Farm Share Info for July 29

It's a funny time here on the farm. Busy, as always, but a little lean, too. Our first big flush of spring produce is done (no more napa cabbages, peas, chicories, beets) and we get to catch our breath for a little while before the big summer crops come on. Well, we won't be catching our breath so much as we'll be busy weeding and weeding and planting and weeding and building and mowing and weeding some more.

It may not seem like it to you, but it's been a little bit of a challenge for us to put together the past couple of shares -- mostly due to drought, insufficient fertility and just a little bit of inadequate planning. The drought and fertility I can't really do a whole lot about except know that we can irrigate in the future (with our new irrigation setup) and that the soil tilth and fertility will continue to improve as we continue to work the soil and to cover crop it and add minerals and nutrients. As for the planning, I just underestimated how much of each crop we would need. It's exciting to walk through the market gardens and see all of the different crops, but it's frustrating come harvest day when you pick every last fava bean and still don't have enough to give out. Hypothetically speaking, of course. But of course, this is where we can see the power of crop diversification: with so many different crops planted, there's always something ready to fill in for something that didn't do well. Crop diversification is way better than crop insurance. What can I do about this? What any good farmer would do: learn from it and plant more.

But don't worry! This little shortage only affects our successtional plantings and -- being successtional -- we get a chance to plant more. Better yet, all of the crops that only get planted once (onions, leeks, winter squash, tomatoes, potatoes and such) are about to starting coming in by the bushel. We've been eating the first few cherry tomatoes of the season, some of the big slicing tomatoes are done sizing up and are just waiting to ripen, eggplants are setting fruit, winter squashes are -- as usual -- out of control, corn is tasseling, potatoes are about golf ball size, and you're all getting some early hot peppers this week. All that good stuff yet to come and, since we're just now only 1/4 way through the CSA season, we'll have plenty of time to enjoy it all.

All shares contain:

• "Rainbow" Beets
• Swiss Chard
  
• Zucchini and/or Summer Squash
• Cilantro
• Green Onions
• Hot Peppers
  

"Full" shares also contain:

• more onions, zucchinis and peppers
  
• Fennel
• Thyme
  

Veggie Notes

beets - I can't believe I've forgotten to mention this for two weeks -- in fact, I can't believe that I'd forgotten it at all: beets are really really good when eaten with a little goat cheese. It's by far our favorite way of eating beets. Just roast the beets and then serve them with some chevre -- such as the great stuff available from Kennebec Cheesery at the Thursday farmers market. The sweet, earthiness of the beets is set off nicely by the creamy, tangy, earthiness of the cheese. Try it!

green onions - These are just "premature" onions and can be used like onions or scallions. The green tops can be used too. Kendra's family likes to pack the green tops in a bin of salt, which preserves them. Then they use them to flavor soups and stews over the winter.

fennel - The first time we grew fennel, we were hooked. What a unique, versatile, little veggie! If the licorice flavor is a bit much for you, cooking can help to tame that a bit. Raw, it's crunchy texure is great in anything that calls for celery and it's sweetness and flavor really pair well with fruits: with raisins, say, when grated into some sort of new-age cole slaw or with grapes in one of those chicken salads that have grapes in them or just chop it up and toss it in with some fruit salad. In Italy, apparently, it's sometimes eaten for dessert with orange-flavored goat cheese. When cooked, it again can be used anywhere that celery would be used and that would benefit from a little sweetness. We really like to carmalize it like you would onions: slice it thin and cook it in olive oil over a low flame for 30-40 minutes.

Recipe Ideas

Corn Salsa
Sweet corn is starting to show up at roadside stands in the area and this is a great way to use any ears that you might have leftover. It's also a great way to tide you over until fresh tomato salsa season. To cut the corn off the cob, just stand the [already cooked] ear on end on a cutting board and cut downward to slice off the kernels.

2 cups sweet corn, cooked
1/4 cup red onion, minced
1/4 cup cilantro, minced
minced fresh hot pepper, to taste
salt

Combine corn, onion, cilantro and hot pepper. Season to taste with salt and serve.


