There was a fun coincidence this week – as I mentioned last week, we now have 6 people and 3 dogs at our farm with one thing in common – we all spent time at Habitable Spaces, the sustainable farm & artists’ residency in a tiny town in Texas called Kingsbury. And they’re not just casually located there – Shane & Alison, who run Habitable Spaces, are central members of a political battle to maintain Kingsbury’s independence from nearby Seguin, which is trying to absorb Kingsbury like The Blob.

Kristin, the dogs, and I spent two months there this winter helping out and building them a wood-fired earth oven. Reynaldo (who we’d met in Mississippi before we went to Texas), went there shortly after we left, on our recommendation. A month or so later, we recommended it to The Brazilians (Cristiane, Lucas, & Neo) by email when discussing their WWOOFing trip, and they happened to be right by Kingsbury when they got the message – and so they went too.  And after they traveled on, Alabama Spencer came to Kingsbury – where he heard about us and our farm, and decided to include Wisconsin in his cross-country trip route.

Reynaldo came to Que Sehra Farm first – then last week Spencer arrived here an hour before the Brazilians did, where we swapped tales of the people and dogs we’d all met in Kingsbury, and Reynaldo showed them the amazing, almost-completed  oil painting of downtown Kingsbury that he’s been working on here for the last few weeks.

On Friday, we all took a break from the field to go forage for edible mushrooms and take a dip in the Saint Croix river. We found plenty of beautiful chanterelles (which Kristin made for dinner than night with pasta, butter, herbs, and a fresh Chicken of the Woods mushroom we found growing just outside our trailer), and took a refreshing break in the cool, fresh waters of the St Croix.

On the way back to the car, I detoured through the woods, hoping to find something else good.

I didn’t find mushrooms – instead, I found a rusty old beer can, in a small cache that had sat together since the 1960s. I could tell from a distance it was an odd can – not a brand I was familiar with. And I burst into laughter when I turned it around and got a good look.

Kingsbury Beer, from Kingsbury Breweries – I hurried back to the other Kingsbury veterans to show them the find. None of us had ever even heard of Kingsbury beer before – and we loved that we happened to find a can of it in the woods while foraging with folks with Kingsbury as our common thread.

Good times!

It’s been a very summery week – in fact, we went river swimming three times this week, avoiding the baking (poaching, really, with this humidity) sun of the open field and renewing our spirits and bodies by floating in the stunningly beautiful Saint Croix – wide, slow, clean – without a single sign of mankind in any direction.

Then back to the farm, where summer’s hallmarks are popping up in ever increasing numbers – the first ripe tomatoes! Eggplants! Peppers! And did I mention TOMATOES!?

The tomato plants look better than any previous year, thanks to a combination of our improved soil, new mulching and trellising techniques, and great growing weather.

In fact, most everything in the field is going great right now* – sure, a couple crops are not doing as well as they should be, and there are voles and weeds and bad-guy bugs, but overall, the forces of good growin’ clearly have the upper hand.

 

Box Eight

The experience we have from last year, the help from our awesome WWOOFers, and the regular rainfalls have really worked out well – we’ve keep ahead of the weeds like never before, and are excited to have some room to breathe to take time to go flow with the river, and get beds prepared for the crops for late summer and fall.

Warning: now that the boxes are getting heavy, be sure to pick up your box from the bottom – just in case the weight is too much for it!

Just as we woke up to harvest today, the thunder started rumbling, and before we were out the door, the downpour began – fortunately, we’d known it was a possibility, and gotten the beans all harvested as the sun went down Monday night (handling bean plants when wet spreads disease).

