Eat Better News

Dr. Alan Greene at the Organic Farming Conference (Part 3)

2009-07-08T19:53:00.002-05:00

"Good food, grown right is at the core of human health."

The folks at MOSES (that’s the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service) were kind enough to allow me to reprint this summary of Dr. Alan Greene’s keynote at the 2009 Organic Farming Conference, written by colleague and friend Bridget O’Meara; this is part two.

National Crisis: Childhood Obesity
Greene then changes tack and focuses on the crisis that is taking place on a national scale: childhood obesity. In the last 30 years, childhood obesity has increased to the point where 1 in 3 kids is already overweight or obese--and, by the end of next year, the numbers will reach 40%. Problems that used to be rare are becoming increasingly common in children: high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol, abnormal triglycerides, abnormal blood sugars, Type II diabetes (formerly known as "adult onset diabetes") and/ or a waist-size over 40 inches.

"Obesity is just a visible sign that the way we are feeding kids today is failing, utterly. But, the good news," according to Greene, "is that organic food can prevent and reverse these trends and set our metabolism right, especially in early childhood." Organic food is more satiating because it's more nutritious. It has more antioxidants that prevent and repair damage and more micro-agents that slow the aging process. It is also grown without the use of pesticides that contain endocrine disruptors, which are linked to diabetes and to which the typical American consumer is exposed daily through diet. Investing in organic foods now will save not only health-care costs but also, literally, the lives of today's children.

Some people say organic food is too expensive. But, as Green points outs, a diagnosis of Type II diabetes will reduce a child's life expectancy by 10-20 years; it will cost more than $3 million and will be a chronic problem for the rest of a his or her life. "If we spent $100 million to provide good organic food to kids in schools and we could just stop 33 kids from getting diabetes, it would pay for itself-- and we would get delicious organic food to enjoy and we would save 300 to 600 years of those kids' lives to have relationships and love and family and work. We would save so much… What a bargain organic food is!"

"When I was growing up, doctors were my heroes because they could help people who are sick. But, today, farmers are my heroes because you can prevent people from ever getting sick AND can help them when they are." The body sources food for all the good things it needs to keep us from getting sick as well as what it needs to heal when we do get sick or injured. We are what we eat in a profound way. We are built entirely from food. As Greene says, "When we feed a child, every bite is either an investment in a child's body or it's a debt you're taking out that you're going to have to pay back somehow, some way. How much better to invest than to take out new debt--especially in a tough economy."

Too Much Food, Not Enough Nutrition
Greene addresses a fundamental irony in the United States. At the same time that childhood obesity rates rise exponentially, kids in this country are suffering from malnutrition. Of the 40 known essential nutrients, kids typically get 13 at sub-optimal levels--levels low enough "to affect their intelligence, to affect their behavior, to make them get sick more often, and to accelerate the diseases of middle age."

Changing what kids eats can change their health. Exzema in kids, for example, can by reduced by a third by just switching from conventional to organic milk. "Autism, ADHD, food allergies... all are nutrition problems with food answers. The answers to all of the most pressing problems in kids health and in our health are in this room--this is the answer, this is the core, this is central."

But conventional medicine has under-valued food as a source of health and has even downplayed the importance of food as a source of nutrition. Fortunately, new scientific studies contradict conventional wisdom. The potato, for example, long maligned as a "junk vegetable," contains not only fiber, vitamins, and minerals but also medicinal levels of coco amines, which have been proven effective against high blood pressure and cancer. In Greene's words, "The least of our vegetables is filled with things that we didn't even know existed that are so good for us."

And apples, similarly derided as nature's junk fruit by Western medicine, have an unprecedented ability to fight breast cancer and can lower cholesterol. The effectiveness of eating one apple a day against these conditions is as dramatic as taking a statin drug. "Apples taste better, especially organic apples, without all the side effects. Lipitor costs $4 per day--the apple is worth every bit as much and more."

"Healthy food is the best answer to all of our health problems--and the research backs that up."

Greene cites an Organic Center study that compares organic and conventional produce. ORAC units (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity ) measure the affects of food on health. 3000 units a day are needed to maintain health; 5000 units a day improve health. Most serving of fruits and vegetables have about 1000 units. But most adults get 1200-1600 a day, a third of what they need for optimal health. Organic food on average across the board has 30% more ORAC units than its conventional counter part. Millions of people at the cusp between health and sickness could get 30 percent of what they need if we just switched to organic food. "In this room is the answer to our health care crisis," Greene claims, pointing to his audience of organic farmers.

A russet potato has 5000 ORAC units, but what happens when the potato is submerged in boiling grease and turned into a French fry? According to Greene, "It destroys coco amines, greatly reduces ORAC values, and adds calories, fats, and carcinogens called acrylomides. It takes something that's beautiful from nature and destroys it."

Farm Happenings

2009-07-08T19:53:00.001-05:00

Weather: We had weird weather over the last week. Several rainy days yield a total of about one inch of much-needed rain, but made working in the fields just muddy and cold enough to be worth complaining about. Still, weather breaks on Monday and Tuesday afternoons let us get some in some seeding and one easy harvest.

What We Did: Almost everybody worked together to remove the row cover that has been keeping bugs off of the melon crop. Now that the melon crop has begun to flower, we have to allow bees to have access; it also means letting the nasty little cucumber beetles in. Cucumber beetles carry nasty plant diseases that can devastate young melon plantings, so we use an air-, light-, and water-permeable cover to keep the little buggers off. The same crew hand-hoed all of the rows of black plastic on the farm; we have pretty good weed control, but needed to clean up the rest, and it was no small task. We did a bunch of additional handweeding and hoeing around the farm, as well. Zane and Chris did a one-two punch cultivating the winter squash. Chris seeded the fall storage beets and Big Ben stayed late on Monday to roll the beds flat, ensuring good seed-to-soil contact. Big Ben and Little Ben worked together to bring further order to the shop, which seems to be an ongoing nightmare. Bekah and Sanna pruned and clipped the greenhouse tomatoes. Sanna and Ryan weeded the rosemary pots. Zach and Ryan hoed another crop of weeds in the greenhouse. Sarah picked the very first of the cucumbers from the greenhous.

Comings and Goings: We had a visit on Friday from two long-time CSA members who were camping in the area, and it was fun to show them around. Chris’ mom came to visit on Monday night from Seattle, bringing son Oliver back home from a visit. She’ll stay through Sunday and help with the bookkeeping (she’s a world-class bookkeeper) and budgeting through the end of the year.

In the Kitchen

2009-07-08T19:52:00.001-05:00

When you get this box home, put it all in the refrigerator, in plastic bags. Bag the rosemary separately; sometimes I see suggestions to put it stem down in a cup of water, but I’ve never found this to be necessary. I might cut the tops off the fennel to make the bulbs easier to store.

As our Round Red Tomatoes, Sungold Cherry Tomatoes, and Greenhouse Cucumbers slowly edge into production, we are trying to get our boxes populated with as many of these treats as possible. If you are one of the luck ones, leave the tomatoes out of the refrigerator, and store out of the sun. Cucumbers like it a little warmer than other vegetables, so I might put them in a paper bag (for a bit of insulation) in a warmer part of the refrigerator, like up at the top.

We continue to work with our simple salad mix, although we did add in some spicier greens this week. Enjoy with a light vinaigrette dressing.

I’m not sure of how we came up with such an abundance of Escarole this year, but I have to take responsibility since I made the crop plan. This will be the last of it until fall. I really enjoy this sliced into ribbons for salad, or sautéed as follows.

Sautéed Escarole

1 head escarole
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp dried hot red pepper flakes
1 tsp anchovy paste

Separate the leaves of the escarole, and slice into coarse ribbons. Heat the oil in wide skillet over medium-high heat until just before smoking, then add the escarole, pepper flakes, and anchovy paste. Reduce heat after an initial sear to moderate, and cook, stirring occasionally until the escarole is tender and any liquid is evaporated, about 15 minutes.

