An overcrowded chicken farm produces fewer eggs

Miso zucchini

2011-07-07T22:15:00.000-04:00

Last year I was completely, utterly bombarded with zucchini. You know how they say that if you let the zucchini grow too large, the plant stops producing? Not only did the zucchini grow too large, the plants didn't stop producing until the frost killed them. Months of baseball bats. I brought some to work and received an email, "I hear that you have some weapons-grade zucchini on your desk. I would love to take one off your hands." Love.

So this year I did NOT plant ANY zucchini. In a way this is sad. I was always guaranteed a grocery bag of zucchini. But I am using the space for more winter squash, and the patty pan squash I grow is an adorable, round little yellow zucchini. But it's not, you know, ZUCCHINI, stuff of nightmares.

Still, no matter what you do, if you live anywhere near a farm or gardener you're going to end up with someone, um, "gifting" you zucchini. And I just didn't want more stirfried zucchini with garlic, or to put it into a curry. Last year I bought the cookbook Bento Boxes: Japanese Meals on the Go, which I love. The book presents a different way of cooking, combining, presentation than traditional big dish American cookbooks. I've cooked a lot with miso this year, partly due to that cookbook, so I decided to try a miso zucchini.

Miso zucchini

Serves 2

One knob of fresh ginger
Splash of sesame oil (for cooking)
2 tablespoons of miso (the paste, not the powder)
2 tablespoon of Mirin (or a sake/sugar mix)
1 tablespoon of soy sauce
1 smallish zucchini
Sesame seeds

Chop the ginger. If you like to chew on ginger, then do a rough chop. If you like the flavor but hate the texture, mince it.
Slice the zucchini into thin rounds. (Gadget alert: If you have a mandoline, this is the sort of thing you should use it for.)
Heat a fry pan on medium and add sesame oil.
When the oil is hot, add the ginger.
When the ginger has cooked for a couple minutes, add the miso, mirin, and soy sauce. This will form a sort of paste.
Add the zucchini and stir to cover with the paste.
Cook, stirring off and on, until the zucchini is floppy, but still holds its shape.
Remove from heat.
Toss a few sesame seeds on top, give it a quick stir, and serve hot.

It's a sweet and salty side dish that takes about 15 minutes to prep.

Bitter melon and bitter gourd seedlings

2011-06-26T08:19:00.000-04:00

A couple weeks ago I posted about growing bitter melons and bitter gourds, but didn't know what the seedlings would look like. I couldn't find the pictures online, so I'm contributing to the Internet today by posting a few pictures of my germinated seedlings. The gourds and the melons look similar.

Progress

2011-06-16T22:29:00.002-04:00

Every year I wander around the community gardens with some jealousy. Why are everyone's tomatoes taller than mine? Well, because I try to start them from seed. Inevitably, some of the seedlings die, and then I replace them with purchased tomatoes from, well, everywhere. Farmer's markets, gifts from friends and coworkers, Wilson Farms, Pemberton Farms.

My garden is taking on a life of its own through its various deaths. I keep replacing and diversifying. A coworker of mine left me a bag of homeless plants, so I popped in a couple eggplant, a tomato, a jalapeno, some basil, and a parsley. Luckily, with the exception of the jalapeno, the plants were new varieties. Why I prefer to have two kinds of basil and parsley instead of one is beyond me, but it seems to appeal to my innate need to have as many options as possible. Or, my innate need to hoard. Spring has sprung; I am decluttering the house and cluttering the garden.

But I had a couple people tell me my garden was off to a good start today, and as I know these folks are well weathered gardeners, I'll accept their opinions with optimism.

The corn is about 8 inches high, and the beans are all popping up out of the ground. I'm willing them to send up tendrils so that I can watch them curl around the corn. Doing the same with my sunflowers. Last year, I rebelled against beans, not a one in the garden. This year, six kinds! Soy, red cranberry, scarlet runner, two green pole varieties, and fava. Can't wait. I think I was just avoiding the classic green bush beans. They grow like mad and then you're stuck eating them. Apparently not everyone shares this opinion, so I started giving them out last time I had a glut.

All my squash are doing beautifully. One of the gardeners suggested that in 5 minutes with a stirrup hoe, I could clean out all the weeds in my three sisters. It was true! I mulched the squash down after the weeding, finally. A nice solution. I have four kinds of winter squash and some patty pan going. Still managing to hold off on the zucchini!

I planted bitter melon and bitter gourd to cook with pork later in the summer. And now I have this conundrum...I don't know what kind of seedlings I'm looking for! In this case, I normally let everything grow, including the weeds. Woe. These seeds looked like weird flowers, not like normal seeds. I have only had the melon in dishes at restaurants, so I've never even played with the fruit before.

Meanwhile, I'm eating a lot of greens, radishes, Hakurei turnips, and scallions. It's going well, but I was sure thankful that some hot peppers are setting. I'll give them another week. Dinner today was kimchi fried rice made with Chestnut Farms hot dogs, greens and turnips from my garden at Codman Farms, and kimchi that I bought at Ebisuya but that is made at Chung Ki Wa.

I visited Chestnut Farms this weekend and we took lovely pictures of all the animals! Hoping to post a few soon.

Heat

2011-06-08T23:34:00.002-04:00

We're having a heatwave in Massachusetts. I love the heat! And, sadly, I spend my entire days inside a freezing air-conditioned office. But at 6pm, the worst of the sun is over...though I put on the sunscreen anyway, redhead thing...I'm outside in the fields. I wish I were there every night, because every day there's something to take care of, something to miss. Still mourning some lost peppers, but I put in some transplants from Wilson Farms today to alleviate the loss. It gives me more variety. The plants are at the rootbound stage, the "on sale" stage. I think of being a rescuer here, taking in the lost lambs...

I think I've lost plants mostly due to the deadly combination of sun and little rain. Most of my basil has shriveled. You read gardening books, the step-by-step, the pretty pictures, 1-2 pages of info for all sorts of generic crops, and yet, it has so little to do with reality. Reality says "plant me on a day when it will be cool or wet for a couple days" and yet today is the day you have to plant, and it's going to be hot and sunny for a week. Throw in the fact that the water broke in our corner of the farm, and me carting around my amazing orange watering can still isn't a match for the heat.

But why is it that even though my plants are drying up, the weeds are flourishing? I wandered into my perennial plot today to find...a jungle! Weeds pushing up through the strawberries, plants I'd "moved" popping up everywhere, vines going absolutely nuts. I pulled a few weeds, and lo, the first strawberry! And a second due in a day or so. It was magic. The weeds must've hidden it from curious eyes. This weekend I'll need to go at that plot with a vengeance.

Every day I go to the farm I set out a list of must dos. Today it was to get the plants into the ground, and finally get the okra, 3 varieties of cukes, and Korean and tigger melons into the ground. I managed all of that, plus some weeding and much watering. I'm awaiting the moment that the beans I planted this weekend emerge from the soil, the soy, cranberry, and fava popping up in a green mat, and the pole and runner beans entwining themselves around the corn and sunflowers that so graciously germinated and seem to be giving the weeds a run for their money.

Meanwhile, the peas, radishes, scallions, and greens are flourishing. I picked a plastic grocery bag's worth of the stuff today (the strawberry I just ate right out of the plot), and then made a bacon and greens stirfry, then a bacon, radish, and scallion pizza. I love my Chestnut Farms bacon! This weekend is meet the meat time, so my brother and I are taking the trip out. Hopefully the heat keeps up.

May garden update

2011-05-31T23:33:00.003-04:00

And suddenly it's the end of May. My leeks grew up and I've put them in the garden. I also put in a ton of pepper, eggplant, tomato, flower, and other seeds. Most have been popped into the garden at their own peril.

On Thursday I was rushing. It was after work and I got there around 6. I really wanted to put the melons in before the hot summer days coming up over the weekend. And I was so sad for my new little seedlings. It would be unseasonably warm all weekend, with little water, and me, well I was off to Acadia for some camping, fishing, and hiking. (During the drive up, I watched the temperature fall from 86 to 52.) As always, I tried to cram too much into my day...sweet potatoes and tomatoes to transplant, watermelon seeds to plant, everything to water, and my my aren't the weeds getting tall these days?

The mosquitoes had their revenge. They wrote "3" on my left arm...a message that my boyfriend and I have yet to decipher. Though I did get a few bites up in Acadia, it was nothing like my late evening gardening trip.

But it sure paid off. I came back and my corn is now ready for stage 2. I'm trying out the 3 sisters planting...corn, beans, and squash. You plant five hills of corn, with four seeds in each. Then you plant 4 hills of squash, and we picked 4 different kinds. After the corn is 4 inches tall, you plant pole beans that grow up on the corn. And you have this lovely mess of companion planting, tall and short. So far it's quite nice looking, and I'm hoping for productivity.

I'll admit to a bit of jealousy when I look at some of the neat, tidy gardens with careful veggie choices. My garden is focused on getting out as much food as possible in a small space. In my 15x30 plot, I'm hoping for about 50 varieties of veggies. It's pretty easy to do when you only plant one or two square feet of of several veggies. My problem is that it also leads me to buying too many seeds. Johnny's Seeds has been great, and I particularly like their sweet potato sets. But next year I might go for the High Mowing Seeds, since there are less choices and they are all organic. I'm finding that it's a lot easier for me to control my shopping when there are less choices, especially when they're all high quality. Clothes, menu choices, seed catalogs, less is more darling.

The tragedy of the week was that I burnt out some of my peppers and eggplant. I'm thinking that I'll try to replace them with other seedlings from the garden shop. Last year I similarly had problems with both, so I'll need a different strategy in the spring for starting. I figured that my grow light would solve my transplanting needs, but I think I'll need to get everything bigger pots too. I read all the seed packets and try to follow the rules, but so very often it doesn't work out in the soil as it does in black and white. Will keep on truckin'.

Spring in my condo

2011-02-13T12:54:00.004-05:00

Massachusetts, along with most of the rest of the country, has been suffering a harsh winter. Weekly or twice weekly snows, followed by cold and ice, and melting snow that freezes to ice. Two-lane roads are now one, and drivers are playing vicious games of chicken on the road. "Why should I yield?" seems a common theme. I'm itching for spring, so I decided to start it in my condo.

My boyfriend bought me a grow light for my birthday, a fairly basic one with a fluorescent bulb from Johnny's Selected Seeds. Even though most of what I'm planting shouldn't be started until March, I decided to start up my leeks, which take forever, and lettuce for winter greens.

Last year I grew everything on the windowsill, to mixed results. I bought the apartment with no appreciation for a south-facing window, and my only windows face North. But even then, my organic farming teacher once said that there's such a thing as "South Window Syndrome." The plants tend to be very spindly in any window, and he suggested a greenhouse or a grow light. It's nice because the plants are, at the very least, growing straight up. They are still very tender, and I'm beginning to understand the need for hardening. I'll have to put in some sort of cold frame this summer.

But ain't it grand to see a bit of green?

Leeks:

Lettuce:

I note that we haven't had a significant snowfall up here since the groundhog failed to see its shadow. Happy melting.

Nourse Farms

2011-02-13T12:37:00.003-05:00

There's a nice article in the Boston Globe that's mainly about Nourse Farms in Westborough, MA.

The article discusses how Nourse is one of the oldest farms in the US, but that they've managed to continue by adapting with the times. As a kid, my parents would occasionally bring us to Nourse to pick strawberries (and yes, I was the guilty, curly-haired redhead with suspicious sticky red all over my face).

Now that I've moved out of that area, I don't get over to the farm too often. I heard from friends and directories that they have a CSA now, and my parents decided to sign up.

There's more to choosing a CSA than meets the eye. The CSA that I used to belong to was largely a veggie CSA. We'd get a couple containers of strawberries or raspberries in the season, but never enough. Nourse specializes in berries. My parents gets fresh berries for months and months, in quantity. As few foods seem to make my mom happier than berries, this is a great fit and a way to break up her share with fruit that requires no preparation. In addition, the farm has a nice store full of their jams and jellies and other food for sale. One year they offered three berry pies if you renewed your CSA subscription early. So good!

If you are choosing a CSA, try to find out what sorts of crops they grow, and about how much they had of things the last couple years. 2009 and 2010 were vastly different growing seasons in Massachusetts. I love the surprises in each season, but it's also nice to know what I'll be eating all summer.

(Note: it appears that there's another Nourse Farms in South Deerfield, MA that produces berry plants, but I know little about them.)

Farmshare Fair

2011-02-01T23:46:00.002-05:00

There is a Farmshare Fair sponsored by theMove on Thursday, February 3 at Democracy Center in Harvard Sq. Pick out who is going to grow your summer veggies, dream of summer, dream of melting...melting...melting.

NOFA Winter Conference

2011-01-16T11:08:00.003-05:00

Last weekend Max and I went to the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) Winter Conference in Worcester, MA. As a non-farmer, I was a little sheepish about going, but the program included a nice mix of beginner, intermediate, and advanced activities. In fact, there were so many workshops on things I am interested in as a gardener and potential farmer that I had trouble deciding what to attend.

The one-day conference also included a key-note speech by an organic apple farmer, a teacup auction for various farm goodies (neither of us won, but we really wanted the Armsby Abbey gift certificate), a potluck lunch, and a nice vendor selection. At the technology conferences I occasionally attend, you don't get cheese samples, seeds, organic soap, and sips of raspberry wine accompanied by roasted beet spread on crackers.

I went to three workshops, one on raising certified organic poultry, one on finding your own farmland, and one on edible landscaping.

The organic poultry workshop was largely new to me. I was interested in what they do to raise the chickens from the beginning of life, and that warm chickens wander; cold chickens huddle. After they are old enough and can fend off some predators better, they are given lots of outside space. I'm used to chickens in school buses, but they talked up the chickens with the movable cages, which is what Salatin uses. It allows the chickens to add manure to the field while cutting your grass. You move cages twice per day, and add new ones as the chickens grow. You can plant on the field, but harvest must be 90-120 days after the chickens have been there. There was some talk of the changing legislation for organic farming solutions, and how it might be to work with the new Congress. Apparently NOFA sued and lost over the organic standards back in 2002, but many of their changes are under consideration.

In the workshop on acquiring farmland, sponsored by Land for Good, I had a wonderful time talking to people who were in various stages of trying to start their own farm. Some were currently working at local farms and hoping to strike out on their own. Others, like me, had a full-time job outside farming, and were saving money. The big thing I learned is that it's very difficult to get land without a business plan and experience farming. It's also very difficult to get money when you are farming. Everyone noted that you can't readily do both at the same time. But a few had done it, one gave up his software job, another really wanted to raise kids on her farm, and she and her husband saved up and now were "living the dream." It was really interesting to see all the paths and ages in the room, and the Land for Good folks are developing tools and workshops to help you sort out your farming goal. I'm currently reading Salatin's You Can Farm, and he really stresses that this is an entrepreneurial adventure, not an escape from real life. And in this workshop, I received a sheet on budgeting and a worksheet on my own values. I also got a healthy idea of what it means to work this out as a couple, and managed to have conversations with my boyfriend that I just haven't learned to frame in the right light. It's a big thing, figuring out a farm.

The last workshop I went to was about landscaping with wild edibles, run Ethan Roland by AppleSeed Permaculture. One of the first pictures Ethan displayed was a woman standing with banana trees in Holyoke, MA. Wow! It turns out that you can grow the banana leaves up here, though the plants will not fruit. You can use these lives in cooking or as serving dishes. He went on to talk about kiwis and American persimmons and the pawpaw, a fruit that is native to North America and tastes like mango. There's a hardy pawpaw that can grow in Zone 6, which is about where I am. I also learned where pine nuts came from (and why they're so expensive...it's a 20-year start-up period to get the tree growing). He talked about an edible landscaping wiki sponsored by the Apios Institute. It includes information about growing the plants, their uses, what to plant them with, and plans of existing gardens that include these plants.

I left this conference wishing I had a couple acres to play with, but instead I must appease myself with dozens of seed packets that need starting. I learned last year that you can't start leeks too early, so I put 50 seeds in the seed trays from Johnny's Seeds. I added water, and now I wait for spring in my landless, balcony-less condo.