I donned swim trunks and a raincoat, and got the processing area ready while Kristin made us breakfast – by the time we finished eating, the rain had slowed enough to harvest in, and stopped in time for lunch and packing up the CSA boxes – which contain:

• one of the first Tomatoes of the season! – more to come … I maybe sort of tried to convince Kristin to let us eat tomatoes all week on the Farm instead of sharing just one per box with ya’ll, but she overpowered me …
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• Basil – two kinds are in the same bag: . Italian Basil is the green leaves and smells like you’d expect basil to smell. It’s good for Italian food, of course … and goes great with tomatoes. Thai Basil has a purplish tint, tastes spicier, and is often used in Asian dishes – although it can be used along with sweet Italian basil. Here’s a good overview of the difference basils, with some recipes.
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• Pepper medley – hot and sweet varieties
  These are the hotties – if you don’t like much heat, you can remove the seeds and the white membrane that the seeds are attached to, to cool them off:
  
  And these are the sweeties – if you don’t like mild peppers, you can poke a small hole in the side and inject them full of habenero hot sauce or something similar. But that would be kinda weird, really:
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• Beets – Best when roasted, although can also be good grated raw, in wraps or salads.
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• Beet Greens -Beautiful, nutritious, delicious – these are really top notch greens, not just a byproduct to be discarded! Great for creamed greens, Use in place of Swiss Chard if you have a recipe for those that you like. (such as a chard tart) .Kristin makes an amazing salad with beets roasted in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Then skin them, put the liquids from the roasting into a pan on the stovetop, and add lemon and orange juice, and reduce it down to a light syrup. Wilt some chopped up beet greens in this syrup for a minute, and then toss with the chopped up beets.  Maybe add feta cheese, goat cheese, fresh herbs (basil or mint).

  

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• Broccoli – tender young side shoots – better consistency and flavor than large heads.
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• Zucchini – there are four different kinds, green standard ones, mint green stripey guys, yellow crook necks, and the Pac Man ghost-shaped pattypans. Have you ever had chocolate zucchini cake? It’s delicious – Kristin’s mom made us one this week, and it was a huge hit with everyone.
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• Cucumbers – a mix of slicers and picklers – all good for salads, sandwiches, etc. We like to snack on them raw when working in the heat – here are some slightly less simple recipes that are also perfect for summertime.  Or make what Kristin has been serving up all week – a sesame cucumber salad!
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• Onions – eat them.
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• Beans –  a mix of varieties that play well together – the ones with purple coloration will lose their color when cooked, so serve those raw for best effect.
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• Okra (Large boxes only) – As northerners, we had little to no experience with okra until we started growing it. We’ve learned that it’s best to cook them by sauteeing them whole . Here are six recipes that promise a non-slimy okra experience.

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PS – We saw the White Cat again – on the drive to the Farmer’s Market on Saturday, not far from the Farm. We thought she was dead on the side of the road … but no, she was just hunting, and crouching perfectly still on the edge … and of course, she bolted when Widget and I approached to see if she was alive or in need of help …

It was a muggy and stormy week. with periods of sunshine-blasting heat making things intense for work in the open field, interspersed with deluges of rain, firework displays of atmospheric electricity, and a barrage of crazy wind. And throughout it all, the air remained thick with moisture, which the plants no doubt loved, but we could have really done fine without, ourselves.

 

The wind partied hardest on Sunday night, during a thunderstorm powerful enough to  warrant a warning from the National Weather Service.

In addition to terrifying our WWOOFers (who had to wonder if the rocking Albatross trailer was going to make like its namesake and take off), it knocked over sunflowers, laid most of the corn over at all angles, and KOed several bean plants and onions.

Most of the damage was minor, and we helped the corn stalks stand back up, propping them upright with handfuls of hay mulch, so most should regain verticality without “goose-necking.”

The worst storm damage was actually inflicted the next day – when an unexpected and incredibly prolific rain cloud descended upon us, dumping bucketloads of water per square foot in mere minutes … completely destroying the ten trays of kohlrabi, herbs, and head lettuce seeds that WWOOFer Ariel had just finished meticulously planting in soil blocks.

It was depressing to see all the hard work, time, and seeds destroyed, but all things considered, we got off pretty easy given how things could have gone down.