We are having quite the Beet year this year. I think the highest use for beets is to roast them in the oven, a technique that seems to enrich the flavor instead of watering it down. The piney-ness of the Rosemary complements the sweet, earthy flavor of the beets.

Baked Beets in Rosemary Butter

1 lb beets
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp chopped rosemary

Preheat oven to 400. Halve beets if they are large, otherwise use them whole. Place them in a covered baking dish with a little bit of water, and bake for one hour or until tender. Meanwhile, melt the butter and olive oil together with the rosemary, infusing the flavors over very low heat for about five minutes. When they are fork tender, hold the beets under cold running water to slip the skins off. Place in a serving dish and pour the butter-olive oil mixture over the beets. Serve warm.

Rainbow Swiss Chard, like all of the chards, is also known as a leaf beet, since they share a species designation and intermate freely. Known also as silverbeet and perpetual spinach, Swiss chard can be used in much the same way as spinach. I like to strip the leaves off of the stems (botanically speaking, they’re petioles), then chop and cook the stems until softened before adding the leaves. Sautéed thoroughly and topped with a little bit of butter and salt, Swiss chard is delicious.

Some of the scallions got a little large on us, but the flavor is still quite nice. Slice thinly for salads, use them in place of onions, or, big Ben says, put them on the grill.

Grilled Scallions

Scallions
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Lemon Juice

Toss the scallions with olive oil, and add salt and pepper to taste. Place on a hot grill, using tongs to roll them once or twice (you could also run several skewers crosswise through the scallions to form a solid grid). Cook until softened and charred in places, about 5 minutes total, depending on the size. Remove from the grill and sprinkle with lemon juice.

We harvested the last of the spring fennel this week. The beautiful, fat bulbs just have a fantastic flavor, and the fronds can be fun and tasty as well. The hollow stems make a nice crudite, or you can chop them up and use as the base for a bed of steamed fish. The fine leaves can be used in the same way – and in many of the same recipes – as you would dill leaves. For the annual Fourth of July pig roast and pot luck at my neighbors, I took a bowl full of the following grilled fennel, which was met with surprising enthusiasm for this semi-exotic vegetable.

Grilled Fennel

Put a pot of water on to boil, and start heating the grill. Cut off the fronds, slice fennel bulbs in half lengthwise, then cut the halves again into halves or thirds. Add the fennel to the boiling water, and cook for about ten minutes, until just tender. Drain and cool, until cool enough to handle. Skewer the fennel with metal or soaked-wood skewers (work the skewer through the center stalk and everything will stay together). Brush with olive oil, and add salt and pepper to taste. Grill, turning occasionally, until lightly browned. Sprinkle with lemon juice and serve.

Dr. Alan Greene at the Organic Farming Conference (Part 2)

2009-07-02T17:35:00.001-05:00

"Good food, grown right is at the core of human health."

The folks at MOSES (that's the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service) were kind enough to allow me to reprint this summary of Dr. Alan Greene's keynote at the 2009 Organic Farming Conference, written by colleague and friend Bridget O'Meara; this is part two.

Crisis and Transformation
Dr. Greene did not always understand the link between farming practices and human health, however. In fact, although he has long had a keen interest in nutrition, his pediatric medical training and his early years in practice were very conventional--until an unforeseen series of events changed the course of his life.

As pediatrician in the 1990s, Greene enjoyed his relationship with families in his care. Then the payment system changed and, in a year and a half, he went from seeing 3 families an hour to 8 families an hour; visits went from 20 minutes to 7 minutes. This changed quality of healthcare he could provide. He and his wife Cheryl started Dr. Greene's website (www.drgreene.com), the first of its kind, to stay connected and make health information available to families. The response was enormous, as more and more people sought out information online.

It was during this time that a lump was found in Cheryl's breast. Greene pauses and, with his voice full of emotion, recalls that Cheryl's primary concern was what to feed Austin, their nine-month old son. "There is this deep instinct in all of us to feed our kids the best. Sometimes we run into obstacles and it might be something like cancer or it might be school lunch program or TV advertising or fast food, but the instinct is there, in all of us, to feed our kids great stuff." The crisis led Greene to explore more deeply the questions of "What is best?" and "What are real differences in the quality of food we feed our children?" He could no longer say it was all the same. "How we feed babies and all of us changes us--it changes our minds, how we think; it changes our immune system; it changes how we grow; it changes our mood, our behavior, our attention. It changes so much about our lives." He began to realize that conventional medicine had significant gaps regarding the relationship between nutrition and health.

Further research into causes of breast cancer revealed direct and well-substantiated links between pesticide use and cancer rates in agricultural communities. Cheryl had grown up on a seedless-grape farm in central California and had been exposed to pesticides throughout her childhood. The pesticides used on her farm when she was girl had already been linked to breast cancer. "In fact," as Greene notes, "the closer that a woman's room is to the field the higher the risk of breast cancer--you can measure it in feet." He had learned nothing in his conventional training about this research... it was outside the vision of medicine.

"It was then I really got it: Good food, grown right is not just some optional nice little side-dish but it is actually the core issue of human health."

(Cheryl survived and is healthy today, thirteen years later, in large part to good food.)

In the Kitchen

2009-07-02T17:33:00.001-05:00

When you get this box home, you'll want to put it all in the refrigerator. Remove the beets from the greens first. Everything goes in plastic bags in the crisper drawer.

Bunched Mini Red Onions are basically what the name implies, small red onions that you can use just like a large red onion. In general onion terms, these have a milder flavor than a standard yellow onion. The greens have a nice flavor as well, although they lack the tenderness of a scallion.

The earthy flavor of beets comes from the same chemical compound that soil organisms secrete to make the characteristic smell of freshly-tilled soil. If you are reluctant to try beets because of some leftover trepidation resulting from canned and boiled conventional beets from you childhood, then please try our beets. The best simple preparation is to bake them in a covered baking dish at 425 for about an hour, although these quick beets are a household favorite, as well.

Quick Beets

1 1/2 lbs Beets, julienned
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 fresh squeezed lemon
salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon fresh chopped dill

Heat a medium pan and add olive oil and beets. Cover for 5 minutes to lightly steam in own moisture. Uncover and saute (you may need to add a tich more oil) until lightly browned. Toss the beets with lemon juice, salt and pepper, and dill. Serve.

Beet greens are awfully good, too. Use them just like you would spinach, especially cooked.

While peas have been cultivated for some 8,000 years, Snap Peas only became popular in the late 1970's. This is our last picking for 2009, in a significantly smaller quantity than last week. Don't forget to take the strings out by pulling on the peduncle.

I've never understood why Red Russian Kale is called a kale, since it's the same species as turnips. The flavor and texture lack traditional green kale's hearty overtones, as well as the spicy flavor and almost ethereal texture of turnip greens. Cut into thin ribbons, you can serve it as a salad. I like it best with strong flavors of soy sauce or red pepper flakes.

Red Russian Kale with Pancetta

2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup diced pancetta
1 medium onion, chopped
1 bunch Red Russian kale, stemmed and chopped into 1-inch ribbons
1-1/2 cups chicken broth

In a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat. Sauté the onion and pancetta until the onion is translucent and the fat has rendered from the pancetta. Add the kale and toss to coat the leaves with oil. Add the broth and bring to a boil, then cover, reduce the heat, and simmer until the leaves are tender, about 8 minutes. Raise the heat and boil, uncovered, until the pan is dry. Season with fresh ground pepper and serve.

Sweetly pungent and sharp tasting, fern-y Dill Leaf is used as a seasoning in everything from green salads to fish dishes.

Yogurt-Dill Sauce

1 cup plain yogurt
3 Tbsp fresh dill leaf
1/2 cup chopped onions or scallions (mini-onions work great!)
1/2 tsp salt

Mix ingredients together to make a sauce for fish or raw vegetables.

