lunch on the porch the clouds began to move in thicker. As the crew pulled out of the driveway the first few drops began to fall. The breeze and rain came in earnest and we enjoyed a lovely afternoon storm bringing a much needed 1.35 inches of rain. I had front row seats to the storm from the chick brooder. As I cleaned out the space in preparation for the next batch of chicks the storm crashed around me. There were frequent lightning flashes with thunder following just on its tail. Crack-boom! Crack-boom! The coolness and energy of the storm transformed the normally hot and tiresome job into an almost fun task. Poor Petunia didn’t think so though. She eventually found me in the shed as she nervously sought shelter from the storm. She eventually settled down in the fresh shavings as I finished the job. She does not like storms!

Recipes

Classic Tangy Vinaigrette https://sites.google.com/site/bluebirdfarmnc/homeC/recipes/classic-tangy-vinaigrette … Variation: Pack the basil in this recipe. I like to reduce the mustard and then add around 12 leaves of basil into the blender or food processor.

Orange-Beet Salad

From Better Homes and Gardens annual Recipes 2001

Note: I used olive oil instead of walnut oil and plain chevre instead of feta cheese. I also omitted the orange peel (the peel of conventional citrus have a high concentration of pesticides) and used 1 extra tablespoon of orange juice. I let the beets marinate overnight in the dressing and topped the beets with the walnuts and cheese on the dinner plates. It was delicious!

3 medium beets (about 9 oz)

3 Tbsp. walnut oil or salad oil

1 tsp. shredded orange peel

2 Tbsp. orange juice

1 Tbsp. white wine vinegar or white vinegar

2 Tbsp. broken walnuts toasted

3 Tbsp crumbled feta cheese

¼ coarsely ground pepper

1. Wash beets well. Cut off and discard root tails and all except 1 inch of stems. Do not peel. Cook, covered in lightly salted boiling water for 40 to 50 minutes or until just tender. Drain. Let cool until easy to handle.

2. Slip skins off beets under running water. Carefully slice each beet into 1/4 inch thick slices, removing and discarding remaining stem ends.

3. Meanwhile, for dressing, in a screw-top jar combine walnut oil or salad oil, orange peel, orange juice, and vinegar. Cover and shake well.

4. In a medium mixing bowl gently toss the beet slices with the dressing. Cover and chill for 2 to 24 hours.

5. To serve, let mixture come to room temperature. Gently stir walnuts into beets. Sprinkle with feta cheese and pepper. Makes 4 servings.

Well, here it is 9:30 pm and we are finally sending out this week’s newsletter.When William began writing it this morning at 6:00 am, we had no idea that today would turn into “one of those days.” See the last paragraph in the body of the newsletter and you’ll see the type of piggy adventures we were up to late last night…and then several times through the day today when we trying to harvest and pack the CSA boxes. The pigs have been having a blast! Every heard of a pig jumping over the moon? We hadn’t either.

Week 7 Box: We apologize for the shortened recipes section today.

Curly Kale- Baked Kale Chips anyone?

Swiss Chard- I’ll be cooking a fine Italian pasta meal with Swiss Chard, zucchini and squash, basil, garlic, and parmesan cheese.

Bok Choy (also spelled Boc Choi) Try an Asian style stir-fry with carrots, spring onions, and boc choy. Remember to cook the carrots and onions first, then cook the Bok Choy stems lightly, and the chopped Bok Choy greens last. Any green will taste bitter if you cook it for too long- I like my greens just past wilted and still bright green.

Squash/zucchini-

Cucumbers

Carrots

Spring Onions

Garlic- variety “Nootka Rose”

Basil- Keep the bag of basil open so the basil can “breathe” and always store basil at room temperature. You can still use it if it is slightly wilted. You make also freeze basil in freezer bags and then crumble it into a dish when you need it. It won’t keep a pretty color when frozen, but it will still taste amazing!

Thank you for all the returned boxes last week! It makes our job much easier to have them back so we can pack them for you today.

This week you will be receiving some of the garlic we talked about last week. We grew about 5 different varieties of garlic, just a small sampling of all the possibilities. This week’s garlic variety is Nootka Rose, a beautiful silverskin garlic with red streaked clove skin. Look for differences in taste, peeling ability, and texture each time we put garlic in your box. Garlic is a great example of a crop with tremendous variation that has been reduced down to just a few types available commercially. Those commercial types have, as usual, been chosen not for flavor but for looks, storage ability, and easier peeling. Spending just a few moments more to peel a clove of garlic seems like a small price to pay to begin to explore a plant with as many complexities and differences in flavor as wines. For a brief overview of all the garlic available you can readhttp://www.gourmetgarlicgardens.com/overview.htm

You will probably notice holes and pock marks on the boc choi. These are the marks of flea beetles. The marks are just cosmetic blemishes, and the plants are fine to eat. They are very small, usually black insects that jump when disturbed, hence their name. Two of their favorite crops are eggplant and boc choi and this year they found both! If their numbers are controlled they typically just slow a plant down and it will recover. However, they are capable of completely devouring a young transplant. It is always interesting to see how the pest populations vary from year to year. Last year we had very little flea beetle problems, but we were inundated with squash bugs and potato beetles at this time. This year it is reversed.

This big project in the garden this week was to catch up on weeding and put down hay mulch around the potatoes and tomatoes. We still need to get around to the peppers. All these crops really appreciate the moderating effects of mulch. It will help hold moisture in, cut down on weeds, cool the soil temperature, and reduce pest pressure. Pests that particularly like tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes-in particular the potato beetle, are unable to navigate the jungle created by mulch. They tend to get lost in the hay instead of finding the plant. Unfortunately the same is not true of pests for other plant families. Mulch around squashes is a bad idea because this provides the ideal habitat for squash bugs to wildly proliferate.

This Monday and Tuesday we didn’t get to work in the garden quite as much as we had planned because we were busy with an experiment. We were testing the idea that our single electric line fences for pigs only work when the pigs are happy. It turns out that when the pigs decide that they are unsatisfied with what’s inside their fence they have no problem going through it! In the last 48 hours the pigs have more or less operated as if there were no fence-extremely exasperating (especially to the poor horse who is pretty sure that the pigs are after her when they get out!). Last night we were finally able to address some of the issues. Turns out the pigs were just plain hot. Who can blame them for being grumpy when it’s almost 90 and humid? So we ran water for a nice big wallow-they loved it! We also added some electric lines to their fence so it looks a little more intimidating. Today we will find out if our changes worked. Update: The pigs decided that the fence doesn’t apply to their situation right now. William added one more electric line to help prevent these particularly athletic pigs from sailing over the fence.

That’s all for this week, Enjoy the food!