Week 9

Hello to all of our members!  We have had a great past week on the farm.  We're starting our days earlier with work beginning at 7am.  It feels good to have a nice long morning of work before the heat comes on around 1-2.  We feel like were almost caught up after all of that rain we had late May and early June.  The fields are all bush-hogged (that's farmer talk for 'mowed'), all of our spring plantings have been cleared out and now we're waiting on some rain so we can till and then plant cover crops.  Our plants are weeded, the peppers, eggplant and tomatoes are all staked and tied, most of our late summer crops have been planted and we've begun seeding crops for the fall.  Isn't it amazing that it is now time to start fall brassicas----cauliflower, broccoli, kale, collards for harvest in Sept, Oct. and Nov?  It's also time to start some of the flowers that are overwintered like delphinium and foxglove.  It's so fascinating to have to stay ahead of yourself by so many months at a time.  So much of what we do revolves around planning....never let anyone tell you that farming doesn't require much mental work.  Obviously that person has never had to create a planting schedule!  
This picture to the left is of a parasitized hornworm.  We LOVE seeing these on the farm as it means that natural biological controls are working against pests.  One of these hornworms can destroy a tomato plant in a matter of a few hours.  They are about three to four inches long and probably two pencils thick in diameter.  Telltale signs they've been on your tomato plant are that most of the foliage is missing and stems have been eaten down to a nub on the plant.  This worm here has had a wasp lay its eggs inside of it, and the larvae works its way from inside out by creating the little cacoons for themselves.  They feed on the worm throughout the process, so  eventually the worm looks shriveled up and brown.  It's really gross if you think about it---the worm is definitely still alive in this picture, but how cool???  The parasitized hornworm means that our tomatoes are safe and that you will get them in your boxes soon!
In your box this week

half share

2 pints of cherry tomatoes

onions (last week for this staple!)

cucumbers

green beans 

2 lbs freshly dug taters

full share
extra potatoes

extra onions

pint of padrons

extra cucumbers

It's looking like heirloom tomatoes the next week or two.  We've been eating the few we've picked and WOW.  It's so heavenly to have a tomato sandwich.  So definitely get yourself excited for these.  Also, padrons will be back for the half shares soon.  Our second planting is starting to produce, so maybe next week they make a reappearance.  We're glad to have some people requesting them again; we love to find a new item we can grow that our CSA likes!

RECIPES

Serbian Salad

1 or two pints of cherry tomatoes, tomatoes quartered

3-4 regular sized cucumbers, finely diced/chopped

2-3 small onions, very finely diced/chopped

1-2 teaspoons salt

1 tsp sugar

Mix ingredients together and let sit overnight.  This is a surprisingly simple recipe and yet the results are so flavorful.  We made this on Sunday afternoon and have been eating it all week.  It might need more salt, just season to taste.  

Roasted Green Beans (and cherry tomatoes?)

We have really taken a liking to roasted green beans.  roasting them brings out their flavor and gives them a great chewy texture that just isn't there when you steam them or saute them.  We don't even de-stem them, but use that little bit of stem to hold onto when eating, and then we discard that little bit at the end.

1 lb green beans (what's in your box this week)

1-2 tbsp olive oil

coarse salt

Preheat oven to 415.

Wash beans in colander, then put in mixing bowl and coat with oil and sprinkle coarse salt over them, then mix.

Lay flat on a baking pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until beans shrivel and brown a little.  Halfway through, mix beans on tray so that they bake evenly  

Serve hot or cold, both ways are delicious. 

FLOWER SHARES--This week as promised we will have oriental lilies.  We have some in a vase here at home and they are stunning.  

DISCLAIMER!----Lilies are poisonous to cats.  Please keep them in a separate room or give them away as a gift if you have cats that like to eat flowers.  

Thanks everyone and HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!  Eat some great food on the 4th!  

Week Eight is already here!

