HeartEye Village CSA » Down on the farm

Summer Squash Time!

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:23:01 +0000

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members! Summer squash is here! We are happy to report the summer squash plants are in full gear, no longer just idling along. And what happy little squashes they are, sweet and good-natured! We’ve had some great changes in the garden this week. The zinnias started blooming and we are starting to see tomatoes forming on the vines! The tomato plants seem thrilled to be alive and appear to be doubling in size nightly. And in anticipation of the abundance of crops we hope to continue to have, we encourage anyone interested to sign up for the Food Preservation Workshop on the 31^st.

We also have one favor to ask of you all. We need everyone to take a few minutes to do a little hokey-pokey magic dance during the upcoming full moon in order to make sure we do not become victims of the GH PLAGUE that is occurring all around the region now. I’m not going to actually write out the word for the GH’s (just as a sort of precaution), but I will tell you that they can be described as “a hopping insect” the name of which sort of rhymes with “show-stopper.” We have done some biological pest-control mitigation but we don’t think that asking everyone to do the hokey-pokey is an excessive precautionary measure. Thank you!!!!

Enjoy!

Tracy

Variety!

admin — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 20:39:20 +0000

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members! Variety, variety, variety! That is what this week’s box is all about. We are still waiting patiently for the true hot weather items but in the meantime we’ve got a fantastic array of crops for you. One thing is that we have more garlic that it ready. Yahoo! You can use this fresh or dry it and it should last most of the way through the winter. We have kept the Minutina separate from the lettuce mix this time. You can mix it into your lettuce mix if you want to add “flair” to your salad (so I’ve heard), but I would think that it would also be GREAT chopped up with Beets, balsamic and goat chevre or gorgonzola (please see the recipe from last week).

Enjoy!

Tracy

The beauty of early-mid-season harvest

admin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 20:40:10 +0000

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members! Ahh….the beauty of early-mid-season harvest. How about those Turnips, huh? Have you tried them raw yet, just like candy I say! Well, I hope you kept your Squash Blossom recipes from last week because boy do we have blossoms for you now. You can turn your kitchen into a gourmet restaurant with the presence of these blossoms. I’ve added another recipe below but I think they’d be great toasted and then put in an omelet or a frittata. If you did not keep your recipes from last week let me know and I’ll e-mail them to you. So, we have an abundance of blossoms but the squashes themselves are playing hard to get… So we have “Hint of Summer Squash” this week as they work themselves up to full production mode. Also, just to let you all know sometimes we have to divide things up over time between half and full shares. For example, much earlier this season the full shareholders got Rhubarb and this week the ½ shares are getting Rhubarb. If you aren’t getting something in your box this time around be assured that we will have some for you later in the season. We also have a few tart cherries for you. I actually like these just raw, but they are a bit tart for most people. So, being as there aren’t really enough to make a whole pie, we recommend you make a sauce that could be used for ice cream, angle food cake or just by the spoonful. Half share holders (or full shareholders if they still have their Rhubarb from several weeks ago) could possibly make a cherry rhubarb pie. That sound good to me!

Enjoy!

Tracy

July 1st Harvest

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:45:23 +0000

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members! Well, here it comes… Things are really starting to produce now, as indicated by the massive amount of Turnips you are all getting this week. Actually, one reason that you are getting this quantity is because we don’t have the farm stand open yet, and so those poor little extra Turnips wouldn’t have had any place to go if not in your CSA box. And next week there will be Summer Squash! Yep the growth rate on everything has really kicked in in the last couple of weeks, a sure sign of mid-summer abundance upon us. We have a couple of very special treats in the box today, Squash Blossoms and Garlic! Now there aren’t a huge number of Squash Blossoms as yet but we will try and include them whenever we can. The Garlic is an early succession that kind of got forgotten about last year but apparently still felt something for us and produced nicely.

Enjoy!

Tracy

Cooking Tips

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:35:22 +0000

Here are a few tips on how to store, and enjoy the produce you receive each week:

Double bag your Basil, or put the bag in a Tupperware container, to prevent it from turning brown in the fridge.

