summitspringsfarm.net

It’s week #17, and your CSA share includes the following:

1 bunch of turnips
1 bunch of carrots
1 daikon radish
1 bunch of Red Russian kale
1 bunch of broccoli raab
1 head of Napa cabbage -OR- 1 head of bok choi
1 head of lettuce
1/2 lb bag of braising mix
1/2 lb bag of pears (this week’s on-the-farm half share members only)

Roots and greens, greens and roots…autumn must be a-comin’!  The braising mix this week contains mizuna, tot soi, Red Russian kale, and red mustard. The lettuces on offer this week are Red Sails, red romaine, and green romaine.

We survived the first frost of the season.  I’m not sure exactly how cold it got on Saturday morning (or how long it stayed there), but there was no doubt about it:  The leftover water for the chickens was partially frozen, and the hayfields were white and frosty when I got up.  Luckily, we knew it was coming and zipped into action after the Friday harvest, covering vulnerable greens and beans with remay.  A little insulation goes a long way.  Some crops, like kale, carrots, and parsnips, can take a frost and will be all the sweeter once harvested due to the freeze.

Hope some of you out there had a chance to hit the Common Ground Fair up in Unity this past weekend.  This is the 32nd year of the fair, and we ventured up on Sunday in spite of a grim weather forecast.  Happily. the heavy rains never came, just off and on drizzle.  The crowds were sparse, and we managed to see and do more than we ever have at the fair.  As an added bonus, we met up with some old friends and fellow apprentices from our Connecticut days and had a chance to catch up and swap stories.  Lydia had fun, too, especially in the kid’s area, the show animal barns, and while watching the incredible drumming ladies of Inanna.

Recipes!  We want your recipes!  Got an old family favorite that became even better this season with the farm’s fresh veggies?  Did you discover a new way to cook familiar veggies, or did you perhaps stumble upon a revolutionary new way to cook something unfamiliar (Desperation can breed creativity:  “What the hell do I do with this kohlrabi?!  Eureka!”)  One goal of mine for this winter is to jazz up the farm’s website, and we’d really like to keep our collection of recipes growing.  For some veggies, we currently have only a single recipe listed; for others, alas, we have nothing at all.  We’d love to hear from our members and find out what you’re doing with all those veggies!  Send us an e-mail, or better yet, post any and all recipes right here on the blog.  In the off season, I’ll copy them all over onto the Recipes! page for safekeeping.  Thanks in advance!

Finally, let’s hear it for the rain!  Ironic, eh, after the endless moisture of June/July?  We’ve needed it, though…the fields have been downright dusty, and the greens during last week’s harvests were looking wilted before they were even cut!  So, we’re grateful for some wet weather as we gear up for October and the final few weeks of the season.

Again, we need leaves for fall mulching!  They’re starting to drift down now, so if you don’t need them, we’d love to have them!

I was reminded by Sonya this morning as we harvested to “stop and smell the roses”, as the saying goes. No roses here, and now it’s a bit hazy and overcast, but the morning was lovely…cool and sunny, all the greens soaked with dew. Son was struck by the number of birds out and about this morning, the sounds of their wings gently stirring the silence. By this point in the season, your intrepid farmers are pretty beat…we’ve been going full on since April, and, especially this week as we’ve all been battling head colds, we find ourselves rather exhausted. However, a few moments looking around on a morning like this one, a few deep breaths before settling into the rhythm of the harvest, and we remember why we do this. Why? Because it’s the best job in the world! It’s week #16, and your CSA share this week includes the following:

2 lbs russet potatoes
1 bunch of leeks
1 bunch of celeriac
1 daikon radish -OR- 1 bunch of French breakfast radishes
1 bunch of broccoli raab
1 head of Napa cabbage
1/2 lb bag of salad mix
1 head of garlic
1 bunch of oregano -OR- sage
1/2 lb bag of pears (half share members only)

