Some Must-See Eye Candy

First, some eye candy from around the farm in the last week or so--

Chard harvest

photo: Lindsay Grimes

Last week's share, beautiful arranged

photo: Lindsay Grimes

Having wrapped up the bulk of our spring plantings (although we'll continue planting and seeding various things all the way up to the beginning of September), the farm crew has turned to some other farm projects. This past week we tackled a big weeding project in our popcorn planting, which occupies almost a quarter of Quaker field (across from the brick hospice). The weeds were growing fast and threatening to overtake our crop so we pulled out all the stops--our Cub cultivation tractor, followed by our trusty wheelhoe, then scuffle hoes and hand-weeding to finish the job. The beds look fabulous and are ready for some irrigation, which has been our other project this past week as the days turned hot with no rain in sight. So far we have almost all of our key summer crops supplied with drip irrigation, the most efficient and effective way to bring water to thirsty crops. The drip irrigation lines we run along side the rows of plants emit water right at soil level (so very little water loss to evaporation like an overhead irrigation system) and deliver it right to the root zone of the crop (and not to the weeds that might grow between the rows). With our dry soil and the last significant rainfall a distant memory, our crops would have suffered during the hot days of the last week, but instead they were happy, irrigated crops, loving the summer heat above ground, and slurping up good, clean  well water below ground.

In your share this week: parsley, beets, 2 bunches of hakurei, salad mix, a mini cabbage, garlic scapes, choice of chard or kale, and PYO dill or oregano. Please remember to return the PYO scissors to the basket when you're done with them--we've found a couple in the pathway!

Recipes of the Week

Wondering what to do with TWO bunches of hakureis? Lynn Rosseto-Kasper of The Splendid Table (a great radio show/podcast and food blog) has this recipe for Fast Japanese Pickles. As written here, it calls for carrots, radishes, and turnips (or some other variations), but I like it with just the hakurei--2 bunches does the trick. It takes me about 20 minutes to make, sits in the fridge for an hour, then it's a great snack or side.
If the kale and chard have left you looking for new recipe ideas, I have a few to share. Real Simple has a collection of 24 easy kale recipes (try the Curried Kale with Coconut!) that are excellent and sure to have something for every taste. Lately I've been enamored with a very simple sauteed chard recipe from Deborah Madison's excellent Vegetable Literacy. I've tried it finished with several kinds of vinegar (sherry, apple cider, white wine) and they were all good, but I like it best with an infused (honey and ginger) white balsamic that I got as a gift.

Sauteed Rainbow Chard with the Stems
serves 2-4
5-10 minutes prep, 10 minutes active time

1 bunch chard
2 Tbs olive oil
Sea salt to taste
1 Tbs butter or ghee
Freshly ground pepper
Lemon wedges or robust vinegar, for serving

Separate the leaves from the stems. Select some of the better looking stems, cut them into similar-sized pieces about 1 inch long, and set aside. If the remaining stems are very thick, cut them in half lengthwise, then cut them into 1 inch long slices; you should have about 1 1/2 cups. Chop or tear the leaves coarsely, you should have about 8 cups. Rinse and set aside in a colander to drain.

Heat the oil in a wide, deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add the sliced stems and cook for about 3 minutes. Season with a few pinches of salt, then add the chopped leaves, cover, and cook until wilted and tender, at least 6 minutes. Taste the chard to be sure it is as cooked as you want. Restaurants tend to undercook chard, and while it looks beautiful and bouncy on the plate, it is not nearly as good to eat as when it is actually tender. Remove the lid and stir in the butter or ghee. Taste for salt, season well with pepper, and pile onto a plate. Serve with something sharp, lemon wedges or vinegar, to bring up the flavors.

Enjoy your veggies!

New greens this week

Every week the array of produce that we're harvesting out of the field shifts a little bit. Some crops carry over from the week before, new crops make their first appearance, and others drop off as their harvest finishes for the season or there's a gap between different

The baby cuke is the spiny little thing between the
yellow flower and the stem.

successions of the same crop. Cucumbers are in a succession gap right now, as the first succession we've been babying in the greenhouse for over 3 months finishes its run before our first succession of field-grown cucumbers is ready. The good news is that the field cukes are not far off! Right now the plants have 2 or 3 baby cucumbers on them, each about the size of my fingernail. Some sunshine and some warm weather is all they need to grow big enough to harvest. 

All the way back in March, on a blustery, chilly day, we seeded some escarole in our bright, warm greenhouse. Escarole is in the lettuce family and looks very similar to the green leaf lettuce we've

been harvesting lately. Slightly bitter by nature, I've heard escarole described in a beer analogy--lettuce is to escarole what Bud Light is to Guinness. Chefs often pair escarole with sweeter salad dressings and sometimes fruit toppings to play up the flavor differences, but you can also make different variations of beans and greens, or just chop it and add it to your salad mix. Store it in the fridge like lettuce (I wrap mine in a wet paper towel or thin kitchen towel and put it in a plastic produce bag) and use within a week to 10 days. 