We grow Baby Bok Choy because I am slightly afraid of the huge size of the regular-old bok choy. The vase-like shape is very appealing, and the stems have a delightful raw crunch, while the leaves have a contrasting mild tang to them. One of my favorite treatments here is to use the spoon-shaped ends to hold a dollop of something delicious, like a thick red-pepper sauce or spicy tuna salad. On the other hand, I have been loving the grill this spring, and bok choy responds quite nicely to the smoky flavor it adds.

Grilled Baby Bok Choy

Slice the bok choy head in half lengthwise (it will still look like a vase.). Soak in cool water for ten minutes and rinse vigorously, then shake and pat to dry. Slice off the tender leaves and set aside. Brush bok choy heads with oil, sprinkle the cut sides with lemon juice, salt, and pepper, and place cut side down on a heated grill for about 8 minutes. Turn the heads when they have have begun to show a golden color, and drizzle a little soy sauce over the cut side. Cook for a few minutes before turning again. Remove from grill when fork-tender. If desired, chop and sauté the leaves and serve over the grilled stems.

Dr. Alan Greene at the Organic Farming Conference

2009-06-25T10:01:00.001-05:00

"Good food, grown right is at the core of human health."

In my other life, I co-coordinate the MOSES Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin, which happens in late February every year. I’ve done this for as long as Rock Spring Farm, having fallen into the position as an over-enthusiastic volunteer in the summer of 1999. The folks at MOSES (that’s the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service) were kind enough to allow me to reprint this summary of Dr. Alan Greene’s keynote at the 2009 conference, written by colleague and friend Bridget O’Meara; I’ll serialize it here over the next several weeks.

The South Hall Ballroom at the La Crosse Center is filled to capacity at the 20th annual Organic Farming Conference in February. Participants pack the seats, stand in doorways, and gather in a nearby lobby to hear Dr. Alan Greene deliver his Friday morning keynote address, entitled "Why Farmers Are My Heroes." After a rousing introduction by MOSES Board member Atina Diffley, Greene walks onto the stage, grateful to Diffley, impressed by the magnitude of the event, and genuinely honored to have been asked to speak. He opens with a story about sitting next to a pregnant woman on the plane and reflects on how the present is part of the future as well as the past.

"Sitting next to this woman, I began to think about how the egg that's becoming her daughter was in her before she got pregnant. . . . It was in her before she knew how to walk, when she was a little girl, before she was even born, that egg was there already. . . When she was there inside her mom and her mom felt her kick, that egg was in her fully formed and waiting. So that means that this woman had been carried in her mom and in her grandmother and that the little girl she was carrying had in her already not only her baby but her grandkids as well. I sat next to five generations of women on that plane!"

While audience members laugh and try to wrap their minds around this extraordinary idea, Greene continues, "Here, today, this event represents our past, our present, and our future. We celebrate not only 20 years of the Organic Farming Conference, as amazing as it is, but also the fact that organic farming has been central to human life since the dawn of civilization. And, in the present moment, there is nothing more important. And, in the future, organic farming is the best hope for our environment, the best hope for our culture, the best hope for our economy, and, certainly, the best hope for our health."

"As a physician," he adds, "everything I do depends on what you do. In fact, what I do is the topping--what you do as farmer is the main course of health."

Farm Happenings

2009-06-25T10:00:00.000-05:00

Weather: It would have been hard to miss the weather this week. Oppressively hot and muggy on Monday and Tuesday, it didn’t make anything easier on the farm. We had rain each day from last Tuesday through Sunday, but it never amounted to much. We let most of the crew take off early on Tuesday because it was too hot really to even see straight, although…

What We Did: Big Ben, Sanna, and Emily muscled through the heat on Tuesday afternoon to transplant broccoli and storage cabbages up on the ridge, while Chris tilled for and seeded rutabagas and carrots for fall storage down at our rental ground. The buckwheat that Ben seeded down there is really growing fast, fat leaves shading out the weeds. Big Ben, Sanna and little Ben also transplanted the very last of the winter squash, a runty-but-delicious variety called Sugar Loaf that always germinated later than the other squash. Several people worked on repairing the bins we use to store our root crops and cabbages. Bekah, Cassie, and Sanna pruned back flowers on the sage and chives, and handweeded the celeriac (which really didn’t take much to do since it was mostly a few barley plants left over from the spring cover crop). Zane mowed the cover crops all over the farm, since the thistles are flowering and the barley, peas and hairy vetch are also flowering. Everybody picked peas on Monday, and nobody complained even though it would have been nicer to do it in the morning. Sarah kept the packing shed running. Bekah seeded the fall crop of radicchio in flats in the greenhouse. Ryan and Zack started staking tomatoes.

In the Kitchen

2009-06-25T07:31:00.000-05:00

Back in our first year on the farm, my dad and stepmom, Mary, came to visit during Snap Pea season, and helped us pick the peas (we were quite a bit smaller back then, and didn't have any help). Mary couldn't believe that we would strip the strings out of the peas and sample as we went along. "You're eating the profits!" she exclaimed - but that was exactly the point. We could sell those peas for a decent price at market, and that would, as the economists say, increase our ability to purchase goods and services that gave us pleasure. Or we could pop some peas in our mouths and cut out the middleman, which we did.

String your snap peas by grasping the peduncle (that’s the part that holds the pod to the plant) and pulling it towards the other end of the peas. You eat the pod and everything with these, just like a green bean. We’re giving you a lot this week because we’ve got a lot, and it’s hard to have too many snap peas. I think the best way to prepare them is a light sauté but they’re also nice as follows:

Snap Peas and Scallions

1 lb snap peas, de-stringed
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
4 medium scallions, thinly sliced

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the peas and stir until crisp-tender. Stir in soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, and scallions, remove from heat, and serve.

The way we look at it, if you’re going to grow scallions, you may as well have a little fun, so we opt for a purple variety rather than the traditional white ones, although you can use them exactly the same way.

With its broad, thick leaves, Escarole looks a lot like lettuce, but it has a distinct texture and flavor. The green and white leaves taste quite different, the green ones chewy and bitter (in a delicious, European sort of way), while the pale heart is more succulent and sweeter. I eat a lot of escarole as a straight salad, with dressings from vinaigrette to ranch.

With a licorice sent and a fleshy white bulb, Fennel features prominently in Mediterranean cooking. My favorite treatments are the simplest: slice off the fronds, coat with olive oil, and grill; or shave thinly and serve with prosciutto ham. Sliced thinly, the stems also make a nice addition to salads and sandwiches. Or chop it up and add it to everything. Isabel claims it as her second favorite vegetable, after radicchio and before Sungold cherry tomatoes.

Warm Escarole and Fennel Salad

1 head escarole, separated into leaves
1 bulb fennel bulb, sliced thinly
1 Tbsp olive oil for sautéing
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
3 Tbsp good olive oil
salt
4 scallions, sliced thinly
pepper

Thoroughly wash and dry a head of escarole. Make a vinaigrette of 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar and 3 tbsp olive oil with salt to taste. In a large skillet, heat 1 Tbsp of olive oil over a medium flame, and sauté the fennel in a large skillet until tender. Add the escarole and vinaigrette and toss quickly over the heat until it just begins to wilt. Season with ground pepper.

We pulled this week’s Simple Salad Mix out of the field on Tuesday morning before the heat got too crazy. With just lettuce and dandelion greens, it’s a nice return to the simple basics. The red-ribbed dandelions have a mild flavor, and seem to be favorite among kids in many families we know.

Winding Up Spring

2009-06-18T12:49:00.002-05:00

This spring’s weather has kept things interesting, although they have been less interesting here than they have been elsewhere. Just to the north of us, the talk all spring has been of drought; not far to the south of us, the talk has been of floods. After the last few years, we have learned not to complain about the weather - I almost had to shout down a visitor last weekend who insisted on making negative comments. On this farm, we work hard not to anger the weather-makers, and stick to vague statements like, “Well, I guess it could be too hot, and that wouldn’t be so good,” or, “Gee, the rain has sure made the crops grow.”

