summitspringsfarm.net

Is it really almost August?!  Your CSA share this week contains the following:

1 bunch of Red Russian kale or Winterbore green kale
Bag o’ roots (contains 1/2 lb of carrots and 1 lb of beets)
1 head of lettuce
2 lbs of zucchini/summer squash
1 bunch of scallions
4 cucumbers
.6 lb bag of green beans
1 bulb of garlic
1 lb of beefsteak tomatoes
1 pint of cherry tomatoes
1 bunch of herbs: Choose parsley -OR- basil

Bread shareholders received a loaf of Cornmeal Wheat bread this week, loaded with organic whole wheat flour, organic cornmeal, and local maple syrup from Sweet William in Casco.

Garlic is here!  The garlic you received this week is “green” or undried.  It should be kept in the refridgerator and used within a week or two.  Sonya and the gals harvested the rest of the garlic crop yesterday afternoon and have hung them up in the barn to dry.  Once the heads have cured (this takes a few weeks), they will keep at room temperature for a long time.

Last Thursday, we experienced one of the perks of Sonya’s membership in the MOFGA Journeyperson’s program:  a visit from Eric Sideman, MOFGA’s Organic Crop Specialist, and Andrew Marshall, MOFGA’s Educational Programs Director.  It was a great opportunity to tour the farm with these knowledgable fellows and pick their brains about all sorts of things:  pests, soil health, and much more.  It was also a timely visit, with news that late blight had appeared in Maine coming just a few days before their arrival.  We are blight-free here for now and have decided not to spray for the time being.  We’ve learned that the spread of the disease seems to have less to do with temperature than with humidity.  The blight has appeared on a few farms in the Waldoboro area, and for now, we’re keeping our fingers crossed that the less humid days we’ve been experiencing this week will keep the blight spores from spreading very quickly or far.   Eric and Andrew addressed some very specific issues we’ve been having.  An example would be the somewhat stressed state of our greenhouse tomatoes.  We learned that the soil needs some additional nutrients and that we need to finally bite the bullet and install a drip tape irrigation system back there.  Many other questions were answered, too, and we want to thank Eric and Andrew for their insights.  We appreciate their visit and all the advice!

Thanks, too, to Maggie, our recent WWOOFer from Thailand, who left on Saturday.  It was great to meet her and have her help with weeding, harvesting, and much more.  Her enthusiasm and curiousity for the work we do was like a breath of fresh air!  She’s back in New Hampshire for now, then on to do some work at a farm in Vermont before returning to Thailand in a couple of weeks.  Thanks again!

Thanks to the folks who came to our weeding gathering and the potluck afterwards this past Saturday.  It was a gorgeous afternoon/evening, and it was nice to spend it with you all.

Your CSA share this week contains the following:

1/2 lb bag of salad mix
1 bunch of young carrots
1 head of Romaine lettuce
2 lbs of zucchini/summer squash
1 lb bag of turnips
Cucumbers:  3 large and 1 small
1/2 lb bag of green beans
1 green bell pepper
1 lb of beefsteak tomatoes
1 pint of cherry tomatoes
1 bunch of herbs: Choose cilantro -OR- dill

Bread shareholders received a loaf of Oatmeal Wheat bread this week, loaded with organic rolled oats and plenty of local honey from Tom’s Honey and More.

There’s nothing too “out there” in this week’s share…just a lot of solid summertime favorites!  You’re getting a lot of cukes this week, and I just have to suggest one of my favorite summer lunch sides:  the simple and refreshing cucumber salad.  Just slice up a cuke and toss it in a bowl with salt, pepper, a dash of balsamic vinegar, and a drizzle of olive oil (sesame oil is nice, too.)  After a long morning on a hot day, I can’t think of a better way to cool down.  The green beans are coming in strong, lovely to look at and delicious.  You may find a stray purple bean or two in your bag this week.  This “green” bean variety is called Royal Burgundy.  I love putting a big basket of mixed beans on display at market with green, purple, and yellow wax beans.  Alas, the rainbow of fun ends with the cooking process, for the purple beans turn green when cooked.  Those wax beans will be coming soon, too…  Also, if you’re cursing us for giving you more turnips, never fear:  this is it until the fall!  They keep for months in the fridge, by the way, so don’t feel as though you need to plow through them right away.  Sonya discovered a new recipe for sweet sauteed turnips with raisins that I will try to get up on the recipe page soon.  Even I, a turnip skeptic, was somewhat impressed.

Just as the weeds and the work in general are pushing Sonya, Corey, Rachael, and I to the limit, help has arrived in the form of WOOFFers.  WWOOF, as you may recall, stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms.  Travelers can stay on a farm in exchange for a few hours of labor each day.  Our first WWOOFer, Pete from Halifax, came way back in April and helped us out with various projects.  This past week, we welcomed Melissa and Brendon, a nice young couple from Providence, Rhode Island.  She is a vet tech, and he is an Army reservist and student (history).  Both gamely braved the heat and humidity and helped with weeding and the big Friday harvest.  Just yesterday, Maggie arrived, all the way from Thailand via New Hampshire.  She’s actually been working in the states since the spring and wanted to try volunteering on a farm or two before heading back home in early August.  She helped out this morning with harvest and will be here for the rest of this week.