Codman Community Farms

2011-01-08T17:28:00.002-05:00

Last year I grew a garden at Codman Community Farms, and I plan to go back this year. The farm is very generous with their plots, so I got only a half plot, and arrived to find it was three times the space I expected! It was a wonderful outlet for stress...no one loves to pitchfork dirt more than me. I grew stuff I loved, sweet potatoes that surprised me with their size and perfectness, tomatoes that took a long time to grow, but were delicious in the end, wild sesame stolen from my boyfriend's sister-in-law, hot peppers, scallions, melons from H-mart, shiso and daikon from Ebisuya and way way way way too much zucchini. I actually had about fifty varieties growing in my garden, because a small garden is great for single plants that you pick up here and there at garden shops or the library book and plant sale.

I'm heading into next year and will try to keep track of spending better, as well as the harvest, hopefully on this blog. I have a gigantic wish list I've generated from Johnny's Selected Seeds. Hopefully I can trim. Last year I spent a lot on transplants and hope to do more from seed this spring. So, on to that project.

Buy No Food month

2011-01-08T16:52:00.002-05:00

This month is Buy No Food month. I really love eating, and though I in particular love supporting direct-to-market, local products, I'll eat almost anything. (I even crave Big Macs about twice per year, but really those are travel food and should be treated accordingly. My parents didn't just take us to MacDonalds; it was a treat that you got on the 600-mile trip to Grandma and Grandpa's farm. And we didn't have dessert every day either. Anyway...)

I keep track of all my spending at mint.com. And the fact of the matter is that between groceries and going out, I spend $500-600 on food. Just for me. I mean, I share it with people in my life, but those people usually share back about equally. But still, even though I grew a garden last summer, my food costs did not go down.

I buy a lot of food, because I love food shopping and discovery. But I don't always eat it all, as I might get busy or sick of leftovers or whatever. So the idea this month is to only eat the food at my house, and to not go out for drinks or dinner. It's partly to eat what I have, and partly to get into cooking mode.

It also means saying no a lot. In some parts of the country, like when I lived in a more rural area, it was trivial to stay home each night. But in the Boston area, my boyfriend and I get invited out multiple times per week. We have favorites and rituals. Or I might stop by for a pre-made chicken on the way home, because I'm hungry and tired and worked 50 hours and went to two classes that week and there's just no way I'm going to cook anything. In fact, I'm guessing that this problem extended the garden. If I spent 10 hours per week at the garden, that's 10 hours less time to cook. And digging and wedding takes energy.

It's much easier to buy less food when two people are cooking in the same apartment. I did this with my sister a couple years ago, and she and I had a merry time of it. At the time we had a glut of CSA veggies, and she could process winter squash like no one else. I am not in a veggie CSA right now, but I am allowing myself $5-10 in veggies each week. So far this has been enough.

So experiment experiment. It would be good to drop the food budget significantly, because I love to cook and have other priorities. It's the sort of thing worth feeling guilty about...what happened to special occasions? Why is there one twice per week? It's embarrassing the amount I let the budget go out of whack against what I want in life, so a month of extreme should help me adjust back to moderate.

Somerville Winter Farmer's Market

2011-01-08T16:44:00.002-05:00

After a year off, I think I'll dust off the old blog and start posting again. If I post enough, the fact that I took off a year will fade into the past, forgotten, right?

I just finished my courses for my grad degree, but I have my thesis to complete. I'll write a couple posts about my past year and my plans for this year.

In the meantime, you should check out the Somerville Winter Farmer's Market. One interesting thing to note is that changes to MA legislation, you can now buy local wines at farmers markets. My spy tells me that the Turtle Creek wines were very good today. I'm excited that you can go to the market and get fish and meat and wine and chocolate, along with the veggies.

Winter Farmer's Market

2010-01-18T00:07:00.002-05:00

October is usually the last month for farmer's markets in this area, as frost takes over and a few farms just go into winter shares. It looks like there's a new winter farmer's market in Natick. It's located at the Johnson Elementary School gymnasium along Route 27, and runs on Saturday mornings from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. through March.

It looks like Wayland also has a market, Saturdays 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Russell’s Garden Center.

Thank heavens for January thaw yesterday. I love January's little reminder that spring will be here in a couple months.

Farm Share Fair

2010-01-06T23:11:00.002-05:00

According to a post in the Davis Square LiveJournal community, there is a Farm Share Fair and Film on Monday January 11 at the Somerville Public Library. It should be a chance to learn about local farms and the structure of the different farm shares. If you're looking for a share this spring, it's good to ask all your questions at the beginning, about how to pay, when you pick up, and if you need to contribute through volunteering on farm.

Loans for CSA members

2010-01-01T22:54:00.003-05:00

I notice that my credit union has a program for a no-interest loans for CSAs. The farmer needs money in the spring, and yet a family's food budget doesn't always accommodate a $700 share at the beginning of the season. I find the farm share I participate in cost effective over the long run, particularly for the taste and quality of the food. This is a nice bridge, and I'm happy that my credit union offers this program.

To a new year...

2010-01-01T22:41:00.002-05:00

I see that I stopped writing in August...in my head it was September, when the semester picked up and I realized I'd bitten off more than I could chew!

But that's ok. You can always go back.

The summer was a sad one, by farming standards. Worst season in 40 years for veggie farmers, with tomato blight and just cold wet everywhere. Terrible time for squash and, really, anything that needed to grow and ripen. Greens coming out of our ears. Healthy, yes. But we get sick of greens by the end of June, and there wasn't a lot to take over this season!

My brother and I went out to Chestnut Farms a few months back, on a perfect day as usual. The meat farm did quite well with the wet weather...never had the cows had such a lush, green season. The grass just kept a'coming and the pigs were in hog heaven in the mud. We had some goat meat this year, and the goat meat curry tasted delicious!

This year I'm going to do something different. The veggie farm share includes a tremendous amount of food, and it requires a couple of good cooks and a few helpful others to eat it. I'm going to scale back a bit and start a plot at Codman Community Farms this summer, I hope. There will be limited lettuce! And a lot more of the bok choy and greens I like. It's cold, cold January and I'm dreaming of stinky manure and little green things popping out of the ground. On to the seed catalogs!

I'm hoping to learn a bit more about heirloom seeds and possibly seed saving. Been reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle very slowly (we're in tomato season now), and really loved the information about seed saving and rare breeds. If you don't grow a breed, it will die out in a few years. Seems a huge loss. And the loss is usually just because something isn't shelf stable, not because it's not delicious. Let us preserve the delicious.

Korean cuisine

2009-08-16T22:52:00.003-04:00

I wanted to comment a little on what I found out about Korean cuisine.

To me, the diet really depends on rice, veggies, seafood, and pork. Of course there is plenty more, but those are the staples.

Kimchi is usually made with shellfish or anchovies. Vegetarians beware! Kimchi is on every table, and I only had one vegetarian version the whole time I was there.

There are vegetable trucks that sell local fruits and veggies. They drive around with loudspeakers announcing their product, and how good it is to eat veggies. (At first I thought we were being attacked but Layna said "No, it's the vegetable truck!)

If you order a "toast" that is really an egg sandwich. If you order it with bacon, beware...they don't cook the bacon and just add it to the sandwich.

My favorite dish was patbingsoo. It's shaved ice with red bean, fruit, whipped cream, and condensed milk (basically). You get it all beautifully presented, then you destroy it! Dump it in a bowl, mix, and you get this lightly sweet, very cold, beautiful thing!

A lot of food is cooked at the table. There's a skill to it, and we definately charred some pork. You usually have meat, but then you might cook garlic or other veggies too. You take pieces of meat, that they cut with shears, and wrap them in lettuce or other leaf, and add sauce and veggies. We also had a great pork soup, the pork served on the bone among a bunch of aromatic and leafy veggies.

On Jeju Island, you can see the women out diving for shellfish. I really wanted to buy the sea urchin, but the only way we could eat it was raw. I just wasn't ready to buy a sea urchin from a bucket and eat it right there. Not when I have to be on an airplane in a few hours.

I also had amazing sushi on Jeju. In Korea, there are tons of side dishes. We got an entire table full of raw and fried veggies and fish before we even saw our order come out. Delicious. Raw octopus ain't bad.

I also spent a couple days in Tokyo. We had these panko-breaded pieces of fish, vegetable, or meat. They would bring out 2 at a time, and there were 5 sauces. Each had a sauce to try. It was like an endless tasting menu.

I found that when a local brought me somewhere and told me what to order, it was a great meal. On my own, a less great meal. But all in all, a yummy time!

sadness and sauce

2009-08-16T22:41:00.002-04:00

My grandfather's family was one of the many that came over during the Irish potato blight. The Irish made the classic mistake of overfarming one staple. They didn't diversify their crops, so when blight set in, it spread rapidly and destroyed a major portion of their food supply. These days some farmers choose to use pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides to control this, but organic farmers must be more creative and use crop diversity.

June was wet and rainy and cold. I left for Korea in July (where it was hot and sunny most of the time), but when I came back I heard that the rain kept going. At the same time, all six New England states where attacked with late blight. This is the same blight that caused the potatoes to rot in Ireland. In this case, though, they attacked the tomatoes. Home Depot, Lowe's, and other stores had to pull their tomato plants. The other farmers held their breaths and hoped for sun.

But sadly, the rainy weather caused the blight to spread and the tomato plants started to die, and the tomatoes started to rot. The farmers heard that the blight hit Lincoln, they warned us, we got a few tomatoes, and then it was mostly over.

Kate said she went to the Northeast Organic Farming conference out at UMass Amherst, and that seasoned farmers said this was the worst growing season in 40 years. So we're all in this together. I've heard that a lot of farms have lost their crops, and a few lucky ones are still going. A few still hadn't had tomatoes 2 weeks ago, because even without blight, the cold summer prevents ripening.

So I took my few sad-looking tomatoes and made up some stuffed peppers. Til next year.

I hear the melons are looking good, so I'm waiting for that!

Greens greens greens!

2009-07-06T23:05:00.003-04:00

It's been a busy month for me, with my sister visiting from Seoul, among other adventures. I've skipped a few posts for the veggies, but jotted this week's share down. I'll be on my way to Seoul and it's veggie-heavy diet this week!

Elena went to the farm with me, in the rain. It had been thundering and lightening out, so the interns weren't allowed to work in the fields. In the end, six of them heroically harvested everything for the share. The put planks down in the puddles so that we could get to the shed. Ah, mud.

I usually go at the end of the share window. This time we went right at the beginning. It was just amazing to see the veggie bins piled high! Elena and I were completely drawn to the scallions, just by our noses.

This week's share:

20 garlic scapes.
6 scallions.
2 big bowls of salad mix, including spinach, tat soi, mustard greens, arugula, mizuna.
8 leaves of rainbow chard (gorgeous pink, yellow, orange).
2 heads of lettuce.
2 bowls of mix n' match, including beets, turnips, bok choy, carrots, and squash.
1 large, gorgeous napa cabbage that made for a great cole slaw.
1 pint of peas.
A few strawberries.
Herbs (we took mint).

Spring 2009 trip to Chestnut Farms

2009-06-29T21:44:00.016-04:00

The moment you've all been waiting for! Cute animals!

June is Open House time at Chestnut Farms, and this time I took the two-hour drive out with my brother and my boyfriend.

We were greeted by some enthusiastic goats who would eat whatever you put in front of them. They also tolerated a bit of petting, and though I don't think they're cashmere goats, they were pretty soft.

Goat meat is new on the farm, and they are going to sell it on a trial basis this summer. It won't be part of the main share. Apparently, in talking with other CSA members, I'm not the only one excited about trying the meat.

We then waved hi to the sheep, shorn recently but still hanging out in the shade.

We wandered on down to the barn. It's remarkable how little the baby piggies are compared to the mommy pig.

They had a pen full of the piggies. What's funny about them is that every time you stepped into the pen, they went after YOUR piggies. Yep, here's a bunch of redheaded piglets chewing on my shoes.

But as cute as that is, nothing is cuter than dozens of turkey chicks singing "cheep cheep cheep!"

A closeup, to catch the chicks' eyes.

Coyotes are a major farm pest. Kim reminisced that one time she thought baby coyotes were cute, but no more! They steal the chickens and the chicks, so for survival's sake, they have to live in closed vans a little longer than they might like. Eventually they'll have their run of the land. A mob of angry turkeys is like nothing you've ever seen, so hopefully they (and their owners) can fend off a few coyotes. Still, it's a really difficult problem for farmers. That, and we spotted a few hungry hawks, sleepily circling the farm.

Here's my brother holding a chick.

They let my boyfriend check the feed level in storage.

A picture of us taken from the feed bin.

This is the brand new manure pit. I know that they've worked very hard constructing this. Apparently they had to submit to some rather extreme government regulations (the manure pit can never go below 52F, for example), and they did the concrete work by themselves. I know that they had an outside civil engineer design the pit. My understanding, as best as I can piece it together, is that there is an area where the animals are going to, um, go. They will then be able to plow that area and push all the lovely new fertilizer into the pit. Kim offered me a bucket of manure whenever I need it.

I didn't know that Chestnut Farms had a sawmill, but apparently it was an extra source of income before they became farmers full time. We had an interesting conversation with Rich about the transition and what it takes to be farmers. He said that he and Kim have different skills, and there's a big gray area in between where he dare not tread. In other words, it works. In the beginning, they both worked locally in addition to farming. Now they have to have someone on the farm all the time. Why? Well, for one, the baby piggies get stuck in the fence (kind of like babies get stuck in cribs). If Kim hears a pig squealing, she'll drop whatever she's doing and rescue the pig. But a major farm takes major work, and there's always something to do.

One thing that the farm does well is live within a budget. They have tons of equipment that they've picked up at auction. ("People come from NYC to become farmers and buy a backhoe, and then we get it for half the price after it sits unused for a year.") This is the sawmill. They've advertised that they participate in a local lumber share, supporting sustainable forestry.

As usual, it was a stunningly beautiful day. Bit of mud in the morning, but that was gone by the time we left.

They have new projects planned, as always, and I can't wait til next time! I met their eldest daughter, who is helping design an educational center. Right now the possible topics are pretty open as they gather ideas. (I didn't have time to think right then, but what I really want to do is learn to, um "process" a chicken. It's a lifelong goal I have as a meat eater.)

And here's one parting goodbye. Til the fall, when we see what's moved, changed, and grown.

Strawberries, early again this year!

2009-06-09T22:26:00.002-04:00

It was a damp day out at The Food Project. They emailed us a note saying that it was going to rain on both Tuesday and Thursday and please pick strawberries!

Well, can't miss out on that!

This week's share:

1 quart of strawberries (picked by me in the rain).
1 pint of snap peas (also picked by me...snap peas take forever to find and pick).
1 bowl of bok choy. Last week we had a small bowl, this week a large bowl.
1 bowl of spinach (the large bowl).
1 head of lettuce.
5 radishes.
6 hakurei turnips.
10 scallions.
8 chive flowers.
1 bunch of cilantro (dill was a second option).
1 bunch of mint (lemon balm was a second option).

Winter squash!

2009-06-07T23:19:00.003-04:00

On Saturday, I volunteered at The Food Project. On some weeks there are groups of volunteers from schools or businesses. This week there was a very good-natured group from Starbucks, who kindly brought bottled water and a nice work ethic. Some children were there, and they paired off with adults for various activities.

About 25 of us walked over to the squash fields, which had been divided into 4'-by-4' squares by little 1' paths. A bit of fertilizer had been dropped in the center of each square. Our job was to plant 4-5 seeds in the middle of each square. Since the squares were so large, each row was pretty quick. In a couple hours, we planted 3600 squares, or over 2 acres of squash. Butternut, buttercup, acorn, spaghetti, pie pumpkin. Yum!

The fields we planted should yield 32,000 pounds of squash. At a half a pound per serving, that's 64,000 servings of squash. The Food Project employees reminded us that the squash will go to local shelters and farmers markets that accept food stamps, along with some going to CSA members.

After that we did the less glamorous task of weeding 600 feet of lettuce. One family took home a bunch of the succulent weeds for salad. It's called purslane and is apparently a good source of Omega-3 fatty acid.

