In the Share - Week 1

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.

Week 1: What to Do With Your Share

Welcome to the 2012 Fair Share Farm CSA. In this section of the blog we will give you recipe ideas and other suggestions for enjoying your share to the fullest. This weekly blog will serve as a jumping off point for you to explore your possiblities. The recipes we post are all tested, and often created, right here in our kitchen. We suggeest the following supplemental sources of information each week:
Fair Share Farm Recipe Page---This website page is a compilation of some of the recipes we have recommended in the past. It was compiled several years ago, so it does not include all of our recipes. You can use the search bar or menu to find what you are looking for.

2004-2006 Fair Share Farm Newsletters---Prior to the blog we posted newsletters every week. An archive of them is on our website. You can look at newsletters from weeks with the same date as the week of your share for some probable cooking options.

This blog---As with the newsletters, you can search out what we were doing in previous years to find recipes appropriate for that week's share. Also, you can use the search bar in the upper righthand corner to look for things.

















Use the Google and the internets---The early days of CSA's consisted of mimeographed newsletters. Today, if you have internet access, the possibilities are endless. Find something tasty? Link it in our comment section or post it on our facebook page. We would like everyone to signup.

So...on with the show. We have a great first share this year. So nice that the encores could be difficult, but that is our job after all. Just no more hail storms please.

Before our feature recipe of the week, here are a few past ones that are known favorites. New to leeks? Try an Asparagus and Leek Fritatta, or if you don't get your asparagus until next week, try Mashed Potatoes with Leeks and Garlic.

The bok choi is perfect right now, so get the wok out and have a stir fry. Hope we don't have to tell you what to do with the strawberries, but a nice option is presented below.

Butterhead Lettuce Wedge Salad with Strawberries and 1,000 Island Dressing
Rebecca and I saw a recipe similar to this on a cooking show this winter, and it stayed with us. The butterhead lettuce in your share is an Italian seed variety know as Regina di Maggio. They are the light green lettuces with the head in the center. The tender leaves combined with the thick dressing are a nice textural combination. Needing a knife to eat it makes it feel so civilized, like you are living at Downton Abbey.

Ingredients:
1 butterhead lettuce
Spring onion
Radishes
Strawberries

Dressing:
Combine in a bowl and blend 4 tbsp mayonnaise, 2 tbsp chili sauce or catsup, 2 tbsp chopped pepperoncinis or relish, 2 tbsp EV olive oil, salt and pepper to taste.

Peel the loose outer leaves away from the lettuce head and save them for salad or other use. With the root end still on, cut the lettuce head into sections (top to bottom). Keeping the root on allows you to wash and drain it without it falling apart.

To serve, cut off root and set wedges in individual bowls, cut side up. Top with chopped onions, radishes and strawberries. Top with dressing.

Fair Share Farm CSA to Start May 9th

The time has come to start the harvest. This Spring has been unusually mild and has created an early maturing of most everything on the farm. These conditions have convinced us to start the CSA a week earlier than originally planned. So...the schedule for the first week's pickup will be:

Wednesday Distribution (Bad Seed or Farm) May 9th
Saturday Distribution (Liberty or Farm) May 12th

For deatils relating to your distribution site please click on the link. If you are a farm pickup, you will have chosen either Wednesday or Saturday, so please take note of which day you are scheduled for.

The farm crew has been busy keeping up with everything the last month. Our 2012 apprentices Dani Hurst and Ryan Stubby started the last week of March and have now been on the job for a month. Peruse the previous blogs and you can see all that we have been up to.

This last week we have been concentrating on our summer crops. On Monday we started up the irrigation system as the plants were becoming quite parched. Our solar irrigation system seems to be working well this season. You can see in the photo the high flow we get on-demand from the panels. We measured this flow at 35 gallons per minute.












Elsewhere in the field crops destined for future shares, such as onions and broccoli are growing well.

The tomato plants are starting to go out. The cherries and caged hybrids are in the ground, and the heirlooms and remaining hybrids are No. 1 on the runway. Squash and cucumbers are germinating in the greenhouse and will be in the field in the next 10 days or so.

