Weekly News

This newsletter will be brief … we are getting dinner with our folks for a belated birthday meal, and couldn’t write in the car today – because we had to drive two cars back to the city, so that we could leave one to have the window repaired – a thief smashed a window and stole Kristin’s phone and Gabe’s backpack when we were in town to celebrate his birthday.

That was a hassle and a pain, but whatever. We had glass insurance coverage, that car window had stopped working anyway, and this will goad us into fixing it finally – and Kristin’s phone had a completely lousy battery life … silver linings, hooray, we’re GLAD it happened! OK not really, but it only made us crabby for a half hour or so. And when we got back to the Farm, we took nice relaxing salty hot tub baths.

Far worse has been the discovery that squash vine borers have sneakily invaded our beautiful & robust squash plants – despite our yellow buckets of water (which are supposed to catch some and alert a farmer to the little bastards’ presence). We never caught a single borer in the traps, but with the droughty heat, we noticed a frightening percentage of the squash looking more wilty and sad than they should be … and discovered the tell-tale “frass” at the base of their main stems. Grubs have been hatching and chewing into the stems, setting up camp within, where they suck away the plants’ vitality and grow fat and disgusting while the squash plants wither away – their huge, gorgeous squash fruits never ripening.

This is the worst of all pests we face. Almost unstoppable and almost always totally lethal. Organic control methods for squash vine borers include “do not plant squash” and “pray for a miracle.” Once they have already invaded your plants, you can try surgery. We knew it wasn’t likely to work, but we had to try – checking each plant for signs of invasion, slitting open the stems where the grubs were likely to be found, stabbing them and scraping them out with a wire, and then burying the grievous wound created with moist compost, in the hopes that all the grubs were eradicated (can be several per plant), and that the vine would heal and perhaps reroot above the wound, recovering enough to allow the huge young squashes to ripen before the frosts come.

This is grim work.

We still have about half of the squash left to do surgery on, when we get back to the Farm tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes. It sucks but it’s precisely this type of thing that we have to simply do what we can, and hope for the best – feeling crappy about it doesn’t accomplish anything other than making our experience of living less pleasant – so, que sera, sera. Life is great, and we hate squash vine borers, and that’s great too. :)

In other news, we did plenty of weeding, took out an old arugula bed to plant new radishes and spinach in, and a new WWOOFer arrived today – Sean from Milwaukee, with his beagle sidekick, Athena. He’s had some experience working on farms and he’s excited to be tenting out in the wild meadow back behind our trailer/home.  We found a couple of delicious, huge Chicken of the Woods mushrooms and ate, shared, and froze pounds of them. Hopefully we find similar bounties closer to box distribution day (this was last Thursday), so that we can share future fungi!

Harvest today went nicely, with help from Sean, Florian, Amy, and our new CSA member, Elizabeth.

Weekly Box

• Cucumbers – lemon, pickling, and slicing varieties. You can guess which ones are the lemons, right? They only look like lemons, though – still taste just like cukes.

• Zucchini –  it can’t stop, it won’t stop. There are a lot of wonderful things to be done with this stuff, get creative and have fun!

• Garlic

• Salad Turnips with greens –  These are the absurdly tasty turnips that you can munch on raw like an apple! Also, try a tender little turnip green raw, they are seriously delicious. And the big ones are great cooked of course.

• Sweet corn – eat it tonight if you can, they lose sweetness quickly!
  

• Parsley & Basil & Dill, oh my

• Cabbage –  no, not another ‘giant Napa Cabbage challenge,’ just a nice modest regular cabbage, of the Early Jersey Wakefield variety.

• Broccoli – bagged with:

• Beans –  mix of dragon tongue (the purple spotted guys) & green beans

• Okra – maybe. We had a handful which we randomized into the boxes.

• Pre-Adolescent Dinosaur Kale – older than baby kale, but definitely not full grown – young and not at all tough, perfect for salads or gentle cooking.