 

The week’s work was varied and satisfying.

I got the guest cabin on its own solar power system, and upgraded the main power system with another battery and 200 watts of additional panels, mounted up on the side of the semi trailer barn, using scavenged metal bed frames.

On Wednesday we thought we were being slightly irresponsible when we decided to head to the friendly local Wolf Creek Bar for dinner and a beer – but it turned out to be a highly productive and even synchronistic excursion, when we ran into Lee the Hay Man, who we had not seen for years – and he was willing to deliver 11 huge rounds of spoiled hay to the farm for a very reasonable price.

Just that morning we had been discussing how we badly needed more hay for mulch, but didn’t know where we would get it from – we couldn’t get in touch with the guy we’d most recently scored from, and were considering putting up a flyer or two … hey hay hey!

 

We planted storage radishes, tied up the growing trellis crops, sought and destroyed cabbage worms and potato beetle larvae, weeded rows of lettuce, beans, and melons, hay-muched melons and peppers and beets, tilled in the pea tendril row, and gave up on the scheme to- grow ground cherries in hanging pots (they hated it), and transplanted them out into the field, where the tendrils had been.

 

 

The voles … shit. They have been off our radar for weeks now, and was starting to dare to think that maybe they just went away. But no. They had just been building their strength for a comeback apparently. Because this week, the walkways between the pea rows were riddled with tunnels that we’d sink into as we tried to walk, and entrance holes appeared in the potato and lettuce rows. Of course we tried to set traps, but of course this yielded only frustration. Voles are an overly-worthy adversary.  So far the damage they are doing seems minimal, but it seems the population is likely on the boom – and each vole must eat its own weight in vegetable matter every day. Or maybe every hour. Something terrifying like that. They breed faster than rabbits and we’re realizing that the pea plants that have already keeled over aren’t just dropping naturally from the heat, but from having their roots devoured …

I love the snap peas, but I’m eager for them to be done, so we can pull the trellises and irrigation, and I can run the rototiller through the area, destroying the tunnel network in there. This is an incredibly frustrating infestation, not just because they are nearly impossible to eradicate, but because they flourish under the very conditions we are creating for the health of the soil and plants, with the thick hay mulch (which not only suppresses weeds and conserves moisture, but also adds much-needed nutrients and organic matter to our sandy soil for future years).

Like the weather and the Quack Grass, the voles force us to face inescapably uncontrollable nature of this lifestyle, and to practice our mantra – “que sera, sera!” We will do all we can, but ultimately what will be, will be – and regardless of weeds and wind and wascally wodents, I think that what will be will be pretty awesome. Chinese curse or no, I prefer living in interesting times – and farming out in the Barrens is rarely boring ….

 BOX SIX!

 

• Bean Medley – A half dozen varieties of green beans and wax beans, delicious raw or cooked – although the spotted and royal purple pods will lose their color when heated.  :(
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• Summer Squash Zucchini  (three varieties) – Young, small and tender this week – you’ll likely get some larger ones better for baking later in the season, so maybe use these in a sautée.

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• Salad mix – this week’s blend includes three kinds of lettuce, argula, plenty of pea tips, and some tat soi and spinach. It’s getting hot, we’ll see how the lettuce fares – this just might be the last salad mix til late summer. Or maybe not!

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• Sugar Snap Peas – Last week for these crunchy yumbombs! If you’ve had enough of the fresh or chopped in salads or stir-fried, try making fridge pickles with them – surprisingly, they actually are delicious pickled, with great texture. Use the dill and onions in the box and follow one of these recipes!
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• Broccoli
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• Onions – now that they’re getting larger, the neck between the greens and the bulb is getting tough, so skip that part – but the rest is still great! 
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• Dill – Chop up the frondy leaves and put ’em on eggs, or in a salad dressing, or juse them to make fridge pickles with your peas! The firework-ish flower tops are traditionally used for pickle making, but you can chop them up and use them just as the leaves.
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• Kohlrabi –  large shares only – on a hot day, slice it up and serve on ice with salt and pepper, maybe some lemon juice. Yum.
  

