FARM NOTES: Wednesday, August 22, 2018
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Coordinator: Mike Rabinowitz Contact Us Before 5:00 pm. House Phone: 895-2884. Leave Message
Pick-UP Places and Time: 6 – 6:30 Mun Science Building Parking Lot
or Organic Farm: 5:30 – 7:30; other days by appointment.
Cell Phone on Pick-Up days: 709 749-2884. ( 6 – 6:30 only) .
More Who’s Who on the Farm! I am The Little Red Hen who helped Mike register the farm as a partnership almost 40 years ago and have helped around the edges, with everything from soup to nuts and in-between. For the first twenty years, the farm notes were printed in-house and slipped into the Veggie bags. This set is primarily the conversation with myself while I am in the kitchen, thinking how to work up the farm vegetables that come to the house.
Note from former CSA Member. (8/17/2008) I just wanted to pass on a note from Calgary:
“Since moving to Calgary, I signed up for a popular weekly CSA membership in town. I have found both the quantity and quality to be very poor compared to what you offered last year. The vegetables I have been getting in this program always seem smaller and in worse shape. I know the weather dictates a lot towards how things grow, but I just wanted to let you know how much I miss my weekly pick-up from The Organic Farm. Hope your year is going well and you enjoy the rest of your Summer! Luke”
House vegetables are the precious goodies deposited on the kitchen table by someone involved in harvesting; things too ugly, damaged or to few sell or use for our Veggie bags. Or it could be the first harvest of a crop we will have in a few days or weeks. Been there – done that! Rhubarb, garlic scapes, zucchini; salad mix, green onions, sage, mint and rosemary, voluptuous Swiss chard, a sample of first greenhouse tomatoes. Last night it was yellow runner beans and garlic.
All the while, I am imagining a conversation with our CSA members, explaining what I am concocting using farm vegetables. Zucchini soup and the squash flam from farm website. Note: Rachel’s made a beet pie with feta and cream cheese as a substitute for the goat cheese the recipe called for. Very simple with 3 ingredients. It could not have been better. I had interesting results with a sweet and sour Vietnamese soup from web; adding thin strips of chard and a hand full of micro-greens rescued from frig salad drawer; this didn’t seem hearty enough so I turned it into a egg drop soup; if you don’t know how to do the egg drop part, do a Google search. Rachael made a gooseberry pie with the large English gooseberries Marc rescued from the bind weeds in the lower garden and I made another round of Mrs. Walters rhubarb cake and rhubarb bars recipe from organic farm website. Hint: I used food processor to prepare rhubarb instead of chopping by hand, because the older rhubarb has a few blemishes and is less tender than it was at the beginning of the season,
Zucchini Soup is different every time. Last night, I put in the left over salad from the night before which we in the frig. It was about 2 or 3 cups of healthy veggies – tiny baby carrots and parsnips which Marc saved when he thinned; the salad may have had arugula and kale; certainly, chopped green onions I added to organic chicken broth along with zucchini, onions, and various spices. I had already started, with garlic scapes or garlic. I usually add a couple of medium size potatoes chopped at the beginning to help it thicken or crumble in four or five saltine crackers. Finally, add a l/2 cup of cream, milk or evaporated milk to get consistency you like. Mike says he doesn’t like curry so I only add a tiny taste.
Ginger, Garlic Soup with Zucchini. Tonight I started with same base, chicken broth, onions, garlic and zucchini but decided I want it to be very different. Added fresh ginger and tomato paste, until it obviously had a tomato base; l/2 cup of evaporated milk at the end, salt and pepper. Will add a slice or two of brown bread if it needs thickening.
Meatless Lasagna. Start with a bottom layer of Swiss chard wilted for 15 seconds in the microwave, placed over your favourite red sauce, then followed by layer of finely chopped feta, followed by another layer of chard, cottage cheese, sauce, building up into what appears be a regular lasagna, ending with another layer of chard and sauce, the normal topping of shredded mozzarella and Parmesan. Sometimes we use thinly sliced eggplant to build the layers. This dish is advertised by the farm kitchen as meatless lasagna and is a successful for both vegetarians and meat eaters, regardless of how you build the layers.