This is officially it for the potatoes, folks, so savor them! Now, what the heck is a daikon radish? It’s an asian radish, popular in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cooking. It can be used raw, sliced or grated into a salad. It can also be cubed and added to your favorite stir-fry. Alas, there’s a gap on our ever-evolving recipes page where daikon radish should be, and I will try to remedy that shortly. In the meantime, try searching for daikon at the Epicurious website, an informative and recipe-packed site that Sonya loves. Finally, we hope everyone is loving the broccoli raab. We remain pleasantly amazed by how well it’s doing and have no choice but to pass along the bounty to you all. If it’s too much of a good thing all at once, though, you can chop up the raab and freeze it. Apparently, blanching is not necessary as long as you use the raab within about six months.

This is long, long overdue, but I want to write a bit about the conditions of the grassy area in front of the barn where everyone parks when they pick up their shares here at the farm. By now, I’m sure you’re aware of The Dip. Last season, there was hardly a bump at all where the road meets the grass, but all of the rain earlier this summer created a heck of a rut there. A couple of people have mentioned that they’ve actually damaged their cars when pulling in or out. We’re mortified by this and plan to get some crushed rock in there next spring to fill the gap. In the meantime, unless your vehicle has plenty of clearance, we recommend parking on the side of the road and not pulling in! Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience!

September is fading fast, and the farm has seen a number of changes recently. The greenhouse has been weeded, cleaned up, and more or less put to bed for the winter. We’ve been busy mowing down crop residue, too, then spading the beds and in some cases sowing cover crop seed (oats and peas, winter rye, or vetch, depending on what we plan to use those beds for in the future). The chickens have been on the move as we haul their coop around the fields to empty beds. There, the gals can eat up the weeds and crop residue and give the soil a healthy application of poop for next year’s crops. Also, a big, big thanks to Glenn Bolduc, our neighbor and friend and fellow farmer, for his weekend delivery of several dump truck loads of composted cow manure. We’ll be spreading that pile of love around Field 1 very soon. (Check out Glenn’s work at Spruce Bay Farm.)

Have a great week, everyone, and enjoy the veggies!

The 15th pick-up of the season falls on the 15th of the month? It was meant to be! Your CSA share this week includes the following:

.7 lbs of mixed beans
Cucumbers: 1 large -OR- 2 small
1 bunch of celeriac
1 bunch of broccoli raab -OR- red mustard greens
1 bunch of Swiss chard -OR- Red Russian kale
1 bok choi -OR- 1 head of Napa cabbage
1/2 lb bag of salad mix
1 head of lettuce
1 bunch of French Breakfast radishes
1 head of garlic
1 lb of yellow pears -OR- cantaloupe (full share members only)

Those lovely bags of beans are a mix of Provider greens, yellow wax, and Royal Burgundy purple. Alas, some of the fun is lost in cooking since the purple beans turn a dark green. Do an impromptu taste test, as we did here at the farm over dinner last week, and decide which beans you like best! The pears this week are from one of the trees in our yard. When fully ripe, they turn yellow…most of them need a little more time, so be patient! The cantaloupes are ready to go, however. You full share folks picking up in Portland and Bridgton received your cantaloupe last week, so there won’t be any in this week’s share. We hope to have enough pears in the coming weeks for our half share members, too. Potato lovers, never fear! We have so many greens coming in that we decided to take a little break from potatoes. They’ll be back next week along with leeks, so dust off your favorite potato leek soup recipes and get ready!

This week’s share includes the following:

1 1/2 pounds of potatoes: choose All Blues or Gold Rush russets
1 lb bag of green tomatoes
2 cucumbers
1/2 lb bag of onions
1 bunch of broccoli raab
1 head of red or green Romaine lettuce
1 bunch of French Breakfast radishes
1 bell pepper
1 head of garlic
1 bunch of basil -OR- 1 bunch of mint

The potatoes this week are a choice between those wacky Blues or Gold Rush russets. Apologies once again for size; some of the russets sized up quite well but others did not (see also: onions). Next week will probably be it for this year’s potatoes, so enjoy them while they last! The greens are coming back, and we’re thrilled to have lettuce to distribute again. The fall might feel a lot like the spring as we bring back many of greens you’ve seen before, including more raab, kale, chard, bok choi, and Napa cabbage. The greens are looking happy and healthy.