Cool weather has certainly slowed some crops down, but it has made for some fantastic harvests of radishes and spring turnips. Our spring-seeded cover crops of barley and peas have made the most of it, giving the spring weeds a run for their money. The thistles that have plagued parts of our farm for years have had a hard time keeping up, and stand poised to go into flower; we’ll chop them down along with the cover crops as soon as we get our mower repaired. Hitting the thistles just as they move into their reproductive phase does as much damage to them as possible, and the cover crops that have stretched the thistles’ resources will add to the health of the soil.

This spring has seen some real progress on the farm. We changed our transplant production system from soil blocks (cubes of soil held together by the roots of the plants) to open flats to cell trays (little pots all hooked together). For years, soil blocks produced beautiful transplants, but they are labor-intensive to produce and don’t work well for mechanical transplanting; the cell trays provide us with a low-skill, very fast way to produce the 150,000 transplants we grow each year.

We borrowed a transplanter from our friends at Featherstone Fruits and Vegetables that has allowed us to double the speed at which we can get plants into the field, which has just about revolutionized the way the farm operates. Black plastic for soil warming was laid early and we were in the process of achieving good weed control well before the melons, tomatoes, and peppers were planted into it.

Weed control operations in general have happened in a very timely fashion, thanks in large part to the capable crew we have this year. A capable crew lets me break away to do the tractor cultivating. A total of three tractor drivers on the farm also means that when the weather is right, one of us can be driving the transplanter, another can be mowing or tilling, and a third can be cultivating or seeding.

Just in time for the solstice, things have really warmed up. The tomatoes in the greenhouse have taken off to a shocking degree, and you can almost hear the broccoli growing.

Farm Happenings

2009-06-18T12:49:00.001-05:00

Weather: Cold and grey turned to hot and steamy by Wednesday afternoon. A half-inch of rain fell on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, which the plants just loved.

What We Did: We started off last Friday to mow cover crops, but the mower broke and we are waiting on parts now. Emily, Sanna, little Ben, and Zane rotated through thistle-whacking duty. Chris seeded carrots, beets, and salad greens. Big Ben, Zack, and Sarah planted potatoes up on the ridge; planting them late has seemed to help avoid disease and insect pressure. Big Ben, little Ben, Inga, and Sanna transplanted the winter squash on the rental ground, across the creek – our first crops in those fields, which we have spent two years preparing. Big Ben drilled buckwheat in the fallow fields at the rental ground, for soil building and weed control. Zach and Ryan cleaned out the bins we used last year to harvest and store root crops and cabbage, so that those are ready to go for the fall’s big harvests. Somebody transplanted out the Brussels sprouts and more broccoli and basil, but I can’t remember who. Chris subsoiled beds for the fall storage crops; we’ll plant rutabagas in the next dry spell. Bekah didn’t get any glamour jobs, but kept things moving along nonetheless. Chris used the tine weeder to kill weeds all over the farm when things dried out just enough after Tuesday’s rain and before Wednesday’s.

In the Kitchen

2009-06-18T12:48:00.000-05:00

To store this week’s box… it all goes in the fridge. Remove the greens from the radishes. Everything should go in plastic bags in the crisper drawer.

An aromatic salad green, Arugula has a wonderful, peppery flavor. When grown under the cool conditions we have been experiencing this spring, the peppery flavor is especially delicious and mild, and the nuttiness shines right through. In the packing shed, Sarah said the tank full of arugula smelled just like a jar of peanuts.

Grilled Steaks on Arugula

3 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
4 oz arugula (about four cups)
1 lbs steak
salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese

Whisk together, the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste to make vinaigrette. While grilling the steaks, dress the arugula with the vinaigrette, mixing gently to coat. Arrange on serving plates. When the steaks are cooked, place them top of the arugula. The peppery flavor from the arugula will infuse the steak, while the steak’s juices will nicely flavor the greens. Use a vegetable peeler to shave curls of cheese onto the steak, drizzle with a little more olive oil, and serve.

We didn’t have enough Red Oak Lettuce to go around, so a few boxes got Curly Endive instead. Curly endive holds up well to heavier salad dressings and light braises.

Roasted Fennel

Fennel bulbs
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

You can also do this on the grill. Preheat oven to 400. Slice the fennel thickly, and coat lightly with olive oil. Add some balsamic vinegar to your taste preference. Lay the fennel slices in a single layer on a cookie sheet, and roast until the fennel is thoroughly cooked and starting to brown.

The French Breakfast Radishes have just thrived in this cool weather, and they were truly a joy to harvest on Wednesday morning with a cool fog gathered over the valley. These are best just enjoyed whole, or sliced and dressed with lemon vinaigrette. I like to get a little extra crispness by soaking them in ice water for ten minutes before serving.

Peppermint is a relatively recent addition to the herb scene, having been first found in a field of spearmint, its much more common cousin, in England in 1696. The leaves of this week’s peppermint may be a little dirty. We usually try to keep the dirt on our farm, where it belongs, but the oil glands on the leaves that hold the peppermint flavor will burst when the leaves are washed, and the flavor components can break down if you wash them too long before using. It makes a nice addition to strawberries and other fruits when chopped finely, and of course makes a nice tea.

Peppermint Water

With the hot weather, drinking water is important. A little flavor make it easier to drink more. And making it yourself is much less expensive than buying the bottled metromint from the co-op.

2 quarts filtered water
20 peppermint leaves

Chop the peppermint leaves coarsely, or tear into pieces, and add to the water. Refrigerate overnight, strain out the leaves, and store in the refrigerator.

This is the last week for asparagus; we picked the last of it on Monday and rototilled the patch to control the weeds. Now we have to let it store away energy for next spring’s revival.

Microbe Farming

2009-06-11T09:12:00.001-05:00

Last week, we mowed and tilled some of our cover crops to make room for further cash crops to be planted soon. These were spring planted barley and peas had grown to a height of about two feet, and Zane used the tractor-mounted flail chopper to mow them, a nice layer of mulch remained on top of the soil. The flail chopper has knives that rotate around a horizontal axis, so that the material gets ground up into smaller bits and laid in an even layer across the width of the mower.

To avoid putting a bunch of green, juicy fuel into the soil, which would decompose too quickly without provide much soil-building activity, we let the residue dry down for a day before Zane tilled it in. We till shallowly most of the time, just two or four inches deep, to avoid mixing the soil layers and bringing up bunches of new weed seeds. After tilling, Zane subsoiled everything to open up channels deep into the soil for gas exchange and drainage.

The reward for all of this came today, when I was feeling my way through various patches of dirt to see when it might be time to cultivate, till, and seed. After the weekend’s very welcome rains, I think it will be a day or two yet. But when I nudged aside a chunk of moldering barley straw, I caught the scent of freshly tilled dirt in a way that rarely happens five days later. I got down on my knees and started looking more closely at the goings on down there.

I picked up another chunk of straw that was clumped together with some moist soil. The soil underneath had simply beautiful crumb structure, with the mineral fraction of the soil held together with the exudates of millions of soil bacteria and fungi engaged in the process of consuming the organic material we had tilled in. The heady scent of geosmins - the chemical responsible for the classic smell of good earth (and responsible for the earthy flavor of beets, as well) – was intoxicating.

Some of the barley leaves had been pulled down into earthworm burrows, empty ones of which were also in evidence. Earthworm burrows increase drainage and air penetration in the soil, and provide channels for roots and soil life to travel. Earthworms leave behind castings, super-rich deposits of rotted vegetable matter, fungi, and bacteria.

Under just that one clump, I observed three insects scurrying out of the light. Two tiny dipterans (members of the fly and mosquito family) with large red eyes were mating, and hopped up and down the irregular surface of the soil. Another that looked just like a microscopic scorpion with its tail all curled up on its back scurried around, wondering who had lifted the lid off of its world.

