Yeah so I suppose that in case you weren’t a boy in the mid-80s, I should explain that “Over the Top” was a movie that cast Sly Stallone as Rocky of the arm wrestling circuit. The phrase in that context had to do with literally getting the opponent’s hand over the top and down, and about victory, and some other feel-good triumphant stuff.

And here we are at the mid-point of the CSA harvest season – 9 boxes down and 9 left to go, cresting Over the Top of the hump, grunt-screaming and flexing our sweaty, straining, shaky-vein biceps with every beastly zucchini and cucumber we pull from the field.

Totally.

(It’s actually been pretty chill, really. The field is flowing and fertile, it’s kind of dry, but that’s not so bad.)

In addition to making life into 80’s arm wrestling metaphors this week, we’ve been transplanting baby salad greens out into the field, weeding the carrots and new beets and the emptied-out rows of early-harvested crops, and pulling out giant mega weeds from anywhere they’ve raised their monstrous bodies, before they can go to seed.

Speaking of the field, a troop of 13-lined ground squirrels have moved in and are continuing the destructive work of erstwhile evil Madam Venison …Kristin is considering focusing her murder-eye upon them, which will be their doom if they repent not from their sins.

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Oh hey, I took a picture of the compost this week to explain the next step of the “compost-shuffle” to our awesome help-squad (WWOOFers Brittany, Lukas, & Alissa), which reminds me that everyone out there is no doubt dying to know about how we’ve been turning food waste into healthy soil this year!

You may remember that in previous years we made compost from weekly 60-gallon batches of kitchen scraps, courtesy of a cafeteria client. Sadly, that option came to an end this spring – but when the God of Garbage closes a trashcan, he opens a bucket, as they say. Our friends at the newly-opened Trap Rock Brewery have been brewing up all kinds of new beer, and providing us with the byproduct – a steady stream of around 50 gallons of spent grains weekly.

These are still full of nutrients and even protein – making them ideal for our existing composting method; first, let the chickens work it over and eat their fill. Then, after it is no longer fresh, we combine it with pulled weeds, damaged/excess veggies, and dead leaves (we stockpile them every autumn) and stir it occasionally as it decomposes. When the heat dies down, the pile goes into big bins for storage.

Come spring, we’ll use this to feed and build the soil up in the high tunnel and field rows, constantly building the organic matter and nutrients available in our soil. The circle of life!

In the Box

Two or three of you got randomly granted OKRA by the gods. Use it wisely!

Eggplant – You remember these! Good for ratatouille! Great marinated & then grilled.

Kohlrabi

Sweet Corn– very little was ready this week – and sadly many of the stalks knocked down in the wind storm didn’t produce ears – but hopefully more to come … hopefully. Corn might be on the losing side of the win-some-lose-some equation this year.

Tomatoes for now and later – We put both ripe and nearly-ripe tomatoes in the boxes – the nearly ripe ones will feel firmer, and can be left on the counter for a few days to finish ripening up.

Beets & Beet Greens – treat them like Chard basically

Zucchini – yup

Cucumbers – ayuh

Onions – the first of our main onion crop! If you want to store them, simply cut off the greens and use those, then let the bulbs sit on the counter. The outer skin will dry up and form a wonderful protective barrier.

Basil in a bag with a few stalks of Cutting Celery, which is basically an herb that provides celery flavor which you can chop up and put into egg salad or something

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Well, remind me to be careful because when Kristin puts her mind to murder, things move quickly.

Within moments of contacting the USDA, they had a guy out to examine our crop damage, about six seconds after he left the farm the approval paperwork arrived in the mail, and in that same breath our friend Bob got his Wisconsin hunting license and transformed Evil Bambi into a freezerful of venison with a perfect headshot.

So that was pretty sweet. We enjoyed our first garden-fattened venison yesterday, with some jalepeno cornbread pancakes ( w/peppers & corn we’d grown), plus foraged raspberry sauce and a side of fried lobster mushrooms from our woods. It was a most satisfying meal to eat while surveying our little patch of heaven from the screen porch.

In the Box

Tomatoes – first of the season! You’ll find one of our larger tomatoes, either ripe or nearly so, and some ripe cherry tomatoes.

Cabbage or kohlrabi – Your veggie karma determines which one is in your box!

Red Potatoes – our first spuds harvested this year. They have very thin skins because they haven’t been cured; so you really don’t have to skin them for use in your cooking.

Zucchini – one each of three color varieties.

Cucumbers –including a few of a new variety we’ve been enjoying. (If you got a weird pale green, wrinkly thing in your box, it’s one of them! Enjoy.

A medley of Beans –  a mix of our yellow, green, and purples in with

a Bag o’ Broccoli – a mix of baby broccoli and side shoots.

Rutabaga – well, the beneficial nematodes were not a magic bullet against the root munching monsters. They definitely look a lot better than last year, though! You can roast them with your potatoes, scare a co-worker, or whatever.

