CSA WEEK 8

82 frost free days left!

Even though the Dog Days continue, even though crickets and katydids sing their sumer songs, that means crops that will mature as it cools will be planted over the next couple of weeks: spinach, kale, chard, spring onions, beets, turnips, carrots, kohlrabi, and the like.  We got the heirloom tomatoes in so late this year, we are only now starting to harvest, and they should produce until frost, and the peppers have recovered nicely from deer browsing and are producing at last.  Should be a banner eggplant year.

Pictured above are the 350 asparagus plants we put in this year on the acre and a half we added last fall.     

They will produce asparagus for next spring's CSA members.  

In this week's share:

Green beans

Summer salad mix with radish micro greens

Peashoots

1 1/2 lbs. potatoes

Chard or beets or eggplant

Garlic

Choice of quarts of donut peaches, plums, apricots, or peaches

Swiss chard recipe

How many things can you do with pea shoots?

Grass-fed cow butter is back in!!!

Lou D'llasandro of North Salem grows wonderful corn, and we have it at the farm stand!  We eat it every night.

CSA WEEK 7

Here we are, midway through summer: drought gives way to deluge, rainbows follow storms.  Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant soak up the sun as lettuce shrivels to protect itself.  The thermometer hits 98 degrees while spinach seeds--foreshadowing cooler weather--arrive in the mail.  Farming is knowing that the present moment contains the past and future, too.

Mid-summer often brings to mind two fine pieces of writing:

Once more to the lake

Knoxville, Tennessee 1915, part 1

Knoxville, Tennessee 1915, part 2

If you have the time, enjoy.

This weeks share:

Beets or zucchini
chard or kale (3 kinds of kale to choose from: red russian, dinosaur, green curly!)
1 lb potatoes
1 lb tomatoes
2 heads garlic
micro-basil or bunch of leaf basil (probably only the morning crowd will have the leaf basil--gets too hot to cut in the afternoon and it will wilt badly)
sorrel or chives
peaches!!!

We have wonderful peaches from Woodland Farm in South Glastonbury, CT this week--best peaches you will have this summer!  At the stand, we will also have their wonderful little juicy plums.  Also at the stand, very sweet 'Butter and Sugar' corn from upstate NY, blueberries from Red Jacket, and a new cheese called 'Europa' from Arethusa.  They describe it as "a hardy, earthy cheese similar to a washed curd cheese from the meadows of Western Europe."  I had a sample last week--delicious!

For dinner this week, I made the following:

Kale Pesto:

1 bunch kale (remove ribs!!!)
2 cloves garlic
3/4 cup toasted walnuts
3/4 cup grated parmesan (I used Arethusa's Al Tavalo!)
1/2 cup olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
salt, pepper to taste

I tossed this with lightly sautéed zucchini.  Works great with potatoes, too.  (Or pasta, of course.)

Speaking of potatoes, here's a very simple change of pace potato salad dressing I also made this week:

1/4 cup chopped basil leaves
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup balsamic or red wine vinegar
1 tbsp. dijon mustard
1 clove chopped garlic
Salt and pepper to taste.

Combine in food processor.  Pour on halved or quartered new potatoes that have been boiled to just tenderness and cooled to room temp. Toss.  Enjoy!!!

Find us on Facebook:  Garden of Ideas

CSA WEEK 6

Ok.  How about some rain chants?

Check out the last 6 months for the Danbury area on this page:

Precipitation status

How about the national crop moisture report (buy corn futures!):

Crop moisture

How about Drought status?

Drought report

Our wells are ok!

Fantastic share this week.  We dug the garlic and the new potatoes today!  They are uncured, so they're not for keeping.  Eat the potatoes soon, the garlic within a couple of weeks.  We have a fantastic crop of each, and you'll be getting them each week in the shares coming up.  The flavors of each are very good, and you will likely never want to buy store bought garlic again after tasting this!

At the stand, apricots and yellow plums from Red Jacket, Appleridge chickens, Arethusa dairy, some primo salad mix, a few small heads of a new iceberg lettuce I tried this spring--worth planting a bigger crop of it, for sure.