One of the nicer things about the day is how happy everyone was at the end. The youngest ones announced how much fun they were having and people all chatted about how they might get to harvest the squash in the fall.

In other old news, it looks like 40% more people are growing gardens due to the recession. Good times. Everyone is going to be eating way too much zucchini this year.

First veggie share of the season

2009-06-02T23:26:00.002-04:00

This spring has been much less miserable than last spring, and the veggies said thank you! Last year's share was really sad the first week of June. This year was a bit more varied.

The first Food Project share of the season:

5 radishes.
12 scallions.
1 head of lettuce.
1 bowl of bok choy (about the same size as a head of lettuce).
8 chive flowers (pretty purple, nice in salads and stirfries).
8 springs of mint (lemon balm was also available).

The economy and the soil seem to have hit the farm a bit hard this year. I overheard that the kitchen had to be closed, so no more of the BBQ sauce that I'm obsessed with. They are still selling the amazing honey, and flavored honey sticks.

As for the soil, last year we didn't get very much corn. Everyone loves corn, begs for more corn. But in sandy MA soil, it just doesn't grow well. So they aren't growing corn this year, and instead are going to use cover crops to repair the worn soil. I think this is a good decision, but Jean's pretty disappointed. Ah well.

My veggies are all stored happily in their new and improved fridge. My last fridge would freeze the veggies sometimes. I'm hoping that my new fridge keeps things happier longer. I'm also trying the Green Bags (warning, site has annoying voice over) to see if they help keep my produce fresher. We shall see! It's still June, so finishing veggies isn't a problem.

One of my more favorite Biblical stories is the one about manna in the desert. I personally think that this is an anti-refrigeration story. Anyway, we can all take a lesson from the folks out in the desert. I often try to "save" veggies. This is silly. You should just eat them or they will go bad. The farm will have a new share next week, with something more exciting than this week. Yes, even after strawberry season, there are fruits and veggies to look forward to!

June's meat share

2009-06-02T22:56:00.002-04:00

It's exciting to finally hit summer. When I arrived at the Chestnut Farms meat pickup, there were still tons of eggs, from happy, warm chickens. I'm still amazed at how much egg production drops off in the winter.

I had a nice chat with Rich about the St. Bernard puppies from the last open house in the fall. Apparently all the puppies went to CSA members, and they are all 100 pounds now. 6 months ago they were little babies you could sit in your lap. Apparently, even at 100 pounds, they want to sit in your lap. Sadly, but responsibly, there aren't going to be any more pups. Check out the post from last fall's open house to see pictures of the little ones.

I'm really looking forward to this year's open house in a couple weeks! Kim says that everything has moved again. It sounds like they're doing some good canning too.

The farm newsletter had some interesting information about the fight against organic, which is of course is by lobbyists only. Monsanto is trying to get its genetically modified food into various world markets, and various world markets just say no. Aside from the Monsanto stuff, the Mid-America Crop Life Association, an organization for pesticides, is all kinds of upset that Michelle Obama has an organic garden. Oh, the horror!

I love the farm newsletter, and you can sign up for it here.

I have upped my share to 15 pounds and will be sharing it. This has many of the smaller packages, plus a couple of larger cuts:

1 maple sugar cured bone-in ham steak.
1 package of 2 pork chops.
1 package of 3 breakfast sausages.
1 package of hickory smoked bacon (without nitrate or nitrites, yay!).
3 packages of beef loin top sirloin steak.
1 beef top round roast.
1 whole chicken.

Oh my goodness, I am hungry.

Fish share!

2009-06-02T22:50:00.003-04:00

My veggie farm forwarded this message on to me. It looks like a great way to get quality fish at a good price. I would really like to participate, but with the meat and veggies, it's too much food! I would like to know how to clean fish better, and it's great that they teach you a class.

----------------
Cape Ann Fresh Catch (CAFC), a Community Supported Fishery program, or CSF, is a collaboration of shore-side residents and the local fishing community. CSF members give the fishing community financial support in advance of the season, and in turn the fishermen provide a weekly share of seafood during the harvesting season to shareholders. A CSF reconnects people to the ocean that sustains them and builds a rewarding relationship between fishermen and shareholders.

*WHY SMALL AND LOCAL? *

There is an essential quality to seafood that you only get when it’s harvested locally and delivered to you just hours out of the ocean. Our small family-owned boats enable us to pay attention to the way fish is caught and to focus on strengthening our local food community, economy, and the sustainability of the ecosystem. The long-term health and abundance of the Gulf of Maine are important to all of us.

Cape Ann Fresh Catch (CAFC) will deliver a variety of the freshest haddock, cod, flounder, hake, dabs, grey sole, monkfish, Pollock, and redfish – and possibly other seafood such as clams, lobsters and scallops. In traditional markets fishermen are forced to chase whatever species is fetching the highest price that week. By taking a mix off these species at the same price week-to-week (about $3/lb), fishermen are able to fish areas that are not stressed by the rest of the fleet, and give species and ecosystems time to recover and replenish.

This cooperative system also keeps fishermen safer because they don’t have to fight the weather to go offshore for a certain species; if the weather is dangerous, they can stay close to shore and catch only what the CSF needs that week. At the same time, shareholders are guaranteed the freshest, highest quality fish caught. The fish caught for the CSF will never be old or frozen, and it will always come from fishermen who believe in working with the ocean and the community.

*WHAT WILL YOU GET?*

The fish will be dressed (cleaned and gutted, NOT filleted), and packed on ice. There will be a FREE DEMONSTRATION OF THE ART OF FILLETING YOUR FISH AND HOW TO COOK WITH WHOLE FISH AT THE START OF THE SEASON!

- A 12-week subscription to our summer CSF will start in early June
- Instructions and recipes on cooking with whole fish
- Half share of whole fish: 4-6 lbs per week
- Full share of whole fish: 8-12 lbs per week

Full shares are $360, half shares are $180 (roughly $3 per pound)

Finals are finally done

2009-05-31T21:16:00.002-04:00

I had to finish up a class of mine, so I'm behind on blogging. Here's highlights from last month.

I went to The Food Project to volunteer. You don't have to be a member to volunteer, and I get a lot of questions about how the CSA works. We had a productive day. Our group planted 1000 beets and then mulched the newly reorganized tea garden. I guess they are trying to control the mint, which grows mad crazy around here.

The feeling of planting a couple long rows of beets is amazing. At the beginning, you look out at the empty furrow and think, "yeah right." 90 minutes later, you have a row of 1000 beautiful little plants, which will grow up into healthy roots and leaves, both edible. Yum! Can't wait for salads and roasting.

I haven't yet posted this month's meat share, so here goes:

1 package of ground beef (which I just made into meatloaf).
1 package of ground beef patties (which we grilled).
1 whole chicken (which I just baked with a pecan cranberry stuffing).
1 package of sausage patties (which we brought to Mother's Day breakfast and use the farm eggs to make a sausage, asparagus, Manchego cheese egg scramble).
2 packages of pork cutlets (one used breaded and fried with pasta, and the other for crockpot pulled pork).
1 beef round sirloin tip steak (which we grilled).

I'm really looking forward to the Chestnut Farms open house in a couple weeks! And hey, it looks like they revamped their website, so take a look.

In other news, I decided to buy a new fridge before my veggie CSA starts up on Tuesday. Actually the fridge is coming on Tuesday, so five of us just had a "clean out the freezer dinner." So I'm getting ready for a new era of food storage. My fridge is 30-40 years old, I think, so I look forward to cheaper electric bills and less frozen veggies by my overzealous fridge. Yay!

Easter fare

2009-04-11T10:39:00.002-04:00

Today I was supposed to go to The Food Project and volunteer, but because I made the decision to eat something that didn't smell quite right yesterday...I'm stuck at home. Yes, I should know better. Hoping that I recover soon, for tomorrow I am hosting Easter dinner!

We're going to have the normal potato salad, sweet potatoes, standard salad, and so on. But feature is going to be meat from Chestnut Farms. It's all about making EVERYONE happy, isn't it?

Kim was kind enough to put a whole chicken into my share this month. I am going to use a recipe that M and B swear by, coating and stuffing the thing with Boursin cheese. Oh yes.

Then there's leg of lamb, which was in my share last month. I haven't chosen a recipe for that yet, but hopefully I can get cooking temperatures and times to match the chicken.

I also have a couple ham steaks saved from last month's share. I am going to make one with a typical pineapple glaze, and another with homemade applesauce. Yum stuff.

Jean and I are hoping to not cook for several days afterwards!

On to other things, this months' share!

1 whole chicken.
2 packagess of 2 pork loin chops.
1 package of 4 pork breakfast patties.
2 packages of ground beef.
1 package of 3 hot Italian sausage.
1 maple-sugar cured bone-in ham steak.

And lastly, Michelle Obama is still working on the White House garden with local kids.

Many hands make light work

2009-04-04T13:44:00.002-04:00

Every year you have New Year's Resolutions that are difficult to keep. This year I resolved to volunteer more, and, of course, to get in better shape.

Today I volunteered at The Food Project. It satisfies both goals! And it's a wonderful way to see how your food gets on your plate. The Food Project invites volunteers to come work the land on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays in the spring and fall. (During July and August, they recruit dozens of high school students to do most of the work.) Each volunteer day, they have between 10 and 60 volunteers each week.

At 9:30, about 20 of us gathered. We played an icebreaker game, and part of it included facts about food production. For example, in a $3.50 box of cereal, about $3 goes to packaging and marketing, and $0.07 goes to the farmer. Yikes. It's like being a musician and selling CDs. We also learned that there are more people in jail than there are farmers in the US.

We split into groups, and I ended up working with five others in a hoop house where the winter share was grown. It was fun to see, since I participated in the winter share. The student leader ran the show, and we had to clear the whole place of plants and weeds. It's possible that I pocketed a bit of cilantro that maybe I had in an egg scramble when I got home, famished. I also learned a bit about using the hula hoe.

Once we cleared the vegetation, we put together a bunch of large tarps to cover the floor. Since we didn't know what to expect when we unrolled all the tarps, we had to puzzle things out a couple times before we could stake everything into the ground. That finally done, we started to build tables for new seedlings to grow on. The main greenhouse already had nice seedlings, particularly a bunch of beautiful onions. One of the students said, "They're so cute...I want to take one home!"

To build the tables, we stood cinder blocks on end, put slats of wood across the bricks, and then put the long flat crates on top of that. I ended up carrying a bunch of cinder blocks! By the end, I was pretty sore, and starving! We all got together and talked about what we did that we enjoyed. Weeding, building tables, finally getting the tarp down.

We ended the day with another game where we learned about healthy food communities, and how they are lacking in most areas. This is especially true of low income urban areas, where there are 30% less grocery stores. It can be difficult to get adequate nutrition when all you have is sub shops and convenience stores. The Food Project sponsors several farmers markets in areas such as these, bringing reasonably priced, homegrown veggies to as many people as possible.

The Food Project grows about 250,000 pounds of vegetables, according to their website. Today, I was a part of that!

Baaa!

2009-03-29T20:57:00.015-04:00

I decided to trek over to Drumlin Farm yesterday to go to Woolapalooza. Drumlin Farm is part of the Mass Audubon "Protecting the Nature of Massachusetts." Mass Audubon was selling their membership, which gives you free admission to 45 Mass Audubon wildlife sanctuaries, a full-color guide to these sanctuaries, a one-year subscription to Sanctuary, an environmental magazine, and to Connections, a member newsletter. Plus you get discounts on programs and courses. It looked like a lot of value for a family.

I got there between the big events, a sheep dog demonstration and sheep shearing. I wandered around looking at their chickens first. I found out that free range chickens produce about 330 eggs per year each, but a caged chicken produces 265. Having considered owning chickens in the future, and pondering a flock of 20...would I really have 6600 eggs in one year? That's a lot of quiche!

I then went and checked out the merchants, which was interesting because they were not your typical merchants. The American Textile History Museum was there, and they are having a grand reopening in May. They were giving demonstrations on how to spin wool with a drop spinner and a spinning wheel. Kids were everywhere at this event, and they sure loved poking at (and trying to spin) the spinning wheels at various booths.

I chatted with a woman who makes angora products at Needle's Eye Angoras. She brought along one of her rabbits and let the kids pet it. She told me that she grows much of her own food during the summer and stores it over the winter. She was selling the yarn, headbands, and cute baby booties. She was delighted by the event, "So many parents with children, and they are talking to their children!"

Then I saw one of the main events: a sheep dog demonstration. There were four dogs, but one is still being trained. All the dogs are trained with voice and body at first, but then learn to respond to just a whistle. They love moving the sheep...one was just itching to start.

Whistling to bring them around:

Into the pen:

I went to the lambing shed. There were twins born the night before, and another baby born while I was there!

Along the way to the sheep shearing show, I walked along the Sheep to Sweater Interpretive trail. They were showing how to wash the wool, comb it spin it, and dye it with natural dyes. I liked the pokeweed, even though the color would look terrible on me!

The yellow is a goldenrod dye, and the brown is black walnut, which I learned about in the Foraging for Wild Edibles workshop I went to last year. They also had several pretty yellow dyes made from onion skin.

I ended with the best part, sheep shearing! I thought that I had to take a trip to New Zealand to see these demos, but no! For $10, this was a better deal:

Big fluffy sheep, dying to take off the winter coat when it's 55 degrees out:

Starting to shear:

Halfway there:

Almost done:

Done! With just a bit of razor burn:

This big sheep had about 10 pounds of wool on it, which would make 2 adult sweaters and a few hats. Hats off to you, sheep!

Woolapalooza!

2009-03-24T18:56:00.003-04:00

Drumlin Farm is having Woolapalooza for "all things sheep" today from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Shearing and knitting o my!

Local food, national news

2009-03-22T19:33:00.004-04:00

My blog only wakes up to scratch itself once in awhile over the winter time, generally on meat share days from Chestnut Farms. But now it's spring: people are digging, bees are buzzing, and I'm blogging again.

I joined the Facebook group Support Local Farmers, and they occasionally send information. Today they sent a link to farmfed, which is a site dedicated to educating people about where their food comes from and how to encourage healthy, sustainable farming methods. They have some nice photos of the White House garden ground-breaking.

Last year I cut off my hair for a good cause, but before that I used to walk around Moody Street in Waltham and was often stopped, "Can you tell me where the macrobiotic restaurant is?" Ah, long hippie hair. I didn't know where it was, but since people kept asking me, I figured I'd check it out. Yesterday my boyfriend and I went to Masao's Kitchen, a tiny little place that serves a beautiful buffet of simple macrobiotic vegan fare. You can order dishes of noodles or soup, but we decided to try the by-the-pound buffet ($8/pound). What's funny is that when you click on their menu, all you see are pictures of vegetables. Not bad!

There was a gorgeous dish of butternut squash and onion, which was steamed and brought out the wonderful flavor of the squash. I remember faintly that I was sick of squash by the end of the winter, but that memory is now overtaken by the sweetness of this dish. I had a lentil-chickpea dish with aromatics that was a lot like the dish my college roommate taught me to make. Comfort food. I rounded out my meal with some quinoa and steamed broccoli and kale. I did take little sides of a cabbage lotus flower mix, and a shiatake mix. My boyfriend also had the tofu, which he enjoyed, and brown rice. He ordered a side of the miso soup, which he really enjoyed but felt there was too much! (So I ate the rest...hearty and not at all silty like some.)

We kept discovering new food, but I'd already taken a pound and a half! So I left it at that, and ate it all. The restaurant was packed, and there were many families with little girls...perhaps a dancing school is nearby? It looks like they also do a healthy takeout service. The staff is extremely friendly and seems to love introducing people to the food. Most people there appeared to be regulars.

At the end of the meal I felt like I'd only eaten good things. It's rare to go to a restaurant and feel wonderful at the end, but here's your chance.

Arugula

2009-03-21T10:01:00.002-04:00

Soooo excited about the first family's veggie garden--organic, started by Michelle Obama and some local fifth graders. The project is a combination of educating the young, feeding the first family, and providing fresh vegetables for a local soup kitchen.

And they even have the plans for the garden. I love that they are lining the walkways with flowers, especially marigolds, which keep out pests. It's a heavy greens garden, not much in the way of beans, potatoes, and tomatoes. But it'll make nice salads and steamed greens. They devote plenty of space to a variety of herbs.

