Summer Sets In

Let me tell you, it is hot out there these days. I find myself working inside during the hot sun- shining hours of midday, and daydreaming of poolside siestas. Out in the fields I spotted a baby eggplant and the tomatoes are sizing up, so July will bring us a bounty indeed. We could use some rain, so if anyone knows a weather man put in a good word please. My work right now is transitioning the ground from spring crops into cover crops, and preparing ground for the fall root crops (beets, carrots, turnips) and fall brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower). With the breeze moving through the past few days I can almost imagine the fall, but the sun reminds me that summer is just settling in.

Featured Recipes

Garlic Spinach Dip

2 Tbsp Garlic, minced
! tsp Oil
8 Cups Fresh Spinach, chopped
8 Oz Light Cream Cheese, softened
¼ Cup Milk
1/8 tsp Salt
Dash Tabasco Pepper Sauce
Sauté garlic in oil until soft. Add chopped spinach to fry pan, one handful at a time. As it wilts you can add a little water as needed to prevent sticking. Place the cooked spinach and garlic in a blender or food processor. Add cream cheese, milk, salt & Tabasco and blend until smooth. You can serve immediately or heat through for a warmer dish. Garnish with chopped tomato or shredded Monterey Jack cheese. Serve with tortilla chips or toasted pita wedges. Makes 2 Cups.

Curried Greens

2 Tbs. olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup diced peeled carrots
1 cup diced peeled beets
1 cup vegetable stock or canned broth
1 tsp. curry powder
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 Tbs. arrowroot dissolved in 2 Tbs. water (to thicken sauce)
1 lb. collard greens, stemmed and coarsely chopped
Directions:
1. In large saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and cook, stirring often, until onion is soft, 5 minutes. Add carrots, turnips and vegetable stock. Cover and simmer until carrots and beets are just tender, 5 to 7 minutes.
2. Stir in curry powder, salt and pepper to taste. Add dissolved arrowroot and simmer until sauce begins to thicken. Add collard greens, and cook until greens are bright and tender, 5 minutes. Serve warm.

Farm of flowers
This time of year is truly satisfying.  I try to get most everything planted on or before the solstice (the longest day of the year) which is Thursday, so the fields are really filling up, and my favorite fruiting vegetables are finally starting to flower.  Yes, this means your tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, and squashes are gearing up to set fruit!  You will notice in this share the start of it all -- sugar snap peas, summer squash, and berries!  Everything continues to grow well, and the big news on the farm this week is that I invested in a new rototiller, a BCS.  It is a fine machine that could outlast me if I care for it properly - I will do my best.  That being said, it is my birthday on Thursday, and I’m going to celebrate by acting on some folk wisdom my grandma told me this weekend, that her grandfather always planted cucumbers on the longest day of the year.  
In the Share this Week
Napa cabbage, head lettuce, mesclun mix, sugar snap peas, summer squash, bunching onions, kale, parsley, carrots, spinach, blackberries

Featured Recipes:

Sauteed Summer Squash Serves 4
Source, The Joy of Cooking
• 3 cups diced summer squash
• 3 tablespoons butter or olive oil
• 1 cup minced onions
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon pepper
Cook onions in oil until golden brown. Add squash, salt and pepper. Cover and cook the squash until tender, about 6 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally. Remove the lid and cook an additional 3 minutes to evaporate juices. Serve and sprinkle with any of the following:
• Chopped basil or parsley, grated parmesan, chopped garlic, grated lemon zest, or drizzle with tomato sauce

Kale Souffle
Softened butter to grease dish
2 tablespoons freshly grated parmesan cheese
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flour
1 2/3 cup milk, warmed
Salt and pepper
Pinch cayenne
5 egg yolks
1 cup cooked and finely chopped kale, at room temperature
1 cup grated gruyere or swiss cheese
2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill or 2 teaspoons dried dill
7 egg whites, at room temperature
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Butter sides and bottom of an 8-cup soufflé dish or deep, round baking dish. Sprinkle buttered areas with parmesan. Melt 4 tablespoons butter in saucepan; stir in flour and cook over low heat for several minutes, stirring often. Whisk in milk until thickened; season with salt, pepper, and cayenne. Cool 10 to 15 minutes. Beat in egg yolks one at a time. Stir in kale, gruyere, and dill. Beat egg whites and a pinch of salt in a clean bowl with egg beater until firm peaks form. Fold a quarter of the whipped egg whites into kale mixture, then gently fold in the rest. Do not overmix. Gently spread mixture in prepared pan. Place in oven, reduce heat to 375 degrees, and bake until high, golden, and barely set in the center, about 35 to 40 minutes. Serve immediately!
Serves 6.
Source, From Asparagus to Zucchini

Peanut Sauce -- I recommend making this peanut sauce and stirring it into steamed napa cabbage and snap peas (or any greens), then serving over rice.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon white sugar
• 2 drops hot pepper sauce
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup water

Directions

1. In a small bowl, stir together peanut butter, soy sauce, sugar, hot pepper sauce and garlic until well mixed. Gradually stir in water until texture is smooth and creamy.

