Thank you Andy!! and other news.

BABY LETTUCE MIX ~ GREEN, YELLOW, PURPLE OR "DRAGON TONGUE" BEANS ~ SUMMER SQUASH/ZUCCHINI ~ CUCUMBERS ~ CABBAGE ~ BASIL ~ SCALLIONS ~ CARROT BUNCHES ~ GARLIC ~TOMATOES ~ and (big bunches of) CILANTRO

This is what Belfast members on Friday, the 21st of August will receive in their weekly share. A bit different than this past Tuesday's Farm members, but such is the nature of weather and crop readiness. Big bunches of cilantro for all. . .Click here to see my cilantro pesto "recipe," or should we call it cilantro pesto "guidance". . . from an earlier blog posting. It shows up on our lunch table at least once a week. Great on bread or with rice and beans, Indian curries, chicken, fish, or as a fresh topper for almost any grilled thing. YUM!

This is Amanda digging garlic at with farm member, Judy. Thanks to Gail Chase for sending along some pictures from last week's work party and potluck. We had such a nice timeat the farm potluck!!! Thank you to those of you who came out and brought delicious foods to share. We will host another farm gathering on October 6th at 5p.m., so mark you calendars now.

This week of hot weather has felt like July to all of us and so it is causing some confusion that late August is actually where we are at, calendar-wise. This not only means that we will not taste fresh peas until next year but also that it is back to school time for our farm intern, Andy Smith. He returns to his Biology major and other studies at Colby College in a few weeks after heading south to his homeland of Pennsylvania for a vivit with family. To say we have enjoyed having Andy here is way too much of an understatement but we don't want to embarrass him by gushing about what a great guy he is. Intelligent, thoughtful, hard-working and driven. . .funny and kind. . .are a few words that come to mind. A HUMONGOUS Thank You to Andy for spending his summer with our farm and family, for teaching and inspiring us, and for allowing us to teach him what we know about this art-science-gamble called "farming."

Here is Andy, back in July. . . wiped out after planting corn???

Our farm kitchen was a busy beehive of activity last week with lots of preserving the harvest going on. Frozen green beans and peaches, dill pickles, blueberry jam, strawberry-blueberry jam and strawberry-raspberry jam were all put up in one way or another. Benny decided all things needed labels, so at one point, Abel, Mama, Ben, Daddy and Joseph all sported canning jar stickers with our names printed on them. Ben stuck Abe's right on his bare chest! (I got a picture of this, but due to techinical difficulties, I can't upload them right now.)

Here is a sunflower picture from Gail. More flowers at distributions in the weeks to come. . .

And one more beauty of a beauty of a pig. I love this photo.

For now, that is the news from here.

All the best,

Polly and all at Village Farm

You Say Tomato. . . .

Week of August 10th

Tomatoes ~ Yellow Beans and Green Beans ~ Vitamin Greens or Hon Tsai Tai ~ Cabbage ~ Cucumbers ~ Fresh Garlic ~ Lettuce ~ Summer Squash and/or Zucchini ~ Cilantro or Dill or Sage ~ Basil

(Sorry, no new pictures at the moment. I am not able to download the camera for some reason.)

Vegetable notes: Tomatoes are beginning to ripen in the hoophouse and everyone receives them this week. We should continue to have them weekly for you into September. This variety is Early girl and I will try to let you know of other varieties coming ripe as we distribute them. In the spirit of full disclosure, we have been spraying our tomatoes and potatoes weekly for the last three weeks with an organically allowed Copper hydroxide fungicide (Champ WG is its name). But don't be fooled, just because it is allowed under organic certification, doesn't mean it is benign or harmless. We "hummed and hawed" over this decision and put it off for a few weeks but eventually realized that the late blight spore, rampant in the Northeast this summer, was going to reach Village Farm. Our intern, Andy, was among the first to report it in the state. He found it in the Community Garden of Waterville and soon after that at the Colby vegetable garden he oversees (in his spare time). We have found one bit of it in the hoophouse tomatoes and because of its ability to rapidly spread (its spores love the moist conditions this summer), we feel that the copper applications have protected our crops well. Copper can build up in soil with longterm use, though most Maine soils are Copper deficient. It should not be ingested, of course. The "Pros and Cons" have been the topic of many a lunchtime discussion here. . . we all seem to have come to the realization that if you eat a potato or tomato at all this summer, fall or winter that has been grown in the Northeast, it WILL have been sprayed with some form of copper (either organically allowed or a conventional copper fungicide). Yes, we could have not sprayed and kissed our potatoes and tomatoes goodbye but we were not willing to do that this year. If the late blight becomes an annual issue, we will have to reevaluate.