I've been eating a salad mix from Whole Foods recently that includes mixed greens, dill, and parsley. I'll have to try that this summer with the farm food!

In other news, I finally invested in a real knife, the Wusthof Grand Prix II. I bought it at on the edge at Faneuil Hall Market Place, explaining to them that I get a lot of fresh meat that needs to be broken down sometimes, as well as tons of fresh veggies. And it's amazing! It takes about half the time for me to cut the meat and veggies, and the cuts are more even and accurate. It makes cooking fun again! OK, end of advertisement.

Suggestions of spring

2009-03-07T16:12:00.003-05:00

I walked down to the square today just to go to the bank, and it was gorgeous out. Except for the snow melting everywhere, it felt like spring! I wanted to volunteer at The Food Project, but apparently that doesn't start until April. Alas...will have to wait to play in the dirt.

I picked up my meat share from Chestnut Farms this week:

1 leg of lamb (beautiful! I'm thinking of saving it for Easter, but it'll be tough seeing it in the freezer for that long).
1 chicken breast.
1 package of chicken legs.
1 package of three greek lamb sausages.
1 package of ground beef.
1 top round steak.
1 package of breakfast sausage.

I went to the doctor's last week to discover that my cholesterol has dropped 41 points in the past five years! I attribute this to the veggies and lean meat from the two CSAs that I participate in. It's also a lot of food, so I've significantly decreased the amount of ready-made snacks and dinners that I used to eat. Less salt, less corn syrup, less trans fat. All good things.

I'm reading a beautiful book This Common Ground: Seasons on an Organic Farm by Scott Chaskey. He's farmed in Cornwall, England and on the South Fork of Long Island at a CSA. He brings together farming and his love of poetry in a thoughtful, topic-based book. He does not go through the seasons, he isn't providing how to's. He paints pictures of various crops, farmers, CSA members, animals, whatever has moved him in his life as a farmer. The romance of the farm.

Meat days are happy days

2009-02-03T20:06:00.002-05:00

Kim at Chestnut Farms is trying to figure out if cats like lamb liver or beef liver better, and she was selling the stuff off at $1 a package. I grabbed some lamb liver in the hopes that I could convince someone to make a lamb liver dinner with me. So far, not a lot of interest. C'mon guys!

This month's share:

1 package of maple sugar cured hickory smoked bacon (yes, I'm on the "more bacon" list).
1 package of 3 Greek lamb sausage.
1 package of pork loin chops.
1 package of maple sugar cured bone-in ham steak ends.
1 shank steak.
2 packages of ground beef.
1 package of pork breakfast sausage patties.
1 porterhouse steak.
1 package of steak tips.

After yet another snow storm this year, I'm dreaming of lettuce and turnips from our first veggie share this summer!

Speaking of summer, it sounds like the farm is trying out goats this year. Yes, for goat meat: "I'm not milking anything!" they say. It sounds like it's been a tough winter on the farm, with the cold, cold January we had right after my "it hasn't been that cold yet" post. Serves me for talkin'. Anyway, I love goat curry, so hoping to try their goat this summer if it happens.

Again, it's a great time to go veggie CSA shopping, so I encourage everyone in MA to go to NOFA Mass. There are many different types of CSAs, so it's best to look for one nearby that fits with how you eat. Some give you tons of food, others are more modest. Some you have little choice and really eat with the harvest, and others give you points to pick out how much of each veggie or fruit you want. Some you go to the farm, others you might go to someone's home or other drop-off location. You might have to put in a day or two of work each season, and you might be able to get a free share if you do enough work. Many donate extra veggies to food banks, and some are full-fledge non-profits. I'd love to hear about your farms, and it's been wonderful that several people I know are newly signed up for shares next year. Good eatin'.

My winter blog is as quiet as the sleeping fields

2009-01-07T22:27:00.002-05:00

The only thing happenin' on the CSA front is a cold frost and the monthly meat share. Actually, we've had plenty of warm weather in MA, no difficult frosts, so it wouldn't surprise me if a few veggies were still growing slowly around the state. At our first veggie distribution last year, we had some turnips that had been in the ground all year.

Last week I made a trial run of applesauce, using this really easy applesauce recipe. Sure, it was sweet, but it's so much yummier than the watery, bland store stuff. I have a ton of apples that need eatin' so I plan to try a bigger crockpot of the stuff some time this week. I had it with pork chops from Chestnut Farms...delicious!

The brave folks at Chestnut Farms drove through the Western MA ice to distribute shares today. It was rainy here, and luckily most of the ice had melted. But yuck, what a job. It makes you remember that you have to be outside in all kinds of weather as a farmer, and I'm sure that the share distribution is one of the less messy jobs. I worked from home today. The building manager called to kick my car out of the parking lot for plowing, so I took a quick hop down to the drop-off location to pick up my share early. Normally I get there a couple hours later, so I was amazed at the dozens of coolers they distribute! I know that they were recently able to quit their square jobs to be farmers full time. Such a wonderful thing.

This month's share:

1 maple sugar cured bone-in ham steak.
1 lamb shoulder (yay! I have no idea how to cook this, but it looks beautiful).
1 package of ground beef.
2 shank steaks.
1 chicken breast.
1 package of maple sugar cured hickory smoked bacon.
1 package of steak tips.
1 large rib steak.

This past month I've had less steak. I used to dread the stuff because I didn't know how to cook it, but with the miracles of marinades, dry rubs, and a good tenderizing blow, I'm starting to get into the whole steak thing. Thanks Food Network!

'Til June!

2008-12-17T23:09:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I picked up the second and final winter share. It was really different from the first one, which was fun.

Here's the take:

1 bag of sweet potatoes! These are the first sweet potatoes that I've had since I joined the farm. There have been deer issues, woodchuck problems, and then mysterious happenings. So thank heavens! I love sweet potatoes.
3 bags of root veggies, including carrots, turnips, beets, and rutabagas.
1 bag of assorted apples.
1 bag of spinach (no lettuce this time).
1 crown of kale.
3 red onions.
3 white onions.
1 bag of russet potatoes.
1 bag of red potatoes.
2 celeriac.
5 garlic.
8 dried hot peppers.
2 bags of herbs, and I picked sage and lavender.
1 bag of tea herbs, and I picked lemon balm.
3 ears of popcorn.
1 delicata squash.
3 butternut squash.
1 carnival squash.
1 loaf of pumpkin cranberry bread.
1 bag of maple roasted almonds.

I also bought some eggs from the Codman barn, and some honey. I went to Wilson Farms today, and noticed that their Boston Honey Co. honey was $8, where I can get it from the farm for $5. They have reasonably priced jellies and hot sauces too. Good fun!

Meat! (and Thanksgiving)

2008-12-04T00:24:00.004-05:00

Today I picked up my December meat share. Kim was pretty relieved that turkey season is over. Her monthly pickup email talked about past turkeys that grew the size of emus and other turkeys that were eaten before they were harvested! But this year, lots of normal-sized turkeys, and not many casualties.

This month's meat share:

2 packages of 2 lamb rack rib chops.
1 smoked bacon.
1 bacon ends.
1 pork garlic and cheese sausage.
1 maple sugar cured bone-in ham steak.
1 package of ground beef.
1 package of beef stew beef.
1 chicken breast.
2 packages of pork loin chops.

Last week we had, of course, Thanksgiving dinner. I went to my parents' with two of my siblings, and Eun Jung came too. It was her first turkey, and mom let her baste it, "I saw them do this on TV." We had a ham from the farm too, and it cooked much faster than we thought. But it tasted great.

I brought mom a squash from the farm, that was delicious! And I brought the apple pie from The Food Project (yum!), and a pumpkin pie that I made from a farm pumpkin. The farm pumpkin was try #2. First try, well...remember that evaporated milk should NOT be chunky. Second try was quite yummy.

The ham:

The pie (thanks to a coworker's recipe!)

next season

2008-11-23T23:39:00.002-05:00

OK kids, if you're upset about the cold, crappy November weather we had this weekend, it's a great time for you to start thinking about next summer. That's right, now is a good time to sign up for a farm share! In Massachusetts, I suggest checking out NOFA for farm listings.

I made a change for next year, and it has good and bad points to it. I am going to stick with The Food Project, because I've been really happy with the food, the staff, and their communication. I like the fact that part of their mission is to help out people who don't get enough fresh veggies.

But normally I get the on-farm share, which feeds 2-3 vegetarians. As my sister and I are not vegetarians, it's just too many vegetables. Plus, I have a busy life, and sometimes that means I miss a cooking day and have to pick up a burrito somewhere. The Food Project doesn't have half shares, but they do have box shares.

Box shares are a little smaller, designed for 1-2 vegetarians. You don't pick up on the farm. I am going to do the Cambridge box share, which is at someone's house. You go and get a box of 4-18 pounds of veggies each week. This is a little more reasonable than the 8-24 pounds you get otherwise. Also, the on-farm share is $700 this year, but the box share is $500. Less waste and less money are better all the way around.

I'll be sad not to go to the actual farm each week. It was a peaceful weekly ritual, picking parsley, tomatoes, strawberries. However, they have on-farm volunteer activities. As my #1 New Year's Resolution is going to be to do more volunteer work, the farm will be a great place to start. I wasn't able to go this year, but I'll be changing my schedule next year.

I'm steaming Brussels sprouts in my rice cooker just now. Made steamed egg rolls with farm veggies and ground beef, and cooked up a pot of lentils seasoned with onions and spices from the farm. I'm good til Thanksgiving. Tuesday, I make pumpkin pie!

bounty!

2008-11-19T22:38:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I picked up my first ever winter share! Yay! I expected a lot, and even though what I got met my expectations...it's still a lot of food!

The share (if I can remember it all!):

Four produce bags of root veggies, including carrots, beets, turnips, and rutabagas. I found out recently that I liked baked rutabaga, with the sweetness of a turnip and the meatiness of a potato. I think that if it had a cuter name, more people would eat it.
4 stalks of Brussels sprouts. This looks immense and ridiculous all together. Perhaps I'll post a pic at some point, since a lot of people haven't seen how these things grow.
1 cabbage.
1 kohlrabi.
1 peck of assorted apples.
1 bag of lettuce.
4 onions.
6 bulbs of garlic.
1 handful of parsley.
1 handful of cilantro.
8 pounds of potatoes.
3 crowns of kale or collard greens.
10 leeks.
2 butternut squash.
5 assorted squash.
1 apple pie!

It's possible I missed one or two things. I'll be bringing a lot of veggies home for Thanksgiving this year, along with a ham from Chestnut Farms. Such excitement!

Ham!

2008-11-08T11:37:00.002-05:00

I picked up my meat share on Wednesday.

Here's the share:

1 3.5 maple-sugar cured bone-in ham. I already called my mom and we're going to have it as part of Thanksgiving, along with the Turkey. I'm excited to share my meat with my family!
2 1-pound packages of maple-sugar cured hickory smoked bacon. This stuff is great, like the bacon you get from the meat counter at whole foods.
1 beef flank steak
1 package ground beef
chicken legs
chicken breast

I've enjoyed cooking lately, as I've finally figured out that when I cook steak, it takes approximately 1/5 of the time I was originally comfortable with to cook it properly and have it taste good. Amazing. The meat doesn't have to be grey!

It's over!

2008-11-08T11:29:00.002-05:00

I picked up my last veggie share at the end of October. Has been a busy couple weeks, or perhaps I was just agonizing over the final notes of voting season!

My last share was about the same, I won't post it all. We got a couple of butternut squash, I'm set for potatoes and carrots for a bit, and we got the special corn-on-the-cob popcorn! It's beautiful, full of gold and deep purple kernals. There is nothing like the light fluffy popcorn it makes. Butter is unnecessary for this stuff, just a little salt.

I made lamb chops and mashed potatoes this week, nice and hearty. This past weekend, I made amaretto scallops with bacon and it's one of the nicest recipes I've made!

I'm already missing the farm, even though it was getting dark and cold. The winter share is distributed in a local barn, so I won't be able to wander the fields come fall. I'm really looking forward to the share though!

Meat continues through the winter. Yay! There is plenty to eat!

Brussels sprouts

2008-10-27T23:22:00.002-04:00

I was a tad under the weather for much of last week, so I never posted on veggies!

Suffice to say that I hit up the farm in the rain last week and skipped picking the last few raspberries and herbs.

But the share was nice!

2 stalks of Brussels sprouts! I love these things, but I have to learn to cook them better.
1 bag of spinach, instead of lettuce. This would be way better every week. Made a spinach, apple, goat cheese salad.
2 butternut squash.
1 carnival squash.
2 bulbs of garlic.
10 leaves of kale.
1 bag of mix n' match, where I stocked up on carrots, potatoes, celeric, turnips, onions.

Fruit share:

1 bag of apples.

We are overwhelmed with the fall harvest, and I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, it's time for the second annual Buy No Food November.

I'm not sure if tomorrow is the last share. It may be! Until the winter share next month...

Discovering raspberries

2008-10-15T23:18:00.002-04:00

Yesterday a friend of mine brought her toddler M over for lunch and a trip to The Food Project! We had stir fried strip steak from Chestnut Farms that I made with peppers and onions. Her daughter kept saying "chicken chicken" when she wanted more. We also had roasted veggies and some mashed butternut squash, which tasted great with just a little butter.

They brought along a toy shovel, and since I had a couple spider plants I had rooted in water, we decided to plant them. M shoveled in the dirt, protesting the plant. (She's used to a pail at the beach, and the plant seemed in the way.) But good for her to kind of see the process before the trip.

Then off to the farm for some real dirt. M was really drawn to the delicata squash, which was new for this week. She kept saying "pumpkin pumpkin!" and wouldn't leave that table.

The share included:

One bag of salad mix.
1 bulb garlic
10 leaves of kale.
2 delicata squash.
1 sugar pumpkin (yay pumpkin pie!)
1 bag of mix n' match, including potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, turnips. We realized that we're very good about eating the root veggies, have some trouble with the lettuce.
Half a pint of raspberries from the field. M had never had raspberries, and she quickly learned to pick the ripest ones from the bush and eat them immediately!
Herbs.

There were also cornstalks for decorating. I didn't take any because I don't have a doorstep at my condo.

Fruit share:

Apples.

M had a great time wandering through the flower patch and running through the fields. Then she was hungry (raspberries just don't cut it alone) and we went on home. It was a beautiful October day for a trip to the farm, and we're planning to do more trips during a different season. Maybe during strawberry season, since M kept calling the raspberries "strawberry!"

Chestnut Farms open barn

2008-10-13T12:24:00.010-04:00

Yesterday Eun Jung (who was Elena's Korean tutor before Elena went to South Korea) and I went to Chestnut Farms for their open barn. It was a gorgeous day, and the excursion doubled as a leaf-peeping adventure. We trekked out to Hardwick, got totally lost, asked a lot of locals where the farm might be, with answers like "well I can tell ya how to get to Hardwick" to "I know about where it is, but that's the fire chief who just pulled up to the bait shop there, and he'll definitely know."

The amazing thing about the farm was the everything moved! In veggie farming, you rotate crops, and the same stuff applies to the animals. The barn, which has nice new siding, was completely moved around from our visit in the spring. The school buses for the chickens were in totally new places. If you have movable structures, they aren't taxed (this is what Spags in Shrewsbury did to keep taxes, and prices, low). Plus moving the animals around keeps them rotated to fresh grass and bugs.

Eun Jung used to have three chickens when she was young, which she said took an hour to chase around every evening. She tried to chase them, but said it's more difficult and a little scarier when you're older!

There weren't as many babies since the lambs give birth in the spring, but there were new piggies everywhere.

And there were St. Bernard puppies, which they are hoping to sell. These pups were only 2 weeks old, and they didn't open their eyes.

The cows were enjoying munching.

There's a new little brown goat! In the spring you could carry the white goat around, but it's too big now. It stuck its head through the fence to eat my hair.

Chestnut Farms sells turkeys in the fall for $75. You pre-order. Last year the turkeys ranged from 25 to 50 pounds, I think. This year they had a July batch and an August batch, so that there would be some that were closer to 20 pounds. Kim says that the turkeys take only 10 minutes per pound to cook, which is half the time that a turkey from a store takes. So even though they're pretty large, you'll be able to cook them in a reasonable amount of time. And they are less fatty and taste better!

