All posts by Farmer Rebecca

What to Do With Your Share—Week 3

May 23, 2012csa, fair share farm, kansas city, napa cabbage, stir fry, sustainable agricultureFarmer Rebecca

This “Sprummer” weather has really been something so far. We have learned over the past 10 years that all you can do is go with the flow, and adjust your growing practices to fit the situation. In our case that has meant harvesting up to a month earlier than in the past and irrigating starting n April. A few more than anecdotal examples of this seasonal shift are in our past blogs and harvest records.

This year the strawberry harvest is already winding down. In 2010 we spotted the first ripe berry in mid-May and didn’t pick a full quart until tomorrow, the 23^rdof May. Other years showed a similar timeframe, with the first harvest somewhere at the end of May.

Likewise, the sugar snap peas are in full flush at the moment. In other years, it would be at least two weeks before we would start picking them. Best case with all of this, you eat better earlier in the year. Worst case, we’ve screwed up the balance of atmospheric gases with pollution, and we won’t be able to count on a “regular” season of weather too often.

Napa cabbage

The Share
Opportunities abound for delicious meals with this week’s vegetables, and any that you have left from last week. Remember, that for most all of the greens that we give you the best place for them is in a bag in your vegetable crisper. They will last over a week in such storage conditions. Vegetables will dry out in a fridge if not in a bag, so be sure to keep them happy.

First, a couple links to recipes. If you look to the right, you will see a link to member Emily Akins’ blog Everything Begins With an E. Her post of May 15^this for braised lettuce with peas..just the thing for your share. If lettuce has accumulated, here is a good chance to eat some in a new way.

Re: the peas, you can “string” the sugar snap or snow peas and cut them into small pieces as a substitute for individual peas. Remember, with both types of peas we give you the pods are edible, but it helps to snap off the top and pull off the string (see photo). Try the recipe on that link too.

The turnips will be in the shares for a while, so keep our curried Hakurei turnip recipe in mind.

Raw Stir Fry SaladOur suggested recipe for this is an Asian vegetable salad/slaw, or as Rebecca noted, it is a “raw stir fry.” It started as we pulled a Chinese cabbage last week to check them out. I wanted to make a slaw, but felt that was a little too normal and finely chopped. So I cut up the more solid ingredients (turnip, radish, cabbage stem) into chunks while chopping up the greens. Tossed with an Asian sauce it really is the same ingredients as a stir fry, but raw.

Ingredients:Any that your want from your share. It is a good use for the Chinese cabbage. Also good in it would be radish, turnips, turnip greens, peas, broccoli, onion. Cut greens fine and other parts chunky for a good mix of textures.

Dressing:For a slaw-like taste I go for a dressing that is about half oil and half sharp tasting liquid (ie, rice wine vinegar, lemon juice, fish sauce). You can try the following and adjust to your taste:
5 tbsp sesame oil, 3 tbsp rice wine vinegar, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp fish sauce, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tsp chopped ginger.

Method:
Prepare vegetables and mix well in a large serving bowl. Toss with dressing. Serve as is or over warm or cold rice. Garnish with cilantro and crushed peanuts.

In the Share – Week 2

May 16, 2012pestsFarmer Rebecca

LETTUCE (F/P) These lettuces are too beautiful and scrumptious to waste. Lettuce prefers to be in a plastic bag in your crisper drawer. That goes as well for almost any leaf vegetable you will be receiving from us. 2 big heads for the full shares, 1 for the partial shares.

STRAWBERRIES (F/P) More luscious ladies from the patch. Thanks to all of you who have been ordering bulk! We really appreciate the sales and it means we don’t have to schlep our products to market to try and sell the excess. So far you all have ordered 100 quarts. Way to go CSA!

RED RUSSIAN KALE (F/P) The kale has grown by leaps and bounds thanks to the crazy weather we’ve had. If you haven’t yet discovered the beauty of kale chips now is your chance.

ASIAN GREENS (F) The perfect ingredient in your spring stir fry. This week we have Tat soi or Yokatta Na. Partial shares get a choice of Asian greens or kale.

PINK BEAUTY RADISHES (F) the hail from last week did a number on the greens, but the roots are still plenty pretty.

GREEN GARLIC (F/P) These are young garlic plants that you can eat like a green onion. Search the blog for past recipes or just use like you use garlic.

