Week 13; August 31, 2017

What's in the box?  

corn, the best we’ve seen this year. Quote from the field “these are like submarines”
tomatoes
watermelon (red and yellow)
cantaloupe
carrots
green peppers
green beans
bok choy
green butter head lettuce - large
broccoli - large

Notes on the box.

We did a lot of debating for how to deliver these watermelons to you outside of the boxes to leave room for more veggies.  In the end because of logistics and limited space in the van, we weren't able to deliver the melons in separate boxes or to move everyone up to a larger box size.  
Because of that we had to make some tough decisions about what to put in and leave out of the box.  We decided to give more tomatoes and hold onto onions and potatoes for later weeks since the tomatoes are fleeting and don't hold.  This box is about living in the moment.  Stuff yourself with Summer while it's here!  Looks like next week will be pretty much a repeat of this week.  Without the bok choy and probably beets instead of carrots.  

Cosmic Wheel Creamery Cheese Shares.

2017 Antares is here!  This beauty was made in May when the cows were eating lush spring pasture.  The golden color and the grassy flavors highlight those pastures.  It's nice and tangy when it's young and the finish is less aggressive than in the longer Aged Antares. It also has a bit higher moisture when it's less aged, so it's a better melter.  
I also included the flavored quark this week.  It's the easiest cheese to eat in one sitting according to Otto and Sadie who go through a container with some crackers at an astonishing clip.  

Recipes.

Eat a BLT before there are no more tomatoes!

Raw Choi Slaw—Finely slice the choy, and mix with this Miso dressing:
2 tablespoons miso
1/2 teaspoon powdered mustard (or a bit of whatever mustard you have around)
2 tablespoons brown sugar (or honey)
1/4 cup rice vinegar, or whatever vinegar you have around
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon pure toasted sesame oil (optional)
Salt

Tomato and Corn Pie—from Deb (first name basis!) 

Rama’s been enjoying the cantaloupe sprinkled with chili flakes and salt! Delicious. Use more salt than you think you’ll need

On the Farm.

Guest post this week. We’re Andrew and Caroline. We’ve been working here on the vegetable crew since early spring. You may have seen some incriminating photos of us in previous blog posts. 

This week we said goodbye to Madeline, who helped out for the month of August. We’ll miss her color palette, field songs, and extreme appetite for carrot weeding.  

Otto had his first day of Montessori. No homework to speak of, yet.

Wednesday was Rama’s birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY RAMA! We are so lucky to be in the everyday presence of such a magician.

Spinach is looking great and buttery. Squash and zucchini are done and out! We enjoyed our cantaloupe harvest as it enabled us to throw melons at each other and up onto the wagon, working out some interpersonal dynamics! Things got cheeky.

It’s been a cool August for everyone, maybe except for Caroline who is from Northern California and actually doesn’t really like direct sunlight that much. Particularly in the context of Hurricane Harvey, climate change is on our minds as a real threat to smallholder farms and resilient communities at large. It is humbling to have been here for a single season, and hear about years of experienced climate and landscape events that farmers have endured and frightening to think about breaking from these acquainted patterns in movement towards further volatility. Houston received about 51 inches of rain from Harvey. Minnesota receives an annual amount of 18-32 inches of rain. Even with the omnipresence of climate change and weather in our daily work, events like Harvey shock us and we feel for the devastating loss in Texas and South Asia. 

We’re enjoying our days and conversations on the farm. Thanks for supporting the CSA so that we can continue to do this work! As our student coworkers return to school, we are grateful to be able to continue work through the fall and see the winter squash through fruition.

A and C

Forecast for next week.  

corn (last week of corn!)
tomatoes (probably last week of tomatoes)
melons (last week of watermelons if we include them)
peppers
green beans?
green top beets

 

Turnip Rock FarmerComment
Week 12; August 24, 2017

What's in the box?  

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Sweet Corn
Watermelon - yellow or red
cucumber
dill
tomatoes
sweet onion
bok choy
green beans
bell peppers
fennel - large
broccoli - large

Notes on the box.