 

Hello shareholders!

Welcome to July – we’re definitely into the summer now. Some of the cool weather crops like the lettuce and peas are beginning to show signs of fatigue, and the radishes are pretty much dunzo. But this isn’t bad, it’s just the cycle of the seasons – and to make up for it, the hot weather crops are really becoming vigorous.

The eggplant, beans, zucchini, pepper, and tomato plants are growing up and out, and looking very promising. The tomatoes are the healthiest and happiest I’ve ever seen them at this time of year, and seem to really like the new mulch and trellising system we’re trying out.

 

The week’s work involved more hay muching and more organic insecticide (manual pickin’ & squishin’) of potato beetle grubs and squash vine borer eggs.

We started preparing a bed for the fall crop of salad greens, using a technique known as a “stale seedbed” – in which we create moist, warm, happy conditions for the lurking weed seeds, using transparent plastic applied to a row after a good rain. This will encourage all the weeds to germinate under the ideal conditions – and when they come up all new & tender, we will gently remove the cover … and greet them with a propane flamethrower. And then it’ll be safe to plant the fall salad.

Last week, Kristin found a bunch of tadpole babies in some water buckets we were using as weights – she and WWOOFer Reynaldo thought we should create a tadpole hatching pool, so we alley-scavenged up a kid’s pool when we came to the cities last week, and this week we turned it into sweet digs for future farm frogs.

 

We woke up at 5:00 am on the 4th of July, to harvest for the Saint Croix Falls farmer’s market – for the first time this year, due to the casualties the cutworms and voles inflicted upon our early spring crops.

Then a bunch of friends came out from the cities to celebrate the holiday weekend together on the Farm, and the next day a new WWOOFer, Ariel from Maryland came out to help out for a couple of weeks. We had a long soaking rain the next day – at least 2 inches fell over the course of a day, giving all the crops a well-timed drink the day before the CSA harvest – today!

We had a good crew helping out, making the harvest go smoothly even as we did our first dual-harvest of the year – everything for you all, plus some surplus veggies for the HealthPartners cafeteria. Much thanks to our WWOOFers, Kristin’s parents, and our friend Mark who helped make it come together today!

Week 5 Box:

• Week 5 Salad Mix – Red Ruby, Buttercrunch bibb, and frizzy green lettuces, baby Red Russian & Dwarf curly blue kale, arugula, pea tips, tat soi, & mizuna
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• Sugar Snap Peas – the pea(k) season is passing now, alas … but the pea plants are still putting out a whole lot of sweet, tasty pods.
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• Kohlrabi – This is the alien lookin’ fellow in your box. These are the survivors of the vole assault this spring – the ones we took back in from the field after transplanting to nurse back to health. They are usually peeled – we usually just use a sharp knife to cut off the tough outer skin. The leaves are also edible, best if cooked. We think the root is tasty served cold, sliced and salted – but here’s a good post with other good ideas for eating yours.
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• Fresh Herbs – Basil, Spearmint, & Lemon Balm – (the lemon balm has the twine around it to help you know which is which). Here’re some ideas for how you can use your basil. Lemon balm is great for tea (Fill a jar with fresh leaves. Pour simmering hot water into the jar then cover the top with a saucer so that none of the vapors escape. Let steep until cool enough to drink & sweeten to taste.) Spearmint is most excellent served outdoors in a strong mojito on a sunny afternoon while playing hooky from your job.

