While not of the astronomical type, a new solar system has set down at Fair Share Farm. The system, dreamed up by us farmers, and engineered & fabricated by Henry Rentz of Missouri Valley Renewable Energy (www.movre.com), arrived on May 11 and was put to use this week.

With all of the rain and cool weather this Spring we were beginning to wonder if we would need it at all. But a week of warm and sunny weather saw the necessity to water in our new tomato, pepper and lettuce transplants.

The schematic shows the general, simple layout of the system. Solar panels provide the electricity needed to power an electric submersible Grundfos pump. When turned on, the pump provides irrigation water to the fields for as long as the sun is shining. When we aren’t irrigating, we can use the solar panels to charge up the batteries on our electric tractor.

With a rated flow of 25 gallons per minute, and “plenty of pressure” according to Henry, the system appears to be meeting our needs. The beauty of the system is the fact that it is “on-demand”, pumping lots of water right to the drip tape in the beds, without the need for any type of storage tank system. On Tuesday we were able to pump water to one of the higher points of the fields, while irrigating another area at the same time.

We are looking forward to seeing just how far we can pump water, and then working up a permanent layout for our main lines. We are also going to see how large an area we can overhead water. This can be useful in getting cover crops to germinate during dry periods, as well as allowing us to foliar feed large areas with EM (beneficial bacteria).

We are still learning to enjoy the fact that we can run the system from this point on without the emissions, noise and cost of a gas-powered system. Except for additional irrigation supplies, operating the system from here on out should cost basically nothing but our time. The pond we are pumping from drains a large area and has not required a large amount of rain to fill up in the past. We are lucky to now have such a dependable and inexpensive source of water.

The little video below is of the pump controller. It shows that water is flowing (green arrows on left) and how much power the solar panels are providing in watts. On our first day, when the sun was bright and right overhead, the panels were providing 400 watts of power. We’ll see how much more we get by the first day of Summer.

It is the time of the year to enjoy the greenness of your share. We have been doing just that ourselves, taking advantage of some of the best salad ingredients of the year. You can’t go wrong with a simple mix of lettuces, Asian greens, onions and your choice of dressing. You can keep on topping it with nuts, seeds, hard boiled eggs, and/or grated cheese, to add some protein.

You will notice that the Asian greens have started to flower. For some vegetables, like lettuce, this signals that it is turning bitter. But for others, like tat soi, bak choi, and yukina savoy, they simply get more flavorful. Snack on the flowers, or cut them off and use them as garnish, or in a salad.

You can’t get any greener than this week’s recipe. The version below is based on what’s in the shares, but it could be just about any greens. Our favorite is cream of sorrel soup. Just make sorrel the main green that you use. You can also add a potato with the onions to thicken it up a bit. You will notice that this recipe is quite similar to last weeks, but is really quite different.

Cream of Green Soup

2 cups chopped onions, walking onions, and/or leeks
3 green garlic
½ head of lettuce
3 to 4 cups spinach leaves
¼ pound asparagus
1-1/2 tbsp lovage
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 bay leaf
1 dried hot pepper (optional)
Grated Parmesan, yogurt of sour cream for topping
Chives and chive flowers for garnish

Wash any mud off the vegetables. Cut the root end off the leeks, green garlic and walking onions. Next cut each just below where the tops start.

The tops are used to make a quick stock. Simply chop them once or twice, and add them to a 2 qt stock pot filled with cold water. Next add any trimmings from the asparagus, bay leaf and dried hot pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, finely slice the leeks, garlic and/or onion. In a medium saucepan sauté them in the olive oil over high heat for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add salt and butter and turn heat to medium low for 10 minutes.

Chop the lettuce, spinach, asparagus and Lovage. Add to the onions. Stir and cook for 1 minute. Strain stock into the pan, bring to a boil, then simmer for 15 minutes. In a food processor, puree the solids until smooth. (Note: it is best to strain out the solids and puree them separately before adding back to the liquid).

Top with grated cheese, yogurt or sour cream, and chopped chives and chive flowers. This soup is also good lukewarm or cold.

Tomorrow morning will be the official start of the CSA season on the farm. It’s a time of nervous anticipation at the farm. We hope that you all are as ready as we are for the season to be here. It’s been a long time coming.