You should know that we have washed all the fruits in a vinegar and water solution but an extra wash in your kitchen is advised.

I highly recommend reading this article in Saturday's New York Times called cleverly, of course, "You Say Tomato, I Say Agricultural Disaster." The author's main point that when it comes to airborne diseases like late blight, gardeners and farmers and big box retailers and anyone handling plant hosts all comprise "one big farm" is a welcome example of the interconnectness of all life. Have a look, it is a great article.

Well, that was a lot about tomatoes! This week's harvest also includes beans of four colors (though until we pick them it is hard to say which colors you will actually get): green, yellow, purple (which fade to green when cooked) and Dragon's Tongue, a beautiful flat bean with magenta streaking (also fades when cooked).

The Vitamin Greens or Hon Tsai Tai are a members of the vitamin-rich broccoli and cabbage family and can be stir-fried alone or added to your favorite other vegetables. We tend to cook them with garlic and oil and then sprinkle them with tamari/soy sauce. They are great stri-fried and tossed in with pasta, also. These freeze extremely well and can be either blanched (instructions below) or simply chopped and bagged up. They add greenery and vitamins to a winter soup so nicely.

I admit that I often cook without recipes and also in answer to a craving. I guess this "sushi salad" is doing something for me becasue I have made it three(?) times in the last week. "Sushi Deconstructed," as a friend called it. Here is the idea: Sticky rice, cooked and cooled. Add raw chopped carrots, scallions (or chives), chopped, raw snow peas, and chopped raw cucumber. Dress with tamari and a bit of vegetable or toasted sesame oil and sprinkle on toasted sesame seeds and chopped fresh cilantro. I whisk up three eggs and pour this into a buttered pan, flip it and cut this omelette-without-the-cheese into strips and serve it on top of the salad. You can also serve with a drizzle of watery wasabi paste and torn up nori seaweed, if you want, but it is good without these.

A note about freezing vegetables: We freeze a lot of vegetables without much of a fuss, so if you find yourself overrun with vegetables, consider putting some by for later use. I use the book "Putting Food By" for all my canning and freezing guidelines but briefly, here's how to freeze a few vegetables. (As always, we welcome your questions. . .) And if you would ever like to purchase a great quantity of some herb or vegetable for processing, we give all CSA families wholesale prices. Just contact us at villagefarm@fairpoint.net or call us.

• First, always freeze FRESH, clean, unblemished vegetables, not icky ones that have been around for too long.
• Beans: Remove stems and leave whole or snip into 1" pieces. Boil in a pot of water for 2 minutes ONLY and then remove from the pot with a strainer and dunk into very cold water to cool them quickly. Drain and bag in pint or quart ziplocks, squeeze out the air, label and freeze.
• Greens (Spinach, chard, kale, collards, escarole, vitamin greens, etc) Wash greens and remove big tough stems, tender ones are fine to just chop up with the greens. Boil a big pot of water and boil greens for 1 1/2-3 minutes. 1 1/2 for tender oens like spinach, vitamin greens and chard, and 3 for thicker ones like collards. Drain and cool immediately in very cold water. Drain and squeeze out some water then bag in ziplocks, squeeze out the air, label and freeze.
• Zucchini and summer squash, peppers and tomatoes do not require blanching in boiling water. Just shred (zucchini and ss), or chop (peps and tomatoes) and bag, label and freeze.
• All of these should last one year in the freezer.