Tarragon is a great herb to use with Chicken. Place a few sprigs in the body cavity and some under the skin and then roast.

Arugula is a spicy salad green, delicious raw by itself or added to other salad greens. It can also be wilted as a side dish or garnish.

Turnips can be boiled, steamed or sautéed or eaten raw. I cut them in ¼ in slices or ¼ the smaller ones. Larger ones can be cut into 1/8ths. Sauté them in a small amount of oil for a couple minutes, then add water and steam for a few more minutes, until fork tender (the amount of time depends on the size). In my book, you can never go wrong with adding butter, salt and pepper.

Leafy greens are prolific throughout the early CSA pick-up season. If you begin to tire of them you can always slice them, throw them in a ziplock bag , squeeze the air out and then put them in the freezer. These can be added to soups during winter months.

Braising Mix: Chop the greens, heat oil or butter in the pan to very hot then add the greens per cooking times:

Collards (bagged separately): 10-20min
Escarole: 5-10min
Swiss Chard: 5-10min
Spinach: a few seconds to a few minutes
Curly Endive: 3 minutes

While cooking your Braising Mix or any greens you could add any of the following combinations for flavor:

Fennel, onion and butter
Bacon and goat cheese
Olive oil and lemon
Chili Flakes and crushed Peanuts
Toasted Sesame Seeds, minced Ginger, minced Garlic, then after cooking drizzle with Toasted Sesame Oil.

Our fourth harvest and a bit of hail

admin — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:28:38 +0000

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members! It’s Stunning Box Four this week! And wow, who would have thought that the Turnips would have gone bananas before the Basil? Although, the Basil is blessing us mightily at the moment. Another blessing is that we did NOT get decimated by the hail on Monday. Whew and Hallelujah! We were prepared and had virtually everything covered with floating row cover. I had just taken the row cover off of the Winter and Summer Squash, since it was unhappily straining against it. My mistake… But Jillian and I ran out there and braved the hailstones to place the row cover back over the squash. Being slightly battered is a small price to pay to save our precious Patty Pans, is it not? Thank goodness we were here otherwise those squashes would look like Swiss Cheese about now (as does some of the Spinach in your Braising mix today)! And you know I just have to ask, is that Escarole not sublime?!

Enjoy!

Tracy

First Harvest!

admin — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:15:51 +0000

We had our first CSA harvest today! It is still early in the season, so expect a lot more in your boxes as the farm bursts with life!

A Down on the Farm Video Update

admin — Thu, 27 May 2010 18:20:31 +0000

Here is a fun little tour of the farm with Tracy, Esther, and Jim. (please excuse the shaky hand-held video quality and noise from the wind…)

Soil Improvement

admin — Tue, 11 May 2010 18:26:02 +0000

Tracy found a free supply of coir (coconut fiber) from a hydroponic tomato grower, and we added that to the rows that we have yet to plant in. This will help add organic matter to our clay soil. I must say though, the soil has greatly improved over the past year, and seemed very fertile during our first growing season.

And in this nice soil we have lots of goodies growing for this year’s CSA and beyond. Esther has been diligently seeding successions of a wide range of greens, root crops, peas, and many other items.

Spring on the Farm

admin — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:15:03 +0000

What is new on the farm you ask? Well, the garlic & shallots that we planted last fall are growing beautifully! We have one variety of shallot, and three varieties of garlic. Already seeded and starting to germinate are: lettuce, arugula, turnips, radishes and more! This past week Esther planted a bunch of onion seedlings, and speaking of seedlings… the hot weather crops are growing nicely in our little greenhouses. We’ll have a nice variety of tomatoes again this year, as well as peppers, basil and eggplant. Since last year’s eggplant harvest was extremely low and we were unable to give any to our CSA members (because there was never enough to give everyone), this year we started a lot more eggplants in the greenhouse. We hope everyone gets some eggplant in their boxes this year!