ORGANIC FARM NOTES: WEEK 5: July 27 – August 2 , 2014
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Coordinator: Mike Rabinowitz: Farm/House Phone. ( 895-2884) Before 5:30 Leave a message.
Cell Phone at Pick-Up. 749-2884. 6 -6:30 p.m.
Please note: Mike has this cell phone at pick-up only. It is usually not answered at other times. Last week a member reported having called this number several times during the day to no avail.
IT’S IN THE BAG!
Oh yeah! Zucchini! Hope you dropped into Belbin’s and picked up the Monterrey Jack. Of course, broccoli is for steaming. This week in the family kitchen on one of the hot days, we had cold soup ( kale, green garlic, chicken broth, yogurt and other seasoning. Around 1976 when we visited Mike’s aunts in New York, I was introduced to this as Schav, a cold drink made from steamed spinach and sour cream made by Aunt Esther and Aunt Suchie. Later, I found it in The Art of Jewish Cooking referring to sour grass or sorrel.
What else did we have this week based on house veggies, veggies sent to the house at the end of the day. Oh yes, two quiches, one vegetarian and one with meat, made with zucchini, red peppers, green onions. Mike complimented me a half dozen times on the mock cabbage rolls using Chinese Cabbage. We used l/2 of the first cabbage of the year to make Tennessee Cole Slaw the other half will be steamed. And, Toby made the Zucchini with Monterrey jack for dinner on Sunday evening. All incorporating green onions, green garlic and/ or garlic scapes.
Key Informants!
If you find something in your Veggie Coop bag that is “not up to snuff “ as my mother would say, we need to know. Our Veggie Coop members are like the canary in the mine. If our members don’t tell us that they found excessive rot inside their head of head of lettuce or that the garlic scapes were too woody to use, we will not know. To clarify, it t is likely that from time to time you Veggie Coop bag will have veggies that have insect holes, a bit of that wonderful organic dirt or that you open a head of butter crunch and find a baby slug tucked inside. This is to be expected but week I discovered that the green garlic sent to kitchen in house vegetables was too woody and difficult to cut. Your may have been fine, but mine wasn’t. The women who pick vegetables such as the green garlic, normally do not taste it and from time to time there may be some items that do not meet the standard you expect. may be ti. Mike took a bite and thought it was o.k. And, it might have been for some people. But, you are person using our products! If you get something that is not usable or you don’t want to use, please let us know. It will be doing us a favour and we will replace it with equal product!!!
LINK TO BLOG FROM TOP OF FARM NOTES
You will find pictures, the link to 31 Ways to use your CSA Vegetables and some other comments. If you have a picture or two of your veggies in the comforts of their new home, children crunching on snow peas right out of the bag or the little three year old trying to lift the big, big bag at pick-up, please share them for the Blog. We need permission. Many years ago, a member sent us a picture of her obviously healthy and happy six month old son with baby food made from organic farm spinach all over his face. It was a wonderful picture. When we asked permission to share it in Farm Notes, explaining that he might not like it, if it is still floating around when he is a teen-ager, she wrote back, giving permission, saying, when he is a teen-ager, I hope he still likes spinach!!
WHAT’S HAPPENING ON THE FARM!
Last week Mike said that the tops of some of the tomatoes in GH#1 were wilting due to the heat. Too hot in Newfoundland to grow tomatoes? He set up a fine misting spray to help cool them down. Apparently, it worked; they soon perked up. Needless, to say, we are still learning about the greenhouses with Geo-thermal heat along with how the weather is evolving over the past several years.
Sad Thirsty Crops
Same story with field crops, except this is about water, not the heat. We have been praying for rain for days and on Saturday, it came. We were literally dancing/ working in the rain, smiling, going from place to place, pulling weeds, picking rocks, taking out overgrown shrubs with the pick-ax and putting in herbs, edible flowers and mint. Paulette cleaned the lettuce shed, sterilized the picking baskets and found plants for home gardeners while Mike walked to Aunt Esther’s Garden to settle a volunteer into weeding the Fava beans. He was met coming back down the trail by a friend and local doctor who brought his mother for a visit and soon wound up in the kitchen for a tea bun and cuppa. It was an exhilarating day but there is a story about irrigation and water!
When we purchased the land behind us, in 2003, we knew we would need a plan for irrigation. The concept we eventually settled on was that instead of digging a deep well for irrigation, that we capture the run-off from the mountain/ high hill on the back of the property and store it in a pond for irrigation. We did that, making a series of ditches, piping it into the pond, then establishing a pump and a network of hoses around the fields. The farm is on a slope between the mountain and the the creeks below so we are only borrowing the water; it eventually drains naturally into the open bully behind the lettuce shed, then the creek, eventually reaching the ocean. It took two or three years of adjusting things,, lots of work and pretty expensive but a plan we are proud of. But there are still times like this past week, where there is no water! Although the pond is 14 feet deep, the pipe installed about 4 feet below the water level wass literally high and dry. However, when the chips are down, so to speak, we have another source of water, which is setting up a maze of hoses to bring water from the family dwelling. That’s what we did this week. It is low and tedious because Watering various gardens and green houses has to be staggered because of the water pressure. But, for the most part, the crops in the back fields survived.
WE NEVER PROMISED YOU A PERFECT CROP OF LETTUCE!
Lettuce likes cooler weather not the excessive heat we have had over the past few weeks. Mike used to say that because of its cooler weather, he thought Newfoundland could become the lettuce capital of Canada. This summer has brought these ideas into question. Our normal lettuce production pattern is to begin to develop lettuce transplants from seeds beginning in early spring and keep transplants ready to put out every few weeks through the harvesting season for both salad mix and heads. This season, the lettuce has jumped ahead of itself, like a teen-ager on steroids. Regardless of whether we need to or not, it has to be harvested to sell or give away. We have enough now, but, we may have a lettuce drought in a few weeks. That’s what happened a few years ago. We promised a huge bag of salad as a donation to the 24 hours Art Marathon. But, by late August, there was none. What no lettuce at the Organic Farm? It’s was a well kept secret that I bought organic lettuce from a box store to make a huge salad adding other farm goodies, green onions, cucumber, tomatoes and edible flowers.
Pot of Gold Arrives by E-Mail
A few days ago, I received an E-mail from Wanda Murrin-Davis, a Veggie Coop Member, since 2008. After learning my sad story about loosing much of my farm notes and recipes, she sent me her own collection, of both Farm Notes and Recipes. She had scanned them and put them in order, something I never quite finished with the recipes. I am both honored and inspired. In fact, I spent last evening reading them, remembering the chit-chat, circumstances and stories. I laughed at some things and winched at others, not so much content, but at spelling mistakes and run on sentences or unfinished sentences.
Mike and a couple of Veggie Coop Members have been offering to edit over the years, but, I never get them done in time to go through that process. Off the Press and Out the Door. There were a couple of fact sheets written specifically for Veggie Coop Members. No more excuses and no more whining! I will get busy and pull out recipes and stories to continue to share this season. Thanks again, Wanda!
Little Red Hen. July, 2014