HAKUREI TURNIPS (F/P) If you are new to the Hakureis, you are in for a surprise. They are not your grandmother’s turnips – oh so sweet and juicy you can eat them like an apple.

ASPARAGUS (P) The last of the spears until next spring.

HERB CHOICE (F) Cilantro, dill or oregano.

ALSO THIS WEEK: Parker Farms CSA shares

NEXT WEEK: More lettuce, turnips, greens and strawberries. Peas and green onions.

FARM REPORT
The month of May is in full expression on the farm right now. Peas, potatoes and broccoli paint the fields in hues of green. Sugarsnap and snow peas ornament the rows with their delicate white flowers. Meanwhile tomatoes, summer squash and cucumbers have adjusted to their new homes and are beginning their exuberant growth. The farm crew rushes through the days harvesting strawberries every morning and then tending to the plants in the fields even as we add to their ranks. It takes a bit of choreography to keep all of the crops planted, watered, weeded, trellised, hilled, irrigated and mulched.

Sometimes we lose one. As we realized this week when we uncovered the arugula. Seems that a pesky moth larvae, most likely a cankerworm, insinuated itself under the row cover and flourished. So, our apologies but there will be no arugula until fall. The other planting bolted in the unseasonably warm weather.

It is hard to say what the weather will do next week, much less next month. Tom and I rest easier knowing that this year we started a week early. That means we have some flexibility in the season. If we have a good harvest all season long the 24 weeks of the CSA season will end a week earlier than planned. But if sometime during the season the crops are meager we can figure on this early week as its substitute.

What to Do With Your Share—Week 2

May 16, 2012UncategorizedFarmer Rebecca

The fields continue to produce in a grand fashion this week. The name of the game for week 2 is greens and roots, with some juicy red fruit thrown in. Time to settle into an eating cycle full of these early, cool season crops. Keep your wok and salad spinner handy.

We have several types of greens this week: lettuce, kale, Asian greens, and turnip tops. The leaf and head lettuce is at its tender best, making this a great time to make a “big salad.” Get your biggest salad bowl, clean and spin a whole head of lettuce, and top with some onions, turnips, radishes, green garlic, nuts, seeds, cheese, etc. The real homemade local touch is to then make your own salad dressing. We recommend our Garlic Scape and Strawberry Dressing. Simply substitute green garlic for the scapes.

Wednesday harvest

The Asian greens this week are also good fresh in a salad, the tat soi and yukina savoy have the deep color and body of spinach. You can use these greens to make a fresh and delicious stir-fry too. Or go one better and make a savory stir fry soup. Serve it over rice noodles and you will think you are at a Vietnamese restaurant. Either way, consider stocking up on your Asian cooking supplies to get the best out of the next few week’s offerings.

We suggest that you keep at lease some of the following ingredients on hand to compliment the vegetables in your share.

Fresh ginger
Rice and/or rice noodles
Sesame oil
Soy or tamari sauce
Hot sauce
Fish or shrimp sauce
Oyster/hosien or other prepared sauce
Peanut butter
Limes
Corn starch

With them you can make your own stir fry sauces. A peanut sauce recipe is in our August 23, 2011 blog. You can also buy prepared sauces. Just check the ingredients on the label.

The herb choice this week is full of fresh, Spring flavor. Cilantro, also known as Chinese parsley, is an excellent garnish for your stir fry (a little lime juice is nice too). Dill goes well in salads, homemade salad dressing, and is great with potatoes. The oregano is a savory herb that compliments most cooked meats and vegetables. When dried it is the seasoning that gives pizza sauce its traditional flavor.

Pickin’ berries with the members

May 13, 2012conventional versus local, fair share farm, strawberries, strawberry comparisionFarmer Rebecca

Every once in a while we buy produce from the grocery store to do a comparison. We like to check out the competition. We are also simply curious as to the overall quality of what is available in the produce section.

Our current evaluation was with strawberries. I bought a pound of what appears to be a modern standard for commercial strawberries. We looked at many factors and below is a little tally. Mind you we attempted to be objective.

Conventional (minus 2) on left, FSF/Local on right

Color
Conventional: All different shades of red, white and green, some unripe fruit
Fair Share Farm: All red or deep orange fruit.

Size of berry
Conventional: All were palm-sized, 13 berries per 1 lb package
Fair Share Farm: From small to thumb-sized, 43 berries per 1lb+ package

Interior
Conventional: Hollow with white flesh
Fair Share Farm: Red throughout

Exterior

Conventional: One berry half covered in mold, bruising on most.
Fair Share Farm: All berries in good to excellent condition. No significant bruising.