Watermelon can be stored outside of the fridge until you cut it.  There will be more watermelon coming!
Tomatoes should be stored out of the fridge unless you plan to cook with them.  
Keep Sweet Corn in the fridge and eat it ASAP.  The fresher the better with the sweet corn.  
This is likely the last of the cucumbers for the season!  Great cucurbit year and we are happy we got some fresh dill to you at the same time as cukes!  We had an early dill planning wash out, so this is the only dill harvest of the season.  

Cosmic Wheel Creamery Cheese Shares.

Cheese curds and Deneb.  Deneb is our gouda style cheese.  It's a great melter!  Time for a nice grilled cheese with a fat slice of tomato!  

Recipes.

Sweet Corn, Cucumber, and Dill Summer Salad
Dressing
1/4 cup sour cream, creme fresh, or buttermilk
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 tablespoon wine vinegar
1 small clove garlic, minced and mashed with a pinch of salt (optional)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Salad
4 ears worth of corn kernels
about 2-3 cups worth of peeled and cubed cucumbers
chopped fresh dill
chopped fresh parsley
2 diced bell peppers - red and/or green
finely diced sweet onion
Whisk together ingredients for the dressing.  Mix Salad ingredients with dressing.  Eat it up!

Bacon Ends, Greenbean, Tomato and Pasta quick Dinner
Cook Bacon ends and chopped sweet onion in a pan together (if you have very fatty bacon, drain off some of the grease). While bacon cooks, boil pasta adding the destemmed and chopped green beans to the pot during the last 3 minutes of cooking.  While pasta is draining, put cooked bacon an onions into the pasta pot.  Put chopped tomatoes into the bacon pan to deglaze the pan and cook the tomatoes down some.  Add tomatoes and pasta and beans back into the pot with bacon and onions and stir well.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Top with hard grated cheese and a nice amount or red pepper flakes.  

Radient Bok Choy

On the Farm.

We had a nice week of picking and packing.  We are excited to bring these wonderful watermelons to you.  Our soil is quite heavy and that's not a favorite for melons.  With all the rain and cool temps we've had we weren't expecting a great season for them, but they are here and looking great!  They are nice and sweet and good sized.  We hope you enjoy them!  There will be more coming as  next week and we have a nice crop of cantaloupe coming,  too.
We watched the solar eclipse and the clouds stayed away until after the peak, which was really great!  Did you get to watch?!   
We are having another visit from Grandma and Grandpa and that means all the things that were broken on the farm that we haven't had time to fix are getting fixed by grandma and grandpa.
We also have a condition around here that one of our farmer friends deemed "harvest house" which is when we are in peak season and don't have time to clean, so our houses get pretty dirty until frost hits.  But this visit gave us total relief with grandmas wizard like cleaning skills!  Their visits are such a blessing and keep us from being overwhelmed and completely swallowed up by the farm.   
This week is the last week that Lily is on the farm!  She is heading back to Northland for school.  Lily has been a fantastically steady worker who shows so much love and appreciation for the land and the farm.  It's nice to have people show that connection to remind us that where we live is amazing.  Her gratitude is contagious.  We will miss her and her humor a lot.  We will also miss the steady flow of delicious  vegan cookies!  Thank you so much for everything, Lily!  Please come back to visit anytime!  
Otto is starting school next week!  Late Summer has officially arrived.  

Forecast for next week.

Sweet Corn
Watermelon - yellow or red
tomatoes
sweet onion
green beans
bell peppers
and whatever else we can fit into the box-  beets?  carrots?  Napa cabbage?  greens?  

Turnip Rock Farmer Comment
Week 11; August 17, 2017

What's in the box?  

Sweet corn
Beans
tomatoes
cilantro
fennel
carrots
cucumbers
Yukon gold potatoes - medium and large
Broccoli - medium and large
Summer squash/Zukes - large
peppers - large

Notes on the box.  