Tomorrow’s harvest crew will initiate our new wash & pack area. Not new precisely, but a big improvement over last year’s model. Tom outdid himself on the addition to the loafing shed roof, which now extends over the wash area. No more need for the temporary canopy we have used for the past five years whose hobbies included sailing across our fields in the wind and dripping water on the workers. A table for spraying root crops is going to save a lot of backs and our fabulous apprentice, Jenn Baughman, & I built new tables adding lots of workspace. For the entire construction thanks to more CSA member angels, only the nails are new.

Oh we love our new wash area so! Especially since it is a bright spot on an otherwise nerve-racking sight at the farm. Two out of seven beds of peas rotted , the others only so-so. Two out of six beds of potatoes rotted; ditto on the others. We’re hoping to plant more potatoes this week. Half or more of the broccoli ‘buttoned up’. We’re sending in some of these lovely buttons for you all to see and eat. Thankfully the greens and the alliums survived the muck and the cold. You will see that this week’s shares are filled with them. While the fields are full of crops of which many will undoubtedly produce a bountiful harvest, these first few weeks are going to be a struggle. We’ve got loads of lettuce planted, so be prepared to make some salads. Meanwhile, we will continue to do our best in keeping our commitment to feeding all of our wonderful member families. In four seasons, we’ve had drought, flooding, and pests of all sizes. So far we’ve been able to muddle through these events and still have plenty for us all to eat. Here’s hoping the trend continues! On a positive note, thanks to the chilly spring for the first time ever there is asparagus in the shares. Granted its only ¼ lb. bunches (I recommend eating it raw in your salad), but the cold-induced late start brought its six-week harvest window into the CSA season so that we can all enjoy the crunchy shoots. Hoorah!

And finally before you head out to pick up your shares, a few points to keep in mind…

Fair Share Farm CSA Top Ten List: Things for a CSA Member to Remember:

1. Pick up your fair share. For the next 24 weeks you have a date with your food, don’t leave it to rot… or have it eaten by others, more likely.
2. And, perhaps, your other shares. Your meat, bread or egg shares come every other week or once a month.
3. Bag up your fair share. Used plastic grocery bags may be available at distribution, but bring your own bags of your choosing if you can.
4. Read about the fair share. Look for a new post about the shares and happenings at the farm every Tuesday night for the next 24 weeks.
5. Share about the shares. Fill out the surveys sent mid and end of season. Post a comment on the blog.
6. Eat your fair share. Check out Tom’s blog for all the yummiest recipes.
7. Contribute your fair share. Distribution & farm shift schedules are posted on our website. All payments due by July 31^st, 2008.
8. Preserve your fair share. Order extra food from the bulk list, once we have extra….
9. Share your appreciation with the distribution workers and the core. Without the diligent efforts of your fellow members, we farmers would be in a real pickle.
10. Celebrate the season’s share. Join us at the End of the Season Dinner October 25, 2008 for food, fun and family entertainment.

Until next week,

farmer rebecca

Welcome to week one of 2008. In our new weekly format, I, Tom, will try to provide assistance to the membership in enjoying their share. With 4 years of newsletters in the archive, there is a lot of information and recipes at your fingertips at www.fairsharefarm.com/newsletterarchive.html. I will suggest some past recipes and hopefully provide one new one each week.

The theme this week is greens and allium—as Spring as you can get. A blend of the alliums (leeks, green garlic and walking onions) makes a nice soup. Check out the recipe below, farm tested, it is mellower than you might expect. You can also check Week 1 of the 2004 through 2007 newsletters in the archives for a nice list of recipes including baked leeks, leek and tomato pasta sauce, and angel hair pasta with leeks.

The greens part of the share can be cooked or eaten raw. They provide a tremendous amount of nutrition, especially when in combination with the alliums. The Asian greens have a crunchy texture, and can stand being marinated in the dressing of your choice. Add some nuts or pumpkin seeds for flavor and protein. Our very first newsletter has a recipe for Asian Salad with (or without) Beef. A little sesame oil and Lovage (see below) is also good in this recipe.

