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This week I had to go to the hospital to have a beetle removed from my inner ear. It crawled in while I was asleep, although that didn’t last once it started trying to ake its way through my ear drum … tweezers were useless, flushing it just drove it in further, and our baby’s “Nose Frida” couldn’t suck it out. Fortunately, I was able to kill it with a shot of rubbing alcohol, leaving me to go back to sleep with the strange sensation of ear-fullness, until the doctor’s office opened up in the morning. Pro-tip: do not let a beetle crawl into your ear.

In more relevant news, the traditional ridiculous dry spell has mostly continued, as big fat rainy clouds approached on the radar over and over, only to dissolve or split in highly unlikely ways just before reaching the farm. We are trying to be used to this, but it still chafes, especially when everyone else around is upset about having too much rain. Fortunately, a bit finally snuck through on Sunday, and we got a much-needed 2/5 of an inch to keep things green.

Things are starting to really come up now – tomatoes look nice, squash are gaining steam, and we should have snap peas for the boxes next week.

We went to the farmer’s market for the first time this year – if you’re ever in the mood for a trip to see Franconia Sculpture Garden or Interstate Park some Saturday, come say hi! We’re there from 10-1:00 slinging veggies and canned goods.

Thanks to Dedrick for coming out to help with today’s harvest!

Box 2:

• Freshly Stone-Ground Corn Meal

• We grew this last year, and hung it to dry all winter in our shipping container. Yesterday we shucked the cobs, and then finely ground it all – making ideal cornmeal for cornbread (you don’t even need to add sugar if you use more flavorful fresh ground corn).
• Salad Mix – green & red lettuces, mizuna, arugula, pea tips
• Green Onions – Both the tops and bottoms are edible. Not to be confused with:
• Green Garlic, which looks like this below. The bulbs can be used like you normally would garlic cloves.

• Bekana – closer to full-grown size leaves this week, this Asian green would be tasty with orange sesame dressing. You can also sautee it – the leafy part will cook down a lot, but the crunchy stems will tastily endure,

• Radishes – French Breakfast & Plum Purple varieties

• cut the greens off so the roots stay fresh longer. If you don’t love lots of raw radish, they are wonderful and milder when sauteed or roasted!

Have a lovely week, and eat yer veggies!

And here we go again – another season kicks off in earnest today! We will also start going to the farmer’s market now every Saturday morning in Saint Croix Falls – if you’re in the area, stop by and say hello.

I seem to have forgotten how to write these things. Words? Words. Words!

Well, let see. Since we last sent out a communiqué, we’ve been focused on preparing the field for the season. Transplanting, seeding, tomato trellising, weeding, war with quack grass, fencing.

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Last year, with the new baby and the c-section recovery, the weeds got ahead of us and we spent the rest of the year struggling to not drown in their shadowy tendrils. We were damned determined not to let that happen again, and put all our efforts into a successful mission to cover all possible bare ground covered in some form of mulch.

The cool season crops – salad, broccoli, potatoes, radishes, turnips etc – are nestled into thick blankets of hay, which retains precious, tenuous soil moisture as well as prevents most weeds from sprouting.

The hot weather crops that will be harvested later in the summer mostly went into black landscape fabric, which suppresses the incredible weed seed bank and warms the soil beneath, making heat-loving plant roots happy.

This tactic turned out to be an unexpected lifesaver this year. We had a surprise frost in the middle of June, a month past the official USDA “Last Frost Date” for our region – the field got down to 32 degrees overnight, which would normally wreck havoc with crucial crops such as tomatoes, melons, zucchini, and peppers. And this frost was bad enough to damage and kill plenty of even cool weather crops like kohlrabi, potatoes, and cabbage.

However, the hot plants managed to survive, oftentimes undamaged. The preceding day had been nice and sunny – and in the light, the black fabric warmed up the soil around them – which then slowly flowed up and out through the planting holes over the course of the chilly night, preventing catastrophe.

Hay, that’s a happy ending, so I’ll stop there and turn it over to:

The Weekly Box:

Spring Salad Mix –  we hydrocooled and dried it, but recommend a final wash before serving to remove residual soil.

• Lettuce (green and smidge of red – for some reason it refused to grow much this spring!) 
• Bekana – an Asian green – if bok choi and Napa had a baby, this would be it.
• Pea tips –  the usual type, plus a new fancy frilled variety
• Arugula 
• Mizuna

Lambs quarter 

Consider this wild harvested ;). This delicious weed is in the same family as spinach, quinoa, and beets and a nutritional super green. We snack on raw leaves, but if I’m using a lot in a meal I usually cook it – probably would be your best bet. It can substitute for spinach in recipes (curry, quiche, gratin etc.). Note: you may notice a sort of whiteish powder on the leaves – this is natural to the plant, and nothing to worry about (we did rinse and spin them dry)

French Breakfast & Lady Slipper Radishes & Greens

Lately we’ve been slicing plenty of radishes up onto our salads (leafy and egg), soups, and sandwiches. The greens aren’t good raw, but are delicious wilted/sauteed. And this is probably a good time to inject this:

The basic pesto guide:

A lot of herbs and greens (including radish greens, lambs quarter and scallions!) make great pesto:

• 2 cups packed herbs/greens
• 1/2 cup grated hard cheese
• 1/3 cup toasted nuts/seeds
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup oil
• Salt to taste

Green onions aka Scallions

Chive blossoms 

Kristin recommends infusing vinegar, snipping them into salads, or tempura-ing them. Read other idears heres.