From two separate spots, white fungal mats of mycelial growth radiated. In addition to breaking down residue, mycelia filter the water that flows through their environment, capturing any free nutrients that may be floating around in there and keeping them from leaching away.

And that was just what I could see! I would have loved to have had a microscope and an hour to explore that particular moment in time. Further explorations under other clumps revealed similar levels of activity in the chilly, slightly wet soil. Growing vegetables is just a small part of the organic farmer’s job; the larger part is growing the microbes, earthworms, insects, and a multitude of other critters that take what we put into the soil and turn into loads of good things.

Farm Happenings

2009-06-11T09:11:00.001-05:00

Weather: We had the most beautiful weekend of rain on Saturday and Sunday. Unlike an office worker, I prefer rain on the weekends, because then the crew can get more done during the week. Cool, mostly-grey days dominated the week, but you could almost hear the barley and pea cover crop stretching for the sky.

What We Did: We took advantage of the end of a dry week last night to mow and plow down cover crops, seed a cover crop of buckwheat on the rental farm, transplant oodles of perennial herbs, and put out some other transplants. Everybody continued to rotate through asparagus harvest on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Inga led a rotating crew of valiant herb weeders where things had gotten away from us last fall, working through the tall weeds and then the not-so-tall weeds. Sarah continued to reorganize the packing shed. Bekah started propagation on some herbs that will get transplanted in the spring of 2010. We seeded more crops in the greenhouse. Zane and one of the Ben’s whacked thistles on our water diversion, where it’s too steep to mow – the thistles are just beginning to head up, so hitting them now gets them at the weak point in their lifecycle.

Comings and Goings: Chris hosted a greenhouse open house on Sunday afternoon for fellow producers in the region, which led to many interesting discussions and a lot of information sharing.

Extracurricular Activity: On Saturday morning, Chris presented a talk about the role of CSA’s in revitalizing local agriculture and communities to the Northeastern Iowa Synod, which was holding its annual meeting at Decorah’s Luther College.

In the Kitchen

2009-06-11T09:09:00.001-05:00

To store this week’s box… it all goes in the fridge. Remove the greens from the radishes and the Spinruts. I don’t eat radish greens, so I would discard those, but I would definitely save the turnip greens. Everything should go in plastic bags in the crisper drawer.

Sometimes I think that my life as a vegetable grower has been defined by seeing something, somewhere, and thinking, “I. Have. To. Grow. That.” I felt that way the first time a saw a photo of fresh, peeled onions, the first time I dug a patch of heirloom potatoes, and the first time I saw the beautiful, white-rooted, Japanese spring turnips during a slide show at a farming conference in a rural church in upstate New York. I went home to the farm in Maine exclaiming, “We have to grow these!” we call them Spinruts, which is turnips spelled backwards, at the suggestion of a farmers market customer who insisted that if we continued to call the spring turnips, lots of people who deserved to eat something this good would miss out on them entirely. The greens make a great sauté for a tasty side.

Steamed Spinruts

Several spinruts, quartered
butter
salt

Steam the quartered turnips until just barely fork tender – about five minutes. Don’t overcook them, and remember that they will keep cooking even after you pull them from the pot. Serve with just a little bit of butter and a dash of salt.

We are still harvesting asparagus, and may be the last farm left doing so in this area, because the demand from our wholesale accounts has gone through the roof this week. The hard frost in early May was hard on the crop as a whole, and asparagus has been scarce as far south as Iowa City. However, the CSA eats first, so we are sending plenty that way this week.

The Red Oak Lettuce hales from the greenhouse this week, as we wait for the outdoor crops to work their way back from the cold spring. Greenhouse lettuce has a tendency to be extra-tender, and the red oak we grow comes close to butterheads in its tenderness. This lettuce will do best with lighter dressings like vinaigrette. I am quite pleased with the sweet flavor.

Red Russian Kale is actually a different species from the standard green curly stuff, sharing a common heritage with turnips rather than broccoli. The greens are still quite hearty, and respond well to generous cooking. I like it best with strong flavors of soy sauce or red pepper flakes. Strip out the tough midribs by grasping the base of the rub, and using your other hand to run your thumb and forefingers down the rib, stripping off the relatively-tender leaf.

Spicy Red Russian Kale

1 bunch Red Russian Kale
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced (or scallions or shallots)
1/2 tsp dried pepper flakes

Stem the kale and slice into ribbons. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, heat the oil until just before smoking. Add kale and garlic, and cook for one minute before lowering heat; continue to cook the kale, stirring occasionally, until the greens are tender. Toss with the dried pepper flakes and serve.

I spent a long, long time entranced by the idea of Purple Radishes, but the varieties I have tried to grow in the past were irregular, and prone to go to seed. This new hybrid holds its flavor and eating quality for a long time. Some of this week’s radishes are quite large by my standards, but still tasty and possessing a nice texture.

As a former Latin-student (the first time I ever came to the Midwest was for the national convention of the Junior Classical League in Bloomington, Indiana. I’d never seen fireflies before, and the thunderstorm was over-the-top. And, my team from Seattle won the chariot race with a unit designed to be transported as checked baggage.) I’m a sucker for a good myth, especially when it has to do with vegetables, so here’s one for the Spearmint in this week’s boxes. The ancient Greeks told the story of how Hades, god of the Underworld, fell in love with the water nymph Minthe, for not even the charms of his wife, Persephone—whom we have to thank for the changing of the seasons—could keep him fully occupied. In what seems to be an all-too-familiar theme in the Greek pantheon, Hades succumbed to temptation but failed to keep it hidden from his wife, who, upon learning of the illicit activities, decided to take revenge on her husband’s mistress, and began stomping, kicking, and trampling all over the poor water nymph. Hades, in a rather sorry attempt to stick up for his lover, gave Minthe a wonderful sweet fragrance that was released each time Persephone gave her the boot. So, it is thanks to the rather ungallant actions of the god of the Underworld, we have the delightful smell and flavor of a whole variety of mints, all of which grow quite nicely even if you walk on them a lot.

Mojitoes

A bunch of mint leaves (10 – 20)
1/2 lime, sliced thinly
1 Tbsp sugar
4 oz light rum
Crushed ice, or small ice cubes

Mix mint leaves, lime slices and sugar, mashing the mixture repeatedly until the lime juice and sugar take on a minty flavor. Add the rum and mix. Fill tall glasses with ice, and pour the mixture over the ice. Tastes best after sitting in the refrigerator for about ten minutes. Serves two.

A Lot of Rutabagas

2009-05-27T23:14:00.002-05:00

In light of the continuing stormy financial weather, this article bounced to me from the SBS website provided more than a little food for thought. It’s more than a little astounding that we can come up with $700 billion just-like-that to support the global financial system when you consider what else could be done with that kind of money.

Basically, that’s a lot of rutabagas.

$700 billion would buy 2,000 McDonald’s Apple Pies for every man, woman, and child in the United States. Or, if you want to take the culinary high road, 31 pounds of foie gras (we’d have to buy the world’s production for 197 years to get there, though). Or 11 pounds of black truffles (if we got all of those truffles from France, we’d have to buy all of their annual production for three years, so maybe that’s more reasonable than the foie gras.)

At one of those hyper-food restaurants you read about occasionally, where they serve the results of “molecular cuisine,” we could take the entire population of the world’s five most populous nations out to a really fancy dinner.

For a more plebian approach, $700 billion would buy 350 billion pounds of certified organic rutabagas from Rock Spring Farm, at retail prices. That’s a heaping 20-bushel bin (the ones you see watermelons in at the grocery store) for everybody in the United States. Or, it’s enough rutabagas to stretch to the moon and back 92 times.

Don’t even get me started on beets.