Another green in this week’s share is something new—sorrel. This hardy perennial comes up every year first thing in the Spring and is usually passing its prime by the time the season starts. But this year it is ready to be harvested for the first week of the CSA. A tangy green with a citrus flavor we like it in salads, on sandwiches and in one of our favorites, Sorrel Soup.

The herb choices this week include Lovage, chives, mint, or dried herb. We hope you have a chance to try the Lovage. A little goes a long way, so don’t add too much. A tablespoon for a large salad is usually plenty, and adds a unique taste to dishes. It goes well with potatoes, in cole slaws, and in Asian dishes. It retains its aroma when dry, so don’t throw any leftover out. Air dry it, and then warm it on the lowest setting of your oven to drive off any remaining moisture, before storing it in a sealed container.

Three Onion Soup

2 medium leeks
4 green garlic
4 walking onions
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 bay leaf
1 dried hot pepper (optional)
Grated parmesan or other cheese for topping

Wash any mud off the vegetables. Cut the root end off the leeks, green garlic and walking onions. Next cut each just below where the tops start.

The tops are used to make a quick stock. Simply chop them once or twice, and add them to a 2 qt stock pot filled with cold water (see photo). Add bay leaf and dried hot pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, finely slice the leeks, garlic and onion. In a medium saucepan sauté them in the olive oil over high heat for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add butter and turn heat to medium low for 10 minutes. Strain stock into the pan, stir, and simmer for 5 minutes.

Top with grated cheese. If you have oven proof bowls you can brown them in the broiler before serving.

As mid-May approaches we ready ourselves for the start of the season. The farm is drying out and warming up after an exceptionally cool and wet Spring. The fact of the matter is we have only recently “broken a sweat” it’s been so cool out. This weather has set the clock back at least a week on many of our early vegetables, but we still plan on starting the season next week, May 14th. We hope to have a full share, but may be a little light. We hope you understand.

Our best projection of what items may be in the share is the following: lettuce, green garlic, leeks, Asian greens, herb choice (chives, mint, lovage), a small bunch of aparagus, walking onions, and maybe some other greens.

The rain predicted for Tuesday and Wednesday passed us by, finally letting the farm dry out, and allowing for lots of planting, tilling, thinning, and good growing. Summer squash, cucumbers, beans and more tomatoes have joined the crops in the field. In the greenhouse there are melons, pumpkins and winter squash germinating and getting an early start. We plan on getting the eggplant, peppers and rest of the tomatoes to the fields over the next week.

The weather has created a few problems. The 70 mph straight-line winds last week put some of the row cover and deer fencing in disarray, snapped a few tomato plants, blew off some roof shingles, and put us out of power for the day. As we’ve mentioned, we lost 2 plantings of peas and the ones that came up are a little thin due to all the rain. Many of the potatoes that were under water are still not up after almost a month in the ground, though we have some hope they are just laying low.

Also a large portion of the 1,200 broccoli plants we have in the field have “buttoned up” (see photo), flowering early and creating a small, small head. Our Extension agent Lala Kumar said that this happens when broccoli is exposed to extended periods of cold weather. The plants are otherwise quite healthy, so we will clip off the small heads and see if new ones develop.

Finally, we have been using our electric tractor quite a lot and it has been wonderful. This time of year it is important to cultivate when the weeds are in the “thread stage”, that is quite small and easy to kill. Creating a weed “free” bed when the onions, carrots, beets, spinach and other crops are still small goes a long way towards helping them out compete the weeds. Check out the video of Rebecca quietly weeding 200 bed feet of spinach.

It’s been a bit cold here at the farm and we hear it will be getting colder. We have been covering all the tender plants with row cover. Lots and lots of stooping and digging and burying the edges.

Sunday night is supposed to be down to 27 degrees. Cold, but not as bad as last year’s 18 degrees (for 2 nights). So if we make it through this cold spell, we feel that Spring will finally have sprung.

It’s been awhile since the last blog, and there’s lots of catching up to do. A brief summery of what’s been going on at and around the farm in the last 3 weeks includes:

• A quite successful and fun sign-up meeting on March 30th
• The arrival of our new intern Jenn Baughman on March 31st
• A farm tour as a part of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) 20^th anniversary conference that was at the Weston Crown Center the last week of March.
• A visit by fellow member and Channel 9 newsman Mike Flink to do a story on community farming
• Rebecca’s birthday
• Rocky’s first tooth

We would like to extend many thanks to the Core Group for organizing the signup meeting. We think it was enjoyed by all. The blurriness of the picture may be due more to the whirl of activity than a shaky hand.