We began seeing aphids in the greenhouse on the peppers and eggplants the last few days, so felt it was time to call in the biological hit squad of lady beetles. Rebecca bought some at Family tree nursery and we set 1/3 of them loose last night. This morning they seemed to be quite active. We expcet them to do their job and help keep our transplants as healthy as possible.

Look forward to seeing and feeding all of you soon.

Watkins Mill Spring on the Farm 2012

We feel fortunate to have an historic site as beautiful as Watkins Mill located but a mile from the farm. The mill and farmstead date back to the mid-1800's when Waltus Watkins brought his family here from Kentucky and created Bethany Plantation.

While the mill and house are open year round, several times a year events are hosted at this Missouri State Park. The video below is but a sampling of the many activities that took place yesterday.

Part of the reason we went is because we consider it a vital training session for our farm apprentices. There is a lot of intrest in self-sufficiency these days, and the Watkins were experts in it---by necessity rather than by choice. Between the visitors center displays, the house, and the many demonstrations, you can see just what it took to live in those days.

Of course to really understand it you would have to cut ice in the winter and store it in your icehouse; spend all day Monday washing clothes by hand; help to slaughter, butcher, cure and smoke 65 hogs at a time; tend to a large vegetable garden and orchard; and many other demanding tasks. Much of it was at times drudgery, so we visit to make sure the romantic shine isn't the only thing seen when wishing for the past.

Spring Planting Winding Down

It has been an exceptional Spring for plantings, especially if the freezes and frosts hold off. To date we have planted:peas
beets
carrots
radishes
lettuce
kale
swiss chard
potatoes
onions
herbs
broccoli
cabbage
bok choi
hakurei turnips
tat soi/yukina savoy
kohlrabi
arugula



lettuce under row cover

cabbage, kale and row cover

Already in the ground from last year, or as a perenial are:
garlic
garlic greens
leeks
asparagus
strawberries

garlic

strawberries forming in April

With the help of our electric and gas powered tractors, and the dry weather, we have been able to keep the beds as weed free as ever. Each bed has received several rounds of cultivation, and many have also received hay mulch.

The cultivating serves to kill the weeds when they are still small, and help exhaust the "weed seed bank" in the beds. The mulch keeps new weeds in check, holds the little moisture we have had, provides lots of worm food, and cools the soil. So far, so good.
 

mulching the napa cabbage

freshly cultivated onions

We are looking forward to the 2012 season, and may be starting a week early (only 3 weeks from now?!)  More on that later.

Google Earth Tour of Fair Share Farm

While looking over the web for aerial photos of the farm I decided to download Google Earth. It is a treasure trove of information, cataloging our farm's progress since we began in 2003.

My curiosity piqued, I quickly learned how to do a tour/flyover of the farm and then how to turn it into a movie file that could be displayed on YouTube (thanks Screencast-O-Matic). The detail isn't as good as viewing it in Google Earth, but it is still amazing that I can put such a thing together while sitting at my desk (and for free!) I hope you enjoy it.

More to come in the near future...historic aerials to show our progress over the years.

Planting Away

So far, this Spring has been one of the best we have had for early growing. We continue to put out plants and seed our fields, and hope for thisweek to be especially productive, so that we can have time to turn our attention back to our high tunnel.

Our 2012 interns Dani Hurst and Ryan Stubby have been on the go and productive since the beginning. Last week was a good example as we: mulched, staked and trellised the peas; planted, mulched and covered the broccoli; weeded some "no-till" beds; planted potatoes; potted up tomatoes, eggplant and peppers; hoed, fertilized and mulched the new asparagus patch; harvested for the KC Food Circle Expo; and took care of many other tasks.

We also put row cover over the strawberry plants, the first time we have ever done that. Of course this is the first time they have ever started flowering in early April. Last year the very cold start to May severely damaged our crop and we do not want a repeat of that, so we are doing all we can to keep these tasty fruits protected.

pea mulching

covering the strawberries

asparagus plants

potato planting