In your share this week: lettuce, spinach, hakureis, chard or kale, beets!, mustard greens, garlic scapes, salad mix, escarole, and Pick Your Own dill, cilantro, or oregano (choose 2). 

Enjoy your veggies this week!

Recipe of the Week 
Escarole Salad with Apples and Pecans
from Martha Stewart's great online collection of escarole recipes

1 Tbs olive oil 
1 Tbs white wine vinegar
2 tsp Dijon mustard
coarse salt and ground pepper to taste
1 head escarole, cored, trimmed, and torn into bite sized pieces
1 apple, halved, cored, and thinly sliced
1/2 cup pecans, toasted

In a large bowl, whisk together olive oil, vinegar, Dijon and 1 Tbs water; season with salt and pepper. Add escarole, apple, and pecans. Toss and serve immediately. 

Spinach!!

 

It's been a great spring for spinach--that's another crop that loves the cooler weather we had in April and May. After coming in strong for the last few weeks, we were worried about it surviving the recent heat wave. But Sophie reported that this morning's harvest is looking as good as ever!

Old friends and new favorites

In addition to the familiar salad superstars like lettuce, spinach, and salad mix, some new crops are coming in this week, including one of my all-time favorites, hakureis. These small, white Japanese root veggies look sort of like golf balls, but also have lush green tops--and both parts are edible! The white, round roots are slightly sweet, slightly spicy, and

Freshly picked hakurei bunches--don't worry
we'll clean them up for you!

very juicy and crunchy. Although I usually intend on using them raw in a salad, I almost always end up eating them all as I'm slicing them. They are also delicious when roasted, but with the hot weather predicted this week, I don't think I want to turn on my oven. Hakurei tops are mild and perfect for adding to a sauté (maybe with mizuna and chard or kale) with garlic, olive oil, and a little salt. 

Also ready this week are some new herbs for Pick Your Own, a choice of cilantro or oregano. The oregano is just about to flower, which means it is at its peak flavor. If you choose oregano but don't think you can use it all this week, you can dry it easily. The cilantro was one of the very first things I seeded in April and it has been growing very sloooowly during the cool weather this spring. It's finally big enough to harvest, though (and might even double in size this week during the hot weather)!

Casey with a huge head of lettuce!

In your share this week: 2 heads of lettuce,1 bunch hakureis, a choice of chard or kale, salad mix, mizuna, spinach, a greenhouse cucumber, a potted herb for your garden or kitchen window sill, and PYO cilantro or oregano. 

Reminders for the week: don't forget your reusable grocery bags on your pickup day and don't forget we have yoga on the farm this Saturday at 4pm, taught by CSA member and yoga teacher Maureen St. Croix and followed by a BYO picnic! Class is free for CSA/Trustees members and sliding scale donation (to benefit our Food Access Fund) for other friends and yoga buddies. All are welcome!

Enjoy your veggies this week!

Farm Fresh Yoga next Saturday

A quick reminder that this season we're lucky to have CSA member and yoga teacher Maureen St. Croix offering a series of yoga classes on the farm! Our next class is next Saturday (the Summer Solstice!), June 21st, at 4pm, followed by a BYO picnic in the field. 

Class will be held outdoors (conditions permitting), so be prepared with sunscreen, bug spray, water, and maybe a bed sheet to go under your yoga mat. Meet us at the Yellow House to start and we'll direct you to the yoga spot. Friends are welcome for a sliding-scale donation to our Food Access Fund. After class, the Yellow House kitchen will be available (although there are no supplies in there yet) if you need a microwave, refrigerator, etc for your picnic food. 

See you next Saturday!

Farm Fresh Yoga Schedule 2014

Thunder Moon Yoga
7/12 Saturday 5:30pm

Green Corn Moon Yoga
8/11 Monday 5:30pm

Autumn Equinox Yoga
9/20 Saturday 11am followed by a BYO picnic lunch

Sunrise Yoga
10/11 Saturday 6:30am followed by breakfast in the greenhouse

CSA Harvest Celebration and Yoga
10/17 Friday 6pm yoga, 7pm potluck

Busy as bees

After a great first week for the CSA, we've been busy the last few days. Saturday was our first trip to the Hingham Farmers Market this year and it was great to be back in the thick of the festive atmosphere there. We were also busy in the field prepping beds and planting--we're still scrambling to keep up with the big plant-out that happens in late May and early June. Summer squash, zucchini, and cucumbers are now happily thriving in Turkey Hill Field next to our garlic crop. The crew was transplanting them with our tractor-driven Waterwheel transplanter and I shot a quick video to show you how it works.