The turkeys are extremely social birds. They all crowded at the fence. Kids were feeding them grass. One kid started screeching at the turkeys, and they all gobbled back at the same time. It was amazing. "Screech screech screech" and 30 turkeys "Gobble gobble gobble" in sort of a watery ripple.

It was such a nice day. On our drive home we saw a hot air balloon and some sort of machine with a parachute-like attachment, flying around the hills. Ah yes, everything great about Western Massachusetts, on a sunny October afternoon.

Winter veggie shares!

2008-10-09T23:39:00.004-04:00

Today was a beautiful day, but soon it will be cold cold cold. What better way to combat winter blues than with a winter veggie share? My farm is sold out of winter shares, but Kate from The Food Project sent everyone an email today about another local winter share. One of the gems in this email is the Belmont CSA News blog. Beautiful pics from their farm.

The New Amsterdam Project is something I'd heard of before in a post about the Harvest Coop in Central Sq. They deliver various products on these neat bicycle carts.

Here's the email about the winter share.

"Buy a Multi-Farm Winter Community Supported Agriculture Share!

Enjoy locally grown vegetables this winter!

Three farms have come together to share their fall and winter harvests with you through this three month Winter CSA. Gretta Anderson, Belmont CSA, manages the Winter CSA and will grow many of the leafy greens you will find in the Winter Share. Bruce and Jenny Wooster, Picadilly Farm, grow and store the bulk of storage vegetables for the Winter Share on their Winchester, NH farm. Chris Yoder, Vanguarden CSA, grows some of the storage onions, popcorn and a variety of root vegetables and leafy greens for the Winter

Share.

These shares will contain many storage vegetables, as well as leafy greens and storage apples. Plans for the winter share include beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, celery, celeriac, collard greens,

escarole, hakurei turnips and greens, kale, lettuce, leeks, sweet potatoes, purple top turnips, onioins, parsnips, popcorn, potatoes, radishes, radicchio, shallots, and winter squash. Storage apples from Cider Hill Farm

will also be part of the share.

Winter Shares cost $225. They will be distributed from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM, Saturdays, October 18, November 8, and December 6. Shares will be distributed at the farm in Belmont (34 Glenn Road). Eco-Friendly Delivery is available through the New Amsterdam Project <http://newamsterdamproject.com/> .

For more information, see the Belmont CSA blog <http://BelmontCSA.blogspot.com> or email BelmontCSA@gmail.com for details and a subscription form."

Yay!

2008-10-09T23:29:00.002-04:00

Chestnut Farms is having their Open Barn on Sunday, or what I affectionately call "Meet the Meat." (Or maybe I'm just a bit snarky?)

My brother John and I went this spring and had a fantastic time. At first we were like, hi sheep hi pigs hi chickens...but then we got to hold the little lambs, chase the chickens, put the goat back in its pen, learn about how the animals are fed...it was just good times. The farm is next to the Quabbin, and it's a beautiful area. The air smells lovely, aside from the manure. On Sunday I'll be going with a friend "I haven't seen farm animals for a long time!" and my brother is trying to decide whether or not go.

I'm looking forward to it, and will hopefully have pictures next week.

disasters and creativity

2008-10-08T21:59:00.002-04:00

Sometimes life is not fair. In my life, this tends to manifest itself as household pests.

I do keep things clean! I swear! But I have this thing about living in backwoods cottages, where the mice really don't think a house is any different from a tree, and the ants hang out, and you get roots in the pipes. But I moved to a city! I live in a big brick box! No normal living creature wants to hang with me. That is, unless they are too small to care, and have an unlimited food supply.

I was craving eggplant parm at 11pm last night after the debate. Great. Cut up the eggplant, pulled out the last two eggs, everything was fine, and then...in my breadcrumbs...and infestation. It was gross. It was in the "baking" cupboard. Near the flour. Near the two bags of sugar that Elena and I accidentally bought within days of each other. A veritable bug feast!

So, after chucking most of what was in the cupboard, Jean and I decided to make breadcrumbs. Two slices of bread and an English muffin was all we had. Plus I had herbs from the farm that day. We toasted the whole mess with salt and pepper, then food processed it, and they were the most beautiful breadcrumbs I've ever eaten. The meal came out pretty good.

This week's share was pretty good. Tomatoes are done, and it was the last week for peppers and eggplant. Frost hit pretty hard, and the basil was dead dead dead. But, more squash...

1 bag of salad mix.
1 acorn squash.
1 butternut squash.
10 leaves of kale.
2 bulbs of garlic.
1 bag of mix n' match, including peppers, little eggplant, 4 onions, carrots, turnips, beets, and celeriac, which is also known as celeriac. I had to ask about this one. You can peel the root and chop it up and use it in cooking like celery, or you can use the leaves, also in cooking.
1/2 pint of raspberries. It was so cold out! And the sun goes down early, so picking was tough.
Herbs herbs herbs!

Fruit share:

1/2 peck of apples and pears. Yay pears!

I need to figure out how to cook the veggies more quickly. I spend a ton of time cooking and eating, but there are other things sometimes...

October's meat share

2008-10-01T19:16:00.002-04:00

I was delighted to open my meat share this month and see bacon! Now I can finally go to The Bacon Show and experiment.

This month's meat share:

1 pound of bacon ends. What I love about this is that it's already all in little pieces. I like adding bacon to dark leafy greens, like kale. It sweetens and adds moisture to the normally woody green.
1 beef rib Delmonico steak.
4 pork loin chops.
4 burgers.
1 package of ground beef.
2 rib steaks.
1 pound of hickory smoked, maple sugar cured bacon.
1 chicken breast.

I fear that I'm much better with ground beef than I am steak. I also fear that I'm totally starving, and it's time to end this post!

Cooking

2008-09-30T23:42:00.002-04:00

The one thing about fresh vegetables is that you spend a lot of time preparing them. And then cleaning up after them. It always feels worth it once dinner is ready, but you have to get dinner ready! I've been eating a lot of raw veggie wraps, just lettuce, peppers, turnips, dressing.

This week I made a nice edamame cous cous. The farm tells us to just pull up a couple edamame plants and pick off the pods when you get home. This means that you have these plants at home, and you have to deal with them before you even start cooking! But it's efficient at the farm. Anyway, I picked off the pods, then washed them and boiled them until the pods softened. I cooked up a cup of cous cous and added some sunflower seeds. Then I removed the beans from the pods and added them to the cous cous. A bit of salt n' pepper, and some poppyseed dressing, and it was good stuff. It has protein and sunflower seed fat, so it's been a satisfying midafternoon snack.

Today I made a squash kale risotto that came out great. I also made a spicy ham apple stirfry that was just weird. I think that I tend to enjoy the adventure more than the final product.

And on to this week's share!

1 head of lettuce
1 bag of salad mix
2 bulbs of garlic
2 green tomatoes (I made fried green tomatoes last year and they were awful, but they were awful in the movie too, so maybe that's just how they are)
10 leaves of kale
1 bag of mix n' match, including onions, hot and sweet peppers, potatoes, turnips large and small, and beets.
1/2 pint of husk cherries. I didn't get any of these all year by choice, but I tried them today in the field and they're really good!
1 pint of tomatillos. I've been skipping these too, but since tomatoes are sparse and they seem to be holding up well, and I need more vitamin C, I picked up a bunch.
2 edamame plants.
1/2 a pint of raspberries.

It was also ok to get more beans, flowers, and herbs, but I skipped on these this week.

Fruit share:

1/2 peck of apples. I need to make another pie...

And tomorrow is the meat share! I got an email from the farm saying that the place where they get the lambs processed in New Hampshire was flooded recently, so no lamb this month. I hope that the plant is able to recover. Anyway, looking forward to the share, and to the last time the share is during the Arlington Farmer's Market. I believe that they close at the end of this month, so it's a good time to check them out. I like to pick up the flavored goat cheese and fresh fish, plus there are plenty of veggies, a nice shrub stand, and lots of other interesting products.

Ah, fall

2008-09-27T08:52:00.003-04:00

I'm finally on a new computer, which means that I should be able to do exciting things like post pictures of our food again. Jean and I had a friend over to help me with the computer (Vista is terrible, in case anyone is wondering), and in return we fed him.

One of Elena's "signature recipes" is her spaghetti squash. We got a beautiful one from the The Food Project farm a couple weeks ago. Just cut it in half and pull out the seeds, pop it face down in an oiled pan at 400 for 45 minutes to an hour. Stick a fork in it to see if it's good n' squishy.

While it's cooking, you can make a sauce for the cavity in the squash. I fry up garlic, onion, and several kinds of hot and sweet peppers in my wok. Then I add chopped up Italian sausage from Chestnut Farms. Once it is brown, I add a can of tomatoes, and this time some thyme, salt, and pepper. Let it simmer until the flavors are blended, a good ten minutes or longer.

Take out the squash and flip it so that you can fill the cavity with the sauce. When you eat it, you pull the spaghetti strands with your fork and grab some of the sauce with it. Yummy, and filling!

I haven't yet blogged this week on the veggie farm, so here we go:

1 carving pumpkin! It's on our table, and looks really nice. I'd heard it was a lousy pumpkin season, so I'm happy we got one.
4 nectarines, full of flavor and just perfect.
1 bag of salad mix.
10 leaves of Swiss chard.
4 small tomatoes. I think tomatoes are about done for the year.
1 bag of mix n' match, including large turnips, small turnips, an eggplant, onions, peppers, carrots, and potatoes.
1 bag of pick your own beans. The beans have about had it, and taste a bit old. And yet, still better than the store.
1/2 pint of red raspberries. Jean and I don't even try to save these. When she gets home from class, we just wash them and snack on them for the night.

And then the fruit share:

1/2 peck of apples.

Jean and I made an apple pie this week! I bought vegetarian shortening to make the crust with, but it didn't seem to jive with my Fannie Farmer cookbook. It didn't hold together too well, so though the bottom crust was ok, the top crust was sort of a, um, patchwork. We didn't have to vent it. And then it never browned. Yet, despite it's ugly ducklingness, it tasted really good. Yummy apples, flakey crust. The shortening container has its own crust recipe, so I'll try that next time. I just want to get away from lard, having known a number of people who can't eat it. When there's pie, everyone should get a slice.

Restraint

2008-09-17T22:25:00.002-04:00

One thing I always have to remember is that if I don't eat something, it goes bad. And if I don't actually take something from the farm, it is either sold or donated to families who don't get enough veggies. Yesterday I shorted myself in the fields. We had a bunch of tomatoes go bad...I pick them when they're very very ripe, and sometimes they split and start rotting within 24 hours.

And I was also rushing it, because it was primary day in Massachusetts. There were a couple of races where I wanted to get my say, so I rushed home between the farm and chamber music to get my votes in.

This week's veggie share:

1 spaghetti squash! Yay! It's the start of winter squash season. Spaghetti squash are great because you bake them, flip them and fill them with pesto or sausage or whatever, and then use a fork to pull out the long, mild spaghetti strands.
1 bag of salad mix, which I skipped because I still had a half bag left from last week.
1 head of lettuce.
2 tomatoes, as the season wanes.
2 bulbs of garlic.
10 leaves of kale.
1 bag of mix n' match, including peppers, hot peppers, onions, carrots, beets, turnips, and potatoes.
Pick your own tomatoes, so I took a few little tomatoes.
Pick your own beans, but I skipped them.
Pick your own raspberries, so of course I picked a pint. Jean and I made raspberry pancakes!
Unlimited herbs, but again, I have enough.

(Right?)

And the fruit share included:

1 bag of apples.
3 peaches.

My farm is offering a winter share. The deal is that it's only two pickups, one in the second half of November and the second in the second half of December. Apparently you get 40-50 pounds of food each share, or at least that's how it was last year. Potatoes, rutabagas, garlic, squash...all the winter veggies. And you get some breads that the farm produces. All for $130. One couple raved about the share during the picnic the farm had this summer. Plus, there was an optional apple share, 20 pounds of apples for $25. I signed up, and can pay in two installments. It's a fun thing to do for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Last year Elena and I were practically dying for local veggies by spring, so hopefully this will stave off the cravings. It's going to be 90 in South Korea this week, so I'm guessing the winter isn't quite as long over there! They have the coolest little peronal-sized melons that I'm jealous of. Lots of fun fruit, and lots of fish. I'm looking forward to visiting!

Blanching

2008-09-09T22:10:00.002-04:00

OK, again, I should know better. When the forecast calls for rain on a farm day, it's not a good idea to wear strappy heels and new pants with a "Dry Clean Only" tag.

Silly me.

Anyway, I wandered through the fields with rolled up pants and muddy toes, and this week's share was:

1 head of lettuce.
1 bag of salad mix.
1 tomato.
1 bulb of garlic ("It's very small" said another woman, "Yes," said I, "but it's stronger than normal.")
10 leaves of really massive red kale.
1 bag of mix n' match, including, onions! as many as I wanted! that fit in the bag!, peppers of all kinds, broccoli, red cabbage, potatoes, carrots, nice looking beets, pat-a-pan squash, and my turnips are back so I can have them on toast for the fall!, and this just in Diacon radishes. Yay!
Unlimited green beans (see below).
Tomatoes, including unlimited plum, 2 heirloom, a pint of cherry, a pint of little plum.
4 edamame plants.
1 pint of raspberries!
Unlimited herbs, but I didn't take much because I haven't frozen or used last week's.

Plus! There was a fruit share which consisted of:

Apples.

Yep.

So today I blanched green beans. It was my first blanching extravaganza. You blanch beans before you freeze them. The first thing you do is start boiling water. While you wait, wash the beans and break them into pieces. Boil them for three minutes and then put them in ice water for three minutes. Immediately put them into freezer bags and the freezer. Yay! Beans in winter.

Yesterday I was watching Rachel Ray, and I just happened to have all the ingredients for the pasta dish she was making. You boil cut up potatoes, add some pasta, and then add shredded cabbage. Meanwhile, melt a stick of butter and add sage leaves and two halved cloves of garlic. Let the butter sauce blend a bit, then remove the sage and garlic and add chopped sage. Then you drain the pasta reserving one cup of the pasta water. Add the water to the butter, then mix in the pasta. Add salt and pepper and some romano. Mix mix mix. Yummy!

2008-09-08T22:24:00.002-04:00

Elena and I are discussing the gigantic plums in South Korea, and I realized that I forgot to post about my fruit share last week! The fruit share is $72 for 2 months of fruit. It comes from a "low-spray orchard," and I'm not quite sure what that entails.

I think we get a half-peck of fruit. This week we got mostly apples, and a small bag of itty bitty plums. I love these plums! I ate them all, since Jean has only eyed them suspiciously. And the apples are really juicy and yummy. But now, back to Elena on Skype!

And meat this week too!

2008-09-06T08:58:00.002-04:00

My meat share this week was:

2 packages of ground beef.
1 beef loin t-bone steak.
1 package of ground pork breakfast sausage (excellent-looking omlette material).
1 beef round top round steak.
1 package of chicken breast.
1 package of three Italian sausage.
2 pork fresh boneless ham steaks.
1 beef chuck steak boneless.
Plus I arrived in time to buy 2 dozen eggs! Jean: "These eggs are way different than normal eggs." They're better.

Since I went away for about a week in August, I still have some meat from last month left. I have a steak marinating in the fridge. I used to never buy steak because it was so expensive and I didn't know how to cook it, but it keeps getting better. Jean brought a grill pan that makes cooking it far more fun! Sizzzzzle.

I wandered around the farmer's market in Arlington afterwards. I steered clear of most stuff, because we have more food right now than any household should. I stopped at a nice stand that sells shrubs. My condo building does not allow us to have Christmas trees. I'm trying to scam the system and buy a live evergreen plant that I can decorate at Christmas time. The stand had all of these gorgeous evergreens, and it made me sad that I don't have a yard. I told them about my plan, but the wizened head farmer assured me that his trees would die if I tried to keep them inside. Alas. I'll keep looking.