Hello CSA members!  Be sure to check out the pictures in the previous blog that Vera sent us, one of our CSA members.  Looks like she is finding some delicious ways to cook up the CSA veggies.  Thanks for sharing Vera.  We hope everyone has had a nice week and survived the heat this past weekend.  Our fields have finally dried out for us to get in them with the tractor and hoes, so things are really going to shape up this week and next.  Planting (most important), weeding, and tilling will be the top items on our priority list.  We also need to mow down all of our spring crops and till them in so we can get some cover crops sown for our soil's health.  We spent several hours getting up our crop of potatoes yesterday; not so great a yield but light-years better than last year.  This year we were able to figure out how best to grow them, so we think next year's crop will be really good.  We had dill roasted potatoes for our side item last night and WOW they were fantastic.  
This beautiful caterpillar is a black swallowtail butterfly to be.  We find loads of them around the farm, usually munching on dill and carrot tops.  Notes on drying garlic:  We've been doling out garlic to you for a couple weeks now and yet another round this week with another big bulb of elephant garlic.  The best way to store these (we think!) is to hang them up somewhere out of the sunlight where there is some air circulation.  We have all of our garlic hanging up in our barn.  We prepare yours so that it looks cleaned up and is, for the most part, clean of dirt.  We've read it is probably best not to keep garlic in the fridge, but if you have done this it should be fine.  It doesn't take us too long to go through garlic, and this week we'll have a roasted garlic spread recipe to help you move it along.  

We hate to tease all of you half-shares with the picture of the sungolds, but next week they'll be here!  We thought we would have enough this week for everyone, but it looks like one more week.  And then there will be a'plenty.   Our field tomatoes are also just starting to turn; we had our first sandwich tomato yesterday.....a heirloom cherokee purple.  Perhaps in two weeks for you all?  
In your box this week:  

half shares

fresh dug potatoes (taters!)

bulb of elephant garlic

pint of padron peppers

cucumbers

onions

basil and dill

Large Shares

two pints of cherry tomatoes

extra potatoes
RECIPES

Roasted Elephant Garlic you can click on the red title or follow directions below, both recipes work for regular and elephant garlic

Roast Elephant Garlic: Remove the paper skins, cut off the tips so the cloves are exposed. Drizzle with olive oil and cover with tin foil; bake at 400° for 30-45 mins or until soft and spreadable. 

Dill Roasted Potatoes  Preheat oven to 415-425 degrees.  

Wash then chop up your potatoes into bite size pieces; we like to do around 1/3 inch pieces because they cook faster.

Coat generously with olive oil and coarse salt in a mixing bowl (if you don't have coarse salt you can use regular salt)

Layer flat on a baking pan (the oil you used to coat the potatoes should be enough to not need to oil the pan) and cook for 20-25 minutes or until tender.  (sometimes it takes our oven 30 minutes)

While the taters are cooking, you can wash and chop a couple tablespoons of dill leaves, finely. 

When the potatoes are done, remove from oven, sprinkle with dill, and mix.  Add more salt if desired.  Serve hot!  

Cucumber and Onion Salad   (click on link)

Hungarian Cucumber Salad  (click on link)

FLOWER SHARES

This week we will have a mixed bouquet with zinnias, dill flowers (edible dill on them as well!), cosmos, and rudbekia.  Next week oriental lilies as pictured above, a heavenly white called Siberia.  

Thanks everyone and enjoy your veggies and flowers!  We're thinking of you all.....

Vera's awesome photos

Our CSA member Vera Reina recently sent us a link to view her flickr album full of mouthwatering photos of her food creations made with things from the CSA box.  Here are just a few of the delectable items she has been making....I am particularly drawn to that slaw; looks so good!  Thanks for sharing Vera, you make it all look so easy :)

Week Seven

Hello to all of our CSA members!  We hope you're enjoying this last week of spring as the summer solstice occurs this weekend (and Father's Day)---the longest day of the year.  In a way, the waning daylight will be nice even though it probably won't be noticed until August.  Here comes the heat!  Our fields are like swamplands right now, so we're looking forward to some hot days to dry things out.  Not the sweat and humidity, just the dry beds.  All of our beds that should be planted right now are covered with a thick layer of weeds that have germinated with all this rain.  So not only are we backlogged with planting, we have to do all the tractor work once again on these beds that were ready to go a couple weeks ago (hilling the beds and then tilling for a fine tilth).  We're going to give you all fair warning that we might not have enough produce in August to properly fill your boxes since we haven't been able to direct seed anything or plant any of our transplants in the field for a few weeks.  You just can't plant into mud.  We will of course compensate everyone if we are short one week; we just might have to extend things a week later into September....but this is hypothetically speaking.....let's hope we have a bountiful amount of produce despite these wet conditions.   

