I’m going to keep this week’s newsletter short and sweet, I’m still harvesting this evening for tomorrow’s CSA delivery taking advantage of the cool temps. Did you know if you harvest in the heat of the day everything just wilts? Keeping the field heat off the veggies with ice or by harvesting in the nighttime keeps everything crisp and fresh.

This week we have some good tasting grub coming to the CSA members.  The harvest isn’t even, many things are ripening at different times with the hard switch from cold rain to heat. So, we have a bit of a smorgasbord going on this week. Here’s what CSA members will find in their shares this week:

* Assorted herbs – you’ll receive one of the following: Basil, sage, or mint

* Kale – siberian

* Carrots – mini rainbow carrots. These are really special seeds and I’m very excited about them. A rainbow of colors and sweet flavor in these tiny gems:

* Brassica grab bag – for whatever reason, the brassicas are maturing on their own schedule. You will receive one of the following:

• Cabbage – Couer De Boeuf Des Vertus – A delicious, pre-1856, French bull-heart type cabbage that has tall, pointed green heads .
• Kohlrabi – a bunch of this lovely broccoli-tasting treat. Very strange looking, if you’ve never seen one:

• Romanesco broccoli – another very strange looking brassica, looks more like cauliflower rather than broccoli. The true and popular Italian heirloom with spiraling, heads:

There was sun, it was beautiful, I hope you also are enjoying the good weather. We got our wish of at least 4 dry days and I have been madly tilling and planting.

I start every day by walking around the whole farm checking things out. I take notes, root out slugs, log the weather, and identify any pest problems. This week, I rambled by a few spots I haven’t check out in a while and was very happy to find shiitake mushrooms have been soaking up the rain and fava beans have been defying the calendar. I did a whimsical late February/early March planting of favas that have been really turning into monsters with the weather, they love it.

On my walk through the farm there were positive signs of good things to come:

Lots of kohlrabi

Good looking romanesco broccoli

The real sign of summer this week, squash blossoms.

This Week’s Harvest

*  Shiitake mushrooms, grown on a variety of mediums at the farm: straw, alder chips, and logs.

*  Fava beans – usually an early spring treat, I planted some of these guys in late winter/early spring more as a cover crop than anything else. Well, it was cold and wet enough to get a crop out of them! Please note: some people have a genetic condition that results in fava “allergies” or favism. It’s rare but real.

* Scallions – evergreen hardy bunching onions

* Kale – white Russian variety

* On rotation – new potatoes. This week full shares will be receiving new potatoes. These should not be stored but eaten fresh this week. New potatoes aren’t cured in the sun and don’t store well. They are very creamy and very tasty. Half shares will see potatoes in the coming weeks as well.

Fava Beans

This might your first go at eating or cooking fresh fava beans. I love favas and used to eat them all the time for breakfast. Unshelled, fresh favas look like giant, bumpy string beans. They are 5 to 7 inches long and lined with padding on the inside that looks like cotton batting.

Fava beans have been a staple food for thousands of years in Asia, South America, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. For some reason, they just haven’t caught on in North America.

Molly Watson has a really good tutorial on how to prepare favas, most recipes call for a cup or two of cooked favas, this tutorial shows you how to shell the beans and gets you to the point of cooked favas for your recipes.

Personally, I don’t take of the thin membrane on the individual bean as Molly instructs in the tutorial. Some people insist they must be peeled, I like the texture of the shell and leave it on.

Recipes for the Harvest

Simple Italian Fava Salad

1 cup coked favas
1/4 c grated pecorino cheese
olive oil, lemon juice, parsley, hot pepper – experiment with your own preferred ratio of ingredients to your tastes

Toss, plate, eat.

Fava Spread

Boil, mash then mix in salt, lemon, minced garlic, dash of olive oil, and spread on crusty bread or crackers

Ful Mudammas

The national dish of Egypt.  Favas are called “ful” (pronounced fool) in Arabic. I lived in Egypt, Jordan and Israel off and on for several years and while I was there this was breakfast every day in every single one of those countries. A plate with a bowl of ful and a bowl of hummus is loaded up with with pita, tomatoes, cucumbers, hard boiled eggs and goat cheese, it was the most fantastic thing every single morning.

There are a ton of ways to prepare this using dried, canned, and fresh favas. I like to use fresh when I can:

1 cup shelled fava beans
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt
cumin
lemon juice
minced garlic
minced onion (optional)
parsley (optional)
tahini (optional)

Bring a quart of water to boil in a pot. Add the fava beans and olive oil, partially cover the pot, and boil over medium heat for about 30 minutes, or until the fava beans are tender and can be squeezed out of their skins. If you like, add a teaspoon of salt during the last few minutes of cooking. Be careful not to overcook, or the interior of the bean will be mushy rather than intact.