Fall harvests

2008-09-06T08:44:00.002-04:00

Ah, so it's fall time. Fall time means that it's time to pick things as rapidly as possible so that they won't go bad! I picked up my veggies on Tuesday, and here's the take (from memory!):

1 bag of salad mix.
1 head of lettuce.
1 bulb of garlic.
3 field tomatoes.
8 leaves of kale.
3/4 a bag of mix n' match, including all kinds of green, purple, hot, red, big little peppers; carrots; onions; potatoes.
1 watermelon (I haven't opened it to see if it's great or red yet).
Pick your own tomatoes, including a pint of cherry, a pint of plum, a few heirloom, and then unlimted of this one kind for sauce and gazpacho.
Unlimited pick-your-own beans.
4 plants of edamame. When I got to the farm, people were walking around with all these plants...they told me it was easier it we just pulled up the plants. They are covered with edamame pods!
Unlimited field herbs, plus herbs from the tea and herb gardens. More to freeze!

It was my sister Christine's birthday, so Jean and I trekked up to New Hampshire and we all made mango chicken and a yummy salad. Mango chicken doesn't use much from the farm, except onions and garlic, but it's one of the best things ever...especially when you add a can of coconut milk. I'm still looking for something grown in MA that could replace coconut milk, but I've had to cut back to just using the stuff only every now and again.

Jean is a bit overwhelmed by veggies. We had a meal that included a beet and carrot slaw, roasted beets potatoes carrots beans and peppers, corn on the cob (so sweet, didn't need butter or salt!), and ground beef with a bunch of peppers and eggplant. Yum stuff.

Tuesday's take

2008-08-30T07:44:00.002-04:00

Yes, I picked up my share on Tuesday. Yes, I forgot to blog.

Jean moved in yesterday (at 8pm!). So she and I plan to face the fridge full of veggies. I am trying to put away for the winter, but so far I've just frozen some fruit and herbs. But I know that, come January, I will really want to eat those fruits and herbs.

This week's take:

1 watermelon (not sure if it's red or yellow).
1 cantaloupe.
Lots of tomatoes, 4 in the shed, a pint of cherry, 8 other small ones, 1 orchard peach, and 4 heirloom. Hooray for gazpacho!
1 bag of salad mix.
1 head of lettuce, that I didn't bother to take because I still have lettuce.
8 stems kale.
1 head of garlic.
3/4 of a bag of mix-n-match...we now have small onions! but were limited to 2, plus I got a ton of peppers, some fennel, and beets.
Lots of herbs, all of which are now frozen: thyme, wintermint, parsley, and dill.

It's time to make some good roasted veggies in oil and garlic. I made a veggie sausage stew that came out terrible this week....can't win them all! My gazpacho was good though.

My sister Christine turns 25 today. Maybe she wants lettuce for her birthday?

Food food food!

2008-08-24T16:35:00.003-04:00

Jean's not moving in until Saturday. I had friends over yesterday, so of course we ate farmshare food. The difference between this year's visit and last is that this year they have a baby! They are trying to teach the baby to like veggies, so she was eating tomatoes and lettuce. I guess the baby is a self-proclaimed vegetarian already...she'll eat broccoli but spits out meat. Or maybe it's that she only has four teeth!

We made (I very rarely just cook and have people eat...normally I invite/force my guests to help cooking...I think this is due to menu ambition and lack of skill) fried pork chops in a nice Worcestershire sauce with Butt Rub. I was watching the Butt Rub guys on The Food Network, and they won a major BBQ contest, so now I've been using the stuff, even though it had been sitting on the shelf unused for months. And it's yum stuff.

We (well Paul) made a lettuce, tomato, pepper salad with olive oil and salt. Then we had pat-a-pan and two-toned squash in garlic and olive oil. And now I'm out of olive oil, alas! We also had some spinach walnut tortellini from Whole Foods that Elena left behind. Then, of course, yellow watermelon.

Today I made some yellow watermelon popsicles and put a small chunk of peach in each one. Then I had all this watermelon puree left. I added chunks of cantaloupe, a few big spoonfuls of Greek yogurt, and some of my local honey. It's from the Boston Honey Company. Puree puree puree. The smoothie came out gentle and sweet.

Elena's made it to South Korea, and has figured out how to use her rice cooker and hot plate. Hopefully she survives without an oven or microwave! She also went and bought a spicy pork soup, so she had to drink lots of water, so she had to use a squatty potty the first time. Yay!

Saying goodbye

2008-08-20T23:43:00.003-04:00

This morning I dropped off Elena at the airport for her South Korea trip. She'll be gone a year or two. Or who knows. It didn't hit me until she was hugging me goodbye, and then I started to cry and still well up every time I think about it.

We had an impromptu party with Papa John's pizza (a rare treat!). I had gone to the farm before I went home, and we all shared half a yellow watermelon. People were fascinated (and suspicious). A couple people sniffed it and said "It seems to smell like a watermelon" and then took several slices. It's just so...watery and sweet.

This week's share:

2 Yellow watermelons.
1 cantaloupe.
2 heavily bee-stung peaches, ugly but sweet.
2 heads of lettuce.
1 head of garlic.
10 collard greens.
4 field tomatoes.
1 bag of mix n' match, and I chose, peppers, an eggplant, corn, hot peppers, and scallions.
Pick your own tomatoes, including cherry tomatoes, some small tomatoes, and a couple heirlooms.
1 pint of beans.
Lots of herbs.
37 stems of flowers...it being Elena's last day, I hunted around the patch some more and came up with a pretty cool bouquet.

Jean moves in next week, so she'll have plenty to eat!

Not enough veggies

2008-08-14T20:58:00.002-04:00

I spent the last week as a tourist. For me this means eating lots of food I never eat. I spent time with my college roommate's family, where they serve me yummy spicy curries that I can't stop eating. I ate a huge chickpea curry burrito at Bueno Y Sano in Northampton, MA and blueberry ice cream in Amherst. Then I went to New York City for the first time in my life, and had a yummy Reuben, unlimited breakfast buffets, Irish pub food, English tea house comfort food, ya know, all the good stuff. It was the last trip Elena and I will take together for a long time.

And so, I gained five pounds and can really feel the lack of good organic veggies and meat. Luckily, today was farm day! And a good one:

1 head of lettuce.
1 bag of salad mix.
1 head of garlic.
10 leaves of collard greens.
4 tomatoes.
3 ears of corn.
1 bag of mix n' match, included a zillion peppers, pat-a-pan squash, two-tone squash, pickling cukes, and potatoes.
1 cantaloupe!
1 cute watermelon!
1/2 pint of cherry tomatoes.
1 heirloom tomato.
1 pint of beans.
Tons of herbs.
Flowers.

I also signed up for the fruit share, which is normally apples, and sometimes pears n' plums. I guess that there was a lot of hail damage this year, so we'll see what the share brings.

Elena made a nice squash risotto today, and a stirfry full of green beans. Last week Elena made a beautiful carrot cake.

Next week Elena is moving to South Korea for two years. It's very sad, but exciting. We've shared a lot of veggies together! Now she moves on to kimchee and Korean barbeque.

In the US, when someone takes your picture, you say "Cheese!" to show your happy toothy smile. In Korea, you say, "Kimchee!"

My sister Jean will be moving in next week. And will learn to cook. Yay Jean!

Stuffed peppers, here we go!

2008-08-06T19:26:00.004-04:00

I think it's a lot easier to cook veggies when they have meat to play with! Today I got my third meat share, and it was exciting as usual.

I asked Kim if there was ever any bacon, and she said there is. She's good about putting stuff you like into the share, and she told me to email her about it. You get bacon about one out of every three months.

It also sounds like there will be a lot of lamb in a couple months. Kim said lambs are born late winter and early spring in MA, so you have to wait until fall to slaughter them.

Also, if you're a CSA member, there's a cooler full of "extra parts" like pork liver and pork hearts, and so on, that you can take as part of your share. I took a pork heart for Elena and me to try. Time to look for recipes!

And on to the good stuff. My meat share this month included:

3 Greek lamb sausage (my absolute favorite!)
2 packages of ground beef
2 packages of 2 pork loin chops
1 Beef chuck shoulder steak for London broil
1 Pork shoulder country style ribs (yum!)
1 package of 4 beef patties
1 beef rib steak (this looks really good too)
3 breakfast sausage

What I really want to do is make some stuffed peppers with the ground beef and the multitudes of green peppers I picked up yesterday. Since the meat share meat tends to fill me up with smaller portions, the smaller peppers will be perfect.

I also bought some scallops from the fish stand at the Arlington Farmer's Market, and some orange cardamon goat cheese from the goat cheese stand. They were all out of lemon lavender goat cheese this time.

So much cooking to do!

rain rain, go away...

2008-08-06T00:27:00.002-04:00

So as it turns out, with all the rain means less ripe tomatoes, and more wet-related plant diseases. So the tomatoes are late and not that plentiful, unlike last year when it was hot all the time and all we had were tomatoes. On the flip side, we're headed towards some really good melons, which will be great! Maybe the raspberries will be better too.

My farm also offers a fruit share each year, but this year there was a bunch of hail. I guess tree fruit, like apples, is in short supply, and everyone is raising their prices. So I'm still waiting to see how much the fruit share is...it was wonderful to get a bag of apples each week last summer. And the occassional plum and pear.

Today's take was pretty good:

1 head of lettuce
1/2 bag of salad mix
1 cabbage
1 bulb of garlic
3 tomatoes
3 ears of young corn
1 bag of mix n' match, so I chose: lots of green peppers, onions, bunching onions, beets, and a ton of baby pat-a-pan squash...so cute! They steam nicely.
1/2 a pint of cherry tomatoes from the field.
1 other tomato from the field.
1 quart of beans.
Two bunches of herbs (I cheat and split my bunchs, so I took thyme, parsley, cilantro, and wintermint).

Elena made chicken and veggies last night, and I finally made another big batch of pesto. Tomorrow is meat share day, and I can't wait!

Veggies veggies veggies

2008-07-31T00:31:00.003-04:00

So we've hit that point. I have way more veggies than I can consume, and not enough time to prep them. I actually went out to Whole Foods today to get some sushi so that I'd be able to get some work done and then cook. So after some sushi and a few math problems, I tossed my laundry in the washer and started chopping. Unfortunately I forgot that my laundry was going for about a 1/2 hour, so I'm still awake now.

I made my typical cucumber salad, which is two thinly sliced cucumbers, 1 thinly sliced green onion, some dill, salt, pepper, and a couple tablespoons of Miracle Whip. If I remember I'll put some Hungarian paprika on before I eat it. I have a mandolin thing that I used for the first time today, and it appears to cut prep time for cucumber salads by about 80%.

My coworker suggested a different kind of cucumber salad, and this one includes cukes, slices of orange, thinly sliced fennel, and olive oil and vinegar. It smells wonderful, and tomorrow! We'll see how it tastes.

Then I made some pesto. I've never made the stuff before, but it made me love my food processor even more. I only used up about a quarter of my basil for a cup of pesto, so much more to be done this weekend. It turns out that if you freeze it, you should omit the cheese and add it in when you're ready to use it.

The farm gave out a recipe for a fennel garlic spread. Unfortunately, when I was reading the ingredients, I thought it said rice wine vinegar, which I have. But no, it was for mirin or rice wine. I read the description of mirin, and decided that the closest thing I had to it (since it was already cooking) was amaretto. Sweet, anyway.

I then cooked some tilapia in the leftover sauce. If the flavor of the tilapia is any indication, the spread should be pretty good. But then, anything in amaretto is pretty good.

I finished the evening off with a tomato, mozzarella, basil salad with olive oil and vinegar. Yay! Food to eat, for a couple days anyway. I still have zucchini, and I'm angling to watch the Iron Chef America zucchini episode one more time before I dive in...

Pesto party!

2008-07-29T23:23:00.002-04:00

I have never before possessed so much basil. Kate at The Food Project told me that it was so that I could make and freeze a bunch of pesto. I've never done this, but I suppose this is the week?

Here was our take this week:

2 bunches of basil plants (to get some perspective on this, take a normal plastic shopping bag from Stop & Shop and just cram it with basil).
1 head of lettuce.
8 leaves of chard.
1 head of green garlic.
3 tomatoes.
3 ears of young corn.
1 bag of mix n' match. I choose four cucumbers, 4 green onions (with full bulbs), and a big piece of fennel with fronds.
2 quarts of pick your own beans.
Herbs, and I picked some thyme, winter mint, dill, and cilantro.

The farm provided a recipe for a fennel garlic spread that I'm going to have to try, because I have all the stuff for it here. Then I guess there will be some pesto.

I completely slept through dinner after my violin lesson yesterday. This morning I got up early and made one of my standard stirfry stews...a 1/2 pound of steak, one potato, one pepper, one onion, and some worcestershire sauce. Not bad! I ate it all at lunch, and then, I fear, ate BBQ at a company event, and later had some mussels at a little Italian restaurant. I made up for my missed dinner!

hooray!

2008-07-22T22:56:00.002-04:00

And today the season really starts to rock.

The share:

1 head of lettuce.
1/2 bag of mizuna.
1 quart of potatoes (they are little so this is like 10 potatoes).
1 head of green garlic.
10 collard greens.
2 red tomatoes.
1/2 bag of mix n' match, and I picked up 4 green bell peppers (!), 1 dark purple eggplant (they had light purple too), 1 pat-a-pan squash, and a bunch of carrots.
2 Sun Gold cherry tomatoes (just for kicks...).
1 pint of beans, including wax beans and flat beans.
2 bunches of herbs.
And I was entitled to 45 stems of flowers that I did not pick, for reasons below.

And that reason would be that they had a cookout today! It is tough to go pick veggies when you are hungry, and pretty near impossible when you can smell bar-b-que. They asked everyone to bring a salad or dessert, so I brought my bean dip. I literally took the plastic wrap off the dip and was pouring in the chips when it was swamped. I wandered away to pick my herbs and beans, and when I got back there wasn't much left. Yay!

There was a huge tray of baked squash, a couple nice green salads, a lovely watermelon mint salad made by people I sat with, great zucchini bread, a nice fruit bread little cupcake thing, chicken, veggie burgers, and tons more. It was really well run and everyone was fun to talk to. I talked to a couple of the interns, and many of them have been on the farm for two or three years. It's about a 7 week internship, and you work a lot. But that's a great summer job, because it gives you a couple weeks to yourself. It sounds like they learn a ton about food and food production.

Part of the event was that they are raising money for a shed and need $12,000 to do it. The tractors need safe storage (which will really help them last longer). The Food Project is a a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit, even though we buy shares. The shares contribute to about 15% of their annual budget. It's worth a visit to their website, as they post tons of fundraising (like they've teamed up with Jack Johnson) and volunteer (picking squash anyone?) opportunities. They also work with other local farms on various events. I spoke with someone on the board, who suggested that I come and volunteer in the fall on Saturdays. I plan do that if math classes don't conflict.

Also, today I was convinced that I should participate in the winter share. I guess you get 40-50 pounds of produce at each of two pickups, full of squash and root veggies and garlic, plus breads and products made by the farm. Last year it was so sad when the share ended, so the winter share should really help. I wish I had a root cellar!

sleepy Sunday

2008-07-21T00:08:00.002-04:00

It's remarkable how an entire day can be taken up by food if you let it.

First off, I forgot in my last post that we got our first pint of potatoes last week! That's because Layna hid them, probably hoping I wouldn't find them. But, as I was cleaning up the kitchen today, there they were.

Today I made four things. One was braised pork loin cutlets with thyme-lemon sauce. I used the nice pork cutlets from Chestnut Farms and herbs from The Food Project. I love it when the two farms come together in one skillet. I cooked up some mizuna and chard with the few fava beans I popped out of the shell. (I think I got 2 dozen beans from the bag I picked, not a good pull for the labor I put in but pretty yummy.) I sauteed the whole mess in garlic and the herbed vinegar from the farm, and the vinegar really sweetens the bitter of the greens.

I made up a big wok full of pat-a-pan squash. Iron Chef America had a zucchini challenge today, and they included pat-a-pan. "Notorious for no flavor." Bah on that. I cook it in a wok with garlic, olive oil, and saltnpeppa for a summery treat. I almost want to watch that episode again, though, or write down the recipes, because I guess ya can do a lot more with squash than I've tried. Zucchini wrapped around scallops, zucchini pesto, zucchini casserole, zucchini fritters...just beautiful.

