CONTACT INFORMATION:
Coordinator: Mike Rabinowitz Before 5:00 p.m. House Phone: 895-2884. Leave Message
Tuesdays: Oz Cell: Phone: 689-7693 6:00–6:30 p.m.
Wednesdays: Mike’s Cell: 749-2884 6:00–6:30. p.m.
Our apologies to returning members, who have already learned this mantra! Mike sends an e-mail reminder to everyone the evening before. We try to get the list of veggies in your bag on the Website before pick-up and also post it on bulletin board next to chill room in Processing Shed.
WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON`T PICK-UP.
If you are not able to pick-up on time, we need to hear from you before 6:30 p.m. The first week or two we will try to contact people who are not there by 6:30 and wait for late comers. After the first couple of weeks, we expect people will set up their own reminders – whether it is a text message from your teenager, a call from your mother-in-law or a pop-up on your Google calender. Each of the Drop-off team – Mike, Alice, Oz and Ryan – also have plans for the evening. Mike particularly has a long night ahead, setting up plans with employees for work, extensive farm business around certification, ordering equipment and seeds, as well as responding to special orders and people seeking advice for their own gardening practices.
We will wait in case of emergency, but not if being fifteen minutes late is a way of life. In general, the rule is if we don’t hear from you before 6:30, we take your veggies back to the farm chill room. Call or E-mail us. Usually, this works out well. By the time Mike gets back home and checks his e-mail, this or that person has dashed off an E-mail to apologize for missing pick-up and gives us the plan.
What happens to Orphaned Vegetables?
If we do not hear from you by e-mail or a message on the house phone (895-2884) with plans to pick up at the Farm, we will make plans to pass the veggies along to others who will appreciate the food while it is still fresh. If we know there is a plan, we will keep your bag in the chill room until it is convenient for you to pick it up, even if it is several days later.
WHAT`S IN THE BAG?
Tuesday and Wednesday bags are usually similar but not exactly the same. The large bags obviously have more veggies, but over the season, the type of vegetables depends primarily on the amounts available on any give week.
For example, we are looking at small Daikon radishes for this Wednesday and possibly small Salad Turnips for next Tuesday because we don’t have enough of either for both groups. (Mike likes the Daikon radishes and salad turnips grated over salad or raw and used with dip like carrot sticks.)
Besides items mentioned, small and large bag groups have mostly similar items, with some variations, and includes snow peas or sugar snaps, green onions, green garlic, chives with flowers, lettuce or salad mix, Braising Mix for Tuesday and Kale for Wednesday and Chinese Cabbage, small, half or full heads. Use the menu above to navigate to our recipes page for recipes for Chinese Cabbage or click here.
Wet Lettuce??
When the morning weather is wet and rainy, the salad mix may still be wet even though it was laid out to dry for several hours. Before putting it away, check to see what you think. If it seems too wet, try laying it out on paper towels to dry and repack in two bags, maybe with a sheet of paper towel.
Herbs??
As you get herbs, you may want to use a few fresh and dry the rest, whether it is oregano, mint, lavender, etc. In the “old” days, we gave guidance around drying herbs, but today that information is readily available on the Internet. I/we do dry herbs at the farm for ourselves and for selling at the Farmers Market after the regular season. We have a small dryer but we usually dry them by laying them in a tray on the top of the microwave or by hanging them in bunches with a string, upside down, in a brown paper bag to keep them from getting dusty. If you need/want any other information, please get in touch.
RECIPES AND OTHER TIDBITS!
When you join the Veggie Coop, the Farm Notes may have much more information than you really need to know. To spare those who only want recipes and bare bones information, the recipes are posted here on the website. See header: Recipes.
New Recipes From Veggie Group Member: Verify Furlong.
See the recipes at end of the Farm Note below. They are also posted along with Farm Recipes. Thanks, Verify. This makes things much more interesting and fun for me. Will be trying the recipes and sharing with farm employees soon.
What is Braising Mix?
We’ll start with Braising Mix, which was a new “thing” for me, until I finally caught on that it is a mixture of greens, not unlikewild greens like Dandelions and “Polk Salad” and greens grown as farm crops on our family farm in Tennessee. Here is the formal definition.
- Traditional braising mixes consist of assorted greens including, but not limited to, kale, chard, bok choy, mustard greens, spinach, turnip greens, beet greens and pretty much any other dark green leafy vegetation found within the furrowed rows of a farmer’s field, including dandelion greens!Mar 21, 2012
The Braising Mix today has red choy, pac choy and mustards. If you like garlic, you may want to cut in the green garlic, using scissor to make tiny, slim pieces. If you have not made braising mix or wilted greens before, you need to know they wilt into much smaller portions so you may want to serve it with tomatoes, boiled eggs, even toss in a few cashews to make it more hearty. One recipe adds tofu and fresh ginger. Here’s what happened to Maggie Keiley a few years ago!
Wilting Greens Salad!!
A couple of years ago we got this e-mail from a Veggie Coop Member.
“So I was quite famished by the time my husband and I rushed home for my new addiction – fresh salad mix with apples, cheese and red onions.
I whipped it together, fried some rice and enjoyed the oddest tasting but most delicious salad . It had a bite to it and is was very crisp. About half way through, my husband and I realized we had made a great salad out of the wilting greens. It was a hit!