The farm crew is off at Stoneset Farm of Brooklin for the day. Raking and winnowing wild, lowbush, organically certified blueberries! We will have berries for those of you who ordered some and some extras for sale this week at the Tuesday farm distribution/potluck. If you want to get some for the freezer directly from Clara and Nathan Rutenbeck, email them at stonesetfarm@gmail.com

We had a great turn out for the workday on Saturday and I am glad to report that all the year's garlic was dug and tied in bundles--ready to hang. It is now hanging in the pole barn where it will cure for three weeks. The crop looks outstanding, you can look forward to some lovely garlic in the weeks ahead. Thanks very much to everyone who helped out on Saturday!!!

This is Chris laying out garlic that is ready to be tied up. Picture by Bliss Weathers. (thanks!)

And lastly, please come on out to the farm Tuesday at 5p.m. , August 11th for our first potluck of the season. Taste the first tomatoes, see the gardens, animals, curing garlic, new eggmobile, etc. Visit with the farm crew and other CSA members . . .it will be a very good time--GUARANTEED!

Whoa--thanks for reading all that!!

And enjoy the week and the food !

Polly

Fresh vegetables and new tricks

CABBAGE ~BROCCOLI~ FRESH GARLIC ~ "RED RUSSIAN", "LACINATO" OR "WINTERBOR" KALE ~ LETTUCE ~ SNOW PEAS ~ SCALLIONS ~ ZUCCHINI/SUMMER SQUASH ~ DILL ~ PARSLEY

Hello to one and all. This week's harvest includes things you have seen before. Folks at Tuesday's farm pick up liked seeing all three varieties of kale offered. The blistery, dark green variety is the Lacinato, an Italian favorite. Delicious and fresh, but no surprises, this week.

We were hoping to have cucumbers and beans but alas, they are taking their sweet time. Next week you will definitely receive cukes and fennel (we will see about beans. . .). Fennel is a pungent but mild vegetable that has the delicious flavor of licorice. I love a fresh tomato and fennel sauce over pasta but since the tomatoes are still ripening, the fennel will have to find another way to our plates. The Belfast Coop has been serving a "shaved fennel and citrus salad " in their deli case which is yummy. Here is a link to a recipe that seems close. I also linked to a really great piece from the NYT on our "Resources" page called 101 salads, basically recipe-less combinations of vegetables for this season. Some very good inspiration!

I never did make that Mediterranean Stuffed Escarole--we have enjoyed escarole (in case you have one lurking in your fridge) sauteed for 10 minutes with some garlic added at the end. Gail Chase enjoys putting it in soups and Diana Avella was so excited, she took two! I will ask her how she made it. I am afraid some CSA members may have mistaken it for lettuce. Uh oh. It is soooo bitter if you tasted it raw, but cooked well, the bitterness subsides and the flavor is delicious. You may see that large green head again in a few weeks.

Pad Thai for lunch today: chock full of scallions, snow peas and cilantro. Laura made chinese cabbage and sesame seed slaw along with a potato salad for lunch yesterday. Looking forward to our first tomato sandwich of the season.

The tomatoes in the hoophouse are ripening and the first red one was plucked from the 8 foot tall vines today! Once again, we may have to take Benny out of the state for a few days for anyone else to ever get a ripe Sungold cherry tomato. That boy finds every one. Last year he called them "num nums" and this year they are "little 'matos." There looks to be a bountiful crop of tomatoes of all shades coming on.

A first for us last week: Impromtu picnic on a horse wagon. Neighbors and friends, Neil and Gwyneth and their two boys and two mares showed up in our barnyard and one thing led to another and we found ourselves enjoying an evening picnic on the wagon.

The other new trick: Abel smiles. They are making everyone giggly. Both boys ask "Got any smiles in there?" many, many times each day.















And the last new trick: Prentice taking pig videos. There are more where that came from if you like the "pig cam." By the way, pork is all sold out for the year but we do have pasture raised chickens for sale from the freezer and fresh again in a few weeks.

One last thing: Special Vegetable Action Team a.k.a. Work Party on Saturday, August 8th from 8-11 with a lunch provided. Join us for a fun morning of work in the gardens. It really is a good time and we get a LOT done!