• A Mixed Bag of Early Summer Stuff:
  • Peppers – assortment of Czech black, jalepeno, & green peppers. Plus one of you got a mysterious big reddish one that I can’t figure out just now.

• Eggplant or tomato – only a little of each are ripe enough yet, so we randomized it into the boxes …

• Tomatillos – great in salsa, or nibbled fresh

 Weekly Critters

PS – I just remembered that weeks ago I told you that the peas were stringless. I thought they were; yet they weren’t. But the strings were pretty slender and tender, so hopefully no one noticed my big fat lie!

The Weekly News

It’s been dry.

I remember when it wasn’t.

It was wet, once.

There was so much water that the mosquito larvae squiggled through the air and the thought of storing rainwater for later use was laughable.

Who’s laughing now?

Not me.  It is far too dry for laughter.

Also, it is too cold for laughter.

At nights the temperatures plummet into the 50s, and the plants tremble with the newfound knowledge that winter is coming. We split and stack firewood with renewed urgency during the day, and at night, we have to close some of the windows to survive.

OK, so it’s not bad at all actually, I don’t know what came over me, it was just fun to write.

But it really is a bit dry and cool. The tomatoes and peppers are delayed by the chilly nights, but the spring crops love it.

Monday night we were awakened by some mysterious creature bumbling around beneath the trailer, gnawing loudly on something. I crept to the door with my camera, and held it upside down below the edge of the trailer.

My first attempt had more of my toes in it than mystery critter – it chattered at me and stayed put though, so I tried again.

This is not compatible with a dog that likes to hunt through the woods chasing critters, and a budget that does not have much allowance for large vet bills.

Does anyone have a live trap we can borrow?

What else … we weeded the raspberry patch (which won’t be producing til maybe next year), visited a local farm and picked some of their raspberries for preserves, and checked out the nearby hops & herbs operation that a bartender at the Wolf Creek Bar is growing.

We started work on the composting toilet’s foundation, cut up downed trees and split wood, started foliar feeding – applying Epsom salts and liquid kelp to the leaves of plants prone to blossom end rot.

We scored a new free trailer from Craigslist – a former popup tent trailer that had been converted into an ice fishing house, and will now become WWOOFer housing,  a Farmer’s Market trailer, or both.

Farm world abundance problems – when the big stressful thing about harvest day is worrying that you’re not going to be able to fit everything into the boxes ….

What’s in the Box

• Zucchini – It is peak zucchini week! We won’t give you this much again this year, so revel in the abundance without fear of the future.  They are incredibly versatile – either sweet or savory recipes accommodate them well … try em in bread, stir fry, fritters, au gratin,  grilled, etc. We’ve enjoyed zucchini pancakes twice this week, enhanced with chocolate or cinnamon/sugar.  Here’s a LMGTFY link for some ideas if you’re stuck!

• Cucumbers – a mix available, your own selection perhaps includes standard slicers & picklers, Lemon (the round yellow ones), &  Shantung Suhyo cross (the bent cacti ones).

• Rutabaga (aka Giant Fool’s Turnip) – cook them thoroughly and they’re kinda like an extra delicious potato, or bigger, better turnips. We often eat them grated, pan fried, and perhaps topped with eggs. The edible greens are almost literally exploding with nutrients and flavor. BAM!
  
  
• Beans – a smattering of green beans & dragon tongue beans. Eat em raw, or chopped into a salad or stir fry, or feed them to squirrels!

• Beets & Beet Greens – People love beet greens; at the Market, some folks buy the beets just for the leaves. BUT. The beets are really the best part; FACT! (And we saved the best beets for you guys – the market customers got very runty beets this week.)

• Rainbow Chard – DID YOU KNOW that Chard is just a beet that has been specialized for the leaves rather than roots? FACT! So it makes good sense to combine them and cook them together.(DID YOU ALSO KNOW that I am rather hyperactive after being in keyed-up-speedy-harvest mode since 6 am!!? FACT!)

