Category Archives: strawberries

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.

What to Do With Your Share—Week 3

June 1, 2011hakurei turnip, lettuce, strawberriesSemra Fetahovic

The Spring lettuces just keep coming this week. You hear some folks say that you can’t grow respectable food using organic methods, but as the leafy greens in your shares have shown they are one crop that grows great, given the weather isn’t too extreme (like the last 7 days).

Being farmers living close to the fields, we get our choice of the extra and less than perfect lettuces. That means we can cut ourselves a couple Regina di Maggio butterheads for a lettuce heart salad this time of year. The center of these lettuces live up to their designation of butteriness (if that’s a word). They are so tender and delicious that they deserve to be a salad all to themselves. They are a five-star treat.

To compliment this salad we recommend the creamy garlic dressing below. You can use green garlic, garlic scapes or bulb garlic for the recipe. This time of year, of course, the fresh garlic choices are the best. Not much else is needed but lettuce hearts and a garnish.

This dressing is bold enough for romaine hearts too. We have lots of large romaines growing right now and you can expect to see a lot of them. Use the outer leaves to top a sandwich, burger or BLT and use the hearts for a nice Caesar salad.

Butterhead Lettuce Heart Salad with Creamy Garlic Dressing
(dressing modified from The Silver Palate Cookbook)

Ingredients
1 egg yolk
½ cup red wine vinegar
1 tbsp sugar or honey
1/4 cup chopped green garlic or garlic scapes
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup best-quality olive oil

Method
1. Take outer leaves off lettuce head (save them for another salad or sandwiches) until you are left with the tender heart. You may want 2 lettuce heads per salad. Wash, dry in a salad spinner, and place in salad bowl or individual bowls.
2. Combine egg yolk, vinegar, sugar, garlic, and salt and pepper to taste in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Process briefly.
3. With the motor running, slowly dribble in the olive oil.
4. Taste, correct seasoning if necessary, and transfer to storage/serving container.
5. Top salad with the dressing and garnish of choice (we used roasted pumpkin seeds).

Strawberries
We have to report that year’s strawberry season is getting off to a tough start. It appears we suffered significant frost damage from the early-May cold spell, and may have other, yet to be determined problems. Of the two patches, the patch planted last year is doing the best. We will be talking to Extension to see what their opinion is. We hope that we will grow out of this slump.

The berries you receive might not have the shine and firmness that you are used to, but based on many samples, we feel that they are flavorful and should be handed out. We encourage you to use them soon, as they are a delicate fruit.

Hakurei Turnips
Everyone likes to be original, so most of our recipes are born of what is at hand and our creative hunger. But the more we search the web for recipes, the more we see that the aptitude of folks to cook fresh vegetables in imaginative ways is growing in leaps and bounds. I realized this as I searched for Hakurei turnip recipes the other day.

We have had an excellent harvest of Hakurei’s this Spring, and hope to have them in your share for a couple weeks. We don’t want to load you with a particular veggie without some cooking suggestions, so I searched for Hakurei turnip recipes, and found a slew of options. The curried Hakurei’s on The Veggie Project blog caught my eye.

The blog is posted as “a group of Boston-area families committed to cooking with local vegetables. During the summer of 2008, we each plan to try new vegetarian recipes with produce from local farms. We will use this blog to share information about the recipes we have cooked, and hope to inspire others to cook more locally.”

Curried Hakurei Turnips
Ingredients
1 chopped onion (you can substitute green onions or green garlic)
2 tablespoons oil
5 or 6 harkurei, sliced thin
2 teaspoons curry powder (makes a hot dish)
1 teaspoon salt
one lemon, cut into wedges

Method
Sauté the onion in the oil for a few minutes until translucent. Add the turnips, the curry powder and salt and cook until everything is tender. Squeeze some lemon juice over the dish before serving and serve with extra lemon wedges.—We used lime. This is an excellent combination of turnips and onions.

The Beginnings of Summer

May 5, 2011row cover, soil blocks, strawberries, tomato transplantsSemra Fetahovic

As farmers, we try to spend a lot of our time listening. Listening to the plants, the soil, the weather forecast, to better manage the farm. Since 2008, arguably our wettest and toughest year, we have modified our growing practices to alleviate the distress caused by too much rain.

From taking some areas out of production, to guttering our beds with our electric tractor, to using more mulch, these changes paid off in the likewise wet years of 2009 and 2010.

Last year we learned what we should have already known about planting summer crops like tomatoes—wait until it is warm. In 2010 late April and early May saw cold, wet days and nights that killed the feeder roots of three beds (about 300 plants) worth of plants and lead to a harvest at less than 50% of what we should expect.

This year we have been more patient, waiting for what looks like the beginning of day and night temps over 50 degrees. Tomatoes are heat loving plants, and plants that are warm and happy for their whole life grow just as fast, if not faster, than ones put out in the cold to start.

So Wednesday the farm crew set out 100 cherry tomato plants and 100 hybrid determinate plants. Yet to come are 100 hybrid determinates, 300 heirloom, and 200 paste tomatoes. We finish off our tomato planting in about a month with a final bed of summer (heat tolerant) tomatoes.

Tomato planting

Other goings on include walking by the strawberries every day and marveling at their lush green growth and many flowers. At the moment things look right for another successful strawberry season. Keep your fingers crossed.

Elsewhere in the field the broccoli and cabbage planted under the warmth of the row cover are growing as well as in any Spring. As they size up they make thier presence more obvious behind the shear fabric. Other crops are growing well too, as can be seen in the photo of this year’s garlic crop.

