Wanna talk about the weather?

We do that a lot these days. It’s not bad. It’s more meaningful than many popular conversational topics, I reckon.

So. I love this weather. And I love this summer’s slow fade. After the intense spring season, this feels like a hammock in the sunny breeze.

Sometimes, literally.

There is still so much work to do, and sure, we’ve been doing a lot of it. But it feels much more relaxed, less life-and-death. Pull a clump or two of tall grass seedheads out every trip out of the field, but not launch a project to weed out entire rows, or commit total weed genocide.

The mellower temps make harvest less intense as well – things aren’t going to wilt in minutes if not cooled, and ice blocks survive for much longer in the unpowered old chest freezers. Waking with the sunrise now often means sleeping in by springtime standards, and the skies darken absurdly early. Is this really so surprising, year after year?

So it is cooler, but still surprisingly and wonderfully warm. We’re past the average first frost date by a week now, and haven’t given in to firing up the woodstove yet. The WWOOFer musicians have been sleeping out in the starry breeze in The Clearing on The Hill. The literal snowbirds fly over our heads and make us contemplate our own coming migration … as we sit out comfortably in the t-shirt sundowns.

Hopefully it holds to some extent through the first couple weeks of October, because we’re going to have our first ever event on the farm –  a potluck for friends of the farm.  (If you’re reading this, that almost certainly includes you.)

After a month with us, WWOOFer Bryan is heading back to Chicago today – with plans to return for the potluck. I love the connections that WWOOFing forges; there is just something about living within a farm, maintaining the living system, together.  Here’s some of the things Bryan saw and captured over the last two weeks … followed by a haiku he left behind for us:

CSA Box 16

Harvest went smoothly today, even with the return of salad mix. We had a big crew that all know the ropes, and things are just simpler at this time of year – we can harvest some crops the evening before, and overall, the field is settling down. It was still a challenge to get everything in the boxes, even as Kristin started harvesting more stuff in case they were too empty …

• September Salad Mix (lettuce, pea tips, spinach, arugula, tat soi, mizuna)
• Green Tomatoes – it is time for Fried Green Tomatoes! Maybe? Or try one of these green tomato recipes.
• Tomatoes – the last of the season!
• Ground Cherries – I like opening up several at a time and munching them all at once, to blend the varied flavors.
• Kale – Put a little in everything. Or get creative, and try one of these recipes that have been deemed creative.
• Butternut Squash – easy to peel if you want to cube it up and sautee it. Or halve it and roast the whole thing.
• Pepper Party – Those late bloomers are finally starting to produce! If they are orange, they are hot, but other than that you get to play Pepper Roulette, same as I do (today’s lesson for me was that yes unripe green cayenne peppers are just as hot as ripe ones are).
• Broccoli – This has been the best year yet for broccoli on our farm – perhaps due to the regular rains and/or our improving soil and composting … hopefully having a little broccoli regularly is something you enjoy as much as we do.
• Beets (mostly Chiogga variety)

Shareholders Paul & Elizabeth sent in these pics:

“Elizabeth cooked up a gem!! QSF halved squash baked at 350 with  sausage. At 45 minutes 90% of previously diced QSF eggplant, three kinds of diced QSF tomatoes, diced QSF onion (all mixed with olive oil and a bit of vinegar). At 1 hour the last 10% of the diced veggies and some of the mozzarella we made for five more minutes.”

YUM.

 

More pics from this week:

 

 

 

This summer has been perfect, hasn’t it? This is how I remember summers as a kid. Glowing long days that make for weeks that feel like months – in a good way. A great way.

It it was a great week on the farm, too. We have three kickass folks staying with us. (Four, actually, now that Bucket the cat has returned from his three day and night sabbatical in the woods., undevoured and glad to be back.)

The high tunnel project is moving along briskly with indispensable direction and support from Patriarch Jim and Neighbor Dave.

Cold came flirting around, bottoming out around 38 degrees. We’re  working on the woodpile while thinking about frost protection and our winter flightpath through the South.

Autumn’s approach inspires a lot of such forward thinking (made possible by a seasonal shift to a schedule less hectic, with luxury of looking ahead further than the next hour and day); we:

• picked apples and made juice, picked grapes at The Neighbors’, and made jelly with the grapes and the apple juice.
• battled the Tomato Tsunami by turning mountains of slightly damaged tomatoes into BBQ sauce.
• scored more bales of spoiled hay for next year’s composting mulch.