I can’t wait to try the real salad tomorrow as intended. Cheers/ Maggie Keiley”
RECIPES FOR GREENS
Most of my favourite recipes for greens and Chinese Cabbage ideas are already posted in the Recipes section here on the Website. Look for GREENS or click here and follow the page down until you see a recipe for Bangla Style Stir Fried Greens from Emily Sokowe. I hope you have time to read and try a few recipes and/or send in your ideas and variations.
WHAT TO DO WITH THE CHIVE BLOSSOMS?
Congratulations! This week, you get to join the city farmers club by cutting off the flowers from their stems and discarding the stems. Taste the gorgeous blossoms; if you like them, pinch them into your salad; if they seem strong, put them in a small vase for the table, as a reminder of the vitality of spring. Chives are perennials that return year after year faithfully and spread reliably For the most part, helpers cut the chive bunches and stand in the field picking out the stems with flowers and discarding them, putting the rubber band around the rest. We remove the flowers’ stems because they are the most mature part of the plants – woody and inedible. And/or we save the bloom and put them into the edible flowers packaged for restaurants. Let us know if you like the blossoms and how you feel about being named a city farmer!
WEATHER IS MORE THAN CHALLENGING!
It is almost a disaster. As you can imagine, the weather makes a huge difference to how things go on the farm.
Lettuce is a cool weather crop and usually grows well in our cool, short seasoned climate. Some years we have put out lettuce transplants in the fields with snow melting on the sides of the fields and cover it with vegetable row cover. It thrives in cooler weather but not if mother nature switches the temperature off and on, from hot to cold every few days and back again. Today, Mike and Alice were shaking their heads and talking about how slowly the lettuce is growing, wondering when/how to seed the next flats of lettuce. We usually use a six week time frame from seeding, transplanting, weeding and harvesting. In spite of all of our efforts, there have been some weeks over the years where we ran completely out of lettuce. Some years it is just too cold; others it is too hot. When the weather turns hot over night, after a spell of cold (as my Dad would say), the poor, chilled lettuce tries to make a run for it and bolts right under our eyes, something like hopping a plane to Florida. On the other hand, in continuous cold weather, the seeds sometimes rot in the trays before developing into transplants.
BUT WE STILL GET UP EVERY MORNING TO CARRY ON!
This is especially true of Diane, who is from Bell Island and proud of it. She is on the ferry before most of us on this side even get up. She leads the field production team, which of course, includes lettuce. She also leads picking and packing, along with three or four farm helpers and occasionally a volunteer. They get us through the day on time, whether it is a CSA day or a restaurant day. They also prep for the Farmers Market on Friday Afternoon. She sets up tasks for gathering and processing specific crops, picking lettuce for salad mix, edible flowers or field crops like onions, chives or rhubarb. Even with several paid helpers and a volunteer or two, it sometimes goes off the rails, due to weather, or a misunderstanding about the lists and especially if one or two workers are not in like this week. When this happens, they usually sacrifice their breaks to squeeze out the time needed to get your veggies to St. Johns on time. On a day when they get finished a little early, in time for a break before rushing to put the bags in the van by 5 o’clock, there is an all around sense of accomplishment. This is what happened last week. This week, the lettuce is still wet – we are slow because our helpers need breaks due to the cold. Diane laughs and point out this is only the second week – and warns that every week that passes, there will be more vegetables and herbs to pick and pack for the Veggie Bags.
Bottom Line.
When you pass around the salad, please raise your salad forks in appreciation of these incredible women for your bounty. Diane and her team – Michelle (also from Bell Island), Jayne, Karen and Emily!!
JAMIE’S RECIPE FOR GREENS
Veggie Coop Member, August 2012.
Stove Top: Collards or Kale
Here is a great recipe for Kale or Collards. It is from the cookbook “How to Cook Everything’ by Mark Bittiman
2 TBSP of Olive Oil
2 or 3 cloves of garlic minced (or green garlic or garlic scapes)
1 lb. Of collards or kale – washed and chopped
l/4 cup of chicken stock
3 TBSP of Tahannii
Salt and pepper to taste
2 TBSP of Lemon Juice
Heat Olive oil in pan; add garlic until tender and golden but not brown. Add collards or kale, stock, tahini, salt and pepper. Cook covered for about 5 minutes. Remove lid and reduce heat….adding more stock if it looks dry. Remove from heat and add lemon juice. Serve.
RECIPE FROM VERIFY!
Pea fritters
(I used them as “bun” for some portabello burgers but make a great snack with something to dip them into)
Approx 2 cups of peas
1 egg
Spring onion
1/2 cup all purpose Flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
Handful of fresh herbs (I used mint, basil, parsley)
lemon zest
Blend roughly half the peas and all other ingredients. Fold In remaining peas and fry.
Rosemary lemon shortbread
1 & 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon chopped rosemary
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp lemon juice
Lemon zest
Cream butter and sugar. Mix all other ingredients together and then add gradually to butter/sugar mix. Form dough into a roll, wrap in saran wrap and refrigerate 1 hour. Slice into desired thickness place on greased cookie sheet and bake for approx 10 minutes at 375 or until starting to brown