Monday saw a lot of clean-up and landscape work at our new CSA home, the Yellow House. Almost 20 Trustees staff members from different properties all over the South Shore and South Coast showed up to help scrape, paint, weed, and open up the landscaping at the front of the house to make the main entrance more visible and accessible. It's amazing what a flash mob of skilled people to can do in just a day! It's still a work in progress, but we made some big steps with so many helping hands. 

This week's CSA share is another bounty of salads and salad toppers: lettuce, radishes, spinach, mizuna (a Japanese mustard green that's a little mellower than last week's curly mustards), kale (the tender Red Russian variety that's great for smoothies and sautees), a greenhouse cucumber, green garlic, arugula, salad mix, and Pick Your Own chives. 

Enjoy your veggies!

Muddy harvest crew yesterday

Big grins though!!

Sophie, Casey, lettuce, mustards, radishes & arugula!

Salad days

It's finally CSA time! After what seemed like an endless winter, then a chilly spring, we are so ready for the warm, sunny, long days

photo: Sophie Schillue

of June and harvest crates full of fresh veggies! The farm's been kind of quiet without the bustle of CSA pickup twice a week, so we're looking forward to seeing new faces and catching up with last year's members too--welcome and welcome back!

While the farm crew--Sophie, Joe, Casey, and Ariel--and I have been hard at work prepping ground, seeding, transplanting, weeding, and cultivating, the crops have been hard at work growing! The lettuce, arugula, radishes, and mustard greens actually LIKE the cooler weather and it seems like they've been jumping up 2 inches every time I turn my back. And now that the nights look to

be warming up (or so the weatherpeople tell me), these crops are going to be in their prime for the next several weeks. Down at the bottom of the hill, our greenhouse has been bursting at the seams with transplants itching to get outside. Everything--from tomatoes to our fall Brussels sprouts to summer squash--is now queued up for its chance to graduate out into the field.

This week's share has one Pick Your Own item from the herb garden: chives, which happen to have pretty purple (edible!) flowers on them right now.  So some Pick Your Own logistics/reminders are in order. Scissors will be in a small basket at the end of the row, PLEASE return them to the basket after you're done so no one accidentally steps on them! Also, be aware that the ground can be quite uneven in the field with lots of dips and hillocks that aren't easily apparently, so watch your footing. And, of course, nature is full of bugs--bees, mosquitoes, ticks, wasps--that you may be sensitive to, so prepare appropriately. Fortunately, we also have butterflies and dragonflies who love hanging out on the farm, and hopefully their presence outweighs that of some of their less people-friendly brethren.

On the CSA table this week: spinach, radishes, arugula, lettuce, green garlic (mild and tender adolescent garlic plants that looks like

scallions but you use in any recipe that calls for garlic), salad mix, bok choy, mustard greens, a greenhouse cucumber, and a bunch of Pick Your Own chives from the herb garden. 

Recipe of the Week

With all the salad-y items in the CSA this week, I want to share some of my favorite salad dressing recipes.

Toasted Hazelnut Dressing

I found this in Vegetarian Times a few years ago, as part of butterhead salad (that also calls for radishes and chives--full recipe here ). It's one of my favorites now and I usually triple the recipe to make a big batch.

2 Tbs chopped toasted hazelnuts (plus I add more as a salad topping at the end)

3 Tbs apple cider vinegar

1 Tbs honey

1 tsp whole grain mustard (I've used powdered mustard in a pinch, but it doesn't taste as good.)

1/4 c. olive oil

Combine hazelnuts, vinegar, honey, mustard, and 1 Tbs water in a blender (or in a bowl using an immersion blender) and blend until smooth. Slowly drizzle olive oil in while you're blending until the mixture emulsifies. Season with salt and pepper to taste. 

Green Garlic Dressing

This one is from the food blog Urbanrecipe.com. I've tried a few variations on it, all yummy. 

1-3 stems green garlic (I've used up to 5, but I like garlic A LOT)
1/3 c. rice vinegar (can substitute lemon juice, or split it 50/50)
1/3 c. olive oil
1-2 Tbs honey
Salt and pepper to taste
(I've tried adding various combinations of the following as well: 1 Tbs Dijon mustard, 2 Tbs fresh dill, 1 Tbs chopped chives, 1 Tbs white wine)

Chop the green garlic roughly, including some of the leaves. Add all ingredients to a blender (or bowl plus immersion blender) and blend until smooth. Adjust seasonings to taste.

Enjoy your veggies this week!