The tomatoes are slowing down now, and soon will go the way of the cucumbers and zucchini. We skipped salad mix this week since you’re getting a whole cabbage, but expect it the next three weeks – the leaves have been under assault by an army of flea beetles, but their damage is cosmetic and the bug boom seems to be ebbing.  Squash are ’bout ripe, pumpkins are building halloween hype, and we have all the radishes in the world (we may have slightly overcompensated for Spring’s Great Radish Kill).

It’s been beautiful, reaffirming that This has been the right choice for us to have made. Again have to express gratitude- to our families, friends, neighbors, WWOOFers, market regulars, and to YOU. Thanks for sharing the journey.

Now eat yer vegetables.

CSA Box 15

• Napa cabbage – so good and crunchy. Build a delicious salad, or try your hand at Kim chi. Can also be sautéed – or sliced lengthwise, marinated, and grilled!
• Broccoli – it’s been a pretty good broccoli year! First ever for us.
• Daikon Radish – the big long white roots. Spicy. Some people grate them and squeeze the juice out make them milder, then combine them with tomatoes and salt as a salad. They are popular in Kim chi, in site fry, or sliced up in a salad. Store in the fridge.Recipe to try: https://www.google.com/search?q=radish+carrot+vietanmese+pickleEggplant – if you still have zucchini make ratatouille with the parsley. Or do eggplant in a tomato sauce (it mellows the acid of the maters). If you sauté if, steam the eggplant first so it absorbs less oil – unless you prefer it oily!
• Peppers
• Tomatoes – if you were a member last year you understand why the harvest this year has us feeling exuberant. Too many tomatoes is a problem we are lucky to have! (This is the year I truly fell in love with tomatoes, I think. So many ways they are great, but my favorite simply eaten raw like an apple.)
  
• Carrots
• Delicata squash – the tastiest squash, sweet potatoes when. Slice it open, scoop out the seeds and roast it … And the seeds. Because these are also the tastiest squash or pumpkin seeds!
• Parsley – pair with the tomatoes, or dry it if you don’t have a use just yet – it dries well if you hang it upside down in a dark ventilated spot.

Hey lookit, pictures from this week on the Farm:

 

Wednesday we returned to the farm after finishing our deliveries to the Cities to discover the fungus among us had been busy in our absence. Literally ALL the Thai and Italian basil was infected with the dastardly downy mildew oospore invasion, including the dozens of isolated individual interplantings we’d started in random spots between existing crops and where space was opened from removed Spring crops. No matter where a basil plant was in the field, they had been found and parasitized. (This was a bummer, but not terrible – given that basil plants would have been among the first to fall to the coming chills of autumn’.)

Only the Holy Basil was unaffected; although this is the least used variety in the US, it’s my favorite-smelling basil, and I can see how it could have come to be sacred in Hinduism and “the elixir of life” in Ayurveda. There’s just something about the scent that turns my head whenever it wafts my way … so it was a silver lining to find the little patch of it still standing proud while all our other basil fell. (And that’s why it’s in your box this week!)

The powdery mildew was mostly held in check by the sprayings of 10% 1% milk, but it was too late for the worst-case leaves, usually the largest, most central ones. Fortunately, the plants still have their outer leaves, and their squashes, pumpkins, and gourds are nearly ripe.

Field clean-up kicked into gear; we tore out the final sickly cucumber plants, hundreds of infected basil plants, and a dozen or so tomato plants whose cases of ‘failure to thrive’ had turned into cases of full-on “failure to not be a leperous undead pile of grody.” about 300 row feet of sprawling skeletal melon vines and their associated scarred and failing melon fruits. (These went into the woods, not into your boxes; fear not.)

This clean-up work might sound grim but it felt good to get them out of the field, on several levels. It cleared the space out in the field and in my head. (Plus, I kept laughing, remembering this scene as I pulled out the not-quite-dead-just-yet plants and carted their remains to the distant crop-residue pile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grbSQ6O6kbs)

It’s not all death out there, though – sorry for focusing on problems so much – but these are the things we have to be looking out for and addressing much of the time – the many, many, most everything that’s humming along wonderfully tends to do so quite nicely without much attention or effort. But I should probably be sure to pay them attention for your and my benefit both:

The Indian Corn coming in is the biggest and most attractive we’ve grown yet (it’s decoration now, but once dried and pulverized it will be made into all kinds of tortillas, cornbread, tamles, hominey … thanks for your determined weeding of the baby corn months ago, Reynaldo!) Many of the pepper plants seem to be revealing their late-bloomer strategies, with flowers and peppers finally coming in amongst the lush foliage. The other half are mulched differently – it will be interesting to see if this variable might cause significantly different outcomes as the summer turns to fall.