Last week after market we had a chance to visit a very close neighboring farm, Infinity Farm, located in Cedar Grove, NC.  We'll be doing a post soon on our other blog, bluebirdmeadows.blogspot.com if you'd like to see more pictures.  They have goats, turkeys, horses, chickens, cows, a donkey, and more.  It was a rare breed of cow, can't remember the name, but they had these beautiful horns on them.  With around 150 acres and all these animals, this place felt on the magical side to us, feeling like a true farm.  Sometimes our farm feels like something is missing with no animals as of yet.  We LOVED the goats at Infinity Farm, so perhaps down the road we'll have a few of these lovely animals to keep us company.  It was really nice to step onto another farm; it seems like we rarely get off of ours, so it helps to keep things in perspective when we get to visit another place trying to make a livelihood similar to ours.  
In your boxes this week

half-shares

cucumbers

squash

basil

garlic

onion

green beans

padron peppers

fennel

Large-shares

same as half with (we're not completely sure yet what we'll have extra for you all, but this is what we're thinking)

pint of cherry tomatoes

extra pint of padron peppers

extra squash

RECIPES

Sauteed Padron Peppers with garlic

These peppers are our favorite new item this year.  They are the best snack around; a Spanish heirloom pepper, they serve them as a tapas (appetizer) over there, usually just sauteed with olive oil and salt.  So this is the recipe we'll give you all.  

1 tbsp to 1 1/2 tbsp oil

2-3 cloves regular garlic or 1/2 clove elephant garlic

pint of padron peppers, rinse and leave whole

coarse sea salt (any salt will do but this is what we prefer)

Cover a shallow frying/saute pan with olive oil---probably 1 tbsp will be enough for the pint you have.  Heat over medium-high heat til' warm, then throw in whole rinsed padrons.  

Saute for 5 minutes, then throw in garlic.  Add salt (we use more than we typically do for these peppers, maybe 1 teaspoon or more?), cook for around 5-7 more minutes until peppers look deflated and soft.  They will probably brown some or have white blisters on them from the heat.  This is normal!  

Remove from heat and eat peppers whole, seeds and all (leaving the stem).  Wonderful!!!  We hope you all like them; they are classified as a hot pepper, but we think they are very mild, a 1-2 on a hot scale of 1-10.  Every now and then there will be a pepper that is more like a 3-4, but still mild.  

Cucumbers with Basil and Vinegar

We love cucumbers because they are so easy to make.  We typically slice them into thin rounds,  pour some balsamic vinegar over them, add a pinch of salt and sugar, and slice some leaves of basil on them, stir and let soak for a few hours, then have them as a snack.  Easy and delicious.  

We also put them on our sandwiches, put cream cheese in the middle and eat whole, add on top of salads, or put into raita, the Indian cooling side dish.  We'll have cucumbers for several weeks, so there will be more recipes for these guys.  

Couscous with Fennel and Pine Nuts

(this recipe calls for a bigger fennel than you have, but even with the size of yours should still work out)

Roasted Fennel with Olives and Garlic

once again this recipe calls for more fennel than you have, but it's just to give you a cooking method

Flower Shares

This week you will be getting rudbekia (black-eyed susans, state flower of Maryland) and/or dianthus.  

Hope everyone enjoys their produce and flowers!  

