Calling all Artists
This is a special year for the CSA, as we initate a new project, The Fair Share Farm CSA Art Competition. We are looking to tap into the creative energy of our membership, and find out what food means to you. Your fellow member Stacey Cook has volunteered for the daunting task of heading up this exciting venture.

We have started a website, www.fairsharefarmart.com, that we hope will soon be filled with artwork from members of all ages. The website outlines the basics to date: lots of art; a selection of the best adult, teen and kid entries by a panel of judges; and a showing of the winners at Bad Seed on the First Friday of September. Prizes to be announced, with 12 of them to hopefully grace a 2011 Fair Share Farm CSA calendar.

We would like to have every membership submit at least one piece of artwork. A photo, painting, poem, quilt, puzzle, dance, song or sculpture. Whatever medium best suits you to express your thoughts. We hope you will all join us in what is sure to be a fun community project.

And if you have any web design talents, we would love to have your help setting up our website, so that we can easily post all of the submissions for the world to see.
Tom and Stacey

In the Share
The items in this week’s share includes a couple new items, both well known to the seasoned CSA member. Hakurei turnips are the white, radish looking vegetable that is not a radish. While sweet and succulent are not words you might associate with a turnip, they apply to the Hakurei. Great raw or cooked, they are a wholesome treat.

Tat soi, that deep green rosette of a plant is from the general family we call Asian greens. Yukina savoy is from the same family, but with larger, crinkled leaves. From top to bottom they are edible, from the crunchy stems to the spinach-like leaves.

Enjoy too the nice photo of Tuesday’s asparagus harvest by our intern Emily.

Stir Fry Heaven
We’ve said it in the past, and will repeat it here–it is stir fry season for the CSA. This time of year the many wonderful vegetables of Asian cuisine are at their peak. Your chance to make a meal that will be tough to duplicate later in the year is now.

Stir frying is an art easily mastered by following some simple rules. If you know how to chop vegetables, add them to a pan, and stir, you are most of the way there. An excellent summary of the “rules” of stir frying, by Rhoda Parkinson, is a simple click away.

Fair Share Farm Spring Stir Fry
A recipe that uses 5 items from the share, it is a truly local dish. We can tell you too, that it made for a quick and delicious dinner tonight.

Remember that stir fry is a high heat cooking process, so keep the heat on. Also, as PBS cook Martin Yan says “it’s stir fry, not stare fry.” You need to be constantly stirring as you cook.

Ingredients
2 tbsp sesame oil
1-1/2 tbsp chopped ginger
2 green garlic (bottom half)
3 Hakurei turnips
1 bok choi
1 tat soi or yukina savoy
6 to 8 lovage leaves
cilantro for garnish

Sauce:
1/4 cup soy or tamari sauce
3 tbs water
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp red pepper flakes or 1/8 tsp cayenne
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp corn starch dissolved in 1 tbsp cool water

Method

• First step is to ready the ingredients. For the tat soi and bok choi you will want to chop the stems and the leaves separate. Likewise with the turnips, chop the white root and the tops separate.
• Combine the sauce ingredients in a bowl and set aside
• Heat a wok or large skillet, add the sesame oil
• Add the ginger, stir and cook for 30 seconds
• Add the turnips and green garlic, stir and cook for 2 minutes
• Add the bok choi and tat soi stems, cook for 1 minute
• Add the greens from the bok choi, tat soi and turnip, and the lovage, cook 1 minute
• Add the sauce and cook for 1 more minute

Serve immediately over hot rice and garnish with cilantro if desired.

Each week, when we have extra produce we will post a bulk list. These items may be purchased separate from your share. Just email me at tom(a)fairsharefarm.com with your order.

You can pick the order up at distribution, and either mail us a payment or leave it with the distribution coordinators. Sorry if this week’s posting is a little late for the Wednesday shares, but if we get your order by 11:00 am, we should be able to fill it.

Lettuce (large head) $3.50 each
Green Garlic: $3.00 per bunch
Dried herbs: $2.50/tin

Welcome to all of our 2010 Fair Share Farm CSA members. We are ready for another 24 weeks of providing you with the fresh, local produce that you crave. Let’s begin.

While in this part of the blog I can’t tell you everything about every item in your share, I will tend to focus on a few items, and then give a tried and tested recipe. Last year’s Week 1 blog talked about sorrel, lovage and chive flowers, so no need to repeat.