I made pasta and meatballs too. I hope we get more ground meat next time so I don't have to do meatballs out of the bag...and we surely need tomatoes because I did tomatoes out of a can. But I cooked the meatballs with fresh basil, added a can of plain tomatoes and a can of garlic and basil tomatoes, two cloves of garlic, and a bunch of scallions. The secret was adding some crumbled lemon lavender goat cheese to the top. Finally, I figured out what to do with the stuff! Tangy!

carrots

2008-07-17T22:00:00.003-04:00

Does anyone else love when Anne of Green Gables smashes her slate on Gilbert Blythe's head? Priceless.

Anyway, apparently there's a carrot shortage this year. I read that with the big flooding rains we had, some of the seeds have washed away. I wonder if that contributes to this carrot shortage.

So Tuesday's share was:

1/2 a bag of mizuna
1 head of lettuce
2 pat-a-pan squash
8 leaves of chard
1/2 a bag of mix-n-match, so I picked a summer squash, scallions, turnips, and all the carrots that I could grab.
20 stems of flowers, pick your own. I'm way into red this season.
Herbs, including basil, winter mint, and, finally, thyme.

Elena cooked a ton this week. She made pizza with some of the basil, chicken pot pie with some beets and carrots from the farm, and this extremely awesome drink. Take a gallon of water, add a couple springs of mint leaves and some honey, and you have a cool summer's day. It changes day-to-day as the mint sinks into the water.

tidbits

2008-07-15T00:01:00.002-04:00

I used to think that adding a mango to any dish automatically makes it wonderful.

So. Not. True.

I tried cooking my wonderful Greek lamb sausage from Chestnut Farms with some mango...and swiss chard. I thought it would be pretty. Instead it turned the mango flesh brown and the whole thing tasted like chard. Blech. I like chard, but context is important. So on the flavor combos to never use list: Swiss chard and mangoes.

I made a field greens risotto from a Food Project recipe the other day, to bring to the wild edibles potluck. Sadly, most people didn't stick around to participate. The dish came out the way I wanted it to, but I don't think most people agreed with me :-). According to Elena it wasn't a "real" risotto because it used brown rice. Hey, it was what the recipe called for. It used scallions, garlic, ginger, and a whole head of escarole and a bag of mizuna. So you ended up with a very green rice dish. A bit of asagio cheese and we're done. I never had asagio, and I found out that it's good on Chestnut Farm burgers too. I can has cheezburger!

I went to Victoria's Secret the other day, and if you get something from their Pink collection, you get a free tote bag. It's a huge bag, and it folds up tiny, so it looks like a good thing to bring to Whole Foods or the farm. I heard a rumor that plastic bags are going away in Massachusetts, but I can't find anything to confirm it. But they can go away in your own life. I found a Reusable Bags site, which has some interesting statistics on the amount of energy and waste caused by plastic bags. It also has information on who has done what to save energy. I did a research project in 2001 entitled "Paper or Plastic?" The clear answer was: neither! Use canvas bags. Plastic takes forever to break down naturally, and the process for making paper bags, or paper in general, is totally disgusting and expensive and smelly. The trick for me is remembering my canvas bags. The best solution so far is to hang them on my doorknob at night. It's difficult to miss it in the morning. Difficult...yet not impossible...

Foraging for wild edibles

2008-07-13T21:33:00.002-04:00

Today my brother John and I drove out to Belchertown for Russ Cohen's Foraging for Wild Edibles workshop, sponsored by NOFA. It was an excellent way to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon. We learned about mushrooms you should and shouldn't eat, nuts and berries that grow wild, roots to pick, how things smell, when not to eat certain plants, good picking etiquette. After being out in the sun for four hours and driving four hours, I'm kinda zonked, so will post pictures and a more in-depth discussion later this week.

But for now, if you are interested in foraging for wild food, here's some of Russ' info. As he said, foraging is one of the last free things left to do, and you walk away with good things to eat. Yes it takes time and effort, but that's part of the fun. And I'm dying for hazelnut season now that I realize that hazelnuts grow EVERYWHERE, and I can't but help thinking about the beach plum jelly my great-aunt Mil used to make. Might be worth a trip to Plum Island this year.

I purchased his book Wild Plants I Have Known...and Eaten. The book contains information on where and how to forage, some general guidelines, and a wealth of information on plants, including recipes. Cattail chowder and pokeweed frittata, anyone? Russ donates all his money back to conservation land, so know that your $15 goes to a good cause.

According to Tom from NOFA, Russ runs about 60 workshops per year. Take a look at his schedule, and note that there are workshops in Framingham and Lincoln coming up. It looks like some are walks and some are slide shows or cooking events.

Finally, here's Russ Cohen's bio.

I'll write up more later this week, not all my 10 pages of notes but a few highlights and pictures. Happy eating everyone.

I say tomato...

2008-07-08T22:36:00.003-04:00

Not yet. I wait and wait, but at least this time there was progress. There was one (1) ripe tomato at the farm. Not for each of us, one on the entire farm. They said they didn't want to split it between the 340 shares they offer. That's a lot of shares! So when we get two heads of lettuce, does that mean that they've grown 680 heads of lettuce that week? Geez.

They all but promised tomatoes in 2 weeks. I remember that once tomatoes started happening, I was happy for the rest of the season. With tomatoes come many other good things, like onions and green beans.

And on to this week's share:

1/2 bag of salad mix.
1 head of lettuce (this lettuce thing is going to happen for the rest of the season, but occasionally we get two heads of it).
1/2 bag of braising greens (these looked suspiciously like the salad mix, but they gave us an interesting recipe for a risotto that uses 12 cups of greens, so I think it'll be ok).
8 leaves of beautiful chard.
2 squash (I picked a two-toned and a zucchini).
1/2 bag of mix-n-match, so I chose 6 carrots (the limit), some turnips, bunching onions, and garlic scapes.
1 quart of fava beans (pick your own, these beans grow up rather than hang from the plant).
Herbs, I chose some dill and Thai basil.
10 stems of flowers.

Now, if you are driving home on rt. 2 one night in the pouring rain, start hydroplaning towards the guard rail, and hit the breaks so that you are lucky enough to shoot across three lanes of traffic and don't die, the thing to do is to get off four exits early and go to Trader Joe's. This is exactly what happened last Thursday. I bought their masala simmer sauce, because I didn't know what to do with my chicken legs from the meat share.

I cut up some bunching onions and fried them in olive oil in the wok. I took out the chicken legs, which were actually three large leg/thigh pieces. I seared both sides of the meat in the wok, then covered with the masala sauce and a can of coconut milk. This officially makes it bad for low-fat diets, but good for just about everything else. I then let it simmer for an hour and added a bunch of chard, basil, and mint for the last few minutes. The chicken had tons of its own flavor and the veggies melded well with the sauce. It's amazing what good ingredients do for your cooking. Thank you local farms.

CISA

2008-07-04T12:07:00.003-04:00

As you head out to western MA, you'll see more and more cars with the Be a Local Hero, Buy Locally Grown bumper sticker on their cars. This campaign is run by Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA). Tracie from CISA posted a comment on my blog, and I'm happy that the blog's gotten around like that. CISA is a western MA organization that links local farms to local communities.

I admit that I haven't visited their site for a long time. I lived in Amherst and Belchertown until the economy made me flee to the Boston area. I still miss my trees, Antonio's pizza, and Bueno Y Sano burritos. But the site has grown into a wonderful resource for all of Massachusetts. You can click on their Local Food Guide, select a region from the map in the upper right of the screen, and it displays where to get local food products. It also tells you what is in season for the area and when and where local farmers' markets are.

Also, check out their Store. They have a Local Delectables cookbook available, which was written by a Hampshire grad and is sorted into recipes by season. They also have resources for starting a local food campaign and promoting agritourism on your farm. I also like their Eat the View notecards. Yum.

By the pound

2008-07-02T21:27:00.000-04:00

I forgot to mention that if you are interested in trying the Chestnut Farms meat, they have a stand set up at the Arlington Farmer's Market. Not sure if they do it every week, but they deliver the first and third Wednesday of the month there. I suspect they are there at least those times. I think the prices start at $6/pound for ground meat, and go up from there.

Hunting

2008-07-02T20:44:00.000-04:00

In the old days, men were men when they hunted and farmed large animals. These days, men are men when they cook large pieces of meat. The other day I was watching Emeril "kick it up a notch" Lagasse and he was doing a special for men only. So you had this whole group of guys, and Emeril would say, "now let's add some garlic" and the men would all grunt in agreement, and "now let's add some sausage" and they all whooped. Oh yes.

I'd like to point out that I've not yet dated a guy who knows much more about cars or fixing toilets than I do. But they certainly all cook a better burger.

Anyway, the moment you've all been waiting for, my second meat share from Chestnut Farms! Here we go:

1 rather massive package of chicken thighs and legs.
2 packages of 4 hamburgers each. (I have one package defrosting as I type.)
1 package of 3 pork breakfast patties.
2 beef rib Delmonico steaks.
1 package of that awesome Greek-flavored lamb sausage.
2 packages of pork loin sirloin cutlets.

One question people keep asking is, are all the shares the same? And today I found out that no, they aren't. First off, Kim is good about packing "special" shares. One woman wanted beef liver, so she got a big piece of beef liver. More power to her.

I was actually also picking up a share for a friend of mine (a lot of people were interested once I started talking about the meat shares). There was a bit of a snafu with the share, but Kim was kind enough to construct a pork-free share for him at the last minute. So he ended up with all beef hot dogs, porterhouse and top round steak, and so on instead of what I got. I figure they cut the animals into lots of pieces, and they allot a fair amount to each.

I also caught the last 15 minutes of the Arlington Farmer's Market. I picked up a chunk of lemon lavender goat cheese (who knew you could get that?), some organic eggs since, sadly, Chestnut Farms ran out an hour before I got there, and some raisin cinnamon bread ($2 because she thought it may have gotten a little wet...it looked good to me). I think I missed the fish, so I will try again next time. It's a cute little market, probably 15 stalls when I went, but I went late.

I have a couple burgers frying, better go keep an eye on them.

Greens...

2008-07-01T23:12:00.000-04:00

OK, so around now in Massachusetts farmshare land, ya just start getting sick of greens. Especially since the strawberries have passed. I eagerly await the return of the tomatoes!

Today I picked up:

1 head of lettuce.
1/2 bag of salad mix.
8 stalks of especially beautiful swiss chard.
1 head of escarole (this is an interesting bitter green that grows in a head like lettuce, and it's fun to stuff the head with cheese, capers, and olives, and then tie up and steam).
1 summer squash (could not resist the pat-a-pan).
10 garlic scapes.
Mix n' match! 1/2 bag of whatever I want, so I picked up bok choy, scallions, a couple beets, and a couple turnips.
1 pint of snow peas (pick your own, took plenty of hunting).
1 bunch wintermint.
1 bunch basil.
1 bunch dill.
3 flowers, which I squished beyond recognition by the time I got home...I need to start bringing a vase.

Luckily I managed to get to Wright's Pond to do a few laps before I went home. Tiz a good thing, to go to the farm then go for a swim.

NOFA

2008-06-29T21:39:00.000-04:00

NOFA/Massachusetts sent me a big packet of information this weekend. It contains:

Information on workshops,
Information on the NOFA Summer Conference at my alma mater UMass Amherst (go UMass!)
Information on various certifications you can get, and a dense newspaper The Natural Farmer.
NOFA Massachusetts news.
Massachusetts 2008-2009 Organic Food Guide.
NOFA Guide to Organic Land Care.

Just, ya know, tons of stuff for anyone who wants to learn organic farming. If you join, you can get discounts on the workshops, like the Foraging for Wild Edibles one that John and I will attend in a couple weeks.

I made a veggie stew yesterday. Chicken broth, then toss in kohlrabi (stem, leaves, n' all), chard, turnips, parsnips, leftover rice, mint and basil. It came out pretty good, and it's a good way to soften the intimidating kohlrabi stem into something yummy.

I'm having trouble loading the digital photos from my camera, which is too bad. Elena made a beautiful dish of scallops with purple chive flowers on rice and garlic scapes. The purple and green really knock you out. She served it with a side of stirfried bok choy with garlic scapes. It was one of the nicest meals I've had from the farm. And, of course, honeyed strawberries for dessert.

It was hoppin'

2008-06-26T21:13:00.000-04:00

As my normal Tuesday farm adventure was rained (and, apparently, hailed) out, I went to my weekly vegetable pick up today. The place was mobbed! It seemed that everyone skipped on Tuesday. There were little kids, "I eat all the good strawberries I find mom...", moms and dads, 20-somethings like me, and grandmas. And so the strawberry field was kind of funny. Butts in the air everyone! Picking stuff is always an adventure. I gave lots of pea-picking advice to my fellow harvesters, but they mostly got frustrated, "I don't see anything to pick." You have to look low on the vines and dig through the leaves...there's more there I swear!

The veggie haul is starting to pick up. Today I got:
- 1 bag of salad mix. I took mizuna for all of it.
- 2 heads of lettuce.
- 8 stalks of swiss chard.
- 6 Hakurei turnips.
- 1 handful of bok choy.
- 2 summer squash. I took one zucchini and one pat-a-pan squash, which is one of my favorite squashes ever with olive oil and garlic.
- 2 handfuls of garlic scapes, which are the curly-q tops to the garlic that you cut off to promote bulb growth. They taste like mild garlic, rather like chives.
- 2 kohlrabi. Kohlrabi is German for "cabbage turnip." If you've never seen one, this is the best way to describe it. Last year we failed to use the kohlrabi, but this year we have recipes.
- 1/2 pint of peas.
- 1 quart of strawberries, still going strong.
- A few sprigs of lavender.
- A few sprigs of winter savory.
- A handful of basil.

I also purchased some local honey and an herbed vinegar that the local youth from Boston make on Food Project sites. Apparently there will be 64 high school summer youth from Boston coming this week to help weed and work on the farm. It's the Food Project's Summer Interns and Summer Youth Program (SYP) that started 17 years ago. The newsletter says that it's the first job for many of them, and the first time most have been on a farm. They learn abuot food production, server food at soup kitchens, and work at the farmers market. This is yet another reason why I really like The Food Project.

The Food Project is selling tickets to a special Cirque du Soleil performance. Tickets are $100, so I fear I can't quite swing it this year after buying a condo. It sounds like good times, though. 100% of proceeds go to the Food Project programs.

Speaking of the new condo, when I got here I found that my stove just didn't quite work right. Circa approximately 1970, it was a lovely two-toned brown and had five button settings for each burner. But the settings did not all work. I bought a lovely new stove from Home Depot, in the hopes that it will encourage me to keep cooking. So far, so good. I'm going to try and tackle a savory bread pudding at some point. Maybe I'll make it with the kohlrabi!

Elena's response, "Why?"

When it rains...

2008-06-24T23:59:00.000-04:00

So I packed up to leave work today and then saw that it was raining. Downpouring. Big puddles.

It didn't seem like a good day to go to the farm. Luckily, The Food Project lets me pick either Tuesday or Thursday to pick up my veggies. So Thursday it is.

Elena and I went to the Strawberry Fest at Wilson Farm for a little while on Saturday. We had strawberry shortcake, strawberry soup, strawberry jam, and my favorite was strawberry rhubarb crumble. I had also eaten a chocolate chip cookie I bought at the bake sale for Obama in Davis Square, so by the end of it all I needed some decent protein. We made lamb chops with yogurt and mint leaves.

On Sunday, I took the Greek-spiced lamb sausage and cooked it with chard, turnip greens, an onion, beans, and spices in a mango simmer sauce. While simmering, I made paneer with a recipe that popped up in my iGoogle. It is one of the easiest new things I've tried in a long time, and a lot of fun because you get to watch milk curdle, and then you play with cheesecloth. It came out great with my sausage creation.

For the paneer, I used Shaw Farm milk for the first time. They are a local company that people seem to rave about, and yes, the milk tastes wonderful. They don't seem to like the idea of raw milk, and neither does my nutritionist sister. I still have to try it.