We also have been visited by several William Jewell students who are each doing 15 hours of service learning work at the farm as a part of their Ecology of Food course. We are friends with the instructor Paul Klawinski, who we’ve known since our first market days in Liberty in 2003. We’ll expound on the class in future blogs. We are happy to be a part of this unique science class. That’s two of them helping Rebecca uncover the strawberries so the soil can warm up and their leaves can catch the sun.

Greenhouse and field work have been on the list of things to do too. The greenhouse is emptying of its Spring transplants, as they go to cold frame to “harden off”. Much of the cabbage, broccoli, asian greens lettuce, cilantro, and onions have made it to the fields. With the Spring crops heading out, the greenhouse is filling with summer ones, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, basil, and soon summer squash and cucumbers.

We have also seeded our first batches of peas, beets, carrots, turnips and radishes. We will continue this week to plant the potato crop. We are halfway done. We also seeded 100 lbs of wheat and 25 lb of crown vetch as a cover crop in many of our empty beds.

The plants look as healthy as they ever have this year and we are very happy. We are not sure if it is our source of compost, the extra worm castings, or adding EM (effective microorganisms) to the greenhouse water. While it probably isn’t any one thing, we feel adding “good” bacteria to our system can only help.

We hope to get some more good planting in this week and will have time to keep the membership posted more often. In the meantime we have cleaned out our root cellar and larder and found a nice stash of carrots, beets, celeriac, potatoes, turnips, radishes, onions and garlic. We also found our cabbage kept well this year in the cooler, and a delicious slaw has been in order lately.

You can do the same thing at home if you have a basement, garage or other room that stays cool but above freezing for the winter. Simply layer your carrots, beets or other roots in sand, and set them in a dark area (or cover them). You’ll find the carrots you put away in November may actually be more sweet and tender in March and April.

And finally a video, simply because we can. Rebecca planting with the G.

It became official this week, our old gas-powered Allis-Chalmers G tractor moved under electric power! Never having done this before, and not knowing what to expect, the first few feet of motion were a thrill. We simply copied other people’s designs and followed their instructions, but it felt like we were at the origin of the invention of a new machine. It works!!!

We are now at the stage of getting it ready to do some farming. As the Spring is late this year, with soils still being too cold and wet to plant, we have a little time to make adjustments and practice with the G. We still have to hook up the battery charger, build a box to cover the batteries, make some modifications for a few things that didn’t quite fit, and modify some of our implements.

But we are ready to go. Enjoy the videos below.

Rebecca’s first run

Rebecca in reverse

Rebecca second gear

The cold weather continues, with hope for 50 degree weather next week. We expect the grass to start greening up in the coming days, as things begin to awaken, driven by the day length as much as the temperature. The greenhouse continues to fill up with broccoli, cabbage, herbs, celeriac and flowers, with Asian greens, more lettuce, kale and kohlrabi to be seeded before the end of the week.

The fields are still quite soggy, and we have a good week or two to wait for them to dry out. The photograph is of the Spring beds located near the main gate. Just past them is our well mulched patch of strawberries that we are hoping will produce a nice crop for 2008.

They will be Rocky’s big test, keeping the racoons from snacking on them. Right now he still hasn’t grown enough to know how to chase them, as we have had one break into our back porch the last couple of nights with him nearby. Once his baby teeth are gone we expect him to do better.

The wildlife on the farm has been beautiful this Spring as always. We have learned to notice the change in the birds arriving at the feeder. The most striking bird we see is the Red Headed Woodpecker. Other birds scatter when it flaps it’s way to the suet. It is wonderful to see in-flight too.

Other birds are a bit farther away, but a regular visitor to the farm’s air space. The Snow Geese fly so high sometimes that they take awhile to spot, their loud honking giving them away. Another sign of the changing season. We feel lucky to have such a show everyday, and are glad with this blog to be able to share with you.