The weather has been more like fall than summer. Its been over a week without high temps in the 80s. This has pumped the brakes on the melons.  Melons next week! 
First sweet corn of the season!  Try to eat it ASAP as it's best fresh.  Store it in the crisper of the fridge.  Boil some water, shuck the corn, put it in the water for a few minutes, then butter and salt.   If you want to freeze it, just cut it off the cob and put it in a freezer bag and then into the freezer.  We blanched it first for many years and then one year froze some without blanching.  We didn't label the bags as to which was which and we couldn't tell the difference.  Since then we don't bother with blanching.  
Nice big bulbs of fennel!  Try them grilled, roasted, or raw sliced thin and made into a salad.  

Cosmic Wheel Creamery Cheese Shares.

Wonderful Ricotta and a firm, drier aged cheese called Tarazed.  You can grate it on top of finished food or into salad, or it's also good on a pizza, but it's not the best melter so maybe no grilled cheese with this one.  I lovingly refer to this cheese as my 'potato chip cheese' because it's salty and dry and once I have a little taste, I want to keep eating it!  This is a popular one for me to grate up when I'm making dinner and then turn around to witness little hands grabbing fistfuls and shoving them into their mouths while laughing and running away.  Don't turn your back on this cheese.  
Ricotta is great for favorites like lasagna.  It's also really nice with some honey and nuts for a snack.  If you don't think you will eat it in the next week or 2, you can freeze it for later.  

Recipes.

Sausage, Fennel, Ricotta Pizza

Lemon, Ricotta, Fennel and Chili Oil Linguine

Roasted Beet Salad with Fennel, Orange, and Whipped Ricotta in case you have some beets from last week

Easiest French Fries - we tried this and it really worked!  You must use the Yukon Gold potatoes, though. 

On the Farm.  

Morning around here starts like most other working households I'd imagine. We get up around 6, find our way to the coffee pot, clean up a bit, make some breakfast and get the kids up for day care.  The kids are off by 7;30 and the vegetable crew clocks in at 8. Milking starts aroud 6:00. Our livestock manager, Liberty, does a great job milking, moving the cows, feeding pigs, sheep. calves, yearling (last years calves) steers and heifers. That allows me the mental space to make lists of what needs to be weeded, harvested, covered, tarped, seeded, planted, mowed, tilled, etc.  Really, one cotter pin out of place can throw a wrench in the day. But we hold it together with the help of our amazing crew, friends, family, and loyal customers.  

       Small farms live in a place where we are small enough to be human scale, but not large enough to be as 'efficient' as larger farms which are more mechanized. Most everything here is done by hand here. We pick up potatoes and harvest all other vegetables by hand, we move cattle by foot.  People milk the cows, not robots (yes that really happens).  We drag hoes through the dirt and push seeders with our feet. We bend over countless times everyday. I'm mostly happy to and we make great strides every year in becoming more effecient without being larger or more mechanized. It's an old way. But I ask this question often. What makes a farm and how is it different than land?  Our farm is a personal expression of our values. You can see a farmers' personal values in their farmscape, diversity, barn colors, tidyness etc. A farm is a synthesis of land, people, and animals.  In a landscape that seems to value the commodification of food production, we hold down an idea from years gone by where one could be small and still exist.  We strive to be good stewards, to nourish community and honor people, soil, animals, and the balance that allows us to be here.  

Wet conditions have cause some serious foliar diseases in the tomatoes. Its hard to predict how many more weeks of tomatoes, but statistically we are only about 4 weeks from first frost. and 8-10 from hard frost. I see some of the first signs of yellowing in the weaker trees. And only 7 more deliveries of the main season CSA then 4 of the season extension. That puts our last Main season delivery ending the first week in October. 

Forecast for next week.

Beans
Melons! 
corn
tomatoes
peppers
onions
pac choi? 
dill 

Meat shares. 
We had  hoped to put a box out this week, but our butcher got too popular, and had to schedule a later date. We should see some meat coming early September. Then again November and again in December

 

Turnip Rock FarmerComment