Drain the fava beans, coarsely mash and add the remaining ingredients (I go heavy on the olive oil, lemon juice, and tahini for a thinner consistency).

We have a very lovely late spring harvest for you this week. It includes a few ingredients you may not be familiar with or have had a chance to work with before. Let’s start with Escarole.

Escarole is a type of endive that is incredibly versatile. It can be eaten fresh or cooked, used in everything from salad, pasta, and soup. Escarole is very bright green with broad outer leaves that get progressively smaller towards the center of the head. A picture pre-harvest of the escarole you will be receiving (escarole on the left, frisée on the right):

Escarole is really unique in that it provides various degrees and of flavor as the outer leaves are removed. While the outer leaves are a dark green, peeling back a layer will reveal a lighter shade of green. As more layers are peeled back, the leaves continue to lighten in shade. As the shade of the leaves lightens, the degree of bitter taste also lessens. The result is that it is possible to use different layers of escarole to achieve the taste you want with the dish you are preparing.

Next in the harvest that may be new to you is bunched pea shoots. We’ve included the young shoots as a salad ingredient in past harvests but this week you will receive a large bunch of pea shoots to work with. They are fantastic fresh or absolutely delicious stir-fried with sesame and ginger.

Finally, we have some nice baby cabbages that are really lovely grilled if you will be taking out the bbq this weekend. There is the Bacalan cabbage, a very old french variety characterized by its arrow shape, and we also have baby Bilko napa cabbages.

Enjoy!

What you will find in this week’s share:

* Strawberries!!!!!!!!! We have a good harvest this week and will be spreading the love in all the shares. Berry shareholders will also receive their first berry share this week in addition to the pint included in half and full shares.

* Escarole

* Cabbages – Bilko and Bacalan varieties. You’ll notice some of the baby napa cabbages have a little raab or flowering going, this is due to the longer days we’re entering and the flower is really delicious. To be eaten and enjoyed!

* Mixed greens

* Bunched pea shoots

Recipes for the Harvest

Escarole with Bacon and White Beans

*  2  bacon slices, chopped
* 1  cup  chopped onion
* 1  garlic clove, thinly sliced
* 6  cups  chopped escarole (about 2 [8-ounce] heads)
* 1  teaspoon  sugar
* 1/4  teaspoon  salt
* 1/4  teaspoon  freshly ground black pepper
* 1  (14-ounce) can fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
* 1  (16-ounce) can cannellini beans or other white beans, rinsed and drained

Cook bacon in a large saucepan over medium heat until crisp. Remove bacon from pan with a slotted spoon, reserving 2 teaspoons drippings in pan; set bacon aside. Add onion to drippings in pan; cook 12 minutes or until golden brown, stirring occasionally. Add garlic; cook 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Add escarole, and cook for 2 minutes or until escarole wilts, stirring frequently. Add sugar, salt, pepper, and chicken broth; cook 15 minutes or until escarole is tender, stirring occasionally. Add beans; cook for 2 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Sprinkle with bacon.

Simple Escarole and Beans

Saute a small handful of chopped garlic in some olive oil. Add red pepper flakes and coarsely chopped escarole — saute till wilted. Add beans (we use chickpeas), capers and some brine — heat through. We served over whole wheat pasta with a side of baked carrot fries, but this would be fantastic over brown rice or stirred into a simple Parmesan risotto.

Cabbage Curry

Ingredients:
Cabbage (1 medium)
Peas (1 tea cup)
Mustard seed
Cumin seed
Salt
Turmeric

Recipe: Cut cabbage to your desired size and add turmeric and salt. Mix it properly and keep it aside for 20 minutes. Keep a vessel on the heat and add oil to it. Once the oil is hot, add mustard seeds, cumin seed and urad dal. Ones it is properly done, add cabbage and peas. While adding cabbage, squeeze out the water out of cabbage (adding salt would draw the water out of cabbage). Let it cook for 10-15 minutes string occasionally and add water if required. Once you are through, can also add grated coconut if you like. You can have this cabbage curry with rice or chappati.