Flavor/Texture

Conventional: Depended, berries were crunchy as if not ripe. Ripest part had good flavor, sweet and tart.
Fair Share Farm: Juicy and tart with some sweetness.

Conventional on top, FSF/Local on bottom

There is more to the story too. We use what are called biological (organic) methods to grow the crops. Strawberries are fed organic fertilizer and mulched with straw. We work to promote soil life to help keep the plants alive. The plants are treated as perennials, so we keep them from year to year, reducing tillage.

Conventional berries are grown on plastic mulch. The soil is fumigated and sterilized with methyl bromide, an ozone depleting chemical that is still allowed for agricultural use. Synthetic fertilizer is fed to the plants for immediate uptake, kind of like an IV.

I am amazed by the size of the conventional berries. It is almost scary…actually it is scary. And, this being America, you can mark my words that in another 5 years they will be even bigger. If spam doesn’t make you feel inadequate, this sure tries.

Several years ago I emailed one of the commercial strawberry producers to ask them what their growing practices were. I got back a letter where pretty much the only thing they said was they were in compliance with the law with everything they do.

A main point these companies make, however, is that people need fresh fruit for a healthy diet and that is what they are providing. I do agree that there is a need for fresh fruit in everyone’d diet. The rest is a complex issue.

We would love to hear your strawberry experiences and how they relate to our comparison.

In the Share – Week 1

May 9, 2012spring, strawberriesFarmer Rebecca

LETTUCE (F/P) Big, beautiful heads, or at least they were before the hail on Sunday. We still think they are fabulously tasty, raggedy leaves and all. Full shares get a Regina di Maggio (‘May Queeen’) butterhead and a leafy New Red Fire. Partial shares get a choice of one.

ASPARAGUS (F) The early spring brought the asparagus on in March this year, so it will soon be left to fern out for the season. Partials will get their share next week.

STRAWBERRIES (F/P) Our “June bearers” are bearing in May instead this year. Lucky for us we were able to protect the blossoms and ridiculously early fruit from the spring frosts with a layer of row cover on at night, off during the day to allow for pollination of the fruit.

LEEKS (F/P) At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the leeks were extra early as well. These are the leeks we over-wintered from last fall. You have to pull them before they begin to develop a flower stalk. We harvested them over a week ago and kept them cold in the walk-in cooler to keep them fresh.

BOK CHOY (F/P) Tom and I are living on stir fry right now and bok choy is our favorite go-to ingredient. If you have yet to embrace the choy, check out Tom’s link in his post for a how-to for this most delectable dish.

SPRING ONIONS (F/P) Usually the first onions of the season are dainty ones, not these big boys.

CHERRY BELLE RADISHES (F) Bright red and juicy radishes add that necessary zing to every dish or cook them briefly to reduce their heat.

HERB CHOICE (F/P) Cilantro, dill or mint. Partial shares get a choice of radishes or herbs.

NEXT WEEK: More lettuce, radishes, herbs, onions and strawberries. Kale, Hakurei turnips and arugula.

FARM REPORT
Rebecca here. I write the weekly post on what is in your share and the farm report. Make sure to read the post below mine for Tom’s take on how to use your share this week. He likes to focus on the more unusual items in the share and he also loves to talk about food preservation. The farm has been a flurry of excitement this week with the CSA season beginning. With the warm spring the crops are way ahead of schedule. Never have things looked so good so early …

… and then the hail storm came on Sunday. Luckily, the pebbles were pea-size but they can still rocket right through delicate lettuce leaves. And they did. This, my friends, is the life of a farmer. We fall in love with our butterheads and then they break our hearts.

And so this is my welcome to you all to the CSA season. You have chosen to join with us in the roller coaster ride that is farming and we thank you for that. We promise to do everything we can to protect our food supply from the vagaries of nature, but we also promise that there will be highs and there will be lows this season. We will have bumper crops as well as crop losses. There will be hail, but there will also be strawberries.