We have officially planted all that we are going to plant this year. The greenhouse is empty of seedlings, and Kate spent Saturday unclipping, cutting down, and removing all the tomato plants. The greenhouse is now sealed up tight for several weeks of solarization, a process of superheating the soil to kill any diseases contained therein. Between that and a winter’s worth of freezing, we figure we’ll kill off any lurking problems and create a healthy environment for next year’s plants.

We harvested our modest crop of melons last week, and the news there is not so good. Our watermelons didn’t do much this year, and I don’t think we’ll be able to distribute any to the CSA. We did get some musk melons (better known as cantaloupe), though…we’re hoping a few more will ripen off the vine so we can pass them along.

We also harvested pie pumpkins and will pass those along to you with the rest of our winter squash, which we hope to harvest on Friday. They didn’t do so well, either…much of that field was underwater back in June. We won’t know for sure until we get the harvest in, but I’m hoping we’ll be able to give everyone a few pounds of mixed squashes and pumpkins. Last year (another bad one for squash) everyone got about five pounds.

Our Celli spading machine is on the fritz again, due to a couple of sheared screws. This goes with the tractoring territory. It happens all the time, and bolts and screws breaking are much better that other important pieces breaking! However, the Celli is Italian which means that all her bits and pieces are metric and hard to find around here. Sonya spent a lot of time last week trying to track these screws down, and finally had to order them from K.L. Jack down in Portland. I’ll be picking them up tomorrow after the Portland Farmers’ Market. We want to get the spader fixed so we can work our empty beds and get cover crops in.

Also, please remember that the farm needs your mulch in the form of leaves and “clean” (not treated with chemical fertilizers or pesticides) grass clippings…if you have any to spare, let us know! Ciao for now!

This week’s share includes the following:

1 pound of fingerling potatoes
cucumbers
1/2 lb bag of zucchini and yellow summer squash -OR- 1/4 lb bag of bell peppers
1 bunch of broccoli raab
1/4 lb bag of braising mix
1 jalapeno pepper
1/2 lb bag of onions
1 head of garlic
1 bunch of basil -OR- 1 bunch of thyme

The potatoes this week are those fancy fingerlings, a variety that has been all the rage in the gourmet food world for the past few years. They are wonderful roasted! Be sure to check out the potato recipes page for some ideas for your fingerlings. The cukes are finally beginning to slow down, so folks this week will get three smallish cukes or one large and one small. As I mentioned last week, your bag of wee onions should be refrigerated as they are not fully cured yet. The braising mix this week has kale, mizuna, tat soi, red mustard, and snap pea shoots. The pea shoots are an experiment…please let us know what you think!

With the turning of the month comes the apparent turning of the seasons, as the past week has been much cooler and less humid. The approach of fall has us scrambling to get our raspberries and strawberries well weeded and mulched for the winter. With this in mind, plus other mulching needs in the near future (next year’s garlic, herbs, etc.) we need your help. We would LOVE to take any leaves or grass clippings off your hands to use here at the farm. If you can get them here to us that would be great, but we are also willing to pick up mulch if need be. We’re happy to take grass clippings as long as your lawn hasn’t been treated with any chemical fertilizers or pesticides. This is very important, since mulching with anything else could threaten our goal of getting the farm certified organic next spring. We’re also on the hunt for manure sources, so if any of you reading this have any yourselves or any suggestions on where to find some, we would appreciate it!

Our next farm potluck is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 19th between the hours of 5 and 9 PM. Bring along a dish to share, some comfy outdoor chairs, musical instruments, etc. This is a rain or shine event, but hopefully the weather will be nice, and we can eat outside and enjoy a bonfire afterwards!