Week Six

Rain rain go away!  That has been our mantra this week after this past Friday---we got 3 1/2 inches on Friday, totaling 5 1/2 for the week.  There was a lot of erosion on our freshly tilled beds; beds that had been raised up three to four inches above the aisles are now 1-2 inches above the aisles.  The good news is that all of our plants are growing like wild beasts with all that rain and the heat we've had.  The tomato plants grew about a half foot in a day.  The transition to early summer goods has begun.  Cucumbers are coming in from the field, you may see those as soon as next week in the half-share boxes.  Summer squash is going strong, although we've already had a few plants taken out by the dreaded squash vine borer, an insect that lays its larvae right in the neck of the plant, killing the whole plant.  Little buggers.  And soon we'll be harvesting tomatoes, eggplant, and green beans.....but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves!  
IMPORTANT NOTICE:  We had yet another instance at Fosters market of a full share being taken instead of a half-share.  We've figured out what happened the first time, but now we're stumped.  Please, if you have a friend, husband, wife, family member, etc. pick up the box who isn't the one who typically does, let them know about the two sizes.  They are in different locations in the cooler, and the full-share is in a box with 3/4 bushel written on it.

In your boxes this week:

half share

kale

elephant garlic

onions

fava beans

cabbage

kohlrabi

summer squash

italian parsley

Full-shares

same as half with

diva cucumbers

extra squash

extra onions

New produce item descriptions:  So, about this alien looking purple ball with leaves coming out of it---this is kohlrabi, and we really like it.  It is great for making slaw or kohlrabi fries, or telling your friends and neighbors about.  It is in the brassica family (along with broccoli, cauliflower, collards, etc.)  You take the leaves off and peel the purple skin off (a regular vegetable peeler works probably better than with a knife) and your left with the edible inside section.  Recipes below.  

elephant garlic--We love this stuff.  Much, much more mild and sometimes sweeter than regular garlic, we'll use a whole clove to a stir-fry or saute.  It is actually more closely related to a leek than it is to regular garlic.  Take care not to cook it too long as it can become bitter with overcooking.  It is often added raw to dishes, although we'll usually throw it in towards the end of a saute, unless we want to simmer it with butter which we'll do at the beginning.  

Fava beans--another delicious item.  Sorry we didn't have enough to give everyone a pound as a half pound doesn't give you too many beans.  You'll want to shell the fava beans (discarding the large shell for compost), and then put them in boiling water with salt added for around 3 minutes.  You then pinch them out of the skin they're in and you have yourself a delicious small snack reminiscent of edamame.  

Recipes

Kohlrabi Fries

Cut peeled kohlrabi into half-inch by half-inch pieces.  Toss with olive oil and salt to coat.  Spread on baking sheet and bake on 4o0 degrees for 15 minutes.  Turn and bake for another 10-12 minutes, until tender.  then eat them up!  

Kohlrabi Slaw with Carrots and Italian Parsley

Grate your peeled kohlrabi.

Add a couple grated carrots and two tbsp of chopped italian parsley.

Add one tbsp white wine vinegar or red wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar.  

Add a teaspoon of sugar, a few shakes of salt (1/4 to a 1/2 teaspoon), and a half to a full tbsp of olive oil.  Done!

Favas

cook as mentioned above.  You could top a fried egg with these, a salad, a stir-fry, or just put them on a piece of toast.  Or just eat them like edamame, freshly cooked and out of their skin.  

Summer Squash with Onions, Elephant Garlic, and Italian Parsley

We love to caramelize onions, but these onions are so sweet already that this may be unnecessary.  

4-6 summer squash, sliced to even sized pieces

1 medium onion or 2 small ones, chopped

1/2 clove elephant garlic, chopped fine

1 tbsp butter, 1/2 tbsp olive oil

1-2 tbsp chopped parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat butter and olive oil over medium heat until butter is melted.  Add chopped onions, saute for around 4 minutes until they've begun to soften and shrink.

Add squash and cook for a couple minutes, then add the elephant garlic.  

Cook for maybe 5 more minutes, until squash is tender and add a little water as needed so the saute isn't sticking to the pan.  

Add parsley at the end.

Add salt and pepper to taste and you're done!

FLOWER SHARES

Hello my fellow color lovers.  This week we'll have another round of mixed bouquets for you with cosmos, yarrow, beebalm, statice, and maybe some dianthus.  They should be really lovely--hope you enjoy them.  Remember to trim your flowers after a few days and change the water.  This help prolongs the vase life.  