This Week’s Harvest

Wow, the weather really nailed us this week. Tuesday I was holding the greenhouse down in 50 mph gusts and yesterday we were dodging pretty large hail!  Needless to say, the tomatoes took a beating. Fortunately, we plant in waves and had only 1/3rd of the maters outside so we’re still in good shape. Hope you all survived the stormy weather. Now on to the show, here is what you will find in your share this week:

* Spring onions, red wing variety

* Braising Mix – stir fry vegetables including Morris Heading Collard Greens (heirloom), White Russian Kale (heirloom), and rapini.

* Salad mix – includes spinach, Rouge d’Hiver (heirloom), pea shoots, arugula, and Nevada lettuce.

* Radishes – french breakfast and pink beauty

Recipes for the Harvest

Sweet Potatoes, Apples, and Braising Greens
by Traci Des Jardins
Jardinière

Makes 10 Servings

4 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut lengthwise into quarters, then cut crosswise into 1/8-inch slices
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus 3 tablespoons melted
1 tablespoon fine sea salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
3 medium baking apples, such as Sierra Beauty or Granny Smith, peeled, cored, and cut into quarters
6 cups loosely packed braising greens such as kale, chard, or collard greens, stems removed and torn into 2-inch strips
1/4 cup loosely packed fresh parsley leaves, coarsely chopped

Preheat oven to 400°F.

On foil-lined baking sheet, toss potato slices with 3 tablespoons melted butter, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper.
Bake until cooked through and slightly caramelized, about 20 minutes. Keep warm.

In heavy medium skillet over moderate heat, melt 3 tablespoons butter.

Add apples and sauté until tender and golden brown, about 15 minutes. Keep warm.

In heavy large pot over moderate heat, combine remaining 2 tablespoons butter and 3 tablespoons water.

Add greens and sauté, stirring occasionally, until wilted, about 5 minutes. Lower heat to moderately low and add sweet potatoes and apples. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until warmed through, 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in parsley, remaining 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 1/2 teaspoons pepper. Serve hot.


Radish-Chive Tea Sandwiches with Sesame and Ginger
Bon Appétit  | April 2008

*  4 tablespoons butter, room temperature
* 3 tablespoons minced chives, divided
* 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
* 3/4 teaspoon grated peeled fresh ginger
* 1/4 teaspoon Asian sesame oil
* 16 1/4-inch-thick baguette slices
* 10 radishes, thinly sliced

Mix butter, 2 tablespoons chives, sesame seeds, ginger, and oil in small bowl; season with salt and pepper. Spread butter mixture over each bread slice. Top with radishes, overlapping slightly. Sprinkle with remaining chives and fleur de sel, if desired.

Goings on at the Farm

It was a slog through the mud for sure this week. After we wrapped up deliveries for the CSA it was back to the dirt. I am farming two acres, perhaps a little more and it was time to prepare one of those acres for the “big block” crops. I plant corn, summer squash, and winter squash in large squares rather than the long rows I use for other crops.

There was very tall wheat and clover that needed to be taken care of before we till the soil and plant the big blocks, so we sent in the cows from Malinowski farm to cut it for us! Here are some photos from this week:



It’s always encouraging to see the first green bits coming up in the spring. The first crocus, dandelion, and lush lettuce responding to the longer days. I have been harvesting Shiitake mushrooms and mustard greens for scrambles and stir frys and can’t wait to share them with you. It’s no surprise that the bugs that have been slumbering in the soil all winter are also excited to see the first green bits too.

Often when we first set out our small veggie starts from the greenhouse to the field every pest within a mile or two seems to descend in force. Imagine a lush green baby cabbage plant in an early spring field, it’s an easy target for a flea beetle and I don’t blame him. So I spent the better part of the week negotiating with our bug friends to try to bait them off the cabbages.

Here is the flea beetle, looks just like a flea:

This guy and his buddies will swipe a whole row of cabbage in an afternoon or two. These and cucumber beetles are always the first challengers to our crops that appear each spring. There are a few different approaches you can take to these bugs as an organic farm, and this week found us experimenting with several.

The first trick was a “trap crop” of radish. It’s essentially a bright shiny distracting object for the pest we are trying to draw off our main crop. Flea beetles love radishes and the seed is relatively inexpensive so it makes sense to plant a few rows of these throughout the field to draw the flea beetles off the main crops and into the radish trap crop. The second option, which is a good long-term solution I hope, is nettle “liquid manure”. After a little research this looked like a good option for insect control for us, there is a ton of nettle growing in one corner of the field.

So after planting my radish trap crop, I put on some sturdy rubber gloves and began harvesting the green tops off the stinging nettles. I placed these in a bucket filled with rainwater and kelp meal. This is brewed for 10 days into a tea. I sprayed a full acre of crops last night (by hand! It took a while…) and noticed the flea beetles immediately vacated, this was awesome!  No pesticide required. This morning the beetles are on the trap crop and off the main crop.