Elena and I made a bacon minestrone soup, which we adapted from a recipe from The Bacon Show. Minestrone is great, because once you have the beans and pasta, you can just keep throwing in all the veggies you have left from the farm. Chard, turnip tops, zucchini, and leeks instead of onions. I think that bacon and leeks make a wonderful broth. The soup ended with a bunch of fresh basil and mint from the farm.

I am so looking forward to my next meat share from Chestnut Farms. I only have the two beef rib Delmonico steaks left, in part because I am the worst at cooking steak. I seem to be much better at meting out the meat than the veggies.

Too many strawberries?

2008-06-21T00:13:00.000-04:00

I just cut up most of the 2 quarts of strawberries I got at the farm this week. Mixed half with local honey I bought at The Food Project. Honey gives the strawberries a tangy kick. And at lunch today a coworker reminded me that eating local honey can also stave off local pollen allergies. Good stuff.

The other half I froze for smoothies later on. I also made a ground beef curry with Chestnut Farms beef and bok choy from The Food Project.

I have a couple farmer's markets I want to visit soon. Medford has what looks like a modest market, and I'll be able to get Where Pigs Fly bread there. I don't really eat much bread, but since I've discovered buttered toast with turnip slices, I've had to keep some around. The market blog is here: http://medfordsquaremarket.blogspot.com/. They are open Thursdays from 1 P.m. to 7 P.M. in Medford Square. It looks like they try to be a little more than just a farmer's market, and they include weekly family activities starting this season.

Arlington also has a market, and I know that Chestnut Farms attends. They told me that you can get fish there, so I have to check it out. They are open on Wednesday from 1 P.M. to 6:30 P.M. in the Russell Commons parking lot on Rt. 60, just east of Mass Ave. I'm also looking for local yogurt and cheese. And raw milk, but I guess that's illegal. Let me know if you have a cow. I just want to try it.

The commonwealth of Massachusetts runs a great, but not exhaustive, listing of farmer's markets in all counties: http://www.mass.gov/agr/massgrown/farmers_markets.htm. There seems to be a dearth of markets in the Shrewsbury / Grafton /...boroughs area. What's up with that?

Tomorrow Elena and I are going to Strawberry Fest 2008 at Wilson Farms. I hear tell that we get free strawberry shortcake. Can't miss that! (If you don't want to miss it, details here: http://www.wilsonfarm.com/what.html.)

Go green!

2008-06-18T01:12:00.000-04:00

So, if you're gonna choose between green zucchini and yellow summer squash on the eve of a Celtics/Lakers game, go with the zucchini. I did, and look what happens.

Today's farm share from The Food Project:
- 1 summer squash (I chose zucchini)
- 1 head of lettuce
- 1/3 bag of salad mix (it's mizuna time!)
- 1 bunch of chard (lots of colors: yellow, orange, green, bright pink/red)
- 2 handfuls of bok choy
- 6 hakurei turnips
- 1/2 pint of snow peas
- 2 quarts (!) of strawberries

The strawberries are plentiful. You could go find your own spot on the field, squat and just gather a quart. These are not your normal strawberries. One thing you have to learn is that the farm share is not the grocery store. So the strawberries might be small and shaped all kindsa ways, but they are also more intensely flavored. Some are sweeter, some just taste more strawberry.

I have to buckle down this week and really start cooking. I've been eating out a lot. When I was a little kid, we went out maybe twice per year for special occassions. It seems like nowadays, you eat out for special occassions twice a week. Birthdays, classes finished, project finished, it's a rainy day...the excuses are endless. I have to get my condo in better shape (moved in a month ago and still have some boxes) and then I'll have to have people over for dinner instead. And eat chard. We'll see if I can sell that one! The Food Project printed a recipe for a chard pie and another for chard with raisins and olives. Interesting.

Foraging for wild edibles

2008-06-16T22:15:00.000-04:00

I'm planning to join the Massachusetts chapter of the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) www.nofamass.org. (For my friends and family in New Hampshire, their chapter is at http://www.nofanh.org/.)

I picked up their 2008-2009 Organic Food Guide at Chestnut Farms last week. It has a map that shows different organic farms and where to shop, and includes listings for CSAs, farm stands, and farmer's markets. I had no idea there was so much activity, and I think it's just of farms associated with the magazine. I wasn't able to find The Food Project in there.

The main reason that I am joining is that I wanted to take my brother to Belchertown, my old stomping ground, for a workshop Foraging for Wild Edibles. Now, don't all sign up, because I haven't signed up yet and I want there to be space! Russ Cohen runs this workshop and shows us two dozen of the 150 species of wild edibles in MA. You can read a Boston Globe article about Cohen: For this nature lover, the time is ripe for something wild. I've heard it's a great experience.

An aside

2008-06-12T23:57:00.001-04:00

Celtics won! Dreams revived. Eat your greens, everyone.

Wilson Farms and dinner

2008-06-12T21:39:00.000-04:00

After work today I went to Wilson Farms to do a little gift hunting. Right now I have the Celtics game on, and I'm trying to avoid watching it because it's too depressing. (C'mon guys, bring back those childhood memories!)

Wilson's Farm (www.wilsonfarm.com) is in Lexington, MA, and sells vegetables and fruit from their farm, but also imports veggies from all over. They also sell beautiful plants and shrubs, as well as pots, fertilizers, seeds, bulbs, and whatever for your garden. All at high-end prices. As far as I can tell, not everything is organic. The farm has been around since 1884, and I just missed a farm tour today! Oh well. It looks like they are every other Thursday from 6:30-8 PM. They have a strawberry fest coming up June 21 & 22 from 10:30 AM to 4:30 PM. It should be good times.

While I was at Wilson's, they were selling asparagus for $1 a bunch. My farm doesn't grow asparagus (no idea why!) so of course I grabbed a bunch. I had to go to Trader Joe's to pick up some heavy cream, because my sister and I have a problem. We somehow had three and a half dozen eggs at the beginning of the month. She bought some, I bought some from the meat farm, and it's just hard to consume that many eggs. The solution? Asparagus frittata.

I took a recipe from Wilson's, and Elena and I teamed up and it came out great. We used up six eggs too and have plenty frittata for breakfast.

I should clarify that the turnips from the farm are hakurei turnips. They are small white turnips with edible greens, crisp with a touch of radish flavor. The farm suggested that we cook less, and that a nice snack would be radishes or the turnips sliced on buttered toast. We tried it out, and it was fantastic, especially with our eggy, cheesy frittata.

It turns out, and I knew this, that I am terrible at cooking meat. It's probably my mom's Irish/English influence. (Hi Mom! Mom makes really good cookies, I can tell you that.) I horribly overcooked a ham steak, so I had to make bean soup with it the next day. I tried cooking a hamburger for only three minutes a side, though, and it came out wonderfully. I had turnip sliced on top and lots of lettuce. The farm meat is very lean, so you have to add veggies and oil to make it work, and cook for 30% less time. It's counter intuitive. But man, when you do it right, so much better.

I think I'm going to have too much food this summer, so I'm hoping I can discipline myself to freeze more. I am trying to buy less and waste less.

Strawberries!

2008-06-10T22:40:00.000-04:00

Last week's veggie share was a bit disappointing due to the cold, dry weather. But then it rained for two days and has been in the mid to high nineties. The reward? Strawberries!

Last year I didn't get a strawberry until July. I remember that when my siblings and I were little, we played a game called SimFarm. Part of the game was selling our crop on the futures market before it was released. You could make a killing if you sold your crop of oranges for $30,000, because by harvest time it was only worth $12,000. Unfortunately, the game let you sell it that high almost every time, so it was pretty easy to upgrade your farmhouse to have a swimming pool.

The point is that in commodities futures, you never know quite how everything is going to work out. What's terrible for lettuce is apparently great for strawberries. My love for strawberries is about 300 times that of my love for lettuce.

Note to self: remember to NOT wear heels to the farm. There's nothing like clomping around a strawberry patch in heels on a hot summer's day.

The haul this week:
- 1 head of lettuce
- 1/2 a bag of spinach
- 6 turnips with greens
- 2 radishes with greens
- 1/2 a pint of peas (pick your own)
- 1 pint of strawberries (pick your own)
- 1 bunch of dill
- 1 bunch of mint

The summery scent of freshly picked strawberries, dill, and mint wafted over me as I sat in Rt. 2 traffic on the way home.

Liz and John's trip to Chestnut Farms

2008-06-09T23:55:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, my brother John and I trekked out to Hardwick, MA for the semi-annual open house at Chestnut Farms. I called the day "Meet Your Meat."

Despite being a steamy summer day, we had a great time. My brother told me a few times that he was jealous of the family's nine-year-old, Sam, because he got to live on a farm and work with animals. I knew John had visited a farm when he was younger and really enjoyed it. He gets along great with the animals, except when he decides to chase chickens around for a half hour.

I didn't think he'd catch the mean black chicken, and yet...

The chickens don't want to be caught. In fact, between John and a couple of three-year-old kids, all six chickens escaped. I felt kinda bad about this and let the farmers know, but they said, oh don't worry about it. Chickens go home once it gets dark. Kind of like carrier pigeons.

Here's me with a red-headed chicken:

The chickens we caught are meat chickens, but the ones that lay eggs live in a school bus that has a plank out to a yard. Caroline, their daughter who is going to Smith in the fall, pointed out the "laying an egg" sound. "It's a pretty distinctive sound." And it seemed to be going on pretty constantly in the bus. Eggs everywhere.

Piggies! There was a couple from Somerville there asking a lot of questions. One question was, "Does that pig taste different than that pig?" I was sort of taken aback by that one, but I had to remember, yes, these pigs will be my food in a few months. The answer is that the flavor of the meat depends on the feed, not the breed.

Kim said that they brought a bunch of pregnant sheep to the barn in the hopes that they would lamb the week before the open house. And they all obliged. I thought this little guy was cute. The sheep were pretty hot and breathed heavily. They'll be sheared in a week or so.

Me with a lamb (so soft).

John with a lamb. There was also a goat, "Lizzy, why can't I have a goat?"

I asked Kim if they had sheepdogs or llamas. She said they tried llamas but it didn't work. They got out. Their neighbors were "from the city" and had spent $5,000 on their landscaping, and the llamas went over and ate it all. You would think this would be a disaster. Kim said they tried for days to chase down the llamas, and apologized to the neighbors. When they couldn't catch the animals, she told the neighbors that they'd have them shot instead. The neighbors wouldn't hear of it. They built a place for the llamas on their land and co-adopted them, and they are just fine without their landscaping. Too funny. I love western MA.

Be a local hero! Buy locally grown!

I need to post some thoughts on going local at some point. For example, how do I replace coconut milk in my cooking? And avocadoes? Important questions...

Allandale Farm

2008-06-09T23:37:00.000-04:00

I went to the graduation party of one of my math buddies on Friday. It was good times. Besides a tour of the beautiful grounds and endless maze of a house, and firing off a potato cannon, there was amazing food. As it turns out, they found a farm that would cater their party. Billed as "Boston's last working farm," Allandale farms is located in Brookline and has been around for 250 years.

http://www.allandalefarm.com/

The food was simple, which you can do with great ingredients. They had quartered radishes with an herb dip, and the radishes seemed to magically have only the good part of the radish taste, without any of the bitterness. One of the first things I grew when I was a kid was a row of radishes. They grow to harvest in 21 days, great for impatient children, but then you pick them and they have this bitter taste. I ate them anyway, because I grew them. I can't tell if this farm used a better brand of seeds, or watered and fed them better than I did when I was 7.

At the party, a friend of mine stared at his salad in disbelief. It was pretty much just lettuce and dressing, but the lettuce was crisp, sweet, amazing. He asked if that was what lettuce really tasted like. I said, yep, that's why I have a farm share. My food tastes a lot better. The lettuce last spring was better than this year because we had more rain, but it's still better than the grocery store.

They also had a beautiful pasta with quartered steamed potatoes and herbs. You've never had a potato melt in your mouth like this...you don't even need butter. And there was a simple pea soup, steamed asparagus, and a quiche-like item.

At the end there was rhubarb crumble. Simple, sweet, again showcasing just the good part of the rhubarb without any of the bad.

I wonder if they are tax-exempt. I know that my friend's wife is considering raising cattle on their land to cut down on the taxes. I can imagine that would be one way to keep a 100-acre farm going. (I can't find it on their website, but I asked one of the caterers about the acreage.)

The farm has a retail store, but they also sell to Whole Foods. I need to check if there's a way to see the source of vegetables at Whole Foods. Their actual retail store is here:
259 Allandale Road
Brookline, MA 02467
and open 9-6 on weekends.

June 4 meat share

2008-06-07T23:12:00.000-04:00

I picked up my first meat share on Wednesday in Arlington, MA. I had no idea what to expect, thinking that my 10-pound share would probably include four pieces of meat that I'd have to divvy up. It wasn't like that at all! There were lots of little packages, almost like it was designed for one or two people. It included:
- 2 packages that each had two hamburger patties.
- 2 packages of ground meat.
- 3 breakfast sausage.
- 3 lamb sausage.
- 1 large ham steak.
- 1 London broil steak.
- 2 beef rib Delmonico steaks.

I was surprised that there wasn't any chicken in the share, but I know that this is the start of chicken season so we might not get any for a month or two. I committed to six months, and the ten pounds cost $70. I also bought two dozen eggs at $4 per dozen. Kim, the farmer, said that you can leave the eggs out on the counter for up to 10 days and they taste better. She also said that the USDA might disagree with that method, and that eggs last up to a month in the refrigerator.

I put the London broil into my meat and parsnip crockpot. Elena took hers out at 6am and said it was wonderful, but when I took my serving out at 8am the steak was too tough. Organic, grain-fed meat is much leaner than conventional meat, so you should take about 30% off of cooking time. I told Kim that I am Irish and can't cook meat, and she said, "Don't boil it!" And look what I go and do.

June 3 vegetable share

2008-06-07T23:05:00.000-04:00

I talked to the farmer at The Food Project, and she said this spring was cold and dry "which isn't good for growing anything!" Last June was warm and rainy, so I was a little surprised at the first share this year. I picked up:
- 2 heads of lettuce (different varieties)
- 5 parsnips (which had been in the ground all winter)
- mint
- sage

Elena and I have been making lettuce salads all week, with sweet vadalia onion dressing. I have no idea what to do with sage.

Oddly enough, Elena and I both had dreams about parsnips the day after the share. Shaped like a carrot, parsnips have a slightly sweet flavor to them and taste great steamed or in soup. I made a meat and parsnip stew when I got my meat share.

It rained for two days this week, and we're in the middle of 3 days of 90-degree weather, so my hopes are up for my veggies in future weeks.

Hooray for CSAs!

2008-06-07T22:41:00.000-04:00

The title of my blog, "An overcrowded chicken farm produce fewer eggs" is a Chinese proverb that I thought fit the idea of the CSA. If you treat your animals and your vegetables well, you can more out of the land.

Farm shares are not for people who like planning meals. Some weeks you'll have enough lettuce for a rabbit farm, and other weeks you'll wonder how you'll consume five pounds of tomatoes. Experiment! And watch Iron Chef like it's your job.

Last year was the first year I participated in community supported agriculture (CSA). Each week, I'd go to The Food Project http://www.thefoodproject.org/ in Lincoln, MA to collect a share of whatever they harvested each week. I share my share with my sister Elena.

This year I also found a meat share that distributes in my area. Based in Hardwick, MA, Chestnut Farms http://www.chestnutfarms.org/ sends their truck to different towns in Massachusetts once per month. You pick up a cooler full of meat, and they also offer eggs "these were all laid yesterday" for purchase.

This blog will include what I received in my weekly vegetable share and my monthly meat share. I'll post successful recipes, articles about CSAs, and may veer into farming news or farmer's markets every now and then.

I always wanted to live on a farm, and even took a course in organic farming when I was at UMass Amherst. I grew tomatoes and peppers and peas at my parents' house, but now I live in a condo in city. CSAs seem to fill that need for seeing things grow, picking tomatoes, and chatting with other people who care about where their food comes from.

Drop me a line if you have any questions or information you would like me to post.