A ghost from last year has crept into our state:  MOFGA is reporting that late blight, a serious fungal disease that attacks tomatoes and potatoes, has appeared in Maine again this summer.  This disease did a number on tomato plants all over New England during last year’s incredibly cool and wet summer, and we were in the thick of it.  We lost every single one of our field tomatoes last season to late blight, roughly  a thousand row feet of plants.  It’s probably safe to assume that the blight won’t be as rampant this summer, but we are concerned nevertheless.  Sonya and I have talked about spraying copper, an organically approved fungicide, on our tomato plants this very evening.  Stay tuned…

Many, many thanks to CSA member Ted Bridge-Koenigsberg for delivering and dumping several truckloads of sheep manure here this past weekend.  We plan to compost the stuff for awhile before spreading it around in the fall, mostly in Field 2.  We appreciate it, Ted and Ted’s flock!

Don’t forget that the next farm potluck is happening later this week on Saturday 7/24 from 5 - 9 PM.  If the weather is nice, we can all eat outside under Martha the red maple at our spiffy new picnic table!  Bring along a dish to share and chairs or blankets to sit on (alas, it’s only one picnic table!)  Potlucks are a great way to check out the farm and meet or reconnect with some great neighbors and friends.  We will also be hosting the season’s first weeding party on the same day from 3 - 5 PM.  If you’ve been wanting to visit the farm, get your hands dirty, and get a little closer to the fields where your food has been coming from, this will be a great opportunity for you to do so!  It’s also a good way to get to know fellow CSA members better.  Bring gloves if you would like to keep your hands clean and any weeding tools you may have.  Come for both the weeding and the feeding or one or the other.  We ask that folks RSVP this time around so we know what to expect.

Let’s hear it for this past weekend’s rain and for happy, happy plants!  Your CSA share this week contains the following:

1/2 lb bag of salad mix -OR- 1 lb of broccoli
1 bunch of broccoli raab -OR- 1 bunch of Red Russian kale
1 head of lettuce
2 lbs of zucchini/summer squash
1 bunch of turnips -OR- 1 bunch of beets
1 bunch of chard -OR- more (1 lb) zucchini/summer squash
1 pint of sugar snap peas -OR- 1 pint of snow peas -OR- 1/2 bag of shell peas
1 lb of beefsteak tomatoes
1 pint of cherry tomatoes
1 bunch of herbs: Choose cilantro -OR- dill

Bread shareholders received a loaf of John’s Daily Bread this week, the “flagship” bread of the 2010 bread armada.  My goal with the Daily was one-bread-for-all:  simple, light but healthy, solid but not flashy, ever-so-slightly sweet, perfect for sandwiches, excellent for toast, all-purpose, hot or cold, etc., etc.  It contains a mix of organic white and whole wheat flours and local honey from Tom’s Honey and More (and we mean local…Tom keeps a dozen or so hives at the farm, so some of that honey could have originated right here!)

Beets are new this week, and boy are we happy about that!  They are so good for you, packed with fiber, vitamins, and minerals.  Try them roasted or shredded raw in salads and wraps.  Don’t forget to eat the greeens, too!  Broccoli raab makes its first appearance this week, too.  This green is excellent steamed and even better sauteed.  We love to sautee it with olive oil and garlic, then toss it with fresh pasta, along with grated Romano cheese and chopped walnuts.

Nothing says “summer is here” quite like zucchini, and with the recent hot weather, the stuff is going crazy.  My dad had a veggie garden for a couple of years at our house in Georgia when I was a kid.  I remember that we would go away for a couple of weeks in the summer (usually up to Vermont to visit my grandparents), and when we got back we would inevitably find a few 2-foot zucchinis we’d overlooked before leaving.  Now imagine much of an entire bed like that!  Alas, it’s true.  A zucchini/summer squash planting waaaay back at the end of Field 2 somehow escaped our notice until today, and I discovered a section of mega-zucchinis, enough to fill a bin.  These big fellas are really only good for one thing, and that’s zucchini bread.  You won’t be disappointed if you choose to take one of these monsters home!

Potatoes have been on my mind lately, for a number of reasons.  First off, our potatoes here at the farm are coming along nicely.  They are just past the flowering stage, which means the tubers under the soil have been set and are growing steadily.  The potato bugs have been out in force, but so have Rachael and Corey, unflinchingly collecting into buckets the yellow and black striped adults plus the slimy, rust-colored larve PLUS any egg sacks hiding on the underside of the plant’s leaves and delivering the whole mess to the enthusiastic chickens.  New potatoes will be coming soon…

I’m also thinking about potatoes because of my aunt and uncle, Meredith and Tom Hughes, who I’ve written about at some length on this blog in the past.  They started The Potato Museum in Brussels in the 1970s, took it to DC in the 1980s, and expanded their research and activities into The Food Museum in the 1990s and beyond.  This year, the potato once again takes center stage with them as they present “Spuds Unearthed!” at the US Botanic Garden in DC.  The exhibit opened in May and runs until October.  Some photos and video of potato activities from Summit Springs Farm…cutting seed potatoes, planting, harvesting, etc…are included in the exhibit.  If you’re in the DC area, stop in and check out this entertaining and informative exhibit (and the rest of the Botanic Garden, too…it’s quite something).

