CSA Week 5 and some notes

New in your share this week: green and purple beans, slicing and pickling cukes, pattypan, zukes, and yellow crookneck summer squash.  Tis the season of the cucurbitae (squash/cucumber family)!

Slicing cukes have smooth skins, and are generally longer and straighter.  Despite what they say about picking favorites (teachers, farmers, parents??) these are probably my favorite crop of the season.  I grow a variety that is distinct for their crispness, sweetness, and non-bitter, spineless skins.  

Pickling cukes are heavier duty guys that, when allowed to get large, have meatier flesh that can stand up to cooking.  At the younger stage at which they're harvested from GPF, you can treat them like any other regular cucumber.  You can tell these two apart mainly by the nature of the skins, and pickling cukes will tend to be shorter and with more girth, while the slicers are longer, sleeker, skinnier.

Here's a recipe for a cold cucumber soup adapted from the Moosewood Cookbook, my recommendation would be to put the food processor to work chopping (and don't bother skinning the slicing cucumbers as the skins are sweet and will add nice color and a vitamin boost.)

One more note: I am taking a brief vacation to the Adirondacks, and my friends Liz and Wil will be harvesting in my stead.  Thank you, Liz and Wil!

CSA Week 4

In your share this week:

Zuchinni and Pattypan summer squash

Slicing cucumbers

Swiss chard

Bunch baby shallots (red)

Bunch scallions

Garlic head

1 lb sugar snap peas

1 lb snow peas

1 bag mixed lettuce, arugula, mustard greens

1 Bunch each: dill, cilantro, thyme

 Pattypan are just like any other yellow summer squash, and are versatile-- raw, sauteed, fried, grated and baked, etc.  This variety of zucchini is my favorite, Costata Romanesca.  I find it stays extra firm and silky in texture even when it gets a little bigger.

Snow peas and sugar snap peas are tapering off as the weather stays hot and the powdery mildew moves in on the wind.  You may find they are stringier and slightly less sweet-- I'm hoping they'll make it into next week, though if they do it will be in limited quantities.

On storing summer squash-- these really store best if they are unwashed and in an open bag in the fridge.

 Sunflowers, fractals...

Buen provecho!

They just don't get better

(the days, that is) than today.  Gorgeous blue skies laced with crayon-worthy cumulus, 78 degrees and low humidity, and sun.  Wowza.

It was a great afternoon for the first big flower deadheading session, the great sacrifice/gamble for more, better, longer, later.  I hope the hummingbirds and bees will forgive me for the evening!  Monarda, rudbeckia, white sage, hydrangea, carrot flower, and lysimachia make up this bouquet.  What a nose on this grouping, and such a surprisingly austere and somewhat awkward (but beautiful) color scheme-- like something from a coat of arms or a high school mascot.

 I just adore these tightly wound rudbeckias, streaked with burgundy and potential.  They've got so much more to offer texture-wise than their less nubile selves in another day...

Burt was remarkably game for the photo shoot today...  Austerity and sophistication, indeed.

Another, this time with lavender to brighten it up.  The bouquet just made itself 25 years younger.

And, on this day of savoring sunshine, who better to turn to than Maurice Manning?  So fun to read aloud.  From Bucolics.

LXIII

my hay day Boss is every day

the wonder of it never ends

never goes away I never fail

to breathe the sun the summer season

even in the winter even

if the horse's breath is blowing blue

as smoke each time I turn the fork

each time I hear the ring of tines

each time they turn more silver Boss

I taste a long day on my tongue

it's always sweet it's always more

than just a chore I've learned a thing

or two from pitching hay one thing

about the hay it's more than kindling

in the belly of the horse's stove

the second thing beyond the hay

this time about the fork I've made

its handle shiny from my hands

around its throat so shiny now

it's like a mirror Boss it's like 

a glass in which I see your face

your burning eye about to wink

---

the Prince of Ham!

CSA Week 3

And the heat wave rolls on...  The summer crops (summer squash, cukes, beans) are just on the brink of harvest, but for now we've got more spring-type CSA offerings.

 Lettuce mix with mustard greens

 LOTS of peas, please!

 From top to bottom: Arugula, mizuna, mustard greens

Lettuces love the moisture and shade of dense plantings

In your share this week:

head of fresh garlic

bunch arugula

bag lettuce mix with mustard greens

2 lbs sugar snap peas

1+ lbs snow peas

herbs: large bunch cilantro, sage, chamomile, dill

flowers: bee balm, rudebeckia, hydrangea, onion flowers

A hoophouse shot, with sides up for ventilation.

Next on my list: cuke trellising, transplanting out more summer flowers, hilling potatoes, lots of weeding and succession planting along the way.  The neighbors came and cut the hayfield over the weekend, and our lush little microclimate of head high orchardgrass, timothy, alfalfa and clover is no longer.  Hope everyone had a happy Fourth!

CSA Week 2

Belatedly, here's a list of your produce for the week:

Radish bunch (end of the radishes for a few weeks)

Turnips (end of the turnips for a bit)

Beet greens

Sugar snap peas

Snow peas

Bunch arugula

Bag of mixed salad greens (lettuce and 2 kinds mustard greens)

Herbs: thyme, sage, cilantro

Flowers: Bee Balm, Rudbeckia (Black-eyed Susans), Hydrangea, onion flowers

DTF Gives Back Program

In looking ahead to a summer filled with big adventures (wilderness, the company of loved ones, the newness of unfamiliar trails, the miraculous production of food or music from what was just bare soil and hands, the electricity of catching fish) in small packages (backpacking overnights, dinners at home, gardens,wildflowers, creeks I've rubbernecked past daily in my commutes) I am always amazed at the rich feast of opportunity southern Vermont has to offer.

