Farm Share Info for August 26

The calendar still says summer but the weather is saying FALL. How confusing! Some of you will be happy and some will be sad to see more onions and zuchinni. All of you will be happy to see TOMATOES and BASIL. Coming weeks will see leeks, eggplants and peppers. But for now, it's supper time...

All shares contain:

• Zucchini, Summer Squash and/or Patti-pan Squash
• Cucumbers
  
• Fresh Onions
• TOMATOES!
  
• BASIL!
  
• New Potatoes
• Sage
  

"Full" shares also contain:

• more onions, zucchinis, spuds, basil and tomatoes

Veggie Notes

New Potatoes - Last week, you received mix of different potatoes. This week, however, you all received Carola potatoes. These have a firm (or waxy) texture and excellent, rich flavor.

Forget everything you've learned from the supermarket about "red potatoes", bakers, russets and whatnot. It all comes down to one thing: texture. Potatoes -- generally -- come in two textures: firm and waxy or floury and dry. The firm, waxy ones (like the Carola's in this week's share) tend to hold their shape when cooked, making them great for soups, stews and potato salads. The dry textured spuds (which you'll see in a couple of weeks) make quintessential baked and fried potatoes. Of course, they can all be used interchangeably, but you'll get the "best" results when you follow these guidelines.

A quick note on potato storage. These new potatoes will keep just fine on the counter as long as they're not exposed to light. In response to light, they'll begin to turn green, meaning that you'll have to peel them before eating. We just cover ours with a cloth napkin or keep them in a paper bag. If you keep them in the fridge, be sure to keep them in a plastic bag as the dry air in the refrigerator will tend to dry them out. Also, if they're in the fridge for long, some of the starches will convert to sugars, yielding "sweet" potatoes. If this happens, just leave them out at room temp for a couple of days and they'll go back to more or less normal.

Tomatoes - Tomato selection this week includes Jet Star, Big Beef, Moskvich, Japanese Black Trifele, Cherokee Purple, Valencia, Black Prince and Green Zebra. Most of them are picked "dead ripe", but a few may need a few days on the counter to finish fully ripening. Note that some of them will have green shoulders even when fully ripe, so don't use that as an indicator. Generally, we just gently -- VERY gently -- squeeze the 'maters to see if they're ripe. Unripe fruit will be firm, while ripe fruit will yield -- if just a little. Also note that the Green Zebra tomatoes are green when they're ripe. The trick for these is that the will have green stripes over a yellowish background when they're ripe; when unripe, the background is still light green.

Basil - Hey, it's basil! What more can I say? Just this: we don't wash basil before packing it because basil is very prone to molding when it's wet for long periods of time. Just rinse it before using. Also, do not store it in the refrigerator as the very cold temperatures of the fridge will speckled the leaves with unsightly brown spots.

Fresh Onions - These are likely to be the last onions we see in the share for a few weeks. Although they're still great to eat when fresh and green, these should have by now bulked up to be 3-4" across. As onions mature, the tops naturally die back and -- indeed -- we're starting to see that. This signals to us that we should pull the onions and ready them for storage. Until we do this, we'll keep them out of the share.

Sage - Fresh herbs are a great way to give food flavor without resorting to more salt or fat. Sage tends to be associated with anything that's roasted and/or sweet: winter squash, potatoes and such. See below for a recipe for sage pesto.


Recipe Ideas

Idea #1:
Basil pesto. There should be enough basil in the share this week for pesto. Recipes abound and should be easy to find. Our only advice would be to add a little bit of butter and to toast the pine nuts.

Idea #2:
Caprese salad. This is the classic tomato/basil/mozerella salad. Slice fresh tomatoes and serve with basil leaves (whole or sliced) and fresh mozerella. Fresh mozerella is not the kind that comes in the block, rather it tends to come in rounded forms and usually in small balls in a brine. If you don't have mozerella, fresh feta (such as that available from Kennebec Cheesery at the Waterville Farmers Market) works really well. Optionally, you can drizzle the whole thing with a little balsamic vinegar.

Idea #3:
Sage Pesto
I'm cheating a little bit here. I haven't actually made this recipe, but I've heard from a number of people that really enjoy sage pesto. So, give it a shot and let me know what you think. This recipe comes from Epicurious.

1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley
3 to 4 tablespoons chopped fresh sage
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup walnuts
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (3/4 oz) plus additional for serving
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

In a medium or large skillet, over low or medium heat, toast walnuts, tossing frequently to avoid scorching, until fragrant. Blend parsley, sage, and garlic with salt in a food processor until finely chopped. Add walnuts and pulse until finely chopped. With motor running, add oil in a steady stream. Turn off motor, then add 1/3 cup cheese and pepper and pulse to combine.

Reserve 1 cup cooking water from pasta, then drain pasta in a colander. Thin pesto with reserved cooking water in a serving bowl, then add pasta and toss to combine. Sprinkle with cheese before serving.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please let us know if you have any questions, concerns or problems.