But the MAIN reason I’ve got spuds on my mind is because of a potato controversey here in Maine.  This season, we applied for and received permission to accept WIC checks at out farmers’ markets.  WIC stands for “Women, Infants, and Children”.  As described on the USDA WIC website “WIC provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk.”  It’s a great program, but it’s taking some heat because it has banned potatoes from its approved list of foods.  When we received our informal training session here at the farm on how the WIC program works, I was surprised by the potato’s exclusion.  It’s off the list because it’s considered too starchy and fattening.  I’m not alone in my surprise, it seems.  A few weeks ago, I noticed a front-page article about the controversy in the Portland Press-Herald and read a follow-up editorial about it in last week’s edition.  Maine is, of course, a major player in the potato industry, and the major potato producers up in Aroostock County are outraged by WIC’s exclusion.  So are many consumers and health advocates, who argue that the potato gets a bad rap because of the uses to which it is put rather than any inherent faults.  For many, many people, a serving of potato takes the form of a bag of chips or a basket of fries.  Even something as healthy as a baked potato quickly becomes something else entirely when slathered with butter, sour cream, and cheese.  In and of itself, however, the potato is quite healthy…not too high in calories and a good source of protein, vitamin C, and dietary fiber, especially when eaten with their skins.  If folks can get their potatoes fresh from the farmers’ market, along with some helpful preparation advice from the farmer, then I see no reason why spuds should be excluded.  Do you?

Your CSA share this week contains the following:

1/2 lb bag of salad mix -OR- 1 lb of broccoli
1 bok choy -OR- 1 bunch of Red Russian kale
1 head of lettuce
1 bunch of scallions
1 bunch of turnips
1 green pepper
1 1/4 lb bag of snow peas
1 pint of cherry tomatoes
1 pint of sugar snap peas

Bread shareholders received a loaf of seeded rye this week.  This hearty loaf features a combination of organic rye and organic unbleached wheat flours, local honey, and both caraway seeds and organic flax seeds.  Enjoy, and I’d love to hear any feedback from bread share members or any of you who have bought bread or muffins or cookies at pick-ups!

And this bountiful season keeps rolling along.  Green bell peppers in the first week of July?!  Yikes!  It’s extremely exciting for us to see things growing so well after the previous two very wet seasons.  The heat this week has been tough to work in, but the summer veggies are loving it.  The greenhouse cherry and beefsteak tomatoes are coming along, and the peppers and tomatoes out in the field are looking great.  The zucchini and summer squash are coming on strong, too.  I’m taking some to market this week, and hopefully next week we’ll have enough to include in the CSA share.  Turnips are new this week.  Enjoy them, and don’t forget to eat the greens!  They are extremely good for you and have a flavor and texture reminicient of collard greens.  Try them steamed or sauteed.  We grow two varieties of cherry tomatoes here at Summit Springs Farm:  red Super Sweet 100s and orange Sungolds.  As the name implies, the Super Sweets are a wonderful red cherry:  great in salads, quite sweet, and absolutely gorgeous.  For me and many of our CSA and market folks, however, the Sungolds steal the show.  I eat them like candy.  They are incredibly sweet, and their flavor is much more complex than the Super Sweets.  If you are a dedicated red tomato fan, I urge you to take a chance and try the Sungolds!  Orange and yellow tomatoes are also a bit less acidic than red ones, making them a little easier on the stomach for those with such sensitivities.

Folks, the veggies are growing very well…and so are the weeds!  Sonya, Rachael, Corey, and I are doing our best to keep up, but it’s an uphill battle.  We could use any extra time and energy you could spare to help us try and get the weeds under control.  Thursdays are generally a good day for helping out here at the farm; it’s one of the few days where there isn’t either harvesting or a market/CSA pick-up happening.  Any time you could come over, however, would be great!  Just call or e-mail us, and we’ll work out the logistics.

Does anyone know of a local family who is into veggies and in need?  We have a CSA member who will be out of town for the next couple of weeks and would like to donate their shares.  If anyone comes to mind…a senior on a fixed income, someone facing an unexpected illness or job loss, etc…please let us know, and we’ll see if we can work it out.  On this website’s CSA sign-up form we ask folks if they are interested in making a donation towards a CSA share for a family in need.  We also give our members the option of donating a missed share.  The share usually goes to market with us, after which whatever is left over is donated to either the Wayside Soup Kitchen or the Poland food bank.  In this case, however, we thought we’d ask for input about a specific situation here in our community where some extra food might be helpful.  We’d love to help!