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Author: lnmayer

  • Reinventing the Turnip

    Hello CSA Members,

    This is Lauren- you may recognize me as the one who checks you in at the pick ups. Every week, I’m hoping to write to you to give the inside scoop from the farm, ideas for your veggies, and perhaps anything that is coming to mind that is relevant to you as CSA members.

    Today, I want to give you some ideas for your Hakurei Turnips. Of course, the easiest and a farm worker favorite while working in the wash station is to simply bit into one of those tender white turnips. Sprinkling a little chili salt makes it extra special. It’s a great quick healthy snack while we await lunch time and our stomachs are rumbling with hunger. I also love to add a thin slice of one of the turnips to a sandwich for a little texture and crunch. This, however, can only go so far, right?

    So, I’ve been searching for recipes. One really great recipe for summer is on the recipes section of our web page – a Turnip Slaw. I, personally, am a fan of pickles of all kinds. I’ve found a couple recipes for a quick pickle, which basically includes white vinegar, salt, sugar, and any herbs or spices that sound good to you. Stick it in a mason jar and let it sit for a day or two in the fridge. Yummy. If you’re a fan of curries or a looking for a substitute for milk or cream, these white globes are a great addition to any creamy sauce. Roast the root portion of the turnip with a little oil, salt, and pepper until tender, puree, and add to the base of the sauce.

    And of course, don’t forget the greens. If you are a meat eater, saute garlic, onion, in olive oil…add some ham hock or bacon (my personal favorite), throw the greens in for a minute or two and a savory quick side dish is ready to be enjoyed.

    Be inventive and try something new with these Hakurei turnips. If you come up with anything good, please share your recipes with me!

    Happy turnip eating!

  • From the Red Wagon Archive: How to Store your Fresh Greens

    Storing Greens

    Posted on June 3, 2013 by

    We work really hard to get our greens (kale, chard, broccoli raab, collards) to you fresh and full of life. Here’s how you can keep them that way.

    If you store your greens properly they will stay fresh in your refrigerator for a week. Modern frost free refrigerators have moving air that will dehydrate food uncovered, so you need to keep your greens sealed in a plastic bag, or some sort of sealed container.

    When you pick up your CSA share it would be best to put your greens in a plastic bag or container immediately at the pick up. We have bags available if you forget to bring your own. If you don’t want to use plastic you can use a cloth cotton bag. You need to rewet the cloth bag every day or the greens will wilt as soon as the cloth bag dries. You don’t want to pack the greens too tightly in the any bag or squish them either. they need to be stored loosely so some air can move around the leaves.

    This is a bunch of kale that was harvested Friday and kept in a plastic bag in my refrigerator for three days. It looks just like it did when it was harvested.

    kale

    This is a bunch of kale that was kept in my refrigerator unwrapped for 12 hours.

    kale

    I’m sorry kale. I did it for the good of the blog.

    The second bunch of kale is still edible. It is just dehydrated. You could cook it and it would be fine. If I left this bunch of kale much longer uncovered it would start to get slimy. Slime happens when the cell structure breaks down and the kale starts to decompose. When that happens you don’t want to eat it.

    So, sealed and wrapped greens store nicely for one week in the refrigerator and unwrapped greens store for less than one day.

  • Farm Fashion

    When working outside in the elements, one must be prepared for any type of weather – sweltering heat, finger-numbing cold, gusting winds, rain, icy snow. This week has proved to be an early taste of the cold of winter. Looking out at the crisp sun today, one would never guess that this past Friday was so frigid.
    Farm fashion
    There’s a certain type of farm-fashion that comes out on days like this- head to toe rain gear, galoshes, woolies and various combinations of gloves to keep your hands warm when possible. Of course, there is the finishing touch of spatters of mud.

    At one point I headed out to the pea shoots on the north side of the farm, my boots getting heavier with each step as the mud gathered in the tread. Picking pea shoots is a task that requires a dexterity of fingers that cannot be accomplished with gloves. Work quickly- the incentive being the quicker you work, the warmer your hands stay.

    All in all, the despite the weather, we were able to get all the bunches bunched and the greens, peppers, and everything headed to market washed and ready by a decent hour. No bunching by headlamp or car headlights necessary.

    Today is a much more favorable day. It looks like we may actually have a fall instead of jumping straight to winter.

  • Picking Peppers

    During the rush of the Friday harvest, I am usually on team kale, where we weigh out the restaurant orders and bunch the various types of kale in the field. This Friday, however, I was sent to the peppers on the southwest corner of the farm.

    Despite the cool weather, the peppers have finally started to ripen. There assorted types of bell peppers of all colors –  purple, white, yellow, orange, and green. There are the salsa-lovers favorites, jalapeños and chilies like Anaheims  and Poblanos. Then, there are a number of red peppers, whose appearance says “hot and spicy,” but are really the sweetest pepper you can imagine.