Take care everyone and enjoy your flowers and vegetables!  Let us know if you have any questions.  

Farm to Fork Picnic on June 14th

So if you would like to participate in one of the best food offerings of the year (proceeds benefit future farmer apprentices at the Breeze incubator farm program), be sure and get your ticket for this event.  If you check out the restaurant and farm list, you immediately know the food is going to be incredibly delicious as well as farm fresh.  We both definitely plan on leaving this event with a full-belly.  So come on out and enjoy some great food and great company.  

On Sunday June 14, we are joining many of North Carolina's most acclaimed chefs and a group of incredible Piedmont farmers to cook a picnic-style dinner at W.C. Breeze Family Farm, a 270 acre educational farm devoted to sustainable agriculture just a few miles north of Hillsborough. All proceeds from the evening will help grow new farmers across North Carolina by supporting farmer apprentice programs hosted by the Center for Environmental Framing Systems and PLANT at Breeze Farm Enterprise Incubator program. Over 70 restaurants, artisans and farmers are working together to prepare the all-you-can eat feast celebrating the bounty and diversity of our region, including the season’s first field-ripened tomatoes; heritage pasture-raised pork including whole hog BBQ, Tuscan-style porchetta and carnitas; a North Carolina shrimp boil; a tasting tent filled with handmade craft food, including farmstead cheese, pickles, preserves, breads and cured meat; Monterrey-style cabrito with homemade tortillas from old-variety corn last grown in the Carolinas in the 1940's; all-local sno cones, spit-roasted lamb, herb sorbets hand-churned by the teen gardeners from SEEDS; grilled pizzas and flatbreads made with vegetables grown in the field next door; and the last strawberries of the year. This family friendly evening will also feature activities for the kids including sack races, a honey-bee demonstration, goats, rabbits and chickens; and of course a tour of the Breeze Farm. We hope that you can join us! Sunday, June 14th 4-7pm WC Breeze Family Farm 4909 Walnut Grove Church Road Hurdle Mills, NC (5 miles north of Hillsborough) Tickets: $50 per person; kids 12 and under are free. Wine and beer will be available to taste and also to purchase. Tickets are available online at www.farmtoforknc.com A $2 processing fee will be added to all tickets. Organized by: Center for Environmental Farming Systems, Orange County Cooperative Extension and Economic and Development, and Slow Food Triangle Contact 2009farmtofork@gmail.com or 919-755-3804 for more information and volunteer opportunities.

Participants as of May 25th include: 