Also, the first Farm Potluck and garden walk: Tuesday, August 11th 5 p.m. with an all-important Tomato Tasting!!!! We will lay out a veritable rainbow of tomato slices and provide slips of paper for comments. You bring the poetry.

That is all for now.

Hope you all are enjoying the vegetables and as always, be in touch with questions any time.

Polly, for all of us at Village Farm

P.S. Flower bouquets coming soon!

Weeks 5 and 6

Greetings from Village Farm.

Thanks to those of you who made it out to the farm on July 11th for the work party. The second batch of corn transplants got planted and so let's hope for a nice long fall to make up for the lack of early summer. The two images above were both taken by "Amma" Sally, Prentice's mother and give you a look at some of the scenes from that day. Next work party is August 8th, from 8-11 a.m. Join us if you can!!

Also, the first of two Farm Potluck dinners will happen on August 11th. 5p.m. garden walk then we eat. We are fond of taste tests around here, so we are planning a tomato tasting, complete with comment cards and crowning of Best Tasting Tomato.

Last week everyone received a very odd and beautiful vegetable called a KOHLRABI which was purple with green leaves attached to it. It is a member of the brassica family, a cousin to broccoli, and if it is still floating around in you fridge, dig it out--it is delicious!! The leaves are edible and resemble kale and the "orb" can be peeled and eated raw with hummus or dip, peeled and shredded into any slaw or salad or sauteed in a vegetable stir fry. I have heard its flavor described as a cross between an apple and a turnip.

Most people got broccoli last week and every one got edible podded snap peas.

Likely to be in your share this week: (it is hard to know exactly until harvest day, but we try to guess, anyways!)

ESCAROLE ~ LETTUCE ~ NEW POTATOES ~ CHIVES ~ DILL ~ HAKUREI TURNIPS ~ SHELLING PEAS ~FIRST SUMMER SQUASH AND ZUCCHINI ~ RAINBOW CHARD

I looked up escarole on http://www.epicurious.com/ and my mouth was watering. There are many delicious sounding recipes on there, many Quite simple. I am going to make the Mediterranean Rice Stuffed Escarole for farm lunch today and will let you know how it is. Last year, our first with this crop, we just would sautee it until tender(10-15 minutes) in oil and with garlic or an onion and serve it as a cooked green. It appears from the recipes on epicurious.com that it pairs well with Parmesan cheese and sausage and can be used in soups and raw in salads.

The new potatoes are a farm favorite. We pan roasted a big mess of them the other day in a thick pan, with Albion grown and processed sunflower oil (more on that later!) on high heat, swirling them around so they got browned, then covering the pan and turning it down for 5 -10 minutes. Salt and pepper. So moist and sweet. They make a great potato salad, as well.

Shelling peas. This is the last of the shell peas, so grab a chair, take those shells off and steam them up for the quintessential New England treat. My mother always served new potatoes and peas bathed in a butter and cream sauce. Wow.

COMING SOON: Cauliflower, cukes and zukes, snow peas.

Farm news:

We have been extra busy around here with all the sunshine making many more things possible.

The farm crew spends most mornings picking and washing for our wholesale customers and for the CSA families and then they switch gears to vegetalbe maintenance mode and work on such tasks as thinning carrots, cultivating crops with tractor or hoes, mulching or transplanting. Peas are in, so most days they are filling buckets with snows, snaps or shell peas. We have seeded our last lettuce, scallions and brassicas (broccoli family) in the greenhouse where they will grow in plug trays until they are big enough to transplant in to the garden soils. I think I heard someone say "that's sad" when Prentice pointed out our last transplants for the year.

This is the "egg mobile" FINISHED! It has been homesweethome to the flock of 60+ hens and one rooster for a few weeks. Before the move in day, Prentice and I seriously thought of parking it down by Freedom Pond and using it as a lakeside cabin. It is that nice. But now it has been broken in, and is truly a chicken coop. The Rhode Island Red pullets (young females) have just started to lay so watch for more Village Farm organic eggs at pick ups soon! Thanks to Tony Grassi, Prentice's father, for all his help from stripping the rotted trailer bed off to putting on final touches like the doors and chicken ladders.