The garlic greens have sized up nicely this year, and are at their peak right now. The stalk is tender and oh so garlicy. There is enough to make a good batch of pesto with them. Just use our “classic pesto” recipe and substitute 4 or 5 stalks of garlic greens for the basil.

Of all the Asian greens we hand out in the shares, I suppose bok choi may be the best known. A standard stir fry ingredient, it is also good in kim chee or chow mein. Like many Asian greens the entire vegetable is edible, from the crunchy stalks to the tender leaves.

Asparagus and Leek Fritatta
Fritattas are a wholesome and easy dish, and are at their best when made with lots of vegetables. Essentially a quiche without the crust, they turn eggs into a main course.

This recipe calls for 2 cups of grated cheese. We use 1 cup of parmesan and 1 cup of Goatsbeard Farms Walloon aged cheese. Fritattas are a great way to take a high quality cheese like Goatsbeard’s and spread it’s flavor over an entire dish. You can buy it from Brooke and Dan at the Friday Bad Seed Farmer’s Market.

1 medium bunch of aparagus
1 medium leek
1 stalk green garlic
6 eggs
1/4 cup milk
2 cups grated cheese
1-1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp salt

Clean and chop the leeks, green garlic and asparagus. Saute the leeks and garlic in the olive oil and butter for 5 minutes over medium heat in an oven-proof pan. Add the salt and aspargus and cook 3 more minutes.

Beat the eggs and milk. Add half the cheese to the eggs, stir, and then pour into the pan with the leeks. Cook over medium heat for 3 minutes. The eggs should be cooked around the edges of the pan, and the center will still be soft.

Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top and place in the broiler for 3 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool for 5 minutes. Serve warm.

The harvest season approaches here at the farm, and we are readying for the May 12 start to the CSA season. As is the case each Spring, there has been a lot of planting, growing, cleaning, painting, excitement and anxiety filling our days.

Below is a photo of Emily, Matt and Rebecca planting the cherry tomatoes in one of our no-till beds. They grew well in the greenhouse and are now covered with a heavy layer of row cover to keep them warm. We are a bit concerned that the over 300 tomato plants we have in the field right now won’t like the predicted 36 degree overnight temperatures on Saturday. We will do what needs to be done to protect them.

Other crops are growing well. Rebecca took the electric G through the onions on Saturday, cultivating 5 beds in a matter of minutes. Rocky later conducted an inspection and luckily decided not to nap on them.

The strawberries are LOADED with flowers. Our virtually weed-free organic bed looks great. This is the third year for these plants, so we are hoping that the berries they produce aren’t too small (slows down the picking). Expect these delights at the end of May.

The lettuce for the first week’s share is sizing up nicely. It has been covered for over a month, and will remain covered until the latest cold spell is over. On Monday we harvested the leeks for the first week’s shares. They have been in the ground since last May and about a third of them did not survive the bitter cold of last winter (but the rest did). As they are ready to form their flower/seed head, we needed to dig them up now while they are edible. We have about a pound per share. See you next week!

Field crew weeding and seeding

Rain Break

While Rocky may make things look quiet on the farm, we have been busy planting when we can. Last week offered a few days in which we could prep a lot of beds and do both some direct seeding (carrots, beets spring turnips), and transplanting (broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, onions).

The broccoli and cabbage went in the ground via our new transplanter. It pulls behind our large tractor (“Grandpa”), punching a hole in the soil and filling it with water. The farmer sits on the transplanter and drops plants into the holes as they roll by. We then come around behind and firm in the plants for a good stand. In our first trial morning we planted 600 broccoli and 600 cabbage plants. We plan on perfecting our method this Spring.

We are very happy with the quality of our transplants righs now. The greenhouse looks good and able to put out very healthy starts. They are growing so well that our main concern is holding them too long in the greenhouse if we can’t get them out to the field. We will continue squeezing in our planting between rain showers as we can.

Broccoli transplants in soil blocks

Lettuce transplants

Last week we had the help of many hands for a day or two of our work. Six students from the William Jewell Ecology of Food class filled their service learning hours by helping with the lettuce and brassica planting. They also helped us cut 500 pounds of seed potatoes to prep them for going in the ground.

