we are signing up members for 2010!!

The time has come to sign up members for our 2010 CSA! We are very excited about next year. We are adding another small hoophouse to our line-up with which we can get a head start on the season. Some items we're hoping to have in the line-up next year that are new---beets, more varieties of potatoes and more of them, a box or two with some asian greens for everyone to try, long noodle beans, more melons, sweet corn, a few new varieties of tomatoes, and some herbs. We will be decreasing the amount of times the padron peppers and the edamame are in the box as it seemed the majority of you did not really love these items. Our prices are going to change slightly; this will be the first price increase we've had since our inception. We are going to go up ten dollars per share to help us cover some of the increased costs we've had to deal with on the farm such as an increase in our fuel use for our greenhouse which we added last year, our two hoophouses, and the cost of our boxes and bags. We hope everyone understands this slight price increase.

So our prices will be as follows for a twenty week subscription:

HALF SHARES $360

FULL SHARES $510

FLOWER SHARES $170

Our drop off spots will most likely stay the same. If they change they will still be located in the same general area. These locations are:

Wednesdays:

Foster's Market of Chapel Hill around 2-3pm

Falconbridge neighborhood near I-40 and 54 around 2:30-3:30pm

Saturdays:

Durham farmers market from 8-12 Sat. mornings

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SIGN UP FOR THE 2010 SEASON---

We will need the following information---

1.Your names and everyone's email address in your party who would like to receive the newsletter

2. Which shares you would like to receive

3. Your drop off location

To reserve your space for the season, please let us know first by email bluebirdmeadowsnc@yahoo.com so we can get you on our list, and then you can send in full payment with the pertinent info listed above to:
Bluebird Meadows
8650 Burlington Rd
Hurdle Mills, NC 27541

If you'd like to split up payments, we'll need you to deposit a third of the cost of your share/shares to reserve your space and we'll need full payment by mid-February this season. If you have a situation where you need to do more payments than this or you don't have enough to do a third of your share/shares for a deposit, please let us know and we will gladly work with you.

OUR AUGUST VACATION:
This year we have decided we would like to take a week vacation in early August. We're not sure which week it'll be, either the first or the second week, but we will let everyone know as soon as we decide. So there will be no CSA for one week in early August. The CSA will still run for 20 weeks. In turn, we would like to offer everyone their own week vacation, so that if you miss a box/bouquet one week, you can double up and receive two boxes or bouquets the week of your choice (provided you give us notice when you'll be gone and that we have enough produce the week you want your extra). If you miss more than one week, it is much easier for us if you give your box to a family member or friend to share the bounty as it makes it harder for us to keep up with who has missed when, etc. So if you plan to miss more than one week, please share your box with someone you love.

Thanks so much everyone and we hope to have you with us for our 4th and hopefully best yet CSA season!

---Alice and Stuart

Week 20

Wow! This week marks the end of our 2009 CSA season and what a season it has been. We would like to thank every one of you for being with us for these past twenty weeks. You have played an enormous role in the success of our farm as well as our community's health and the progress of local foods. According to Debbie Roos, a Chatham county extension agent, in 2002 there were only around 30-35 CSAs in the state. Now there are around 100!

We are now going to shift gears and try to focus on getting our house built this fall and winter. Just yesterday our first shipment of lumber arrived so we hope to get started in a big way this weekend. It is a very exciting project and one we hope to see to fruition by this spring. Wish us luck!

A few final notes for everyone:

1. Please consider voting for the Durham Farmers Market in the national love your farmers' market contest. We are in sixth place and if we bump up to fifth place our market will receive a much needed $1,000. There are only two days left, so put in your vote soon and spread the word! Here is the link--

http://www.care2.com/farmersmarket/

2. Please remember to bring back your boxes this week. We are going to put everyone's box this week in a plastic or paper bag so that you do not need to come back to Foster's market or to the Anthonys' place at Falconbridge the following week with an empty box. This years CSA has been the best so far with returning boxes, so we thank you for being so considerate and remembering to bring them back. It makes things easier for us.

3. We will begin signing up returning members in mid-October. We will send out an email to all of you around a month from now so you have first dibs on joining our CSA for the 2010 season. We have seen an increased interest in the CSA and we will not be opening up too many new spaces, so it will probably be best for you to let us know sooner than later if you'd like to reserve a space.

4. We will send out a member survey by email. Please, if you have a moment, fill this out and return it. Customer feedback is one of our most important methods of improvement. This information will help us to make our CSA that much better and customer satisfaction.