Here's the share:

1.  Pea shoots (pea shoot pesto!)
2.  Pint of blueberries
3.  1 lb. potatoes
4.  1 lb. tomatoes
5.  Choice of chard or kale or asian greens or sorrel
6. 4 heads of garlic
7.  Beets( not many) or 3 kohlrabi or 2 cucumbers or 2 zucchini

Enjoy!  Did you try the kohlrabi last week?????

CSA WEEK 5

Hello...Hello...

Is anyone around?  Seems like a ghost town in Ridgefield this week.  Can everyone be on vacation?

Fantastic fireworks if you stayed through the rain last night.

Please e-mail and let me know if you plan on picking up today...already heard from several who can't make it until the weekend.  No problem if so, it just makes life much simpler if I know ahead of time.  Thanks.

Today's share:

cucumbers
head of lettuce
microgreens
swiss chard
cherries
kohlrabi (just one!!!!!Please try it!!!!!! I've already heard grumblings about kohlrabi...but simply peel the skin, slice thinly, sprinkle with salt, eat!!!!)
mixed baby asian greens (fantastic!)


Appleridge chickens are available.  Arethusa milk won't arrive until during the day sometime.

Stay cool!

Summer CSA Week 4

Great rain, great sun, so now summer vegetable plants--tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, cucumbers--are finally showing signs of life.  Soon they'll be in the share.  Well, in a few weeks, anyway...

Potato crop looks fantastic, garlic will be amazing, we're transitioning form the last of the spring lettuce to the first of the summer.

In the meantime, a fine share this week:

1.5 lbs March tomatoes
1 lb. sweet cherries from upstate NY
12 Garlic scapes (that's the absolute last of them until next year!!!)
1 bag delicious microgreens mix (pea shoots, radish, amaranth, pac choi)
1 head of lettuce
Choice of bag of kale or swiss chard

Swap for anything but dairy.

Speaking of kale, here's an amazing video about why you should eat your greens, kale especially.  My father suffered from MS, and I so wish we had seen this video:

Eat your kale!

At the stand this week, in addition to the usual suspects, we have raspberries, yogurt smoothies from the same dairy that makes the butter (still out of production, sadly), kohlrabi, beets, chives, and Appleridge Chickens.

Enjoy!

Week 3, 2012 summer

Meet Matilda, the new Garden Dog!

Whew.  Tough week.  Had to cut harvest day short today--greens won't keep well if picked when the temperature is too high...looks like a 5 a.m. out in the field kind of day tomorrow!!!

This heat will finish the early strawberries--always the most tender of the season--so we're including a full quart in this weeks share.  Later strawberries have good flavor, too, but they're never as succulent.  Enjoy!

Northern orchards were hit hard by frosts this spring after the early heat accelerated growth.  Cherries will be in extremely short supply this year, and the price is high.  Part of Red Jacket's cherry orchard was spared a frost when the trees were in flower, and they have some cherries, and now we have them.   They are delicious.  They are not in the share, but are available for sale.  If you're a cherry lover, strike now!

Out kale crop is beautiful this year, and we offer a healthy bunch in this week's share.

This week and next will be the last for garlic scapes...then we wait until mid-summer for the garlic itself.

This is true transitional mode in the garden--spring crops are finishing, summer crops are finally getting going.  Just sowed some heat tolerant lettuce, more turnips, beets, and lots of micro-greens.

Stay cool...well, try anyway.

In this week's share:

1 quart strawberries
1.5 lb tomatoes
15 garlic scapes
kale
choice of romaine lettuce, swiss chard, mustard greens, komatsuna, or salad mix

Greetings!  More gentle, soaking rain this week.  Potatoes and garlic love it!  Tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers...not so much.

In this weeks share:

Bigger bunches of turnips
2 lbs. of delicious March Farm Tomatoes
15!!! garlic scapes
Head of lettuce
1 pint of Red Jacket Orchard strawberries (eat them soon---these babies don't keep long!)
Gator Swiss Chard: here's a simple, yummy recipe (you can use the garlic scapes in place of the shallots and garlic)  Swiss chard recipe

Feel free to swap out for more garlic scapes (if you want to make lots of pesto to freeze--next week will be the last week for them), salad mix, mustard greens, or kale (our first batch).

Please don't take extra strawberries or turnips--I've got just about the right amount.

Take time to walk the garden tomorrow if you can--lush doesn't describe it.