On the other end of things, the UN’s World Food Program used about $3 billion to help feed 86.1 million people in 2007, about one tenth of the 850 million undernourished people on this planet. Based on those numbers, and assuming everything else stays the same, 700 billion dollars would feed all of the world’s hungry for the next 23 years.

Farm Happenings

2009-05-27T23:14:00.001-05:00

Weather: A drizzly Saturday dried out quickly on Sunday, leaving us wishing we had gotten a bit more rain. By Monday we had made it back in the field for more transplanting, followed by all day rains on Tuesday and Wednesday, which the harvest crew gamely picked their way through. By Wednesday evening, soils were nicely moist and the new seedings of carrots, beets, radishes, and salad mix were having a hard time believing their good fortune.

What We Did: On Thursday, Chris seeded salad mix, beets, and radishes, flame-weeded a new crop of carrots the day before they germinated, and tore up a crop of weeds on our rental land in preparation for the start of the storage crop planting season. Our transplanting crew put out the last of the onions, celeriac, and parsley, as well as the first crop of greenhouse cucumbers. The greenhouse crew – which is basically the transplant crew when it’s too wet to transplant – seeded another crop of broccoli, the winter squash, storage cabbages, and Brussels sprouts. Sarah and Ben re-organized the packing house to better meet the needs of the harvest team. Chris cultivated everything on the farm during Memorial Day’s dry intermission. Everybody worked to get the crops harvested, washed and packed.

Comings and Goings: Our summer crew season officially opened on Monday when Emily returned from an academic year of nursing in Rochester. Bekah, a religion studies major from Luther College in Decorah – and Emily’s roommate for the summer – joined us on Wednesday, just in time for a rainy radish harvest.

In the Kitchen

2009-05-27T23:13:00.000-05:00

How to store this week’s box: Everything goes in to the refrigerator except the onions. Remove the tops from the radishes and store them separately if you think you might use them, or just discard. Remove the tops from the spinruts. Everything should go in loose plastic bags in your crisper drawer. Store the onions dark and cool and dry – not in the refrigerator.

We worked hard to get the Purple Radishes and the French Breakfast Radishes this week, managing to time their harvest for a steady drizzle that left he picking crew soaked to the bone. I’ve been excited about purple radishes for a long time, but consistently had a hard time finding a quality variety. This year, I stumbled on a new hybrid that seems to have done quite a nice job of producing a tasty crop. Spicier than the French Breakfast radishes, the purples have a good flavor that isn’t dominated by heat. I think this has as much to do with the cool spring and relatively consistent moisture we’ve been blessed with (a curse for tomatoes is a blessing for radishes, which is the nice thing about diversity, right?).

Radishes with Lemon Vinaigrette

1 bunch radishes
2 tbsp lemon juice
4 tbsp olive oil
generous salt and pepper

Slice the radishes pretty thinly, say 1/8 of an inch. Combine lemon juice, olive oil, and a generous pinch of salt and several grinds of black pepper in a small bowl, and whisk until emulsified. Toss in the radish slices, and toss until thoroughly coated. Chill for fifteen minutes or more before serving.

Those of you new to Rock Spring Farm may not have heard of Spinruts before. These white spring turnips originate in Japan, where they are traditionally grown in the spring, as we have done here. We harvested this crop from the greenhouse. In the second year that we sold these at the Rochester Farmers Market, a customer returned to our stand and informed us that if we continued to call them turnips, lots of good, deserving people would never try them; he suggested we call them spinruts, which is “turnips” spelled backwards. We never looked back. With a mild, sweet flavor, these bear only the slightest resemblance to their fall cousins. I often slice them to serve as crudités with dinner or lunch, but my favorite is to lightly steam them – don’t overcook, or they get a little mushy and less-than-perfect.

The turnip greens are delicious as well, and I especially enjoy them sautéed with a bit of soy sauce.

Lemony Spinrut Pickles

This recipe was given to us by another market customer taken with this delicious spring treat.

1 bunch spinruts, sliced 1/4-inch thick
Zest of one lemon
1 tsp salt

Mix lemon zest and salt. Arrange some of the spinruts in a single layer in the bottom of a non-reactive dish, sprinkle with lemon-salt mixture, and continue to layer spinruts and lemon-salt mixture. Cover, place in refrigerator for 4 hours or more, and serve.

I’ve never understood why Red Russian Kale is called a kale, since it’s the same species as turnips. Still, the flavor and texture is quite unlike kale’s hearty greenhouse or the spicy flavor and almost ethereal texture of turnip greens. Cut into thin ribbons, you can serve it as a salad.

Red Russian Kale with Pancetta

2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup diced pancetta
1 medium onion, chopped
1 bunch Red Russian kale, stemmed and chopped into 1-inch ribbons
1-1/2 cups chicken broth

Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but we found a partial bin of Yellow Onions in pretty darned good condition as we were cleaning out the dry side of the cooler. I don’t expect them to store very well once they come out of refrigeration, so don’t hang on to them for too long, but they should store for a week or two just like you would in the fall, in a cool, dark place with low humidity. I like to cover them with a towel in the pantry, but they will also store well in a kitchen cupboard.

We are still harvesting Asparagus, and will continue to do so for another three weeks. I never get tired of it, although I might if we kept harvesting it forever. Almost every night, I lay a bunch out on a cookie sheet, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and cook in the oven under whatever else we’re having for dinner until it’s tender and delicious.

Our Baby Red Oak Lettuce didn’t size up as nicely as I wish it had for the last of these spring shares, so I selected the largest heads we have for this week’s box. Enjoy.

Farm Tires and Farmer Fixes

2009-05-20T21:28:00.001-05:00

Tires are still kind of a mystery to me. In high school, when I competed in a couple of triathlons, I developed a fondness for racing tires on my bicycle that completely lacked treads in order to reduce “rolling resistance”; I think the bald tires made more of a difference in my mind than on the road. I didn’t own anything with more than two tires until well into my 20th year, when I got a little Subaru to drive from the farm I worked on in Santa Barbara back to college north of Death Valley.

Now, I find myself surrounded by tires. Farms run on them. We’ve got four on the delivery van, four on the harvest van, and four on the Toyota Echo – my subcompact-cum-farm truck. There are twelve on the tractors – plus four more on a rented tractor that’s been sitting for two years. Two on an Italian two-wheeled tractor that looks like a rototiller but does much more. Six on various handcarts around the place. Eight on hayracks. Four on two other trailers. Four on greenhouse wagons. Two to hold the water wheel transplanter at the right depth. Two to hold the field cultivator at the right depth. Two to hold the track sweeps (they kill the weeds in the tire tracks when I’m cultivating) at the right depth. Two more to hold the carrot seeder at the right depth, and two to drive the bean seeder.

Of course, every tire needs air and maintenance. (Tractor tires cost upwards of seven hundred dollars each, so we try not to leave our knives in the field.) On Tuesday, we had to get out the water wheel transplanter – with large hollow wheels that punch holes in the ground and fill them with water – to get some challenging crops into the ground. Just to prove that I am human (okay, not really, I just made a mistake), I didn’t check the tire pressure in one of the tires on the transplanter. Under twelve-hundred pounds of water, this dramatically under-inflated tire promptly rolled right off its rim. I didn’t cuss, even though I wanted to. Ben drove the transplanter back to the shop.

If you’ve ever dealt with a tire that’s come off of its rim, you know that you are up against the laws of physics. You need to put air in the tire, but the tire isn’t sealed; in fact, it’s got a huge gap between the rim and the rubber. Faced with a similar situation a few weeks back, I had found some ideas on the internet about how to fix the problem. So we tried tying a rope around the tire in a way that would let us compress the middle, forcing the “bead” of the tire against the rim. Unfortunately, thirty minutes of dinking around did not result in even pressure around the rim and we gave up. I told Ben that we would give it fifteen more minutes effort, and then I was going to send him to town to have somebody who actually knows what they are doing fix it.