In your boxes this week:

Half-shares

Falconbridge

okra

arugula

salad mix

french breakfast radishes

red peppers

cherry tomatoes

romas

Foster's Market

instead of okra you will get more red peppers and roma tomatoes

Full-shares

extra arugula

green peppers

were not sure about the next item

Recipes

We are delighted to have arugula in your boxes this week. This is a really delicious green that most people eat as a salad, but it can also be lightly sauteed to add zest and a green to pasta or a stir-fry. We usually eat it as a salad with some coarse salt, lemon juice, pepper, and a little balsamic vinaigrette. Some goat cheese chevre or any kind of feta pair really well with the greens, as does fruit as it contrasts with the mild spice of the arugula.

Delicious!

Here are eight great looking arugula recipes from Seasonal Chef's website.

Tomato and Sweet Pepper Salad adapted from The Vegetable Market Cookbook by Robert Budwig

3 sweet peppers
4 ripe tomatoes
1/4 preserved lemon (or 2 teaspoons grated zest with some of the lemon's juice)
2 cloves garlic peeled and crushed pinch sweet paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 t black pepper

Grill or roast peppers, remove skins, cut into small cubes and set aside. Blanch tomatoes for 15-20 seconds in boiling water. Drain and remove skins and stems. Cut in half and remove seeds. Cut into small cubes. Rinse the preserved lemon under running water and remove the pulp. Cut the rind into fine dice. Arrange peppers, tomatoes and lemon in a dish. Mix remaining ingredients to make a dressing and pour over the salad. Mix well.

Flower Shares This week there will be a couple stems of our newly blooming tithonia, also known as Mexican sunflower. Be sure to feel how soft the stems are on this one! And what a great and vibrant orange to have right now.

Thanks so much everyone, you have been great!!!!!

Week 19

Did any of you happen to catch the full moon this past week? We couldn't believe how bright and beautiful and seemingly huge it was. September's full moon is known as the 'Harvest Moon'. We are keeping our harvesting steady here on the farm, but when we hit the equinox on the 22nd and the light begins to wane more and more (along with the temperature dropping), things will slow down quickly.

This is what our farm should look like in a little over a months time. Cleared fields, winter cover crop sown, and overwintered items planted. It's always such an amazing process to get the farm to this point. The fields are an overgrown mess right now, so you can imagine how good it feels to mow it all down, till it a couple times, and plant a nice, thick, lush cover crop. Put the soil to rest so to speak.

We will also be ending our CSA soon as next week is week 20 and our final week. We'll go ahead and put out the reminder to bring back any boxes you may have lurking around your house or garage or porch so we can reuse them. It has been a wonderful season with you all; next week we'll include a quick questionnaire for you all to fill out if you have a moment. This really helps us to plan our future CSAs and to improve each season, so be thinking about what you thought about our CSA and how it could be better.

In your boxes this week:

half shares

lettuce mix

green beans

green peppers

carrots

romas

cherry tomatoes

Foster's CSA members will receive okra

Falconbridge members will receive padron peppers and a couple mole peppers (Falconbridge members, next week you will receive okra)

Large Shares

We're not completely sure what we'll have extra of yet, but this is what we think we'll have for you all, just know this is subject to change!

same as half shares with

sweet red peppers

extra green beans

if we have it extra salad mix

eggplant

RECIPES

We had a couple people email us that the padron peppers were a little hot for them, but since then we have tried to pick them smaller so they are less hot. This is the only way we cook them, sauteing them with a couple tablespoons of olive oil on high heat for 7-10 minutes or until they've deflated, then putting course salt on them. Delicious. There is even a festival held for them every August in Spain.

If anyone else has tried them differently, please let us know your recipe!

Fairy Tale Eggplant in Ginger and Garlic Sauce Recipe from Coconut and Lime Blog

Sauteed Chicken with Cherry Tomatoes from Epicurious

Flower Shares

This week we'll have some lovely bouquets with gomphrena, zinnias, and cat's claw. Hope you enjoy them!

thanks everyone and have a fabulous week!

Week 18

Congratulations everyone! You have made it to week 18 in the third year of our CSA program. We are now down to only two more weeks and the produce is slowly beginning to shift. This week we picked some delicious carrots for everyone and we hope to have them next week as well. We also sowed some arugula last week that germinated well and looks like it will be ready (we hope!) for your last box, along with some lovely radishes. We are feeling very chipper here at the farm with these incredibly comfortable and cool days. 80 degrees and a nice breeze, upper fifties at night?! We are so lucky! Even if it only is for a few days, it lets us know that September has arrived. We are starting to wrap things up for the season at the farm; pulling up tomato stakes, bushhogging old crops down, cleaning up and getting organized for the fall and winter. Next season's strawberries will arrive in the next two weeks! I can taste them already. We hate to tease all you half-shares with the okra picture, but we think next week we should have enough for one drop off point and then rotate to the other drop off point for the final week.

In your box this week:

half shares

carrots

edamame (last week!)

green beans

cherry tomatoes

roma tomatoes

elephant garlic

Full shares

same as half with additional

okra

slicing tomatoes

sweet peppers

RECIPES

Carrot Salad This is from Alice Waters The Art of Simple Food. She says her daughter loves it and she would have it for lunch.