  

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• Broccoli – Every part is edible – some people think the best part is the middle of the stalks, and call it broccoli candy. Fact. This week we enjoyed some in a stew, as we dried off and warmed up from working in the soaking rain.
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• Radishes & Salad Turnips

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• Kale (Red Russian, Dino, and Dwarf Curly Blue varieties) – Have you tried kale chips yet? They are so darn good … although I usually eat the entire batch in one sitting, so they don’t last all that long …

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• Cauliflower (large shares only) – cauliflower doesn’t much like our sandy soil, and we have a hard time getting much of it. We had just enough for the big boxes this week. We were given some from a new friend at the market this week, which we grilled up on the rocket stove – it was delicious,and the leftovers went into the rainy day stew.

That’s it for this week – let us know if you have any feedback, questions, photos, or recipes to share.

Thanks again for joining us this year – we’re grateful every day that we have the opportunity to live this life, and grateful for all the people that have helped make it a possibility – including you.

Have a wonderful week!

– the Sehrs

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weather this week was muggy – although temperatures weren’t all that high, we got steamed by the humidity when out in the field under the open sun. It was necessary to find work in the shade (or go river swimming) during the peak farmer-baking hours of noon to two or so, but the lost time was easy to make up for since the sun has been staying up til approximately midnight lately.

Early in the week we fired up the rototiller and chewed up the thick weeds starting to overtake some of the walkways between rows, and hand weeded several rows of crops that had weeds threatening to shade out our veggies. We picked up a free screen porch off Craigslist, which will someday soon give us some nice bug-free, shady, outdoor hangout space.

While weeding, I noticed a wasp-like form darting about in the squash plants, and realized it might mean trouble so I followed it … as it buzzed from squash plant to squash plant, before selling onto one and quickly moving down to the base of the stem. A squash vine borer! Probably my least favorite insect, although this is the first year I’d caught the flying adults in their foul acts …

SVBs are not actually wasps, but day-flying moths, which specialize in breaking the hearts of gardeners and farmers. They lay tiny eggs on the plants , one at a time – up to 200 eggs per bug, scattered throughout the garden. Eggs are usually on the base of plants, just below the soil line, but can be anywhere. When they hatch, the tiny grub burrows into the host plant’s stem, and starts to feed on its innards. And it grows, and eats, and grows, and poops the plant’s heart out onto the ground. This doesn’t kill quickly – it takes time, as the grub gets bigger and bigger and does more and more damage. The plant struggles on, stunted a bit but apparently OK at first … until just before the bounty of beautiful young squash finally start to ripen – and then the entire plant collapses and dies, its fruits inedible.

I hate Squash Vine Borers more than even Cut Worms. Last year, we never saw the adults – we laid traps that were supposed to alert us to their presence (yellow pails of water they are said to drown in), but never caught a one. So we didn’t know they were in the garden until we started seeing their piles of poop at the base of the squash plants – forcing us to carefully slice open the stems of infested plants and use bits of curved wire to hook the culprits out. Then we reburied the wound in compost so the squash might reroot and recover.

It was a huge pain the ass, and stressful. So this year, we decided to try getting a step ahead of them …  it was still a pain in the ass, but it beat surgery.

WWOOFer Reynaldo and I spend a couple of afternoons roasting ourselves, prostrate on the sunbaked sandy soil, carefully clearing the top inch of soil away from every single squash plant – 600 of them (since we have been waiting to thin them out til we see which are faring best) – and checking for SVB eggs.

They are tiny – a bit larger than this period. They can be found anywhere on the plant. We used little pieces of duct tape to remove them wherever we found them – mostly on the winter squashes, a lot of the summer squash, and some on the pumpkins and spaghetti squash. The only vines they avoided were the butternut squash.

It was a hassle, it seemed absurd, but it was immensely satisfying to removed dozens and dozens of the little murderers from the field before they could even be born. I took sick satisfaction in imagining the little grubs emerging and finding themselves stuck to a piece of dirty tape in the garbage, instead of on our tender plants.