Week 1: What to Do With Your Share

May 8, 2012csa, fair share farm, leeks, lettuce, stir fry, sustainable agriculture, thousand island dressingFarmer Rebecca

Welcome to the 2012 Fair Share Farm CSA. In this section of the blog we will give you recipe ideas and other suggestions for enjoying your share to the fullest. This weekly blog will serve as a jumping off point for you to explore your possiblities. The recipes we post are all tested, and often created, right here in our kitchen. We suggeest the following supplemental sources of information each week:
Fair Share Farm Recipe Page—This website page is a compilation of some of the recipes we have recommended in the past. It was compiled several years ago, so it does not include all of our recipes. You can use the search bar or menu to find what you are looking for.

2004-2006 Fair Share Farm Newsletters—Prior to the blog we posted newsletters every week. An archive of them is on our website. You can look at newsletters from weeks with the same date as the week of your share for some probable cooking options.

This blog—As with the newsletters, you can search out what we were doing in previous years to find recipes appropriate for that week’s share. Also, you can use the search bar in the upper righthand corner to look for things.

Use the Google and the internets—The early days of CSA’s consisted of mimeographed newsletters. Today, if you have internet access, the possibilities are endless. Find something tasty? Link it in our comment section or post it on our facebook page. We would like everyone to signup.

So…on with the show. We have a great first share this year. So nice that the encores could be difficult, but that is our job after all. Just no more hail storms please.

Before our feature recipe of the week, here are a few past ones that are known favorites. New to leeks? Try an Asparagus and Leek Fritatta, or if you don’t get your asparagus until next week, try Mashed Potatoes with Leeks and Garlic.

The bok choi is perfect right now, so get the wok out and have a stir fry. Hope we don’t have to tell you what to do with the strawberries, but a nice option is presented below.

Butterhead Lettuce Wedge Salad with Strawberries and 1,000 Island Dressing
Rebecca and I saw a recipe similar to this on a cooking show this winter, and it stayed with us. The butterhead lettuce in your share is an Italian seed variety know as Regina di Maggio. They are the light green lettuces with the head in the center. The tender leaves combined with the thick dressing are a nice textural combination. Needing a knife to eat it makes it feel so civilized, like you are living at Downton Abbey.

Ingredients:
1 butterhead lettuce
Spring onion
Radishes
Strawberries

Dressing:
Combine in a bowl and blend 4 tbsp mayonnaise, 2 tbsp chili sauce or catsup, 2 tbsp chopped pepperoncinis or relish, 2 tbsp EV olive oil, salt and pepper to taste.

Peel the loose outer leaves away from the lettuce head and save them for salad or other use. With the root end still on, cut the lettuce head into sections (top to bottom). Keeping the root on allows you to wash and drain it without it falling apart.

To serve, cut off root and set wedges in individual bowls, cut side up. Top with chopped onions, radishes and strawberries. Top with dressing.

Fair Share Farm CSA to Start May 9th

April 29, 2012bad seed, csa, fair share farm, irrigation, lady beetles, onions, solar power, sustainable agriculture, tomato plantsFarmer Rebecca

The time has come to start the harvest. This Spring has been unusually mild and has created an early maturing of most everything on the farm. These conditions have convinced us to start the CSA a week earlier than originally planned. So…the schedule for the first week’s pickup will be:

Wednesday Distribution (Bad Seed or Farm) May 9th
Saturday Distribution (Liberty or Farm) May 12th

For deatils relating to your distribution site please click on the link. If you are a farm pickup, you will have chosen either Wednesday or Saturday, so please take note of which day you are scheduled for.

The farm crew has been busy keeping up with everything the last month. Our 2012 apprentices Dani Hurst and Ryan Stubby started the last week of March and have now been on the job for a month. Peruse the previous blogs and you can see all that we have been up to.

This last week we have been concentrating on our summer crops. On Monday we started up the irrigation system as the plants were becoming quite parched. Our solar irrigation system seems to be working well this season. You can see in the photo the high flow we get on-demand from the panels. We measured this flow at 35 gallons per minute.

Elsewhere in the field crops destined for future shares, such as onions and broccoli are growing well.

The tomato plants are starting to go out. The cherries and caged hybrids are in the ground, and the heirlooms and remaining hybrids are No. 1 on the runway. Squash and cucumbers are germinating in the greenhouse and will be in the field in the next 10 days or so.

We began seeing aphids in the greenhouse on the peppers and eggplants the last few days, so felt it was time to call in the biological hit squad of lady beetles. Rebecca bought some at Family tree nursery and we set 1/3 of them loose last night. This morning they seemed to be quite active. We expcet them to do their job and help keep our transplants as healthy as possible.

Look forward to seeing and feeding all of you soon.