Garlic – one head of our hard-won little crop of survivors that we planted last fall and left to fend for themselves throughout the harsh and hungry winter.

Parsley

Okra – a random three shareholders got a bag of okra this week! If you were one of the lucky ones, but you aren’t really sure what to do with it, here’s Kristin’s advice: “one popular way of preparing it is slicing it, tossing it with cornmeal, and frying it. I like to sautee the pods whole over high heat until they start to blacken a little, add garlic and cook for maybe another minute, then add soy sauce or salt.”

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Well, it was another storm near-miss this week, with a tornado touching down in nearby Luck (about 10 miles away). Here we had some stiff wind and a bit of rain, but didn’t feel the need to hunker down in the root cellar this time. The sun came out before the rain even ended, prompting me to declare “hey it’s rainbow weather!” and run down to the field as quickly as possible to check … and yup! A double arc over the greenhouses.

The field is coming in briskly, finally, albeit about two weeks later than usual. The corn that had been knocked over in the storm is standing tall again thanks to the efforts of our squad of summer WWOOFers, who individually staked them back up.

An extremely persistent doe that has learned how to jump our fence and dine on the smorgasbord of crops … she’d munched hundreds of sweet peas, Swiss chard plants, etc – but she really crossed a line with Farm Boss Kristin when she started methodically devouring the edamame.

We have applied for and received a agricultural damage deer hunting permit – if Evil Bambi doesn’t take the hints we are dropping in the form of mannequins, extra fence lines, screaming arm-waving sprinting WWOOFers, wire barriers, shock baits, etc, then we will soon be eating the yields of the field in the form of venison …

In the Box:

• Carrots & Greens – the greens make great soup stock! Or you can make pesto, sautee or blanch them to make delicious greens, or try this chimichurri recipe perhaps.
• Cucumbers

• Zucchini – we have been doing everything with zukes this week; zoodles, fritters, bread, pancakes, galette filling, and slicing and browning them in butter! (tried making zuke chips too but took them out of the solar dehydrator too soon … )

Here are some other ideas you might enjoy:

https://static.nytimes.com/email-content/CK_15619.html?campaign_id=58&instance_id=11212&segment_id=15619&user_id=c4c490fed0cdb0bfe26799dba00189d6&regi_id=93526706&nl=cooking&emc=edit_ck_20190727

• Beans – three kinds of magic beans with which giants’ kingdoms may be accessed, or just eat the things let’s be real
• Cabbage or Okra – two lucky boxes got okra, the rest of ya’ll get the first cabbages of the season.
• Broccoli – various kinds of this tasty edible flower
• Kale – Red Russian & Curly Blue varieties
• Basil – Mammoth Italian

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Well, we finally got a real good soaking rain on Friday night! 3.2 inches of it, actually! But the rain wasn’t the star of the show…

Friday morning I saw that we were in the heart of the severe weather bullseye drawn by the national weather service.

Normally, I am rooting for a storm to hit us, as we often need the rain and I love the energy of a good storm. But this didn’t sound like a good storm at all; this was one I’d feel better about missing out on.

Having a baby and a high tunnel have both made me a little less of a cheerleader for team Stormbringer, it seems. It was oppressively hot and swelteringly humid, so the promised temperature drop of nearly twenty degrees sounded heavenly – but such a drastic relief would come at what cost?

So I spent the day rather compulsively checking the radar with my phone, watching little blobs of storms flare up to our west, and then dissipate or simply miss us. Toward evening, a large blood red system marched eastward past Saint Cloud, heading generally in our direction – but on a course to miss us to the North.

But as I watched (updating a new frame every five minutes), an angry red arm stretched southward from the main storm and began to thicken. The arm clenched a knobby fist, flexing its muscles menacingly as it swung across Minnesota toward us.

The greenhouses were open, plants in trays outside, a shade canopy over the processing area tables, and all of us occupying various lightweight shelters anchored to the ground only by the grace of gravity. As I stood up to go consult with Farm Boss, my phone sounded an alert – and said a storm was approaching with 80 mph winds and golf ball sized hail.

On the radar, the storm’s angry arm unclenched one finger of the fist hurtling our way, and gave me the bird.

Within minutes, we had alerted everyone and gotten the hatches, such as they are, battened down. Greenhouse doors and vents descended rapidly as the western sky darkened and curdled and flashed, and the trees nervously clenched their toes into the sandy soil. 5 adults, one baby, two dogs, and a cat gathered at the mouth of the root cellar – our private concrete cave, refreshingly cool. Kristin took advantage of the opportunity to organize the canned goods, Ace happily sprawled out on the cool sandy floor, Widget found security beneath a shelf. the kitty snuggled into its carrying backpack, and the rest of us sat in the truck topper-roofed atrium watching the pummeling rain blast through the whipping tree branches.