We were joined by two new WWOOFers –  traveling farmer musicians Nora, her boyfriend “B,” (*he goes by that, I’m not protecting his identity) and their cat, Gato aka Bucket. Bucket likes it here; he hangs out in the Rust Shack all day and stalks the woods and fields all night. Killing many, many voles, hopefully.

We went river swimming a couple of times when things got too sticky hot,  and ate lots of great food – most notably a party at Neighbor Dave and Marcie’s – where friends/CSA members Todd & Maaren’s rolled up with their Wandering Fire mobile pizza oven. Between phrases in conversation with all the people assembled, we stuffed ourselves on delicious pizzas and desserts and remembered to be grateful for good people we have been lucking into during this new adventure.

 

Box #14

Kristin’s Corner

• Salad Mix
  Including green lettuce, arugula, mizuna, tat soi, spinach, and mustard greens (reds, really). Good to have them back! Consider topping with fennel dressing.
• Fennel
  You could roast fennel with potatoes and carrots. It pairs well with tomatoes and zucchini as well.

  

• Ground Cherries
  
• Watermelon
   
  These melons took longer to reach maturity and are apparently anthracnose resistant. There are Crimson Sweet, Luscious Golden, and Yellow Sugar Lump varieties, all which have similar exteriors so you’ll have to slice into yours to find out if it is yellow or red. This melon is probably you best bet for making watermelon rind pickles or watermelon rind chutney:
  http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/watermelon-rind-chutney-109655
  
• Potatoes
  I like to cut them into small cubes and cook in butter or oil. Once they are close to done I add chopped kale. It lightens up the potatoes and adds color. Season with salt, pepper, onion or garlic, chili powder or even curry.
  
• Holy basil aka Tulsi
  This plant is revered as an elixir of life. No big deal. It makes a great stress relieving tea and is also used in Thai cooking.
• Kale
  Kale chips. Kale quiche. Kale in stir fry. Kale in soup. So versatile, so healthy!
  
  (*due to a miscommunication in the harvest chaos, everyone got two full bags of kale this week – one Red Russian and one Dwarf Curly Blue)
• Spaghetti squash
  This is a unique recipe for spaghetti squash that I have actually made and liked a lot:
  

• Tomatoes
  No-cook tomato sauce recipes exist if you don’t want to heat up your kitchen. You can chop tomatoes and let them drain in a strainer for less liquidy sauce, bruschetta, or salsa. Grilled tomatoes? Yum! Tomato and kale Benedict?
  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/kale-and-tomato-eggs-benedict-recipe.html
  
• Peppers
  Use them in salsa or tomato sauce. Use the jalapenos and spicy banana peppers in the spaghetti squash recipes.

• Tomatilloes
  I’m looking forward to trying this gazpacho recipe:

  Grill or broil 1½ pound tomatillos until lightly charred all over. Chop and combine with 2 avocados; 2 thick bread slices; 2 tablespoons olive oil; ¼ cup orange juice; 1½ cups water; salt and pepper. Garnishes: Corn kernels (stripped fresh off the cob or thawed frozen) and a pinch of cayenne.
  

  And because people are not so sure what to do with these guys, here are some recipes from a magazine article that featured tomatilloes:

  

   

• Onion
• Zucchini
  Could it be the last???

• Broccoli
  
  Fall broccoli is here! I think it is telling that the cole crops are the favorite among herbivores. They munched quite a few broccoli and cabbage transplants, but they didn’t get them all.
  Now we munch them! Raw broccoli with dip and chopped for salads and wraps. I like to cook pasta and right before I drain it I throw the chopped broccoli in the hot water with the pasta to blanch it. Then I strain it all and add Alfredo sauce.

 

This week, the red oaks began their bombing in earnest, waiting until I fell asleep to hurl acorns at metal roofing and other acoustically impressive targets. Perhaps they’re just mischievous. Or maybe they’re trying to communicate – to rouse me to the defense of their dying breathern across our wooded western border, where all week lumbering lumber machinery has been transforming living landscape into logs.