Here's one more offering: Dorset Theater Festival Giving Back Promotion.  In this program, community members (firefighters, EMS workers, farmers, teachers, etc.) receive discounted tickets to the DTF's summer series-- give a click to the above link for more information.  They've got a great lineup of shows, and it's a joy to have the chance to experience something like this poem by Lisel Mueller describes.

photo courtesy Brendan Condit

Here's to the arts, great and small, light with play or heavy with solemnity, public or private in the quietest moments of our days.  Cheers!

First CSA notes...

I'll add a link here to some recycled, hopefully helpful notes about what to expect if this is your first CSA share with Green Peak Farm.

Please don't hesitate to reach out with questions.  I'm pleased and honored to grow with you this summer, and your feedback is always welcome and appreciated.  That's what Community Supported Agriculture is all about-- a two-way exchange, and lots of questions!  Thanks for checking in.

First CSA 2012

Welcome to your first share of the year!

In your share this week:

1 lb baby turnips

1 bunch radish

1 pint sugar snap peas

1 pint snow peas

green garlic

1 bag mixed leaf lettuce 

1 bunch each cilantro, thyme, mint

 This week we have four types of lettuce: the deepest and most curly red is a Lollo Rosso, the lightest green is Black Seeded Simpson, and a Romaine type and a red/green hybrid. 

A few notes on your lettuce, and produce in general: everything from the farm has been field-washed, and despite my best efforts, you may find an occasional insect or bits of sediment in your produce.  Please be sure to give everything a good wash/rinse before you plate it up! 

Down in the field, the garden is moving right along.  Leave it to two days of ninety-degree heat, plus ample irrigation to get things pumping along.  Above, we've got winter rye acting as a windbreak and as habitat for beneficial insects.  Hay cutting is imminent, and as has happened the past several years, we go from Edenic, lush green microclimate to green garden in the middle of a parched, sere field.  This year, I hope the rye will help mitigate that situation, and we'll see if I can save the ordering in Winter Rye seed for the fall.  I've also noticed the ladybugs seem to love it, and I've yet to see anyone bad lurking on the stalks.

 Letting the cover crop grow and mature also provides grain/seed for eating (rye berries, anyone?) and a nice stalks for mulching.  The root systems are impressively compact and shallow growing, which  makes for easy removal when the time comes, and good winter weed smothering.

Interestingly, rye can act as host to the ergot fungus, which causes "ergotism" in humans and animals.  Some symptoms include hallucinatory visions (comparable to the effects of the drug LSD) and manias-- and it has been suspected that ergotism may have been a factor in the Salem witch trials.  Hmm.  Don't worry, the infection is easily detectable, and we'll keep it calm in the cereal grains department this summer.

 Plus, Burt's on ergot patrol, tough guy that he is.

 We've got shallots, a new type of Italian red onion, and good old Copras coming in strong.  Winter rye in the background

 Summertime = joy.  And, the sugar snaps are taller than I am = double joy!

 There's just something about pea flowers and their tendrils twining away that gets me and my shutterfinger every time.  Add the golden, backlit rye swaying on impossibly slender stalks in the background, layered on top of the Taconic ridge (that's Equinox and the saddle to Mother Myrick in the deepest background) and I'm sunk.

 2 types of mustard greens and arugula are in the wings

 Thyme flowering away.  I've been following Koala's lead and making lots of hummus-- simple, quick, inexpensive, filling, great for breakfast, lunch and dinner-- and dumping in the fresh herbs, which changes the character completely.  Thyme has become my "desert island" herb.  It can blend and augment other flavors, or carry its own tune with a kick, plus you've got the compound thymol to keep your respiratory system happy!  Fresh beans, olive oil, thyme = done.  Canned beans, olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice, a tiny touch of maple syrup and sage, and as much mint/thyme as possible + cuisinart = hummus among us! 

 A cuke's eye view from under the reemay floating row cover

 view south, Equinox on the right.  Notice the the visible row of peas, sugar snap and snow-- the snows come in a week earlier than the sugar snaps, despite their compact plant size.  They are less than half the height of the sugar snaps, as you can see above.

 Gotta love the soft, dry, silty-clay soil in Vermont's valley.  Today saw direct seeding of pac choi, mustard greens, yarrow, nasturtiums, cilantro, chives, scallions, gypsophilia, and more...

 Hoophouse!  This year's hoophouse is up as of Tuesday afternoon, much sturdier, straighter, and with better clearance than before.  Purlands, ridgeline, better support, check, check, and check.  Thank you, Gus, for your masterful, cheerful help!

A happy dinner concoction of turnips, snap peas, green garlic, the last of the garlic scapes, thyme, and some shredded sundried tomatoes in white wine/butter sauce over tortellini.  Yum!

I'm pleased as ever to help you enjoy a summer full of fresh, locally grown produce.   Thanks for providing me with this opportunity!