We hope you enjoy the share!

Farm Share Info for August 19

This week we put a fence around our winter squash because the deer seem to have found it. We also opened up a new garden and turned in a cover crop of buckwheat in another garden. We've also been diverting a lot of energy to building a shed and foundation for Kendra's wood fired oven.

We recently received the results for this years round of soil tests. While being slightly discouraging, they were also great in that they showed progress and reminded us that building and balancing soils is a long term project. It can be frustrating to put so much work into certain crops only to watch them languish in infertile soil. But then patience is rewarded with slow but steady growth; growth which points toward and illuminates the inherent potential of our soils. Reading our soil test results is like reading an elaborate mystery novel for which the last chapter is missing: we have all of the clues, but we'll never understand how they fit together. This property was last farmed so long ago that all details of it's past life are long forgotten and we're left guessing as to what may have happened. Why is the sulpher in this field, like, off the charts? And is that giant mound, that one over there, all of the topsoil which belongs over here where we've planted all of our crops in the hard, rocky earth? As we discover more of these clues, we become more amazed that things are doing as well as they are. Sure, I've not seen potatoes or parsley ever grow this slowly, but they are growing. And the fact that they're not just growing but looking damned healthy (if sluggish) is all the more exciting as we start to think about what this place will be like once we've re-placed the topsoil and adjusted the soil acidity (pH). And nutrients. And organic matter. It's a lot to do, but it's a great, optimistic thing to be working toward and we know that every little thing we do is moving us in the right direction.

All shares contain:

• Zucchini, Summer Squash and/or Patti-pan Squash
• Cucumbers
  
• Green Onions
• Napa or "Chinese" Cabbage
  
• Lettuce (see note below)
• POTATOES!
  

"Full" shares also contain:

• more onions, zucchinis, cucumbers and spuds
  
• TOMATOES!
• Sage
  

Veggie Notes

Lettuce - We noticed a few aphids in the water as we were washing the lettuce heads this morning. These tiny, green insects are harmless, and the lettuce looked OK, so we decided to call it all good. That said, you should rinse the lettuce thoroughly before eating it and try to eat it sooner than later. If you want to keep it for a little while, keep it in a plastic bag by itself. Aphids are tiny, harmless, green insects, but it can be disconcerting to share a meal with them. Please let us know if you have any problems or are unhappy with this.

New Potatoes - These are fresh, or "new" potatoes. New potatoes have a fragile skin and juicier flesh than "regular" potatoes. They're great for potato salads (just toss with some fresh herbs that have been briefly sauted in LOTS of butter) or with basil pesto. Actually, all spuds start out as new potatoes, but lose their freshness after they've been stored for a while. (They're still perfectly good after having been stored, but they're not really the same.) Most potatoes available in stores at not new potatoes (in fact, they're likely last year's crop), and if you've never gone out of your way to have fresh potatoes, you're in for a treat. If you notice any funky, corky, sunken spots, they can easily be carved out or peeled off. We try to grade out all of the bad ones, but some inevitably slip through.

Tomatoes - This week, full shares get a taste of some of our first tomatoes. While "vine ripened" tomatoes in supermarkets are only allowed to just begin to blush from green to red, all of our tomatoes are picked off the vine fully ripe (or at least pretty damn close to fully ripe). The maters this week are a selection of Jet Star, Big Beef and Moskvich. (The former two are tasty hybrids, the latter is a great heirloom.)


Recipe Ideas

Sweet and Sour Cabbage
This recipe has passed the simplest test: we've made it once and we're excited to make it again. Be aware that a giant pile of shredded cabbage will cook down to the barest amount. We got this recipe from a great stir fry book called Wok Hei or Breath of a Wok.

1 tbsp rice wine (or dry sherry)
1 tbsp soy sauce or tamari
2 tsp rice vinegar (or balsamic vinegar)
2 tsp Maine maple syrup
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cornstarch
2 tbsp peanut oil
2 tbsp grated fresh ginger
1 cup thinly sliced or shredded carrot (optional)
2 tbsp minced scallions (or green onion tops)

Combine rice wine, soy sauce, maple syrup, salt and cornstarch and reserve. Heat a wok over high heat until a bead of water vaporizes in 1 to 2 seconds. Add the oil and swirl, then add the ginger and stir fry for 10 seconds. Add the cabbage and carrots and stir fry for 1 to 2 minutes or until the veggies are just limp. Add the rice wine mixture and bring to a boil for 30 seconds or until thickened. Serve sprinkled with scallions.


As always, we welcome your feedback. Please let us know if you have any questions, concerns or problems.

We hope you enjoy the share!