It’s kind of sad, but we work to find the positive in situations beyond our control. The unwanted branches and trunk bottoms they left behind made for easy, excellent fire wood.

While Kristin was in Cleveland, we swapped out farm helpers – now the Albatross houses a new WWOOFer – Bryan from Austin, who will be working with us until he heads back to finish college at the end of the month.

On our way out to the farm from Minneapolis, I explained how to spot edible Chicken of the Woods mushrooms from the road.  We didn’t see any though, and decided to head to the Wolf Creek Bar for dinner rather than cooking. Afterward, while driving around the backroads of the Barrens (our neighborhood), he announced that he was still on the lookout for “chicken of the forests or whatever” – and immediately we drove past a tree covered with them – not in the woods, but in the yard of an old hunting cabin. Score!

The recent humidity has not led to only happy tales, however – it’s also  opened the fungal floodgates in the Field, and we’ve been fighting it on multiple fronts. Although we haven’t had much rain lately, the humidity has ensured that the crops are regularly covered in heavy, dripping dew – combined with the heat, this has created an ideal environment for the fungi and their parasitic relatives.

The cucumbers and most of the melons were decimated by a wave of Anthracnose fungi, as have certain susceptible tomato varieties. All the squash, zucchini, pumpkins and gourds came down with intense cases of Powdery Mildew (actually a fungus). Much of our Thai basil has come down with the deadly new disease on the block – Basil Downy Mildew (not a mildew, but also not technically a fungus – rather, they are in the order “Oomycota” which was recently split out from the Fungi).

We’ve never really had free moments to battle such diseases in previous years, and tried to regard outbreaks with resigned fatalism – especially when the Killing Frost could be only weeks away. But this year we’re just a bit more on top of things, and we’re fighting to save what we can.

Most of the melon plants are dunzo, but we’ll be treating the survivors with organic copper spray this week to help them fight it off. The infected Thai basil will be destroyed in an effort to save the less-affected Italian Sweet Basil plants. And we’ll continue to spray milk on the squash, gourds, and pumpkins … it sounds weird, but in recent years it was discovered that diluted milk is quite effective at fighting Powdery Mildew, so we’ve been spraying the leaves down with a garden sprayer – and have a 5-gallon backpack sprayer on order and en route, for more effective application of all the milk, copper, and neem oil we’ll be spraying in our future fungi fights.

Box 13

IMG_0873

• Sugar Baby Mini Watermelon – the fungal melon disease that destroyed the vines also gave the fruit a skin condition – but it hasn’t effected the fruit, and won’t – as long as you eat it soon. Don’t let the fungus win – eat yer melon before it does – or cut it open, scoop out the insides, and save them in the fridge til you’re in a melon mood (meloncholy?)You don’t need an ice cream maker to  make Italian ice!
  http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/watermelon-ice-15266
  Infuse the syrup with holy basil, mint, or other herbs if you like.You can also pair watermelon with savory ingredients, as in this recipe (that we have not tried):
  http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014851-tomato-and-watermelon-salad

• Carrots! (multiple color varieties, including white, yellow, purple, orange)
  

 

• Tomato Medley (Unchained)
  Kristin has always wanted to make a tomato tart. “They are so darn pretty!” There are many recipes online.
  
  If you’ve had enough of tomatoes (say it ain’t so) you can put them in a freezer bag and into the freezer. They will peel easily when they thaw, and be good for making sauce.

 

• Collard Greens – Kristin sez: “Often cooked with bacon and also good with hot peppers, garlic, and lemon. Recipes often recommend simmering them for 30-45 min but I would not cook them that long. I would also not say that to a southerner.”Once we split them out into the boxes there were less than we’d intended to give ya’ll (southerner veggies), and it was too late to go harvest more – so cooking them down won’t yield a great amount – maybe put them in a soup with some roasted radishes, or use them to make wraps (with collard leaves instead of tortillas)

• Ground Cherries – Not really cherries, but nonetheless delicious. Peel the husks and enjoy – notice the variable flavor depending on the color (deep yellow without any greenish tint is sweetest).