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 July 15 [Updated w/ notes & recipe]

All shares contain:

• fresh garlic
  
• collard greens
  
• scallions
• shell peas -- don't eat the pods, just the peas inside
  
• thyme
  

"Full" shares also contain:

• more garlic and peas
• "rainbow" beets
• baby zucchini

Veggie Notes

fresh garlic - This isn't the young, tender stuff we had earlier. As the garlic plant matures, the stem thickens and hardens while the skin around the bulb starts to become tougher. You can still use the entire bulb (wrapper skins and all), but you'll want to trim off the stem perhaps 1/2" above the bulb.

collard greens - Collard greens can be used just like other cooking greens, but they have a more assertive flavor (like that of kale and other brassicas, such as broccoli and cabbage) a more robust texture. Don't believe the old stories of fat, southern grandmas cooking these things all day with pigs feet; we boil them briefly in 1/2-3/4" of lightly salted water in a wide, shallow pan. You could also steam them. We also make a great tomato-based pasta sauce with collards for which I'm having trouble finding a recipe. I'll let you know when I find it.

shell peas - Unlike in previous weeks, these are shell peas and the pod cannot be eaten. I know, I know: it's a lot of work to shell peas, but -- to my tongue -- the convenience of snap peas still doesn't hold a candle to the great flavor of shell peas. While we cook snap peas in all sorts of dishes (stir fries and pastas, notable), we almost never cook shell peas because we always end up eating them all as we're shelling them.

beets - Remember that the leaves of beets (aka `beet greens') can be eaten like Swiss chard. The tend to be a bit more tart, but they're still pretty good. If you want to preserve the distinct colors of the rainbow beets, you should steam them or roast them. If you boil them, they'll all end up kind of red. See below for roasting instructions ... well, not so much instructions as guidelines.

Recipe Ideas

Finding recipes is perhaps the hardest part of writing these newsletters. We've been cooking with fresh, whole foods for so long that we don't really use recipes anymore, instead relying on "techniques" with generous injections of experience-influenced intuition to guide our hand to great meals. To that end, I'll treat one of our most versatile and trustworthy techniques as recipe.

Roasted Vegetables
Roasting is a wicked simple technique that works well for a lot of different vegetables. (And especially well for root vegetables.) Though we generally roast veggies during winter -- when the heat given off from the oven is a welcome boost to the wood stove -- there are a lot of great foods to roast in the summer too. Summer veggies such as beets, carrots, eggplant, peppers and new potatoes -- just to name a few -- respond well to roasting. So, here are our general guidelines for roasting:

You will need:
a vegetable, or vegetables, to roast
salt and pepper
a fat to roast in - bacon fat is best, olive oil is great, and other vegetable oils will work too
a pan to roast in - large enough to accommodate the veggies in a single layer
optional: seasonings such as herbs and/or chili peppers

1. Turn on oven and preheat to 350 or so.
   
2. Clean, trim and chop the veggies into pieces that are approx. the same same size. The size of gaming dice is a good size -- smaller is too much work and too much larger will take forever to cook.
   
3. Toss the veggies with the oil or fat, a good pinch of salt, several turns of the pepper grinder and -- if using -- the seasonings.
4. Spread the chopped, oiled, seasoned vegetables into the roasting pans and place into the oven.

Roasting times will depend upon the vegetable being roasted as well as the size into which it has been chopped. In general 30-45 minutes is a good amount of time to roast. If the veggies are cut smaller or thin, they will cook more quickly; if they are cut large or are spread in the pan thickly, they will cook more slowly. The test for being "done" is that the veggies will be "fork tender", i.e. that they will yield easily to a fork.

Roasted Beets
Using what we've just said, let's roast today's beets:

1. Clean, trim and chop the beets into 1/2" cubes.
2. Chop up about 1/2 of the bunch of thyme.
3. Drizzle the chopped beets w/ olive oil to coat and toss with the chopped thyme and a good pinch of salt and pepper.
4. Spread the beets into a roasting pan -- we used a 9"x9" pan.
5. Place in oven and roast. As I'm writing, the beets have been in for about 45 minutes and are getting close to done. By 1 hour, they should be perfect!

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

We hope you enjoy the share!

Potting Up

One of the numerous tasks we have every spring, "potting up" -- or moving various seedlings from small pots, trays or cells into larger pots or cells -- is done for a number of reasons: it gives the plants fresh soil (and, thus, nutrients) to use; it gives them more room, so they can grow larger while staying stout and sturdy and it lets us make more efficient use of potting mix and our precious greenhouse space because we can germinate many hundreds of plants in very compact trays and select only the best to spread out later into larger, roomier trays. It's a very easy task, but one that takes a lot of time.

In the pictures below, you'll see that we're using soil blocks, which are just that: little blocks of soil. We germinate seeds in tiny 3/4" blocks, which we later separate and plug into the larger 2" blocks. Not only is it very geometrically satisfying, but it fulfills the strong urge to play with building blocks that we are so rarely able to express as adults.

We finished potting up last week, with the bulk of it happening two weeks ago. These pictures were taken just after the plants were potted up and -- though I have no pictures to prove it -- the plants are already unrecognizably larger.

A big tray of celery seedlings. Note the little blocks fitting into the bigger blocks.


A close-up of the Celery.


Peppers


A whole bench filled with tomatoes, peppers, celery, celeriac and parsley seedlings.
(The plants in back are being watched for some friends. They, apparently, got an earlier start than we did.)