Farm Share Info for August 12

Pray for sun. Please. The crops around the farm continue to look healthy, but this recent stretch of cool, cloudy, rainy weather hasn't been encouraging anything to grow. What we really need now is a good stretch of hot, sunny weather to really push everything along. Here's a great example: last week we picked over 50 pounds of zucchini and summer squash from one 50 foot row. This week we only got 18 pounds, or 1/3 as much.

That said, a number of things are cruising along ... if only on momentum: more and more heirloom tomatoes are ripening, our corn is ripening enough that the raccoons have begun to notice, and it looks like we may just have the best winter squash crop we've ever had.

I've done some informal polling of shareholders that I see and have come up with a few general comments which seem to sum up your experience with our CSA so far:

1. You're all very happy with the quality and freshness of the produce.
2. You would like some more greens to eat as salads.
3. Some of you would prefer to receive larger quantities of perhaps fewer kinds of things.
4. At least one of you hates cilantro.

If your feelings aren't expressed above, please let us know!


All shares contain:

• Zucchini, Summer Squash and/or Patti-pan Squash
• Cucumbers
  
• Green Onions
• Garlic
• "Braising Mix" (aka "stir fry" or mustard greens)
• Celery
• Chives
  

"Full" shares also contain:

• more onions, zucchinis, cucumbers and garlic
  
• Thyme
• BASIL!

Veggie Notes

Nothing really new this week.

Recipe Ideas

Technique: Stir Frying
Stir frying is a very simple technique that can turn very simple ingredients into a wonderful meal very quickly. For years, we tried to make stir frys that weren't runny, bland disappointments. Finally, we made a couple of simple adjustments to our technique which results is pretty darn good stir frys every time:

1. Dry the ingredients as much as possible before cooking.
2. Cook ingredients separately and in small batches (a roomy single layer in the pan)
3. Cook over as high a heat as possible. (Remember to be careful when using nonstick pans over high heat; before we got a wok, we only used cast iron.)
4. When all ingredients are cooked and set aside, heat up your stir fry sauce in the pan before adding the ingredients back to the pan. The sauce can be as simple a soy sauce and maple syrup, or -- like the one listed below -- something a bit fancier.
   

Stir Fry Sauce
This recipe is adapted from one in a Betty Crocker cookbook. We tweaked it to make it a little more seasonal and local-friendly, but we also toned the sweetness quite a bit. (As in we reduced the total sweetener to under 25% what the original recipe called for and we still think this is kind of sweet!)

This makes a lot of sauce, something like 2 cups. We often save half of the sauce in the fridge for another night, or for dipping eggrolls or stuffed cabbage leaves. This can also be prepared ahead of time and mixed right into other already cooked ingredients.

2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp Maine maple syrup
2 tbsp soy sauce or tamari
1 1/2 tsp grated fresh ginger
1/2 cup cider vinegar

1/2 cup veggie or chicken stock, or just water
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tsp corn starch
hot pepper to taste
1 tbsp Hoisin Sauce or Black Bean Paste (optional)

Combine 1 tbsp of broth/water with corn starch, stir to eliminate clumps and set aside. Combine all other ingredients, bring to a boil and continue to boil until reduced by 1/3 to 1/2. Stir up the corn starch mixture and stir into the sauce. Boil/simmer until the sauce thickens, 1-2 minutes.


As always, we welcome your feedback. Please let us know if you have any questions, concerns or problems.

We hope you enjoy the share!

Farm Share Info for August 5

All shares contain:

• Zucchini, Summer Squash and Patti-pan Squash
• Cucumbers
  
• Cilantro
• Green Onions
• Garlic
• Loose leaf Lettuce (for salad)
• "Braising Mix" (aka "stir fry" or mustard greens)
  

"Full" shares also contain:

• more onions, zucchinis, cucumbers, garlic, lettuce and braising mix
  
• Sage
• Marjoram
• "Italian sprouting" broccoli
  

Veggie Notes

zucchini - We try not to give out really big zukes, with the exception of the light and dark green striped and ribbed ones. These are a variety called "Costata Romanesca" and are widely regarded to actually improve in quality as they get larger. Of course, they can quickly reach sizes over 10 pounds, and all of the squashes we put into the shares this week were positively tiny compared to that.

cucumbers - The whitish/yellowish cucumbers are an heirloom variety that originated not far from here in Livermore Falls, Maine. It's called "Boothby's Blond". The spineless cucumbers are a variety called "Diva" which was developed in Albion, Maine.

cilantro - Some of you will have received a funny looking kind of cilantro with frilly, feathery leaves. It's called "Delfino" and recently won a national award for it's uniqueness and high quality. Aside from the leaves, it's just the same as regular cilantro and can be used just the same.

Italian sprouting broccoli - These little tiny broccolis are delicious and very sweet when raw, especially when chilled. It grows differently than regular broccoli and has taken a little while for us to get used to, but we think we're getting a handle on it now. Please, let us know what you think of it.



As always, we welcome your feedback. Please let us know if you have any questions, concerns or problems.

We hope you enjoy the share!