It was also a week of intensive potato beetle larvae squishing – their populations spiked, and had to be hand-squished by the hundreds. This is why organic vegetables cost more than pesticide sprayed conventional crops …

Although we also weeded and mulched, the hard labor this week was mainly trellising. First, the three grape vines our friend Paula donated to us last year – I buried two  8″ thick cedar posts a few feet in the ground, 20 some feet apart, angled outward, and then stretched heavy high tensile wire between them, strong enough to one day hold the weight of the mature woody vines.

I used similar wire between t-posts through the ~500 feet of tomato vines, and Kristin gently and individually tied up each of the few hundred tomato plants to it.

And then the 200 feet of cucumber vines were set up with angled cattle panels, which we will train up onto as they grow.

(Thanks to Neighbors Dave and Marcie, who lent us the 40 steel t-posts we were short, having forgotten we would need more of them after doubling the number of trellised plants since last year!)

(Oh! And since we’re on the trellis theme, should mention that I added a gnarly oak branch to the hop trellis on the side of the semi trailer, since one of the vines had scaled past the top of its 16′ trellis.)

The quack grass, treacherous bastard that it is, broke the truce we had, and started busting up through the thick walkway mulch everywhere, so that war is back on. Grrrr.

The bear from the last couple weeks has been seen around the area repeatedly, but hasn’tcome back around too closely – I think my stern talking to was taken to heart. Or maybe they’re just afraid of our guard hens. We avoided the punishing hail that was widespread in the region, destroying entire fields of crops mere miles from us. It’s been too hot for the lettuce – apparently we’ll have to plant it when the ground is still frozen or something if we want it to form heads next year. The beans are flowering and look happy – we should start harvesting them in a few weeks now. We’ll be going to the farmer’s market in Saint Croix Falls for the first time this year on the 4th of July (we haven’t gone yet as a result of the cutworm-devastation of our early crops).

Today’s harvest weather was perfect – after a nice heavy rain last night got everything happily hydrated, it was a cool and foggy morning, without any direct sunshine on the delicate salad green. Once we had all the sensitive stuff into the shade, the sun came out, but the storm had cleared away the humidity, leaving perfect cozy summer weather for cleaning, drying, mixing, portioning, bagging, and boxing up your shares.

 Week 4 Box:

• Week Four Salad Mix: Ruby Red, Buttercrunch Bib, and Frizzy Fuckin’ Green Lettuces (might not be remembering the names quite right), Arugula, Baby Kale, Tat Soi, Spinach, and a bit of Mizuna, Pea Tendrils, and Lambs Quarter.
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• Cilantro – great garnish for tacos, stir-fries (stirs-fry?) -Mexican and Asian foods. Fresh, not cooked! We have a hard time growing it up here, but we love it so we always try and get a little bit here and there.
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• Sugar Snap Peas – Great fresh snacking, but also great in a dish, lightly sauteed, so they maintain their crunch – and their color brightens up.  Before cooking, pop off the tops and pull the “string” from the pod – like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0I5xbyDeMU. Kristin tosses them with onions, soy sauce, and garlic, then adds a little fresh herbs at the end.
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• Broccoli – Lately we’ve been enjoying ours cooked, tossed in a spicy ginger garlic sauce. Reynaldo sauteed some up with rice and it was tasty …
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• Pea Tendrils (aka Pea Tips) – Add to your salad mix, put into a sandwich, or stuff them in your face fistful at a time and pretend you’re one of the predators that would love to sneak past our electric fence and gorge. People also make pea pesto that these would work out well in, although we haven’t tried that ourse;ves yet.
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• Spring Onions – not quite full-grown onions, but plumper than green onions … edible from top to bottom. Eat the green parts first, as the white bottoms keep longer.
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• Radishes & Salad Turnips – slice them up and add to your salad mix!
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• Radish & Turnip Greens – If you already made delicious pesto and a Southern-style recipe from the previous weeks’ suggestions, then perhaps this week it’s time to try a furikake recipe for these under-appreciated but deliciously-nutritious greens!