Fair Share Farm CSA---Week 2

RADISHES AND TURNIPS  The first tender roots from the high tunnel.  Sweet and juicy salad turnips are best eaten raw like the red radishes.  Salt them both to keep them tasty.

BUTTERHEAD LETTUCE  A farm favorite, especially in Spring. 

RED LEAF LETTUCE  This week we clear the high tunnel of these.  Next week we should have lettuce from out of the field as long as they don’t float away!

ASPARAGUS  Enough for a nice frittata or an addition to pasta, rice or a salad.

GREENS:  We have several options from sprouting broccoli, swiss chard, tat soi and kale.  Wednesday folks get sprouting broccoli.  Later in the week we will have a choice of greens.

GREEN GARLIC  Used like green onions, but with a buttery bite.

HERBS  Arugula for the Wednesday shares only.  Saturday and Monday shares get a bunch of cilantro, dill and chives.

RECIPE:

Fresh and green describes this week’s CSA share. This time of year our cooking habits revolve around this spring growth, as well as the hens’ burst of egg laying. One of the best ways to get the most out of both is to cook them together in a dish.

Tonight we cooked a frittata---a deep dish omelet full of vegetables and cheese. You can use whatever ingredients you have on hand for this versatile recipe. We used Skyview Cheeses’ gouda and garnished with some Jalapeno en Escabeche. A hearty, healthy and delicious meal.

Vegetable Frittata

Ingredients:

·         8 to 10 stalks asparagus, chopped

·         1 cup chopped gai lan or other green

·         2 tbsp olive oil

·         8 eggs

·         1 cup grated cheese

·         Salt to taste

Method:

1.       Chop the vegetables and saute in olive oil for 3 minutes

2.       Blend the eggs and half the cheese, add to the vegetables and stir

3.       Turn heat to medium-low and cook for 10 minutes

4.       Add remaining cheese to the top of the frittata and place the dish in a broiler to brown for 7 to 10 minutes

5.       Let cool, cut into wedges and serve. Good lukewarm or cold

FARM REPORT:

Today was our first rainy work day in almost a month.  Three inches so far and the forecast calls for much more.  The dry weather up until now did allow us to get many plants and seeds in the ground and off to a good start. 

 The potatoes are popping their first sprouts. 

Yesterday we put in the squash, cucumbers and eggplant.  These are our most pest-intense crops, so they were immediately row-covered for protection.  

We also planted insectaries to attract beneficial insects to thwart the pests.  Some of the plants in our insectary are buckwheat, phacelia, alyssum, sunflowers, cilantro, and dill among others. 

Last week, Tom took the tractor and our old manure spreader and spread a good amount of compost on the beds slated for summer crops.

And then, on Friday the farm crew joined in a controlled burn of the farm.  There are 150 acres of native grasses on the Graff family farm that benefit greatly from burning.  Fire removes the thatch of decomposing material, allowing wildflowers and native grasses to spread.  The roots of the native grasses act as a carbon sink, capturing and sequestering carbon in the soil.  Wildflowers bloom providing nectar and pollen to insects, birds and butterflies. The burn went well with no problems, which is always a relief!  It will be exciting to see the prairie turn green with the help from the rain.  

Fair Share Farm CSA---Week 1

SWISS CHARD  These gorgeous plants are amazing.  Planted in September, they fed the CSA well in October and November, they were sporadically picked through the winter, and now they are giving us one last exuberant crop in mid-April.  We are including flower stalks in the bunches, for fun.  They cook up nicely at this early stage and it’s not something everyone has a chance to see. 

CABBAGE   From cold storage.  The mountain of cabbage that we built in the walk-in cooler last fall is officially gone.  We held back the best of the reasonably sized ones for the CSA and they held well. 

BUTTER LETTUCE  The opposite of a hefty cabbage.  Smaller than we would like, but oh so delicate.

YELLOW ONIONS  Also from storage.  Don’t expect them to keep much longer.

DAIKON  Another cold storage star.  Not the prettiest or more recognizable vegetable, but Farmer Tom is here to help.  Read on for the recipe at the end.

GARLIC CHIVES  The freshest green shoots of Spring for sprinkling on everything.

BOK CHOI: Early baby bok choy bunches.  Amazing when stir fried or lightly steamed.

FARM REPORT:

Greetings from Fair Share Farm.  This marks the start of the 2019 CSA season.  We reached our goal of 100 memberships and are in the midst of the Spring planting season.  So far, so good.  I think that is safe to say. 

At the farm the world is sprouting beneath our feet.

This is a photo of our Spring cover crop mix.  The CSA sugarsnap peas have popped up as well.  Hooray!!