Source, allrecipes.com (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/best-peanut-sauce/)

Week 2: Green Beginnings

Rainy Days

Greetings members!  For some of you, this is your first week of official pick up  - welcome to the 2012 season of your Community Supported Agriculture farm.  I am taking advantage of the rainy day to catch up on paperwork and get the newsletter out, but the rain didn’t stop me from planting basil and parsley, fennel and lettuce this morning.  At some point, though, the mud took over and I felt it was the right time to step inside and take a break from working the fields.  The rain is great for the garden; we were about due for an inch and the rest of the week looks like lovely weather.  Some of the information below will look familiar because I am repeating a few things for those who are starting with their shares this week.  Have fun with your vegetables -- it’s nearly all greens this week, but there are baby cucumbers and squash in the fields -- and be sure to consult the chart below if you need ideas on how to best store and enjoy the harvest. 

 Featured Recipes:

This is a great recipe that uses up many greens, if you are having some left over or want to make a large meal for guests:
Room in the Fridge Curried Greens Soup
http://www.farmerdaves.net/no-room-in-the-fridge-curried-greens-soup

Ingredients:

• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 bunch garlic scapes, finely chopped
• 1-2 tablespoons coconut oil
• 1 can coconut milk
• 4 cups broth (veggie or chicken), plus water if needed
• 1-3 tablespoons mild Jamaican curry powder (or your favorite Indian curry powder or Thai curry paste)
• Up to 5 bunches/heads of greens, washed and chopped. You can use spinach and kale , plus tatsoi, cilantro, and pea tendrils from the CSA share
• Washed and chopped root vegetables, such as hakurei turnips, radishes, or golden beets
• Salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste.

Directions:
In a large stockpot, heat the oil over medium heat. Sautee the onions until translucent, then add the garlic scapes and root veggies and sautee for about 5 minutes. Add coconut milk, curry powder, and  broth. Add the washed, chopped greens, a little at a time. As the greens in the pot wilt, add more greens, and water to cover as needed. Simmer for 20 minutes. Add salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, and any other seasonings, to taste.


Kale Chips

Original Recipe Yields 6 servings

Ingredients

• 1 bunch kale
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon seasoned salt

Directions

1. Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line a non insulated cookie sheet with parchment paper.
2. With a knife or kitchen shears carefully remove the leaves from the thick stems and tear into bite size pieces. Wash and thoroughly dry kale with a salad spinner. Drizzle kale with olive oil and sprinkle with seasoning salt.
3. Bake until the edges brown but are not burnt, 10 to 15 minutes.

Here is a Variation, provided by my friend Dan, who is working with me on the farm this week:
Line pan with aluminum foil (lightly oil foil)
Replace olive oil with soy sauce
Enjoy!

Week 1: A Member’s Field Guide

WEEK 1: A MEMBER'S FIELD GUIDE

Good morning!

I just got inside from morning chores - getting everyone fed and watered - and now sit down to write the newsletter over a delicious breakfast of eggs, bacon, and kale! We made it to the first week of the share and there are truly some treats for you. But let’s back up. It was so nice to meet many of you last week for the preview. It always feels more real when I get to show others around the farm, and it’s a great time to taste test the vegetables as they grow up. I hope you find the table below helpful as you navigate through the contents of your share - this time of the year it’s a lot of greens, so I will focus on that in our recipes section.




Farmer Bio -- Megan Rulli

I grew up in Enola, Pa, and spent most of my free time through childhood and adolescence dancing, ballet mostly but also jazz, modern, and tap. After high school I attended college in Erie at Mercyhurst College, starting out as a dance major but later switching my studies to Religion and History. At Mercyhurst I became absorbed in environmental activism and really enjoyed it, working in defense of forests and to get a renewable energy fee established at the school. However, by the end of college I was ready to put my activist leanings into some more grounded efforts and decided to take an internship at an organic farm. This took me to Wilson College’s Fulton Farm, where I spent a season; the next year I joined the farm staff at Weaver’s Way Coop’s three urban farms in Philadelphia, learning to grow and prosper in small places. That fall I learned of an opportunity to farm a friend’s land in Erie and jumped at the chance strike out on my own, starting a 30 member CSA for the 2010 season as part of Wild Winds Farm. As my farming partner Annie and I were planning for the 2011 season, we both got exciting other offers - she to start up an aquaponics program in downtown Erie, me to come home and farm my parents’ newly acquired Piney Mountain Orchard acreage. So we went for the new opportunities and I moved back to Central Pennsylvania thanks to the openness of my generous parents. Today the farm includes a little over a half acre of vegetable production, a small greenhouse, seven chickens, three sheep, one goat, one puppy and many barn cats. Ralph and Diane, my parents, are always helping with the farm, whether to water the greenhouse or plow and mow the fields. It is a family effort and I hope all the hard work we put in is evident in the tasty delights at your kitchen tables.






