next season

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!

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!

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!

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

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.