We decided on a dramatic farmer fix. A good farmer fix requires at least two tractors, a come-along or a handyman jack, no money, and some degree of sketchiness. It usually falls into the do-not-try-this-at-home category. I took the tire off of the transplanter, and we parked two tractors facing each other so we’d have two solid anchor points, then attached a come-along (a winch with a hook to anchor the winch, plus a cable with another hook that you ratchet along to move heavy things) to one of the tractors. We tied a nylon rope to the other tractor, wrapped it around the circumference of the tire, and tied it to the come-along. As we ratcheted the rope tighter, Ben used a metal bar to keep the tire from rotating and popping out of the rope. (Okay, I admit that we had to learn that one the hard way…) When we had it as tight as we thought we could get it without damaging the tire, I attached the air compressor hose to the valve stem to try to inflate it. Alas, we heard only the whoosh of escaping air until Ben suggested I squeeze the sides of the tire as well – and all of a sudden, the whoosh turned into the satisfying susurration of a tire filling with air. I let out a whoop heard throughout Highland Township! Ben noted that we had actually spent sixteen minutes on the project, but we both felt pretty exhilarated by our success.

Farm Happenings

2009-05-20T21:27:00.003-05:00

Weather: Windy. On Sunday morning at four, I woke up to check on temperatures. Outside of the transplant house, nine feet off the ground, the thermostat registered 26 degrees (!), but the tomatoes inside of the unheated greenhouses were doing just fine, so I went back to bed. By Tuesday afternoon at four, we were sweating in 80-degree plus temperatures under a hot May sun. The wind blew the whole time.

What We Did: Transplanted onions, onions, onions, celeriac, and parsley. Put more tomatoes in the greenhouses. Repaired some black plastic mulch that Chris laid last week, which had blown out in the high winds. Seeded carrots, salad greens, and beets.

Observations from the Field: The cover crop of barley and peas that we seeded all over the farm this spring looks great. The earliest seedings are about 12 inches tall now. I pulled out some peas this morning, and was pleased to see the root nodules on the peas formed by the rhizobium bacteria that fix atmospheric nitrogen into a form that can be used by plants. I love to see the soft pink coloration on the knobby growths that indicates a truly healthy bacterial colony.

In the Farm Kitchen

2009-05-20T21:27:00.001-05:00

I love the way a bunch of French Breakfast Radishes looks when cleaned up and beautiful. This week’s radishes are some of the nicest we’ve grown in years, so it was great fun to pick them, and even more fun to see them after Sarah finished washing them in the packing house. French Breakfast radishes have a very mild but quite delightful flavor.

The new crop of Peppermint that we planted last summer has finally come along, another sign of the cold, cold soils we have this year. Peppermint is a relatively recent addition to the herb scene, having been first found in a field of spearmint, its much more common cousin, in England in 1696. The leaves of this week’s peppermint may be a little dirty. We usually try to keep the dirt on our farm, where it belongs, but the oil glands on the leaves that hold the peppermint flavor will burst when the leaves are washed, and the flavor components can break down if you wash them too long before using.

Chocolate Chip Mint Cookies

3/4 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 bunch fresh peppermint, chopped
1 1/2 cups white flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 350 and lightly grease a cookie sheet. Cream together butter and sugars with an electric mixer at high speed. Beat in the egg. Stir in vanilla and peppermint. Sift together the dry ingredients, and add this to the butter mixture along with the chocolate chips. Stir until well combined. Drop by rounded teaspoons onto a lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake 12 to 15 minutes at 350. Remove from the sheet immediately after baking, and cool on a rack.

The hard freeze on Sunday morning destroyed all of the Asparagus that had poked itself out of the ground since the last harvest on Friday. We took the opportunity to rototill very shallowly to knock back the weeds; the asparagus will continue to produce, since the crowns where the shoots originate grow far below the ground. We got some cool new asparagus knives in time for Wednesday’s harvest. Until this week, we harvested with paring knives, slipping them under the soil to slice off the stalks. With over a mile-and-a-half of asparagus to cover, that’s a lot of bending, especially for the small spring crew! Our new asparagus knives look like an especially-aggressive dandelion weeder, with a very sharp fishtail blade on the end of an 18-inch shank; now, we grasp the top of the spear, and jab the fishtail into the ground under the spear. This saves a remarkable amount of bending, and really speeds things up. Now that we are moving through the field so much faster, we rigged up a system so that pickers can drag a box behind them with a rope tied to their belt, leaving both hands free to harvest asparagus.

Garlic Greens this year feel like a little bit of grace. The garlic we planted last fall mostly winter-killed, so we will have a very small crop this year. But the garlic greens we harvested on Wednesday came out of a cover crop of barley and peas that we planted on the ground where we harvested garlic last summer. Use garlic greens just like you would scallions. These are nice and tender.

Garlic Greens Vinaigrette

1 garlic green
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
salt and pepper

Slice the garlic green very thinly, and place it with the vinegar and oil in a bowl and whisk vigorously. Let it sit for about thirty minutes, if you’ve got time, for the flavors to infuse. Add salt and pepper to taste.

This week we harvested the last of the Overwintered Spinach, and are probably serving up the last of the stored Carrots. Our running-behind crops all over the farm are starting to get caught up now, and we are looking forward to some exciting offerings soon.

Farm Log

2009-05-14T07:17:00.001-05:00

This week everybody worked full tilt to get some critical tasks accomplished. After a long day of greenhouse work last Friday, the crew arrived on Monday to almost-ready fields. Ben and I mudded in a few transplants to test out a transplanter we borrowed from our friends at Featherstone Farm, and when it worked with our transplant system (!) we went into overdrive to get it ready as the soil continued to dry.

The windy weather dried the ridges out a little faster than it did our bottom fields. What fields dry out first can vary tremendously depending on the exact kind of weather that’s drying things out. The wind blows harder on the ridges, pulling moisture out of the soil. Down in the bottoms, the soil is quite a bit nicer and will drain and evaporate water more quickly in less windy conditions. I took the tractor and the tiller up and got some ground ready for laying black plastic; by the time I finished, the bottoms were ready, so I prepared the transplant beds and quickly killed some weeds where we’ll be planting our next two crops of carrots.

Ben hooked up the transplanter and drove while Sarah and Inga fed fennel, endive, escarole, radicchio, scallions and mini-onions into it. This new transplanter is really something else, even though it’s cast-off technology from another farm. Since 2004, we have used a water wheel transplanter to put our crops into the field. Pulled behind the tractor, the water wheel has large hollow wheels that fill up with water; spikes on the wheels punch a dibble into the ground, and a hole in the spike fills the dibble with water. Two or four people ride on the transplanter and set the plants in the muddy holes by hand.

On our new transplanter, a shoe opens up a furrow in the soil. The two riders set plants into a pocket that grabs the plant and carries it down to the furrow. Press wheels push the soil around the roots, and the pocket lets go of the plant. With the old water wheel planter, each really fast worker could put in about 450 plants per hour, not including the time it took to scrape the mud off of the spikes, or fill the tanks with water, or load and reload plants; both of these took a lot of time. With the new planter, Sarah and Inga (who had never used it before), were putting in over 700 plants per hour each, including the time it took to load and reload the transplanter with plants (we are running this planter without water right now, and it doesn’t gob up). I figure our transplanting productivity has doubled!

While Ben, Sarah, and Inga were working to set out plants in the lower fields, I started laying plastic up above. The black plastic warms the soil, which should help us to get better crops of peppers, melons, and paste tomatoes. It also keeps the dirt off things and helps control weeds. We have a big, green machine to put the plastic down on the soil and pull it tight, but the job still takes a lot of time; then again, I laid over two miles of plastic between Monday night and Tuesday morning, so I guess it’s only fair to expect it to take a little while.