We also used up lots of leftover paint colors from neighbors Geoff and Abby--thank you so much!

Also, CSA member and top-notch neighbor, Paul Foisy who is a metalworker extraordinaire, put in time at the welding torch installing the "deck" that holds the grain bin and watering contraptions.

That is all for now. Best wishes for a great week.

Polly

Sunshine!

July 10th, 2009

We hope to see many of you on the farm tomorrow from 8-11 for a Work Party. Bring your hand tools and hoes, we hope to form a formation of weeders! Farm tour and lunch from 11-1230. Come for any or all of it!!

Here is what is ready this week:

NAPA CHINESE CABBAGE~ HAKEREI TURNIPS~CARROTS~BROCCOLI~SHELLING PEAS~SNOW PEAS~ROMAINE LETTUCE~BEET GREENS~PARSLEY~ DILL~ CILANTRO~GARLIC SCAPES

Another gigantic chinese cabbage for your stir frying pleasure. The turnips are best enjoyed raw, grated or diced into salad or served with hummus or dip. They are crispy and yummy! We have expanded our color palette in carrots this year to include pale yellow and purple roots. We think the flavor is just as good as the traditional orange. We grow three types of peas: shell, snap and snow. Shell peas need to be taken from their shells. Snap and snow are edible podded peas and can be enjoyed raw or cooked. We will most likely not have salad greens or lettuce next week. Our next planting has suffered from the wet fields and may be late in coming. Choice of herbs this week: cilantro, dill , parsley. Garlic scapes are the flower buds of garlic plants. We snip them to encourage the garlic plants to put more energy into the underground garlic bulbs. Prentice's parents chopped and sauteed theirs last week in a bit of butter and olive oil, cooking them for 5 minutes or so. Then they added a little basalmic vinegar and reduced that over the heat for a couple of minutes. Sounds like a Village Farm lunch dish today!!

Sunshine this morning on the farm. Sweet relief.
The series of pictures in this entry were taken by Prentice's mother, Sally. I know Prentice wanted to acknowledge all the family support we enjoy and are grateful for, so you may hear more from him at some point (if he ever sits down!) but for now, I will just say that this farm could not, would not, happen in its present form without the help of both of our families. Our three boys are so lucky to have four loving and involved grandparents, all within 45 minutes of Freedom. Whether it is fixing up old Tonka trucks for their sandbox, mowing our neglected lawn, hanging our laundry, documenting our farm and family with a camera, fixing us meals or playing with the children here or off the farm, our parents are what we call The Village Farm Varsity Support Team.

This is Amanda who has joined us from Indiana for the season. She is "pricking out" winter squash seedlings, removing the root balls from the trays in which they germinated. These young plants have been in the "waiting room" with thousands of others while the rains have been here.


This is our farm crew: Andy, Laura, Prentice and Amanda. Looking pretty jazzed to be wearing cotton as an outerlayer rather than a vinyl product.




Prentice is poking holes in the black plastic mulch into which the squash seedlings will be planted. We used black plastic for the first time last year. We avoided it as yet another petroleum product until our Extension Agent, Rick Kersbergen said "you use as much oil driving from here to Belfast as is in one roll of black plastic." The landfill issue isn't addressed by that fact, but we feel because strive to generate as little waste as possible, we would take the benefits of black plastic in exchange for having to throw it away.
~additional soil warmth
~weed suppression
~moisture retention

Compromises we hate to make. . .


Remember all that talk about staying out of wet gardens? Well, the winter squash garden got a little sloppy in the center. I don't know if Andy was playing in the mud or if this mess is genuine work mud. Not ideal to be in wet soils, but the seedlings had to go in. More compromises.





Now, this would have been the year to be in the frog and bog business, if there is such a thing. Joseph has a lot of frog and toad friends. Snakes and salamanders, too.

For now, that is all the news from here.

Best wishes to one and all.