• Broccoli
  
• Onions (your box may include any of the red, white, or yellow varieties)
• Garlic
• Basil
• Parsley

Have a recipe you use this week that tastes great or looks ridiculously pretty?

Send it our way, we’d love to share it with others on the Facebook page or future newsletters!

The Weekly Critters

the Weekly News

This week the zucchini and cucumbers are blowing up, sunflowers and okras are blooming, tomatoes and peppers are flirting with ripening, melons and squash are sprawling and fruiting, the hops are climbing, the cabbage is bolting, the peas are dying, and the bees are buzzing about the squash and borage flowers, doing their pollination thang.

The rains ceased, and the sunshine reminded us of what summer us all about. had to fix the irrigation line Gabe ran over with the riding lawn mower, to keep the crops from getting thirsty.

We ate our first and only ripe tomato, in a pico de gallo salsa on senposai-wrapped tacos, and we enjoyed the power of the Miracle Fruit – polishing off a big stack of citrus fruit that would normally make our mouths pucker up with a single bite.

Our friend Jacque came out on Friday and helped Kristin finish the tricky weeding and thinning of the carrot row.

On Saturday we woke up at 5:00 and harvested for the Saint Croix Falls Farmer’s Market, and had our most successful day there yet.

We had an insane amount of peas to go through (we’d been out past sundown the night getting half of them harvested in advance), and people were delighted to buy them at the priced-to-move rate of $5 per 2-pound bag.

We see a new type of insect pretty much ever single day.

The mosquitoes have died back quite a bit, the dragonflies patrol around us and over the fields all day, and monarchs are flitting around the milkweed we’ve left to grow for them. No sign of the dreaded squash vine borers yet, but we squished plenty of potato beetle grubs this week …  (<– only click that link if you really want to see fingers covered in dirt & nasty bug guts).

We potted up the autumn batch of broccoli in the greenhouse, weeded the beans, parsnips, and melons, and planted some late season radishes – China Rose and Black Spanish varieties.

On Monday, we dodged the brutal heat wave by first hanging out at the Polk County Government Center in the frigid air conditioning (filling out paperwork that will let us take WIC and senior citizen farmer’s market vouchers), and then going swimming with the dogs in the cool spring-fed waters of Saint Croix River, right down the road.

We busted out Gabe’s metal detector and had some fun digging up random old junk from around the trailer – nails, cans, heavy iron plates, grill parts, rifle shells, and a sweet old folding chair, rusted and gunshot, but still useable … a perfect farmer’s market seat for Gabe.

Today we had some awesome help with the harvest – WWOOFer Abe, Tiny House Florian, and our friends Cody and Amy made all the work go by breezily, with lots of laughing and time to relax and enjoy a lunch of rocket stove-grilled brats, creamy cucumber salad (from a recipe from our friend & shareholder Lizzy), and an Asian peanut-sauce cabbage salad that Kristin invented.

Kristin’s dad Jim came out too, and built us a tarp shade canopy over the processing area, leveled some rough patches out with a shovel, and finished up the the semi trailer Barn stairs that he’d upgraded for us.

This was our last day with Choppy Abe the WWOOFer – he is heading to LA to start work at his new job.  As we drove away from the Farm today, he remained behind, getting in some last firewood-splitting time with the Monster Maul he’d bonded with over the last few weeks of working with us. We’ll miss him – but we have faith that someday he’ll quit his job and come live at the Farm forevermore, sleeping in his car at night and chopping firewood throughout every available moment of daylight …

Overall, things are going great. We love being on the Farm, don’t miss the 9-5 routine at all, and feel more content and happy than we can ever remember being … we haven’t once regretted taking this leap – not even when the bugs are bad, the outhouse smells, the future seems incredibly uncertain, or the daily work is stressful, hot, sticky, itchy, and/or tedious.