On Sunday we took a break before starting another week to have brunch with some friends and celebrate Rebecca’s 37th trip around the sun. It was a beautiful day and a splendid time was had by all. Happy Birthday Becky!

The middle of March is the time at the farm when we start making plans to plant in the field. This year things will have to wait a little while though, as the ground is still quite wet, and the soil too cold. In our early years we would try to push it and plant too early, but have come to learn that it is better to have your plants in the greenhouse than in soil too cold for them (same goes for seeds).

This year, some of those plants are going to be set with our new water wheel transplanter. We picked it up from Morgan County Seed last Friday, and will be assembling it in the next few days. More on it then, but suffice it to say that we bought it to help save wear and tear on the farmer’s and apprentices. Organic farming is great exercise, but we do want to have working knees in our old age.

Water wheel transplanter

The greenhouse is filling up, and some plants (like the lettuce) are at the size you want them for transplanting. We are hoping that with a week of 50 and 60 degree temperatures, we can plant it out soon.

Also a’ growin’ in the greenhouse are the first tomato transplants (cherry and hybrid tomatoes), onions, broccoli, cabbage, Asian greens, kohlrabi, kale, herbs and flowers. We start the peppers and eggplant this Thursday. You may want to do the same if you are starting plants for a home garden.

Tomato starts

Onions

Lettuce

Broccoli

While walking the fields today, doing some planning, Rebecca and I were chased by a bee. Several days earlier, Keith Stubblefield came out to check on our local honeymakers, put his ear to the otherwise quiet hive, and announced that he could here the buzz of thousands of bees.

So we quickly retreated to the house and made up a little food for the bees to supplement the stores of honey that got them through the winter. The video below shows just how active they have become—a true sign of Spring on the way.

Live bees flying at the hive entrance above a litter of dead bees cleaned from the hive.

Another sure sign of Spring is the migration of the snow geese. This last week they have been noisily moving over the farm, especially just after the sun comes up. These geese fly much higer than the Canadian geese we also see.

Below is the answer to the “Find the dog in this picture” photo. His body is hard to see, but you should be able to make out the black markings on his muzzle. Click on the image for a larger view of the photo.

Start the Planting
Well the season has begun at Fair Share Farm. Except for a few back orders, the seeds have arrived and greenhouse has been started. Over 7,000 onion plants have grown into seedlings, on their way to a mid-March planting in the field. The first shares of lettuce also are now popping through the potting soil on their way to your plate. At the end of the month we start the broccoli and herbs, and before you know it the greenhouse will be full.

For the next several weeks we will tend the greenhouse while continuing the house remodel. This latest round includes finishing some fine points in the dining room and kitchen, the construction of 2 built-in bookcases, window treatments, ceiling fan installation, window installation and finalizing some outside siding and trim. We are looking forward to an even more comforable home to cook and rest in at the end of a long farm day.

Planning. design and maintenance for the season will continue too, as we work to keep Rebecca’s grandfather’s tractor going into it’s 50 year, look at long term building improvements, ready ourselves for more sheep, and try to stay on top of the latest happenings in the world of sustainable agriculture. We also are continuing our intern interviews and working with the Core Group to prepare for the March 21st sign-up meeting.

Lettuce seedling

Onion starts

Voles
Over the years we have spent much time in our newsletters and blogs talking about the many four legged pests that damage our crops. The addition of Rocky has slowed down and even helped stop crop losses from deer, racoons and opossums. But these animals number only in the hundreds. Our challenge this year (and in the future) is managing voles. These ground dwelling mammals are quite literally everywhere on the farm, burrowing just below the surface, and eating many of our vegetables that grow in or on top of the ground—like carrots, beets, sweet potatoes and fennel. While it is hard to estimate, I would guess their population in and around our fields is certainly in the thousands. More on these pesky varmits as the year progresses.

Vole burrows near the strawberry patch (typical)

They are bigger than a mouse and smaller than a rat (yeck).

Tracks in the Snow
While walking Rocky this morning it was hard not to notice the many animal tracks in the snow. The slushiness darkens the tracks and accentuates their shape. Below is a sampling of what is roaming the farm.

Rabbit

Coyote

Opossum

Wild Turkey

Rocky and some small critter (?)

Find the dog in this picture.