Brussels sprouts

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

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

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!

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!

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

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

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!