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I had a knife at hand in case I heard the high tunnel flapping loose – I’d cut the plastic free if needed to save the frame. The sky was green and sounded like an engine, but the fist never really struck. When the worst had past, we took stock – structures all intact, no major trees down! The corn rows were smashed almost flat, sunflowers had toppled onto various crops, the peppers and bean plants were tipped over and violently tousled.

Over the following minutes and days we got a sense of what we’d been spared – miles of blasting wind damage across the state, marked by downed power lines and shattered tree trunks.

“widespread straight line winds raked across northern Polk County. Most of the damage was to trees, although some light structural damage was also noted. Trees fell toward the east southeast, which is consistent with the strong west northwest wind. Maximum wind was estimated at 90 mph given the tree damage and a measured gust of 84 mph in Cushing, WI (Polk County.) The same weather station measured a sustained 73 mph wind for 5 minutes.”

In other news, we went foraging a bit and made a delicious cake with the blackberries and raspberries we found.

And upon investigating a strange metallic chewing sound, I made friends with a flying squirrel that had been gnawing the grease off the grill.

https://weather.com/storms/severe/news/2019-07-19-severe-outbreak-upper-midwest-forecast

In the Box

Zucchini 

Pea Tips – Turn a boring limp salad all fancy and delicious, or add to a sandwich for a good time.

Cucumbers –

Onions – we left the skin on so you can store them if you want, in a cool dry spot

Beans – beans beans and beans, three colors of em!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.thekitchn.com/10-ways-to-turn-a-bag-of-fresh-green-beans-into-dinner-246257

Basil – basil basil and basil, three kinds of it. (Lemon, Mammoth Italian, & Purple) . Clip the stem ends and do the water in a vase on the counter thing.

A recipe for basil AND beans:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/recipes/chopped-string-beans-basil-and-pine-nuts/16241/?utm_term=.e116f6fbab61

Beets – beets beets and beets – three colors of them

Radish pods – “Pop the pods off the stem and enjoy their zippy flavor in a salad or on a sandwich. They will lose their heat if cooked but you could stir fry them.” – Kristin

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Summertime summertime some some summertime …

This week saw more fall crops transplanted out into the field, more insect enemies of the people destroyed, more weedy weeds weeded. We got a couple rejoiceable rounds of rain, plenty of sunshine, and a bit more humidity than we’d really prefer. But hey! Summer!

Probably the most noteworthy event this week is also pretty gross. So you might want to just skip down to the Box section.

You’re still here? OK then. Have you ever heard of fish emulsion? It’s an organic fertilizer made from the carcasses of dead fish. Plants LOVE it – which is why Native Americans would bury dead fish next to their corn crops. Well, we got a tip that someone in nearby Saint Croix Falls was giving away 55 gallon drums of organic fish emulsion – and for years, we’ve been hoping to start using liquid fertilizer to feed nutrient-hungry crops through our drip irrigation lines. But it’s not easy to find locally and expensive as hell to ship. So we pounced on the opportunity, and within a few hours I was on the road to pick it up with our friend Steffan (Kristin stayed back to go to the township meeting where the citizens planned to speak out against a proposed mega pig-farm that’s been menacing our area).

The good news was that we timed it to arrive at the same time as another farmer was picking up a massive vat of the stuff – he brought a skid steer loader, which he was willing to use to load up our little trailer with three of the ~500 lb barrels.

The bad news was that the plastic lids had degraded and broken in the sun over the three years they’d sat out – and they sloshed EVERYWHERE as we rocked them into position in the trailer. On our feet, our legs, our hands, all over the trailer – and at one point, a wave spewed up and out, forming a fist that punched Steffan in the mouth.

And I haven’t mentioned yet …. this stuff was the grossest smelling stank that we’d ever smelled – and we’re both veterans of exploring sewer tunnels, if that tells you anything. Don’t even try to imagine what three year old slurried carp carcass juice smell like. It’s amazingly pungently horrid, and the smell stains anything it touches.

Then once we finally got them loaded and hit the road, a spotted deer fawn darted out in the wet road ahead of us …I slammed on the brakes, squealed down to a crawl that just missed the baby deer – as thousands of pounds of fish goo barrels slid forward and sloshed a wave of stench at the van.

We stink, the van stinks, the air around the field stinks, and the trailer will never not stink again. It was epically gross and hilarious and a memory that will linger much as the smell of the fish emulsion does … now we just have to figure out how to get the barrels out of the trailer, and how to filter and inject the stuff into our irrigation lines. It should be … interesting.

These are the things we do to grow for you! :)

BOX FIVE:

Red Onions

Peas – Snow & Sugar Snap

Zucchini – three color varieties

Radishes – French Breakfast

Kohlrabi / or Cucumbers / or Okra – we didn’t have enough kohlrabi for everyone, due to a combination of an epic cutworm boom this spring, and that June frost we had. So some of you get the first of the cucumbers instead – and the Goat Farmers get okra. We have a second round of kohlrabi coming for the late season though!

Thai Basil

Kale –  Curly Blue, Red Russian, & Tuscan

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