Just in time for the start of the harvest season, we wrapped up the pack/wash area remodel.  It was a real marathon of work, but we are happy with the result. 

Hi there!  That’s me, Farmer Rebecca, washing something as always.  My hubby, Tom, and I write this blog together, as we have for the past 15 seasons (well, it began as a paper newsletter for the first few seasons).  We thank those who support our agricultural work.  Our goals are first and foremost, to build soil, grow food and ferment community.  We work towards those goals through Community Supported Agriculture.  We must re-builds the relationship between farmer and eater.

Hi too from Farmer Tom. Hard to believe it’s been a decade and a half of CSA for the farm. It’s exciting also to enter the third year of selling our fermented vegetables. In that time we have been able to sell to the membership, at the Brookside Farmers Market, and at a half dozen retail stores in the KC metro.

Recently our ferments have been a charcouterie board item at both Of the Earth Farm Distillery and Green Dirt Farm Creamery. And this spring Jonathan Justus of Black Dirt is using our sauerkraut in a wonderful braised Alsatian dish. It’s been great to partner with other farmers and with chefs.

RECIPE:

This week’s share has some bulky items, one of which is a daikon radish. They are a handful, and make a great salad. Take your daikon and clean it before either grating it or chopping it into matchsticks. Chop and add some garlic to taste and a sprinkling of salt. The salt will help keep the radish from getting bitter and will improve its texture. After about half hour mix in a dressing of your choice ( I used white wine and escabeche juice.) Let that sit to blend the flavors, top with garlic chives and enjoy.

One Week Before Our First CSA Distribution!

Next week the CSA starts!!!!  Starting next Tuesday we will post every other week with what is in the share and tips for using your produce plus the farm report.

FARM REPORT:

 So far Spring weather has been friendly to us, a nice amount of rain but not too much.  We feel for many farmers in the floodplain that have had no such luck.  Here on our upland soils, the early crops are in:  cabbage, greens, carrots, beets, roots, onions, lettuce, peas and potatoes.

The plants are looking good in the greenhouse and the fields.  There are four nights in the 30s forecasted this weekend, so I guess we'll see how that goes!  Everything is now covered as long as the wind (40 miles an hour?) in the forecast doesn't just blow it all off.  We're past March madness, yet April continues with the weather-inducing anxiety.  As we wrap up the early plantings, summer crops loom ahead.  Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, tomatillos, squash, cucumbers and zucchini are waiting in the wings.

In the midst of all this green growth, we are racing to complete our retrofit of the pack/wash area of the barn.  Ahem, yes, we have a week to go before the CSA deliveries start. . . eeek!  The work has been progressing nicely since the ice and snow retreated not so long ago.  However, growing crops comes first, so we have had some fits and starts as we drop our tools to get the potatoes in, as we did today.  The work is within the current footprint of the old tobacco/dairy barn with a rebuild of the old loafing shed that surrounded the lower portion.  Plus new windows, doors, siding, some plumbing.  

It's a bit of a project . . .

… and a lean one, at that.  We are an efficient team of three:  Tom, Rebecca and Lucas.  The latter leading the way with his knowledge of construction. It has been quite a long road as we have worked on the barn as funds and time allows.  In 2011 we replaced the siding on the front.  In 2013 we did the back.  It was 2016 when we completed the commercial kitchen in the lower back half of the barn.  Now it is the lower front, aka the pack/wash areas time to shine.  We look forward to welcoming everyone to the new space when you all come out for your work shifts.

Also, egg season is on!  The ladies are happily laying over 100 eggs every day right now.  We will have plenty for the egg shares next week plus extra on the bulk list.  We are flush with lots of hens eggs but even more "pullet" eggs.  Pullets are young hens whose eggs are a little smaller.  Both sizes are in assorted colors, just ready for hiding.

In late-March we took soil samples in our “home field” as we do every other year. The results were some of the highest values of soil organic matter (SOM) we have ever had. Of the six samples we took, three had SOM values of 5.0% or better. During our first seasons in the early 2000’s our SOM was less than 3%.

The SOM represents the part of our soil that is derived from living matter. It is made up of humus, the end result of soil microorganisms breaking biological matter. It also represents the carbon that we have taken out of the atmosphere and sequestered in our soil. When you support our farm you are supporting agriculture that reverses climate change.

If you want to keep up with our work more regularly, we invite you to follow us on social media. We have an Instagram account that we try to post to most every day. We also enjoy re-posting your Instagram tags of Fair Share Farm, especially when you use our products and/or those of our partner vendors. We hope that we can also share your photos of the upcoming farm work days.

Whenever we post to Instagram it is also posted on the farm’s Facebook page. In addition we have a closed group Facebook page you can join where the membership can share recipes or coordinate CSA activities, etc.