Steamed Beets, green tomatoes and green apples. More beets this week; we steamed small beets, six different types – orange, white and purple and candy stripped, shared around the table for five people. And we are getting ready for our adventure with green tomatoes. Not sure what Rachel made with green tomatoes yesterday morning as there was none left in the black skillet when I got to the kitchen an hour later. They have usually been up for hours by the time Mike and I wander into the kitchen for coffee. For the past two days, it has been damaged garlic which needs attention; Today, it was green apples which fell because the branch was splitting. They are very, very small and hard; green because they are no where near ripe; not the kind of apples you would choose to make a pie with, but that’s what I did just the same; using the play dough pie crust recipe in last Farm Notes. Will let you know next time, how it turned out.
From Garlic Scapes to the real thing! We are like squirrels putting away nuts for the winter. Yes, we are drying garlic for the CSA and to sell, but more importantly, Marc is scratching the harvesting plots to find garlic pieces overlooked because it is too time consuming for farm staff to comb through the loosened and muddy soil to find the scattered pieces. They are precious and that’s another job that falls to the Little Red Hen. I have spent 3 or 4 hours already, sitting on the back porch in the lovely summer evening, picking through premature or damaged cloves that are already separating from core stem and peeking out from the dirt like pearls. Some tiny cloves are as small as my thumb; others are more normal size and shape. Regardless, they are valuable and appreciated. I knew that garlic is one of the oldest cultivated plants and like spices and honey was used as currency. See below. (The day I started putting fresh garlic and garlic pieces in the garlic bowl in the dining room, a casual, but steady stream of folks who like to cook, began to make their way to the bowl, like ducks drawn to water. There will be more as we finished processing the seed garlic in the outdoor shed and begin to plant. At that time, in addition to more garlic in the garlic bowl, I will have some pieces to freeze in small zip lock bags.)
Garlic Payment and Religion: (From Grey Duck Garlic Farm) This pungent herb is one of the oldest cultivated plants. It was worshipped by the Egyptians as a god and used as local currency. Clay garlic bulbs were placed in Egyptian tombs with the dearly departed. Archaeologists are unsure whether the clay bulbs were intended as funds for the afterlife or as idols to appease the gods. In addition, garlic was used to pay and feed workers and slaves on the great pyramids. The bulb was so popular with those who toiled on the pyramids that garlic shortages caused work stoppages. A garlic crop failure, due to the Nile flooding, caused one of the only two recorded Egyptian slave revolts. Garlic as currency is not necessarily an ancient idea; at Grey Duck Garlic we have found that some people are easily bribed with a basketball of the aromatic bulbs.
WHAT’S HAPPENING ON THE FARM?
Greenhouse Recovery or Recovering? (See Organic Farm Facebook for pixs) We have been waiting for months for a still day (without wind) to put new plastic sheeting on the biggest greenhouse which is 148 ft. long by 30 ft. wide. If the wind is too high, it will lift the plastic into the sky, stealing it away and it will be impossible to capture it. Staff were informed that any day, they might get called to the task. It was last Thursday. At 9 o’clock, Nathan came to door and said, they had already removed the old plastic and were looking for the new material. ( Staff start as early and go home early if they wish.) This sent me flying upstairs to wake up Mike, who was the only person who knew how to throw over the ropes and pull the plastic over the top. To make a long story short, it took 8 people, all day, working as a team, to achieve this important and momentus job. Thanks to everyone for helping, climbing, pulling and holding their respective corners. This time, we installed a second layer of plastic and introduced a pump to circulate air between the two layers. Amazing job! Life Expectancy – five years if we are lucky and can duck any outrageous hurricane force winds. Congratulations to Mike, who had materials on site and was able to oversee the job. The cost: Around 2,000 for materials and $1,000 labour.
What’s Happening Off The Farm?
You won’t want to miss this happening – a full length movie opening this week-end at Avalon Mall. Written and produced by Michael Rowe, local film maker with Andy Jones and Robert Joy, local actors with international reputations. See Trailer is at crownandanchorfilm.com. Opens Friday at Avalon Mall. See you there!
Please send in your feedback and recipes for sharing.
The Little Red Hen of the Organic Farm
August 21, 2018