    Picking peppers is similar to the kale, when you’re searching for the biggest and most beautiful. There is a certain amount of self-restraint that one must employ to be sure that next week’s harvest isn’t picked before its prime, no matter how enticing the little pepper-jewels are. The pepper plants are rigid and fragile and quite susceptible to breaking easily. The plants themselves are still covered with blossoms. I was surprised by the amount of bees buzzing around, which is always a welcome sight and sound.

    Now, with the peppers and tomatoes in full swing, it’s time to concoct sweet and spicy salsas. Perfect for snacking on a late summer evening.

  • Zucchinification

    This time of year, zucchini is a prolific staple food that has the potential to take over a fridge. One can only eat so many stir-fried zucchini (or tromboncino) before you feel like you’re turning into one. Here’s an alternative to the norm. As a kid, I remember putting spoon-fulls of my grandmother’s zucchini relish on top of toast or on a burger.

    Ma Mayer’s Grand Scale Zucchini Relish
    Makes 8+ pints

    10 cups Zucchini (or substitute a Tromboncino)
    1 cup Pickling Salt (I made notation to cut back on salt)
    5 cups White Onion, minced
    1 cup Celery diced
    2 Sweet Peppers, diced
    2 tsp. Turmeric
    1 Tbsp. Dry Mustard
    3 Tbsp. Celery Seed
    3 Tbsp. Mustard Seed
    6 cups Sugar
    5 cups Vinegar (White or Apple Cider Vinegar)

    Prepare Zucchini. Leave skins on and dice finely.
    Combine with salt and other vegetables.
    Allow to stand overnight.
    Drain off any liquid in the morning and rinse thoroughly.
    Drain again in colander. (Grandma Mayer’s note: I taste to see if too salty, if they are too salty, rinse vegetables again in cold water.)
    Press bowl on top of vegetables to force out extra liquid.
    In large enamel or stainless steel pan, combine remaining ingredients.
    Add vegetables and bring to rolling boil.
    Reduce heat and boil gently for 20 minutes.
    Ladle relish into hot sterile jars and seal. For elevation, process in a boil bath for 20 minutes.

  • 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13….

    With the end of August approaching, while the fields at the farm are producing a ridiculous amount of food of all varieties, comes a shift in thinking for me personally. Starting next week, I begin teaching again.

    Working on the farm has always offered me a unique balance of down-and-dirty physical labor with the weird cerebral nature of teaching college art. Like every year around this time, the transition from body to mind brings it’s stresses its own special Cartesian way. However, there are moments when the these two worlds of farming and academia overlap, not just on the calendar, but in the general notion of beauty in the form of the veggies we harvest and eat.

    When teaching the fundamentals of art, we talk about principles of design that help order visual information — balance, color, ratios, symmetry, composition — the list goes on and on. I often observe similar principles at work in fields in individual crops. From the way that the layers of fennel root overlaps in a fan pattern as it branches out into feathery plumes of licorice to the alternating growth patterns of the kale leaves, there is a remarkably ordered composition.

    There is a relationship to the mathematical sequence of numbers in how things grow, how branches branch to the number of leaves, fruit or berries on a given branch— the Fibonacci Sequence. This sequence is also related to the Golden ratio, a proportion of thirds that is often used in visual art and the Golden Spiral, which can be seen in many brassicas, like cauliflower and, my absolute favorite because of how curiously perfect its fractal pattern is, Romanesco. So, perhaps there is more connection and overlap with the two worlds, in that one borrows from the other. So, eat with your eyes first this week!

    So, thank you all for a great first half of the CSA season. I will be behind the scenes for most of our pickups from here on out. I look forward to celebrating with you all at our CSA party in October. See you then!

  • Hot Air Balloons

    ellie bell and doggiesA common site on the farm on 63rd are animals — of all sorts, wild and penned-in and some somewhere in between. There are long-necked llamas, gregarious goats, a pack of hooligan alpacas, guard geese that can sense fear, chickens, and the sweetest donkey. And of course, there are the two dogs, who often accompany the early harvest, Cedar and Roxie.

    Roxie is a gangly teenager of a puppy with a white heart-shaped spot on her forehead. At somewhere around 8 months, her stature towers over many full-grown dogs. When she runs around her limbs comically bend in awkward ways. She often follows the workers to the fields as the harvest begins in the morning. She’ll pounce like a cat on anything that rustles or moves, whether or not it happens to be in the middle of the basil or some other crop.

    Cedar is the watch dog, a powerful, vocal, and authoritative watch dog. Often in the mornings, she will sit remarkably quiet for what seems like hours while looking South. Then, she’ll suddenly burst into a round of barking. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why she would wait silently, always looking in the same direction. One morning, while harvesting Tuscan kale bunches, I spotted what she was waiting for off in the distance — Hot air balloons. She was waiting for them to rise over the tree line every morning, so she could bark at them and tell them who’s boss. Smart.