CSA Shares 101

For some of you, this is your first time as a member of a Community Supported Agriculture farm. Welcome to a happy relationship between farmer and customer, where you get to take ownership in the farm because you invested early. I will be offering extras throughout the season, and if there is a time you need more of certain items please just ask. If you like to juice collards daily, for example, I can make sure that you get a heaping bunch each week it’s available, even if its not included in the traditional share. You are also welcome out any time for a visit, just let me know when you’d like to come by. But let’s get down to some more helpful details concerning the share:
1. Vegetables are field washed. This means I bring them in from the fields and soak and wash them in cold cold water. I recommend washing them again before use, because although I do not use harmful chemicals, there is a good chance there will be a little dirt left over and even a bug or two from time to time.
2. Getting the most use out of your share. I once attended a whole workshop on how to best use all the veggies in a share from a veteran CSA member. She said it took her a few years to get her routine down. Through this newsletter I will try to give you useful storage tips, but one thing she said has stuck with me. She would take home her share and wash and prepare it in the way she liked to use the veggies. She chopped her lettuce and prepared a large salad immediately, or sliced greens so they were ready to cook. And if something looked too large to use in a week, she got right down to preserving it for the winter. It will take a few weeks, but give yourself time to adjust to fresh produce and all its uses. Try new things!
3. Understanding and using the vegetables through delicious recipes - Each week I will feature 1-3 recipes, depending on the space available. My hope is that you can use these for ideas in your cooking each week, and perhaps even use the newsletter when considering your grocery shopping. The trick too is learning to substitute similar items to make full use of your share, for example garlic scapes instead of garlic.
4. Books I recommend - Here are some cookbooks that I can’t get enough of, which are designed for seasonality and ease of use.
Simply in Season - Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert
The unbeatable seasonal cookbook, including a guide to different vegetables in the front and labeled pages to make it easy to use all your ingredients - divided into spring, summer, fall and winter sections. Wide variety.
Moosewood Cookbook - Mollie Katzen
This is a handwritten vegetarian cookbook full of easy recipes. A classic.
Nourishing Traditions - Sally Fallon
This book is so much more than just a cookbook, it is also a nutritional guidebook and source for rich ferments, superfoods, and preservation. Many interesting uses for your vegetables.
Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables - John Peterson
A cookbook by a CSA farmer full of treats. Will be referenced throughout the season.
From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce - Madison
Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition
Another cookbook put out by the CSA community. A great resource.
5. Picking up Your Share - Your share will come in a waxed box most weeks. I get these from the restaurant I work at on the weekends, but the supply is not endless. Please bring back your box each week so I can reuse them. You could also bring your own bags and leave your box behind. Each box will be labelled per share.



Featured Recipes:

Sautéed Radishes with Radish Greens or Arugula (serves 2-4)
• ¼ cup butter
• 1 lb radishes, quartered
• 4 cups radish greens or arugula
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• Salt
• Black pepper
Melt the butter in large skillet over medium heat. Add radishes, stirring constantly, until they are tender but still crisp, probably about 5 minutes depending on size. Transfer to bowl to cool. Return skillet to stove. Put the greens or arugula in the skillet with wash water still on leaves. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until just wilting, 2 to 3 minutes. Turn off heat. Add lemon juice and radishes to skillet. Stir until combined. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.
Source: Farmer John’s Cookbook
 
Napa Cabbage Salad with Peanut Dressing (serves 4)
Dressing
● 3 Tbs. smooth peanut butter
● 3 Tbs. rice wine vinegar
● 1 Tbs. low-sodium soy sauce
● 1 Tbs. brown rice syrup
● 1 Tbs. roasted sesame oil
● 2 tsp. minced fresh ginger
● ½ tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
Salad
● 4 cups shredded napa cabbage
● 1 small red bell pepper, sliced (about ½ cup)
● 1 large carrot, coarsely grated
● 3 green onions, sliced (about ¼ cup)
1. To make Dressing: Whisk together all ingredients in bowl.
2. To make Salad: Toss all ingredients with dressing in serving bowl.
Source: Vegetarian Times