• Black Spanish radish – “I was surprised to learn that black Spanish radishes are considered medicinal. You can buy extracts and pills of it, or just enjoy eating it! Salting and then rinsing radishes tones down their heat – and if you can’t fathom eating so much raw radish, try braising or roasting them with other root vegetables.”
  We gave you a lot so you could experiment with roasting them – it’s our favorite way to eat a quantity of radishes, and would cook well with the carrots in the box.
• Zucchini
• Assorted Peppers
• Broccoli
  

• Eggplant – (Italian, Asian, or a skinny white variety that I can’t recall the name of right now. Originally eggplants were white – hence the name …) The eggplant plants, like the nearby peppers, are big healthy leafy plants – with almost no interest in flowering or fruiting. Grrr. Fortunately, some of them are still into it!
• Holy Basil – often used in Thai cooking, and pairs well with anything watermelon. I really enjoying sniffing it.
• Italian Basil – also pairs great with watermelon!

Miscellaneous Pics from the Week

(some thanks to WWOOFer Bryan)

 

 

It’s been an interesting week, but I guess I could say that every week. (Maybe I do.)

On Sunday, Field Marshal Kristin left for Cleveland, Ohio for five days, leaving me to run everything …. including the CSA harvest today.

It hasn’t been bad but it was a bit frightening to behold coming at me through the calendar.

Fortunately, the timing was good.

 

Things were pretty stable in the field, and for harvest I had help from two short-term but very supportive WWOOFers- Miami Juan & Miami April (AKA “the PhDs” (both are psychologists)), as well as Neighbors Dave & Marcie and Patriarch Jim Sehr.

The PhDs had actually been running backup for me since Kristin left – cooking delicious and interesting food, helping weed, and keeping company. And they did so with wonderful cheer in spite of the fact that they were both slowly being killed by the unseasonable August chill that had rode in on a daylong howling wind to banish last week’s Floridian heatwave.

 

Which is to say, it got really chilly, down into the 40s at night, and it did so right before these poor unsuspecting hot-blooded Miami natives arrived and found their bodies, wardrobes, and accommodations unprepared and unable to maintain sensation in their extremities.

My blood is thicker, but I suffered a bit with them – although I closed all the windows for the first time in months, sleeping was cold without Kristin there.  I swapped out the Albatross screens for storm windows, provided the PhDs with extra blankets. and draped a thick fleecelined flannel over old Cleo. (I could have run the woodstove, but I didn’t want to concede to winter. And even if I did, it would be demoralizing to the dwellers of the unheated Albatross, and it would chip away at our woodpile, which suddenly seemed too small, urgently in need of additional wood to get busy drying out.; the last thing I wanted to do was start shrinking it in August.)

 

The sun came out today though, for a gorgeous harvest day, the opposite of last week’s grey rainy scene.

 

Here’s what we put in your boxes in that sunshine:

Week 12 Box

 

(Kristin wrote in remotely to help me out today with this part!):

Savoy cabbage aka cabbage patch kids
The sweetest and most tender type of cabbage best type for eating raw in salad or use leaves for wraps. Can also be sautéed with butter/ tasty oil, garlic, ginger, pepper, lemon, whatever seasonings you like!

Thai basil
Add to soup, stir fry, add to peanut sauce zoodles.
Try making an Asian style pesto by blending:

2 cups fresh Thai basil leaves
2 tablespoons dry-roasted peanuts
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons dark sesame oil
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
2 garlic cloves

Zucchini
http://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/sweet-and-hot-curried-zucchini-pickles

 

Edamame (aka fresh soybeans)
Don’t eat the pods! Basic serving suggestion:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/chile-garlic-edamame-recipe.html

Other edamame ideas:
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5877128

Sugar baby watermelon:

(Drat, I opened one of the coolers today and saw a tree frog hanging out on the watermelon pile inside – but he hopped away all photo-shy when I pulled out my phone. So use your imagination here.)

Probably just eat it, right? That’s easiest. But it would also pair nicely with Thai basil. Here’s a refreshing drink:
http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-watermelon-basil-agua-fresca-recipes-from-the-kitchn-205390

Tomatoes
Gazpacho! Tomato soup served ice cold!
Tomato slices on burgers, sandwiches, and with eggs Benedict.

Broccoli
Cucumber
Onion
Sweet Corn

The challenge this week was fitting things into the boxes. Holy crap … you have less zucchini than you started with, and Plan A of putting BOTH a cabbage and a watermelon in the boxes was sensibly and necessarily abandoned … so the watermelons are a la carte.

Hope you enjoy the food!