Everybody started an hour early on Tuesday to get a jump on things, and the crew kept the transplanter running all day. I killed weeds in the peas, carrots, and beets then moved on to seeding. I put out our first crop of beans – yellow wax, Dragon’s Tongue, and edamame – at the same time my neighbor was putting in his soybeans. I usually like to wait until about two weeks after the neighbors put in their fungicide-treated bean seeds to put my untreated beans in, but I decided not to wait for the soil to warm any more this year. Besides, I’ll get to plant more beans in another week or two.

I tilled down some fresh cover crop to make room for the celeriac and some perennial herb plants before I started seeding carrots. Ben had to leave at the end of the workday, but Sarah and Inga and I put in another ninety minutes on the transplanter setting out shallots and onions. I seeded some carrots when we were done, and was just pulling in to switch seeders when it started to rain, which kicked me out of the field for the night.

We devoted the rest of the week to harvesting, washing, and packing our vegetables and herbs, no small undertaking. Everybody gamely dodged raindrops all day on Wednesday and it looks like we are on track for an on-time finish on Thursday.

Farm Happenings

2009-05-14T07:16:00.001-05:00

Weather: Kind of wet. And still cold. Here it is the middle of May and the ground still feels like August. The rain seems to be coming frequently enough to make getting into the field a challenge, but not impossible. And, nicely, it isn’t coming in deluges, but these nice showers that wet everything down and just soak in.

What We Did: Well, we did a lot of stuff that was big and cool, but we kept things moving along, as well. The greenhouse got watered every day. We harvested 1.5 miles of asparagus on Friday, Monday, and again on Wednesday. Harvest buckets got washed. Tractors got fuel. Bills got paid. I keep having to remember to pat our collective backs over getting the fundamental maintenance tasks done in addition to the big pushes.

Natural Notes: The wild plums are in full bloom, so walking the kids to the top of the driveway to catch the bus results in perfume-y olfactory overload. The rabbits are getting braver, waiting longer as we walk up the drive. Bluebirds were cavorting in the dead elms along the creek before Tuesday night’s rain, and I saw two goldfinches and a rose-breasted grosbeak flitting around on Friday. A heron has returned to the valley, standing in the creek every morning. And today, two Canadian geese kept flying around, honking at each other. I think they were lost.

Little Victory: Somebody tried to destroy our mailbox in a drive-by on Monday night. We’ve had two mailboxes – both hand painted by my mom with our logo and farm name – destroyed by vandals in the last three years, so I finally invested this winter in a heavy-gauge steel box. The vandals knocked it over (I found bits of wood stuck to the hinges), but the box is fine and I set it upright on Tuesday morning. When they hit it with their 2 x 4, I hope it hurt.

In the Kitchen

2009-05-14T07:15:00.000-05:00

Asparagus yield went into the stratosphere this week as that crop finally hit its stride. We pick it three times a week just to stay on top of it, and it is no small job in the spring with other things always on our plates. We decided to put two bunches in the box this week because asparagus is like the sweet corn of May. For a bevy of ideas about using it, refer back to last week’s newsletter. By far my favorite preparation for asparagus is to drizzle it with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and grill or broil until tender. If I’m feeling really fancy I’ll squeeze some lemon juice over the top.

Asparagus Pizza

Dough for pizzas doesn’t have to be hard. In the past, we’ve kept frozen Boboli crusts available for emergencies. These days, I’ve got my bread machine programmed to make the dough; I set it up in the morning in under three minutes, and at the end of the workday I’ve got pizza dough waiting.

2 pizza crusts
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tsp fresh thyme (or 1 tsp dried)
1/2 lb asparagus
1/2 cup grated mozzarella
1/4 cup coarsely grated parmesan
salt

Preheat the oven to 500. Slice the asparagus spears in half lengthwise, then slice the halves into two or three pieces; you should end up with something like a course julienne. Toss with 1/4 cup olive oil. Mix the remaining olive oil with the thyme and spread over the pizza crust. Salt to taste. Top with the asparagus, mozzarella, and parmesan. Cook in the oven for about ten minutes, or until crust and cheese are lightly browned.

The overwintered spinach is heading over the hump now. We divided Wednesday’s harvest into “cooking” and “salad” spinach because the two varieties we planted are growing at very different rates. The cooking spinach would make a fine salad, you’d just have to chop the leaves a little bit. And, of course, you can cook up the salad spinach, too, if you prefer. Although it hardly fits with the foodie scene, I do love spinach steamed until soft, drained, and topped with butter and salt.

Carrots are still storing well, and we’ve been especially enjoying them cooked in various ways. Mostly, we keep it simple with carrots, sautéing in olive oil or steaming them, but occasionally I like to do something a little more.

Spicy Carrot Salad

2 lbs carrots
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp white wine or cider vinegar
1 tbsp lemon juice
3/4 cup olive oil
1/4 tsp cayenne

Julienne the carrots. Whisk together the remaining ingredients until emulsified (alternately, have your seven-year old shake in a covered jar for several minutes). Toss the dressing with the carrots and serve.

While cress is often treated like a microgreen and reserved for garnishing fancy dishes, I’ve enjoyed using its tangy flavor around the kitchen this spring. In general, add it last or dress it separately to keep it in top condition, and don’t dress it until you are ready to serve it.

Carrot Salad with Cress

1/4 cup onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
4 large carrots, julienne
1/2 cup cress
salt and pepper

Whisk together the onion, olive oil, and red wine vinegar. Dress the carrots first, and top with the cress.

The Poet's Crop

2009-05-07T08:05:00.000-05:00

Asparagus is not a crop for the faint of heart. It is a poet’s crop, or an artist’s.

Even more than most crops, planting asparagus requires a leap of faith, a confidence in the future, an expectation of stability, a small hope for permanence. Laying the fleshy roots – like octopus tentacles surrounding the eager bud of an asparagus spear – a foot deep in the soil, the asparagus farmer holds onto no small amount of optimism and practices no small amount of patience while closing the trenches over a crop that is years off into the future. An act of faith. Of hope. Of a potential future, as yet unrealized, as yet unpromised.

The farmer can’t help but think at this time, bearing these small burdens down into the soil, of the future. The reward of the asparagus patch does not come in the first year, when the toothpick-like spears must be let to grow to store away the sunlight for the following spring, and for many springs thereafter. Only in the second year does the farmer take a crop, and then, only a small one, just a week’s harvest to wet the appetite, to encourage the now-hidden source to divide. And in the third year, again, the farmer harvests for just two years, taking just enough of the new year’s growth to cause a little concern under ground, where the crown divides again to make more opportunities for the fern-like fronds to find their way.

This year is never the year that shows the yield of the asparagus farmer’s work. The caring, the tending, the worrying – after the brief frenzy of incredible greenness of growth betrayed, snipped off as it tries to reach above the ground – all this goes to growing large, fern-like towers, reaching overhead, inedible. Stretching for the sun all summer, dying in the fall, leaving nothing at the close of winter except bare dirt and expectations.

One day in the spring, hearty shoots slip through the earth. If the farmer is there to see it, it is joy, rows bending around the curve of a hill. Faith and hope rewarded.

Farm Happenings

2009-05-07T08:04:00.000-05:00

Weather: We had a wet week here on the farm, front after front rolling through. But we do not complain, or wish for things to be different. The last two years have proved that the weather gods are fickle, so we try hard to be grateful for what we have.

What We Did: We transplanted more crops into the greenhouses, since we couldn’t plant them outside. The tomatoes are very ready to go into the greenhouses, and we are a little bit behind, but we should be caught up by the weekend’s end.

Comings and Goings: Inga Haugen, who grew up on a pasture-based dairy farm just a little bit north and west of here, joined our the crew this week as our harvest foreman. There is a very good chance that we have assembled an excellent crew for the coming season. Chris traveled north to Featherstone Farm in Rushford, where he attended a meeting for a regional produce transportation initiative getting started this year. He also dropped off three thousand celeriac plants that we started in our greenhouse, and brought home a used transplanter to try.