The idea is that this mixture adds nitrogen, iron and other essential micro-nutrients that will strengthen the immune system of plants, making them more resistant to insect and disease attacks. They also appear to really hate this solution on contact so it has a repellent quality as well. Perhaps this effect is due to no more than the fact that the plant is in a state of optimal and balanced nutrition. In any case, if this is something that can be applied during a small plants vulnerable points in its growth cycle, this could be a great option for insect control.

So far, the radish trap crop has solved the immediate problem of the flea beetles. Yay! I’m hoping the nettle tea will be a long-term management technique for flea beetle as well as pressure from other pests as they emerge this spring. They tend to come out in waves over the next few weeks as the first generations come out  from their winter hiding places.

Replacing Nutrients as Naturally as Possible

Each time we grow a crop packed with vitamins and minerals that come from the soil, we need to replace those nutrients for the next crop. This is both to create big beautiful produce AND to make sure that it contains vitamins and minerals for your health. You can quite literally grow a stock of beautiful broccoli using chemical fertilizers and that broccoli winds up being very low in nutrients. Looks big, looks green, but is not as healthy as it could be. I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching fertilizer and nutrition and have come to understand that it’s pretty basic: it all occurs in nature to begin with, so let’s use natural ingredients to put it back into our crops. Chemical fertilizers are nothing short of steroids and simply don’t account for adding minerals to the final product.

An excerpt from a Seattle newspaper:

A report issued this week examined several recent studies by food scientists, nutritionists, growers and plant breeders. It found clear evidence that as the produce we eat gets larger, its vitamins, minerals and beneficial chemical compounds significantly diminish, as do taste and aroma.

Read full article >>

Our process is to start the year with an initial application of nutrients (a combination of cover crops and added amendments) and then just side dress the crops as needed through the season. After completing the initial tilling for the spring that incorporates the winter cover crops, I will add a mix of nutrients that make up our version of fertilizer that we make here at the farm using inexpensive naturally occurring ingredients. No chemicals. After this initial spring fertilizer mix is added, we will simply rely on compost added to the beds throughout the remainder of the season to provide the nutrients needed to support the plants.

The nutrients I prefer to use are complimentary to my soil needs. I will order a soil test in the fall and spring and make adjustments as necessary, but more often than not the soils of our region benefit from similar ingredients described in one of my favorite books, Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades by Steve Solomon. This book is both a great read and a reference.

The fertilizer mix described in the book that I also find good success with (and it’s cheap!):

* Four parts seed meal (pick your favorite, flax is very nice)
* ½ part lime in equal amounts of agricultural lime and dolomite. Leave out the lime for acid loving plants such as rhododendrons.
* ½ part phosphate rock or bone meal (for vegetarians phosphate rock would be the obvious choice).
* ½ part kelp meal – use more if you can afford it!

Mix these ingredients up in a bucket or tub and store indefinitely for later use.

You can buy these ingredients inexpensively at places like Naomi’s Farm Supply, Concentrates Northwest, Portland Nursery, and just about any feed store on the side of any country road. Which is why it’s awesome.

What We Planted Last Week

My what a busy week. After battling a few bugs, we got down to brass tacks and did some planting:

Benning’s Green Tint Squash

Heirloom patty-pan type, with pale green color that matures to a creamy white.

	Pea Shoots Pea Shoots are the choice green tips and tendrils of pea plants.  They taste very much like the pea pod and can be used in similar ways: in stir fry on or on salads.
	Te You Flowering Broccoli Young, thick stems and leaves are crispy and flavorful with a mini-broccoli floret. Also known as Chinese broccoli since its succulent, smooth stems and dark green leaves most closely resemble that of broccoli. The stems of this vegetable are considered best when young and tender.
	Extra Dwarf Pak Choy This tiny pak choy is picked when just 2″ tall! It has dark green, wrinkled leaves with thick, white petioles and can be used whole to make amazing salads and stir-fries! Very tender and delicious!
	Cosmic Purple Carrot Carrots have bright purple skin and flesh that comes in shades of yellow and orange. Spicy and sweet-tasting roots.

Nettles are a super-food with an impressive nutrient profile (and they’re yummy).  They are packed with calcium, protein, magnesium, a huge amount of vitamin A, iron, and have been used to treat an array of health conditions for thousands of years.

But one of the best uses I’ve found for nettles is pizza, which I am making tonight while it hails.