Polly and all at Village Farm

WEEK 3 Another 1.5 inches of rain last night. . .

It is never good to hear the word "disaster" associated with your line of work. Reading the Bangor Daily News cover story, "Crops in Crisis" today, we were reminded that it is not just our soils that are so soggy. Indeed, open soils everywhere in the state are saturated with water and cold. And many farmers, many cropping, or trying to crop, hundreds of acres of corn, potatoes and grains, are experiencing a disaster. We have not used the "d" word here on Village Farm yet. It is not pretty out there, don't get me wrong, but we have not registered any mortalities yet.


Not only did we invest in irrigation pipe this spring, but we also purchased a vintage and very slick cultivating tractor, an Allis Chalmers G. The G was in constant use forming beds and marking rows earlier in the season but for the last few weeks has been gathering dust in the pole barn. (We do not ever drive on wet soils and try to stay out of the gardens altogether when things are so wet to avoid soil compaction. ) The hope for this tractor was to be able to cultivate (weed) whole beds and rows of crops with sweeps and baskets mounted under the tractor. Because of the wet conditions, the weeds grow but the tractor is parked. If you recall in the MEmber Handbook, we set a work party date for Saturday, July 11th. 8-11 am with a simple lunch provided. We would love as many helping hands as possible that morning to get some weeding done. We will have other projects as well that do not involve getting down in the dirt, if that is not your thing. Please join us!!

THIS WEEK'S HARVEST
Chinese Cabbage (chop it fine for a fresh slaw or lightly cook it in a stir fry)

Young carrots

Radishes

Lettuce

Snap (edible podded) peas (delicious raw or lightly steamed or stir fried)

Broccoli

Beet greens

Garlic scapes

Salad greens

Cheers!

~Polly

WEEK 2: Weathering the weather.

Rain is certainly the name of the game around here. The cows and pigs do not seem to be phased at all. The chickens are growing and grazing just fine. But the farmers. . . soggy and dripping with one eye always to the sky. . . . would welcome some high and dry weather. A silver lining to this weather business. . . little did we know when we agreed to work with Andy for the summer that he would be our own personal meteorologist. As a youngster, Andy had his own website where he compiled radar images and his knowledge and pumped out his own forecasts. We have learned that this last slug of rain and wet is called a "cut-off low" and that there is no real end in sight.
We are trying to not stress about the waterlogged soils and our succession plantings getting pushed back. We schedule all of our seedings in the winter months and follow a strict calendar to make sure we always have greens, baby lettuce, cilantro and young carrots coming along. When we can't prepare soil to seed these crops, our schedule gets messed up. This means, for us and for you, that there will be some gaps in the supply of salad mix and beans and perhaps other direct seeded crops.
"You can't change the weather" is what I keep reminding myself. Prentice related an anecdote from a Canadian grain farmer this morning and it is something like this: "10% of stress is from the event/situation itself and 90% is from our reaction to it." This rings true to us, so we are trying to think creatively, work on other projects, hope for a brilliant high pressure system to blast through, and/or divine intervention. (And we are trying to not stress out.)

This little farmer doesn't mind the rain a bit. He has been sighted recently in the baby carrier visiting the pigs, chickens, and even helping with some barnyard projects. He is catching some ZZZZs in the laundry basket; his second favorite spot -- the best place being in someone's arms.

THE WEEK'S HARVEST

Belfast members picked up beet greens bunches, lettuce heads, spinach, cilantro and scallions this week. Farm members will enjoy the same array Tuesday. We devoured a huge "mess" of beet greens for lunch the other day. Amanda scored the biggest beet roots with a knife (helping them cook faster) then steamed the greens and roots whole for 10 minutes. We like lemon juice on top or butter and salt and pepper. Laura recommends honey mustard, which will be our next taste test.

NEXT WEEK

Snap peas are ready to harvest.
as are a rainbow of radishes.
Baby carrots are already being picked by the two big Grassi boys
Chinese Cabbage for fresh slaw or for stir frying
More herbs and scallions
Salad greens/lettuce/spinach

As always, be in touch with questions or comments.

~Polly