Peel and grate (or chop since yours are on the smaller side) 1 lb of carrots

Make the vinaigrette by stirring together in a small bowl:

1 tsp red wine vinegar

2 tsps fresh lemon juice

salt

fresh ground pepper

Whisk in:

2 tbsp olive oil

taste and adjust as necessary

Toss the carrots with the dressing and add:

2 tbsp chopped parsley

Let stand for 10 minutes, taste again and add salt, pepper, lemon juice or oil as needed.

Roasted Romas We had a fellow vendor at market give us this recipe which sounds familiar; he went on and on about it so it must be really good.

Slice romas in half, sprinkle with salt, and roast on 300 for an hour to hour and a half. De skin and top pasta with them.

I think putting some chopped elephant garlic on them about thirty minutes in would do wonders as well. We're going to try this recipe this week.

OKRA- We hope everyone gives this a whirl. We LOVE it. Fried or sauteed is how we typically cook it, but I do love a gumbo with okra in it. If you ever go to a southern food restaurant, try the fried okra. Q-shack in Durham does a particularly fine job with it.

Fried Okra from Epicurious

Okra Cornmeal Fritters also from Epicurious

Flower Shares

This week there will be a mixed arrangement with zinnias, ornamental grasses, and gladiolas.

Thanks everyone and have a great week!

Week 17; Fall is near!

We're seeing the signs everywhere; next Tuesday is forecast to be only 80 degrees; the mimosa trees have set their pods and the dogwood berries are waiting to start turning red; weeds on the farm have officially taken over; grasshoppers are out in droves, mating and eating all kinds of leaves on our plants (I occasionally wield my scissors and chop in half a mating couple, feeling a twang of guilt as their decapitated heads twitch and fall to the ground); the few dahlia plants we have are sending up blooms; we are only seeding things for late fall plantings; and next Tuesday is September 1st!  We now have three more weeks of the CSA after this Wednesday.  How time flies.  The average fall frost date for this area is October 15 so we plan our crops around this date.  That is also why we stop our CSA in early-mid September.  The closer you get to the frost date, the harder it is to have large quantities of produce.  Speaking of fall, it looks like we'll have carrots for you all in a couple weeks.  They were sown in early July and they look great as of now.  We should also have some okra soon!

IN YOUR BOXES THIS WEEK:

half shares

2 pints cherry tomatoes (with new recipes!)

eggplant

edamame

colored sweet peppers

roma tomatoes

full shares

slicing tomatoes

extra peppers

extra eggplant

RECIPES

Cherry Tomato Crostini with Ricotta (recipe from A Platter of Figs by David Tanis, head chef at Chez Panisse---This is an awesome cookbook if anyone is needing a good one!)

1 large shallot

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

salt and peppa

1/2 cup olive oil

2 garlic cloves, smashed to a paste with a little salt, plus another peeled garlic clove or two

2 lbs cherry tomatoes, halved  (you could also use your romas from the CSA box)

1 loaf italian ciabatta

1/2 lb fresh ricotta

1 tsp red pepper flakes

a handful of basil leaves

In a medium bowl, macerate the shallot is the red wine vinegar with a little salt.  After a few minutes, whisk in the olive oil.  Add the pounded garlic and the cherry tomatoes, season well with salt and pepper, and toss gently.  Leave to marinate for a few minutes.  

Cut the ciabatta into 1/2 inch slices.  Spread the slices on a baking sheet and toast on both sides until golden brown.  Swipe the toasts very lightly with a peeled garlic clove.  Don't push too hard on the garlic, you want the toast to have just a hint of garlic flavor.  

Spread a tablespoon of fresh ricotta on each toast, then put them on a platter.  Sprinkle with a little salt and a little red pepper.  Spoon the marinated cherry tomatoes over the toast.  Sliver or tear the basil leaves and strew over the crostini.  

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes (from Martha Stewart's Living) 

1 pint of cherry tomatoes

1/2 tsp dried oregano

fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 500 degrees.  Spread tomatoes on a rimmed baking sheet.  Drizzle with oil.  Sprinkle with oregano, and season with salt and pepper.  Roast until tomatoes are wrinkled and just starting to burst, about 10 minutes.  

Ratatouille (from Southern Food recipe website) you have many of the ingredients for this in your box this week.  You could easily omit the zucchini, use red peppers instead of green, and use romas and cherry tomatoes instead of large slicers.  

Flower Shares

this week you will get some sunflowers with some other assorted cuts.  this might be the last of the sunflowers so enjoy their good cheer!