Wild Nettle Pizza

Preheat oven to 500 F with a pizza stone on the bottom rack. Blanch Nettles in salted boiling water for 1 minute, drain and plunge into an ice bath. Wring excess water from nettles and reserve.

Mix mozzarella, fontina and provolone together and set aside. Sprinkle the area you will be rolling the dough with semolina and roll the pizza dough into 4 thin rounds. Spread dough with roast garlic puree, sprinkle with salt, crushed red pepper and pepper. Sprinkle with pecorino and then thyme. Roughly chop nettles and sprinkle ¼ onto each pie. Top with your pizza cheese. Slide the pizza onto the stone in your oven and bake until the edges are lightly browned and crispy. Should take about 5-6 minutes, remove and add the next pie. Slice with a pizza wheel into 6 or 8 slices. Drizzle with a little extra virgin olive oil.

]]> http://www.15milesfarm.com/?feed=rss2&p=26 0 http://www.15milesfarm.com/?p=1 http://www.15milesfarm.com/?p=1#comments Sun, 28 Mar 2010 03:39:09 +0000 admin http://66.33.196.68/?p=1 [...]]]> Happy Spring!

I had intended on posting this shortly after St. Patrick’s day but the stretches of sun had me taking the prime opportunity to prepare all the raised beds for the season. This put us about three weeks ahead of our planting schedule. Hopefully this will work out and we won’t see a hard frost we’re not ready for. Just before St. Patrick’s day it snowed one morning up at the farm. We’re somewhere between 500 – 1000 feet and are definitely vulnerable to frost this time of year.

During the break between Winter and Spring CSAs I’ve been finalizing the crop plans and getting last minute seed orders in. I spend a lot of time looking at soil temperature maps and pacing around the farm waiting for my chance to get the initial tilling complete. I only bring the tractors on about three times per year: once in the spring to prepare the beds, planting late spring and early summer cover crops, and finally planting  fall cover crops. The rest of the season, it’s just worked by hand tools and the occasional walking rototiller.

While we were waiting to get the spring tilling done, we busied ourselves building a new mushroom cultivation area.  We’re also building some pretty fancy chicken tractors for our new chickens arriving at the farm in the next few weeks. These will complete the egg-laying flock.

What We’re Growing: Seed to Table

During the harvest season this space is reserved for what we’re harvesting each week and recipes. I thought during the next few weeks I’d update with what we’ve been planting coming up to the first harvest in May.

I save a great deal of my own seed and when I do purchase seed, it’s from sources I know are providing me with seeds that have not been treated or genetically modified in any way. If you are on the hunt for some spring transplants for your own garden, we sell them to friends of the farm for around a dollar a piece. Let me know what you are looking for, we may have it!

The seed suppliers I use (and recommend highly for the home gardener too):

Uprising Seeds
High Mowing Seeds
Peaceful Valley Farm Supply

Here’s a sampling of what we have been planting during the sunny breaks over last few weeks:

Schweizer Riesen Snow Pea

Beautiful purple/pink bicolor blossoms are borne on sturdy 6+’ vines. The seemingly endless harvest of snow peas stay tender and sweet even as the pods mature and swell. An heirloom native to Switzerland, the name translates as “Swiss Giant”.

French Breakfast Radishes

An oblong, blunt-tipped radish, half red on top and white on the bottom.

Seascape Strawberries

Planted in early March, these lovely berries are already putting on a lot of growth. A cross between popular varieties, Selva & Douglas. Seascape is very productive all season – including the first season – with large fruit and excellent flavor.

Walla Walla Onions

Famous for its sweet flavor and fresh eating, Walla Walla is a medium to large mild onion with white flesh and light brown skin.

Suyo Long Cucumber

Started a few early in the green house. Suyo Long is a Cucumber that can grow to 15” long with a sweet flavor and crisp texture. This “burpless” variety can be used for fresh eating, pickling or even cooking as it is traditionally prepared. Fruits are spiny when young, and become smoother and less ribbed at peak maturity.

Cosmos Diablo

A different species than the taller more common cosmos, Diablo showcases bright scarlet/orange, semi-double blooms atop short bushy 3′ plants.

Nigella

The beautiful purple passionflower-like blooms make an outstanding and long lasting cut flower filler. Very delicate and abundant sprays with flowers that contrast from deep purple flower petals to dark purple centers to magenta stamens. Once the flowers are spent, the seed pod swells up into an unusual and quite ornamental balloon.

Snapdragon – Black Prince

A beautiful flower well suited for growing in the Pacific Northwest, it can be wintered over with blooms arriving in late may.