Meanwhile, in the greenhouse, we are finishing up most of our seeding and moving plants from the greenhouse, to the cold frame, to the field. It is interesting to watch the cucurbit seeds germinate in the soil blocks, as their large seeds seem to explode through the soil surface and unfurl thier leaves.

Finishing Out March

April 1, 2011lettuce, seeding, strawberries, transplantingSemra Fetahovic

March has ended with a flourish at Fair Share Farm. We put our 2011 intern Lucas to work a week early, and he helped us accomplish a significant amount of work this week. The plants have started moving out of the greenhouse and into the field. We’ve planted most of the onions, the first batch of lettuce and the kale.

With the weather the way it is looking we hope to plant out the broccoli, cabbage, potatoes, cilantro, dill, and more lettuce next week. We’ve also seeded the first carrots and beets.

Farm beautification has proceeded with piles of brish being cut and fences cleared. We have also cleaned up and “rearranged” many outside storage areas to make them more attractive and useful. Like when you clean up your house for company, it is nice to be pushed to do the work you have always planned on doing.

“Heeling in” the onion transplants

Rebecca seeding beets

Broccoli and cabbage

Lettuce and kale

Uncovering the strawberries

In the Share – Week 9

July 6, 2010cucumbers, strawberriesFarmer Rebecca

cucumber harvest

TOMATOES (F/P) One for each of you or a partial pint of cherry tomatoes

NEW POTATOES (F/P) Not cured, so keep these in the fridge.

CHOICE: BROCCOLI, KOHLRABI OR SALSA PACK (F) Grill the kohlrabi with your summer squash for a real treat. Salsa packs make their debut: chop up contents, add a little vinegar and tomato and you’ve got America’s favorite condiment.

SUMMER LETTUCE (F/P) Small crispheads that can stand the summer heat

WALLA WALLA ONIONS (F/P) They’re the sweet ones.

CABBAGE (F) Time for some coleslaw.

CUCUMBERS (F/P) We’re proud of the crop this week – long and lean.

SUMMER SQUASH (F/P) Can’t believe it took us 8 years of farming to make the Grilled Pasta Primavera in Tom’s blog. Thanks, Farmer Tom for our new favorite.

HERB CHOICE (F/P) Basil, Parsley, Summer Savory or a dried herb

ALSO THIS WEEK: Bread of Life Bakery shares

NEXT WEEK: More tomatoes, cucumbers and squash. Carrots and garlic.

What a beautiful week it has been on the farm. The weather has been lovely for the work, not too hot, low humidity. 1.3 inches of rain fell over the last 2 days, a nice slow soaking rain that was just what was needed. We finally got a break from irrigating which had been continuous for the past 2 weeks.

Summer is really here, you can almost watch the crops grow. The cucumbers are coming on strong and the beans are growing their first fruits. The tomatoes are a bit slow to ripen which is in keeping with the 1 week setback that has occured amongst those crops that were in the field during the cold, wet weeks in early May. We should have more tomatoes by next week with the peak of the harvest usually occuring at the end of July into early August.

The strawberry patch received it’s annual post-harvest haircut thanks to farm apprentice, Emily Lecuyer.

Mowing down the patch appears extreme but is recommended by the horticultural experts for reducing disease and pests. The second stage of what they call “renovation” includes tilling up the paths to make room for harvest and feeding the plants with organic fertilizer. With a little rain and sunshine the patch will grow back better than ever by fall.

Finally, an administrative reminder. July is here and the end of the month deadline for CSA payments is approaching. Contact me (farmer rebecca) if you need help remembering how much you owe. Thank you all for your suppport.

In the Share – Week 4

June 2, 2010irrigation, solar power, strawberriesFarmer Rebecca

morning harvest

BROCCOLI (F/P) Spring broccoli is never a shoe-in, but this week at least it shines.

LETTUCE (F/P) The heat is getting to our some of our lovelies, but most varieties are staying cool under pressure.

STRAWBERRIES (F/P) from the patch that just keeps on giving.

GARLIC SCAPES (F/P) the flower bud from the hardneck garlic patch. Scapes are incredibly tender and delicate – perfect for Farmer Tom’s Garlic Scape and Strawberry Dressing.

RADISHES (F) The last of the spring crop.

ENDIVE (F/P) Something we are starting to experiment growing more of. A pleasingly bitter salad green. Tom paired it with above dressing – yum. Let us know if we should be growing more of it.

HERB CHOICE (F/P) dill, mint, oregano or dried herb

ALSO THIS WEEK: Parker Farms delivery

NEXT WEEK: maybe the first sugarsnap peas, more broccoli, lettuce and strawberries.

This has been a good week for farming. Plenty of sunshine and the return of the warm air has brought lots of plant growth. The cherry tomatoes have begun developing their first green fruit. While the planting continues, we have caught up on the backlog of plants and seeds that had been delayed by the cool, wet weather of the past 2 weeks.

peppers and tomatoes newly planted

A sign of the change is that we fired up the irrigation system. The submersible pump left it’s winter vacation in the greenhouse for it’s summer job floating in the pond. Some minor repair of the floats was necessary due to our pesky muskrat pond-dwellers, but after short work we floated her out, plugged her into the solar panels and flipped the switch. With water now pumping heartily to the fields all that was left to do was roll out the tape along each row. The farm crew has made short work of that so that now all of our summer crops have had a deep watering and are handling the transplant with grace.

water pumping thanks to the sun