Thanks everyone and have an excellent week!  As always, please let us know if you have any questions or comments.  Thanks  :)

Week 16

Greetings CSA members!  We've had a great week of wildlife spottings here at Bluebird Meadows.  Harry the Heron is a regular at our pond and every now and then he lets me take a picture of him from a distance; never a good picture, but maybe in the future when we get more comfortable he'll pose for us.  There has also been a couple sightings of a white egret hanging out at the pond which is very irregular.  It is a big egret and it's odd to see one so far from the marshes of the east.  We've loved seeing him though and we hope he found some morsels to eat while at our farm.  I also spotted a little pack of wild turkeys Friday evening as we were leaving the farm.  What a fascinating bird!  Quite as mice and so strange looking.  Oh so close to being our national bird due to its intelligence (Benjamin Franklin was their big advocate), but I guess we went with a much more fierce national bird, the eagle.  Stuart wants me to mention that the wild turkey is also his alma mater's mascot, the fighting gobblers of Virginia Tech, and he thinks they're quite fierce.  We'll leave it at that :)   

The farm is doing great.  It's getting desperate for a good mowing and some weed-eating, but on the plus side our vegetables are looking fantastic.  We have picked some of the nicest red and yellow peppers we've ever grown.  We hope everyone is enjoying the sweet peppers; they are loaded with vitamins and can easily be eaten by themselves as a healthy snack.  As for the tomatoes, this is sadly the last week for our big slicing tomatoes.  Next season we plan to have some big slicers in our last planting, so hopefully we'll have them for a few weeks longer next year.  
In your boxes this week:

Half shares

green beans

lettuce mix

slicing tomatoes

sweet peppers

mole peppers

cherry tomatoes

Full shares (this may vary, we're not 100% sure yet of these items)

extra green beans

extra peppers

RECIPES (please let us know if you'd like some recipes for certain items so we can provide these for you!)

Martha Stewart's Roasted Peppers with Garlic and Basil

Martha's Baked Stuffed Peppers with Cherry Tomatoes, Feta, and Thyme

FLOWER SHARES

This will be the last week of oriental lilies for everyone.  Enjoy!  

thanks everyone and have a great week.

Week 15

Whew it is HOT outside.  We started work at 6:30 and we were outta there by 1:30.  It was 99 in the shade.  We're glad to see this is only going to last two days.  Hearing about the earthquakes in the east, the 6 feet of rain in China.....we can easily deal with two days of soaring heat when we put this in perspective.  This has actually been an extremely mild season.  Last year we had a week of the temp being around 100 in early June, and this is our first day in Hurdle Mills of the temperature being above 95.  We feel lucky right now.  And we had a great excuse to cut out early!

This first picture is of our beautiful crop of sudan grass, a sorghum that will get 5-6 ft tall and will add lots of precious organic matter to our soil.  This is where our spring section was, our strawberries, overwintered flowers like batchelor buttons, tulips, dianthus, and larkspur, our peas and other goodies that we all had earlier this year.  And now we're only a month away from planting once again many of these same crops....strawberries, overwintered flowers, etc.  We are adjusting ourselves to this melody of cyclical growth that is becoming more familiar with each season, that is always fresh and unique as it is accompanied by a different rhythm each year---the differences in weather, in our planning, in new things we try to grow, in things we let fall away.  In other words, we are thoroughly enjoying getting to know how to farm, and in many ways, we have you our community, our family and friends to thank for this incredible opportunity.   
In your boxes this week:

HALF SHARES

roma tomatoes

red peppers (finally!)

pint of cherry tomatoes

red big beef tomatoes, pink girl tomatoes

edamame (looks really good this week)

green beans

FULL SHARES

extra red peppers

extra romas

either extra green beans or extra edamame

RECIPES

Green Beans Provencale- (from Best of Cooking Light, pg 291, edited)

1 lb green beans

24 small cherry tomatoes, halved

1/4  cup chopped red onion

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

1/8 cup water

1/8 cup white wine vinegar

1 tbsp grated parmesan cheese

1 tbsp olive oil

1/4 tsp dried thyme

1/4 tsp black pepper

1 garlic clove, minced

1) Steam beans, covered, 8 minutes or until crisp tender.  Drain beans; plunge into cold water, and drain.  Combine beans, tomatoes, and onion in a medium bowl.

2)Combine the parsley and remaining ingredients in a bowl and stir well.  Pour parsley mixture over the vegetables, tossing gently to coat.  Serve at room temperature.  

Broiled Roma Tomatoes (from Epicurious's website---quick and easy!)

Roasted Tomato Soup Recipe (from 101 Cookbooks blog by Heidi Swanson )

Pickled Garlicky Red Peppers (from Smitten Kitchen blog---you aren't getting the quantity for this recipe, but maybe if you want to be brave and try to mess with the recipe, they look DELICIOUS!)

FLOWER SHARES

This week we will have zinnias again as the main delight, with some additional flowers for accent.  Hope you enjoy them.  

Thanks everyone and have a great week!