18 Seaboard

 3CUPS

 Acme Food & Beverage

 David Auerbach

 The Abundance Foundation

 Ayrshire Farm

 Bluebird Meadows

 Brinkley Farms 

Cane Creek Farm 

Carolina Crossroads 

Castlemaine Farm 

Celebrity Goat Dairy 

Chapel Hill Creamery 

Contrarian Farm 

Coon Rock Farm

 Counter Culture Coffee

 Durham Inner-city Gardeners at SEEDS

 Dutch Buffalo Farm

 Eco Farm

Elaine’s on Franklin

Farmer’s Daughter

Fickle Creek Farm

 Foster’s Market

 Four Leaf Farm

 Four Square

 Fowl Attitude Farm

 Fullsteam Brewery 

Glasshalfull

 Harland’s Creek Farm

 Haw River Wine Man

 Herons

 Irregardless Café

 Jujube

 Lantern

 Lil’ Farm

 Lucky 32 

Maple Spring Gardens

 Neal’s Deli

 Panciuto

 Panzanella

 Peregrine Farm

 Perry-winkle Farm

Piedmont Biofarm

 Piedmont

 Plant @ Breeze Farmers

 Poole’s Diner

 Sage & Swift

 Scratch Baking

 Southport Seafood 

The Barbecue Joint

 The Weathervane

 Fred Thompson

 Timberwood Organics

 Tiny Farm

 Toast 

Triple B Farms

 Watts Grocery 

Wild Hare Farm

 Zely & Ritz

Week Five

Greetings to all our members!  We hope everyone is doing well and enjoying their produce and flowers.  It's been fairly quite on the feedback front, so we're going to optimistically assume everyone is enjoying the CSA so far.  We are shocked we're already at week 5, a quarter of the way through the subscription.  It's so strange how time shifts during the season.  May is such a physically demanding time and it goes by so fast, but, by August, time has slowed and things become more mentally challenging for us than physically.  We are in disbelief that May is over and June is before us.  June, the month of the summer solstice, the month where heat and humidity tend to slip in, the month of potatoes, squash, cucumbers, weeds, the end of things spring, and the joy of no longer having to pick strawberries.  And much more I'm sure.   
We'll be harvesting our onions and potatoes soon, so I thought we'd have a sneak preview with these pictures for everyone to keep you excited about things to come in the near future.  We'll also start harvesting our garlic this week; we have two kinds, elephant garlic which is very mild, and a California softneck variety.    

In your boxes this week: (a reminder to everyone that we have not yet harvested the produce, so there is always the chance things in the box may change at the last minute)

HALF-SHARES--

two pints peas 5

broccoli 2

squash 4

lettuce 2

kale 2.5

collards 2

FULL-SHARE

same as half with additional:

diva cucumbers from the hoophouse 3.5

extra pint of peas 2.5

extra squash 1.5

RECIPES

We're going to assume everyone knows at this point what to do with peas, kale, and probably the broccoli as well.  There are recipes for kale and peas in our previous newsletters if you need some help with these.  

So, we'll give tips on collards.  Collards are an old-fashioned green that you will find at most traditional southern fare restuarants (in season hopefully).  Bill Smith at Crook's Corner makes some incredible collards if you're ever there for dinner and need a side item.  

For us, we usually wash then de-stem them with a knife as the stems take longer to cook, then roll up the collards like a cigar and cut on the diagonal in about half inch strips.  You're now ready to cook!  

Here is a recipe from Piedmont restaurant in Durham (from the September issue of Bon Appetit which Bluebird Meadows was in!)

Braised Collard Greens

(you won't have this many collards, so pare down the other ingredients given here)

2 tbsp butter

2 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, chopped

2 lbs collard greens, thick stems trimmed, leaves coarsely chopped

2 cups low salt chicken broth

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

Melt butter with olive oil in heavy large pot over medium high heat.  Add onion and garlic and saute until tender, about 6 minutes.  Add greens and saute until beginning to wilt.  Stir in broth; bring to boil.  Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until greens are very tender, stirring occasionally, about 45 minutes.  Stir in vinegar.  Season with salt and pepper.  

If you want to do something more simple (as we always like simple around here), collards do not need to cook for so long as the previous recipe calls for.  We usually do a tbsp of olive oil, a tbsp of butter (we love butter, it really does add so much flavor) heated in a saute pan on medium until warm.  We then add the collards and saute for about 10-15 minutes, adding salt and a little water, and sometimes a splash of ume plum vinegar at the end to season.  You could also use apple cidar vinegar if you have it, or just leave out the vinegar.  We'll also sometimes use store-bought teriyaki sauce on the collards instead of salt and vinegar.  Usually a tbsp to 1 1/2 tbsp does the trick.  We love collard greens and we hope you try them! 

Summer Squash--These guys are super easy to cook.  They only take a few minutes to cook.  You can steam them or saute them; we usually throw ours in with our pea sautes.  We chop them up into inch by half inch pieces (but any size works really) and throw them in the same time as the peas as they both take around the same time to cook.  Here are a couple links to recipes we like from epicurious.  

Orzo with Summer Squash and Toasted Hazelnuts 

Summer Squash Saute 

 Also, if you have any recipes to share, please let us know and we'll post it for everyone.  

FLOWER SHARES:

This week we will have a beautiful and bright mixed bouquet with cosmos, electron purple dianthus, and sunflowers.  Hope you all enjoy the spring pinks.  

Thanks everyone!  Have a great week, and, as always, we welcome any comments, suggestions, and feedback.