Thank you all for helping make it a reality – we are loving growing for you.

the Sehrs

PS – oh yeah, I almost forgot to include:

the Weekly Box

Behold! It’s a box packed full of:

• Cucumbers
• Zucchinis
• Green beans (just a few now, but soon the beans should be bumpin’)
• Snap peas (this is the end of the line for snap peas this year)
• Kale (Dino, Curly Blue, and Red Russian varieties)
• Arugula
• Broccoli
• Bib lettuce
• Onion
• Beet (and oh-so-edible beet greens)
• Garlic
• Parsley
• Basil
• Dill

ENJOY!

The Weekly News

The unseasonably cool weather continued this week … good sleeping and harvesting weather, and nice for the spring greens. The chickens are settling in, loving our garden scraps and their big yard, and giving us a modest amount of eggs.

We plan to double or triple the flock as soon as we find a convenient source of young laying hens. Last night as we were falling asleep, a cacophony of coyote caterwauling erupted nearby… a hair-raising reminder to throw on a robe and go shut the coop door, which we’d forgotten to close for the night.

The garden work this week has consisted of a whole lot of weeding and mulching and squishing potato beetles, cucumber beetles, and squash bugs.

Kristin hung out in the field with a hummingbird feeding on bolted arugula flowers, while she was on bug squishing patrol. Gabe did a lot of chopping and stacking fire wood with Choppy Abe the WWOOFer, who is getting very handy with the 17 lb Monster Maul.

The beans and cucumbers are coming in, will should be ready in harvestable amounts in the next week or so. We are experimenting with trellising the cuke plants this year, which will hopefully make for easier harvesting. We’ve discovered that the cucumber beetles are hiding out inside of the big yellow squash flowers, and have been plucking them once they wither, exposing their striped insect occupants, and squishing them before they can feed on the cucumbers and infect them with bacterial wilt.

We finally tamed the poison ivy in the newly-cleared shady area to the north of the semi trailer “barn” enough to move the processing tables and gear in – today was the first harvest using it; we loved it.

Next we’ll be installing a tarp shade cover extending from the roof of the semi … always upgrading! It was only a couple of years ago that our processing area was a tiny hut barely big enough to stand up inside of …

The Weekly Box:

–          Snap Peas – Always good as a snack, but also great in salads and stir-frys – with pounds of them at your disposal, try something new this week!

–          Salad Mix (with Ruby Red lettuce, Oak Leaf lettuce, pea tendrils, arugula, mizuna, and baby Dinosaur & Red Russian kale) – we’re lucky to still be getting salad mix this late in the year! The lettuce and pea tendrils are getting larger, so you may want to chop your mix up before serving for easier mouth-sized bites. We’ve pretty much abandoned the patch of arugula we planted this spring, in favor of the hardy volunteers that are up between the rows all over the place.
–          Rutabaga (with delicious greens) – similar in flavor to a mild turnip. We usually have them for breakfast, cubed, pan-fried or roasted, and topped with over-easy eggs. If you cook them thoroughly they lose all turnip flavor, and taste kinda sweet.

Cut off the greens so that they don’t dehydrate the root, and store/cook them as you would any other green, such as kale. Very nutritious!

–          Napa Cabbage – Perfect for an Asian salad with peanut sauce, or kim chi. Another options we hear is just delicious is to cut them in half and grill them. Some good options listed out here:

http://www.sheknows.com/food-and-recipes/articles/809695/8-things-to-do-with-napa-cabbage

–          Garlic – tastes great, repels vampires.

–          Zucchini

–          Basil (Thai & Aromato varieties)

–          Miracle Berries (specially shipped up from Florida by a friend of the Farm!) – Pop one, or half of one, into your mouth, and move it around your tongue. Let the skin come off, and ensure the innards get all over the surface of your tongue … then eat a slice of lemon, lime, grapefruit, or orange, and taste something you’ve never tasted before!

Links for more info on miracle berries (they’re just a natural fruit!):

• http://www.molecularrecipes.com/techniques/flavor-tripping-miracle-berry/
• http://people.howstuffworks.com/flavor-tripping1.htm

Have a great week, and enjoy the veggies – and the flavor-trippin berries!

– the Sehrs