    During a long harvest day, Roxie rolling over for a belly rub, the geese chancing you around or Ellie Bell, the donkey, coming over to the fence to say “hi”and to see if you have any treats for her, can give a kind of relief only animals can offer.

  • My Favorite Tool

    scuffle hoeOne of the many important jobs on the farm is weed mitigation.  From the chill of early season to the heat of the summer, the battle between our crops and weeds is full on. Weeds like Mallow, Vine Weed, Thistle, and Dock Root sprout up everywhere. There are some weeds that are edible like Purslane and Wild Amaranth and then some alien-looking ones, like Dodder, that is a parasitic weed that looks like strange yellow spaghetti. Edible or not, they are weeds and enemy to any farmer. If the they win out, our crops struggle to compete.

    Weeding takes many forms on the farm. Much of the work is done by hand. This is slow, but effective if executed properly. Early in the season, full days are devoted to pulling out these pesky weeds. Knee pads and thin gloves ease the pain of being crouched over all day. When I am weeding, I find I have three positions I alternate through to help the repetitive stress. Bending at the waste, kneeling, and crouched on one knee.

    Then, there are some tools that aid the weeding- bludgeon hoes, long skinny shovels, pitch forks. Of all these, my favorite is something we call a scuffle hoe. Like any other tool, it has a long wooden handle, but on the end, instead of the normal spade-type blade, it has a thin looping blade 1 1/2 inches wide. Instead of hacking away at the weeds with a large swooping motion from the shoulder, with the scuffle hoe, you place the blade on the ground and push it under the surface of the soil and pull back and forth. This cuts the roots and is quick and effective on young tender weeds.

    With this tool, I get into a rhythm that comes with muscle memory. Push and pull, watch for the garlic or pumpkin plant, get as close as possible. Take a step forward and repeat. My mind can wonder, but, because of my competitive streak, I always keep one eye on those working beside me, being sure not to fall behind or even better just ahead of them.

    The fields are looking clean this year, no small task with a small work crew. We are winning out, it seems.

  • Garlic as a Vegetable

    garlicThere is quite a bit of folklore surrounding garlic, touting it’s health benefits and even it’s ability to ward off vampires. Regardless of whatever magical powers it may possess- real or imagined, let’s talk about garlic it is most simple quotidian form- As a vegetable.

    On the farm, our garlic crop is one of the most anticipated and revered. It takes up a lengthy stay in the field, going into the ground in the late fall and stays in there until mid-summer. In early spring the pointy green garlic plants send up their spirally scapes that offer a succulent taste of what’s to come later in the year. We carefully weed and tend to the rows, so there is little competition for the bulbs to grow large and fat and count down the days until we pluck them from the soil to dry. This year, the crop is looking beautiful.

    Many of us use garlic as a supporting character for our dishes. Crush, dice, slice, it’s more often used as a spice than as a main ingredient. However, garlic can offer some great meals when given center stage as the main vegetable. One staple in my house: Spicy Garlic Pasta. Using a whole head, I chop the garlic into thin slices. Sometimes, I add a finely diced shallot or some white onion. Sauté with salt, pepper, butter and olive oil until translucent. Pour in some white wine and cook down. If you like things spicy, throw in some chili flakes. Throw in your pasta of choice and some coarsely chopped fresh parsley (a favorite, but another underused item in my opinion). Toss and serve. Avoid any close contact and words that start with “H” for a couple hours.

  • 10 Mile Radius

    Last night, as I cooked my dinner, a certain satisfaction rolled over me that only comes around this time of year when the fields at the farm and my own garden are exploding with goodies. I knew where most everything came from.

    With the exception of the oils and some of the spices, I went down the list of my ingredients and I could identify the origin of each one. The menu: Asian inspired stir fry with a grilled pork chop.

    My list began with the grilled bone-in pork chop- bought from a local berkshire hog farmer. Yum. The stir fry started with a perfectly round sweet white onion that resembled an eye ball and the hollow green onion tops its optic nerve- just pulled from my garden that morning and so fresh I could barely see through the sulfuric-acid-inspired tears as I chopped it. Garlic, snatched from my stash, drying in my garage. Long strips of julienned vibrant orange and red carrots and quarter-inch-thick wheels of dark and light green striped zucchini both from the farm followed by a swollen yellow summer squash from my garden. I threw in some dried Thai chili pepper flakes from last year’s bounty and basil from my herb patch. Honey to sweeten the mix was harvested from my boyfriend’s hive last year. Even the salt, though coming from the other side of the world and no where near local, came from a friend’s trip to Indonesia- colorful tiny straw baskets filled with about two tablespoons of salt. The black pepper, soy sauce and peanut oil were mysteries, but all in all, most things were grown within a 10 mile radius.

    While working on the farm, I can concocted the next meal. I steal expectant glances at the green tomatoes, just starting to blush red and I anticipate the sauces and salsas in my future.