Apple Preserves (either Apple Pie in a Jar, Brandied Apples, or Cinnamon Fireball Apples)

Some sweet canned goodness from last Fall’s apple boom – harvested from friends all around the area. (This year, we will be getting a ton of local apples from a friend in exchange for gopher trapping services!) We’ll happily reuse the jar if you return it with your box

More Pics For You

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The first box delivery is a month and a half away!(?(!))

With our short growing season, our main work throughout April was of course planting in the greenhouses – we start seedlings in small blocks of soil, which are later either transplanted directly into the ground, or into somewhat larger blocks of soil, which are later transplanted into the ground.

The sunlight keeps the greenhouse toasty during the daytime, and before the freezing nights, we fire up our rocket mass heater for 30 minutes to an hour. This charges up the huge clay bench that runs the length of the greenhouse with heat that is slowly and inexorably released over several hours, warming the trays of seedlings – from beneath, which keeps their forming roots especially happy.

We also planted green garlic, onions, our salad mix components, and snow & sugar snap peas in the field, wilted the rising army of early weeds with a propane torch, and set up the electric deer fence for the season – it’s not tall, but the 3-D structure is designed to confuse deer with their poor depth perception, making them hesitant to try to jump it.

We had a WWOOFer come help for a few days, but for the most part it’s just been us, settling into the land and the rhythms of Spring, which seem increasingly familiar now, on our 5th year living here. Productivity is of course lessened by our happily-mobile 1 year-old, but we’re figuring out how to best work and play with him full time – for many tasks, Kristin works solo, enjoying solitude and podcasts, as well as the freedom to think through projects without the pressure or complications of help, while I entertain Otis, keeping his voracious appetite for new experiences sated.

It’s a good life.

We were happy to live it ourselves, but it’s even better to share it with a shiny new consciousness. And we’re grateful that you’re here eating the bounty we create with our lives.

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Here’s to a a bountiful & beautiful season for us all!

Wow.

This year sure shot past fast, considering how many eternities and infinities were crammed into every day and week of it.

It’s a good time for it to come to a close; there is a ton to do around the farm to prepare for our first winter with the baby, plus all the field and greenhouse clean-up, party preparation, and heck, maybe we can even find the time to get the bread oven built somehow.

And it’s been so, so gloomy, I love the Sun. I am not a fan of long periods of gray, even though the monochromatic gloom of the sky provides a beautiful backdrop to the fiery autumn maple leaves.

Anyway, yeah. It’s been a heck of a year. From the late-departing Winter that leaped straight into a blazing, humid droughty Summer to the early frosts and the chilly damp of this sunless purgatory, the weather has been an ongoing challenge.

While we did the dance of the first-time parents, our produce productivity plummeted. The weeds staged a triumphant comeback, bursting back from the single seasonal round that they’d ever lost, the voles staged parades to celebrate our decision to try no-till another time.

Our foes, such as they are, are at least worthy ones.

And you know what?

It was a good year.

In the field, the strong and the serendipitous survived, abiding along to the always-implied strains of “Que Sera, Sera.”  It didn’t really feel stressful. In fact, I think it seemed less stressful than any other year, really.  Sure, we made a lot less money, and The To-Do List got longer rather than shorter.

But it was worth it. It was a season where our major crop wasn’t a vegetable, and the major construction project wasn’t a guest shack, or greenhouse, or a root cellar.

It was the year that we let the farming and the homestead slide into the background ever so slightly, and let them work for us, a bit more on their own. They carried us through: the habits, foundations, mechanisms, and momentum we’ve scraped together in the half a decade we’ve been learning how to live on the Farm.

And this allowed us to grow our Otis as our primary focus, making it possible for him to sink nourishing roots, to rise into the light – with the living farm and forest his ecosystem.

We three grew a lot this year.

Season Six is already, even mere days later, lit by a magical glow in my memory.

And wow, am I excited for what’s to come.

 

 

Box 18

Baby Sweet Potato – As in, a baby-sized sweet potato. We haven’t given these out before, because there is a rather long curing process to develop the sugars and the potatoes aren’t ready to be dug until late in the year. They are not particularly sweet, but they are tasty! They cooked up quicker than I expected, possibly because of their freshness. Try making home fries, sweet potato hash browns, or maybe frying or grilling slices of them. I find that coconut oil compliments them nicely.

Butternut squash – These work well for soup and baked goods (it would substitute well in any pumpkin recipe) because they are moist. I also like them because they are easy to peel, so they can be cubed or grated. Nothing wrong with just baking them up in the oven either.

Brussels sprouts – People were enthusiastic about these in last week’s box, so here they are again! These ones are more normal-sized.

Cabbage – the critters love them too.

Leeks

Kohlrabi – I expected these to be bigger but it seems that they are just maintaining. Has anyone noticed how cloudy and cool it has been???

Potatoes

4 Varieties of Kale – I like kale in squash soup. Neighbor Marcia recommends kale with cubed sweet potatoes.

Sage – works well with squash and potatoes and in hearty winter stews. Dries well for later use too.