Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Week 5 Vegetable CSA


The month of June is a critical time in our long season.  We are planting like crazy, training new workers, trying to stay on top of weeding, dodging thunderstorms, and harvesting for two deliveries per week.  If we can just keep our heads above water, get some cooperation from the weather and good help, we can have quite a garden established.  It’s the end of June and the garden looks pretty good. There is always more to do and we are never done with the perpetual list of jobs but our heads are indeed above water and the outlook is very bright.


Tomatoes Ready To Be Trellised

Farm News
It has been a bright and sunny week with no rain.  We are taking advantage and getting some good jobs done.  Brian has the umbrella up on the tractor for shade and is mowing any weeds and overgrown pasture.  This week, the kids worked with Brian to put up T-posts for the tomato trellising.  The tomato plants have not been trellised yet and they need it badly.  The plants are beginning to fall over and we don’t want the growing fruit and healthy vines to lie on the ground.  The fence posts are put in every 4 plants and are pushed into the ground with the loader bucket on the tractor.  Using baling twine, we add a string up one side and down the other to sandwich the plants between the twine.  The first string is low to the ground – maybe 10”.  The next is a few more inches up and so on until we reach the tops of the fence posts.  Healthy tomato vines will continue to grow beyond the reaches of the fence posts and begin to spill down the sides later in the season.  It will be a weekly job for someone to add the next level of twine to the hundreds of tomato plants in the field and keep those vines upright.

We enjoyed good help Saturday morning when we weeded and planted.  A bed of kohlrabi and bok choy were planted as well as more basil and  radishes.  The radishes are up – hooray!  Besides all the good planting and harvesting, the help is weeding a lot and keeping things under control.  It takes many hands to keep this garden weeded.

What a great box today!  Enjoy your holiday weekend and thank you for supporting this local organic farm.

In Your Box Today
Carrots var. ‘YaYa’ – The first harvest of carrots this week.  And they are beautiful and sweet!  There are many weeks and much work to produce these carrots.  In case you are wondering just how that happens, here is the life story of these carrots…
·         1000’ sown first week of April, one seed per inch, sown by hand
·         Rows cultivated with the tractor and cultivator  twice in May
·         Thinned  to 2” apart and hand weeded in May twice
·         Weeded by hand and hoe June 24
·         Dug with garden fork June 30
·         Scrubbed and bunched June 30
·         Distributed in CSA boxes July 1!

Leaf Lettuce  – A blend of baby red and green leaf lettuces.  The first planting of lettuce is holding on well.

Bok Choy – Beautiful heads of Bok Choy this week.  Very versatile, Bok Choy can be added to your salads or stir fried.  The crunchy white stems and deep green leaves are all edible and delicious.

Sugar Snap Peas – We’re still harvesting peas but the upcoming heat is really going to be hard on the vines.   Harvesting Thursday afternoon, I did not see too many blossoms so the harvest is going to come to a screeching halt.   Those pods with more size today are excellent sautéed just until they are bright green.  Just be sure to remove the stem and pull the attached string for a more tender bite.

Cabbage  - Cabbage has to be one of the most pretty vegetables in the garden.  We like to leave plenty of those big outside leaves on the heads because they are completely edible.   There are infinite ways to use cabbage.  We slice it over our salads, we sauté it with olive oil or a bit of chicken fat  for a quick side dish or we add it to a stir fry.  This cabbage has such good crunch and texture not to mention outstanding flavor.  Our favorite supper of the week was Teriyaki Marinated Beef stir fried with red cabbage, onions, and sugar snap peas.  See below for the recipe for the marinade – it’s an old recipe from Brian’s mother and one of our favorites.
Parsley    Last year, we never came close to producing such lush parsley.  If you recall how wet it was in June, all that rain put our parsley bed under water.   Standing water can kill soil microbes and handicap any plant that dares to try and grow in that soil.  But this is a new year and the parsley has not been under water and it is growing strong.  We throw a bit in our salads, sprinkle over everything and sometimes just grab a stem and munch.
Broccoli – We planted 4 varieties of broccoli this year to stagger our harvest and not put all our hopes on one variety.   The harvest of broccoli this morning yielded full size heads and smaller side shoots that sprout after the main head is taken.
Swiss Chard – The chard is a combination of 3 varieties – Fordhook Giant (white stems), Ruby Red (red stems) and Bright Lites (everything else!).  All so pretty, tender and delicious.  Eat those stems!
Recipe

Teriyaki Marinade
From the kitchen of Sarah Poeppel
1/3 cup soy sauce (we recommend San-J  shoyu or tamari)
1 T wine vinegar
1 T sugar
1 T brown sugar  (we use Sucanat to replace both the white and brown sugars)
1 ½ tsp ground ginger OR 1 T fresh ginger, chopped or grated
1 clove garlic, minced  (or substitute chopped garlic scapes)

Combine all ingredients and place in shallow glass dish.  Add meat of choice – chicken or beef.  Turn to coat all sides, place in refrigerator for minimum 1 hour and preferably 3-4 hours.
 

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