Farm Notes – July 22, 2013
Week 5, 2013
Veggie Coop Coordinator: Mike Rabinowitz. Drop-off is at 6 pm./ Science Building Parking Lot. MUN. If you are not able to pick-up on time, please phone Mike by 5 pm. On the House Phone: 895-2884 or the Farm Cell/ 689-7693 no later than 6 pm. We will keep the bag at the farm in the walk-in chill room and you can pick it up at your convenience.
WHAT’S IN THE BAG?
Braising mix, garlic scapes, green onions, lettuce mix, basil, flowering thyme and a bouquet of herbs. We are not quite to the stage of having sufficient zucchini for our numbers. We are sending a few herbs of each kind, but if you are not able to use right away, you may want to pop some into a brown paper bag and hang it to dry for a few days. No recipe suggestions beyond last week. If you have found a recipe you enjoy for braising mix, please send it along for sharing.
Swap box and tailgate sales!
Bring your money and take your chances. Mike and Diane, our senior helper from Bell Island, who pack the swap box will have veggies for swapping and maybe something new and interesting. Before we get enough cucumbers, tomatoes or snow peas to give out to full membership for one bag group or the other, he will bring early samples along to sell at Tailgate. For example, we had a small bowl with a few of our first tomatoes on the table for dinner guests to taste last night. This means there may be a few in Tailgate sales this week. Sooner or later, we will have sufficient quantities for everyone. In fact, if things continue to go well with the tomato greenhouse, we will eventually have tomatoes each week for several weeks. Fingers crossed – because last year, Hurricane Leslie came blowing in September and the whole crop was destroyed over night.
What’s Happening With Bags?
This season, we are using brown paper bags to make things go more smoothly – no returning bags and no washing bags back at the farm. If the bags are clean, we are glad to get them back and use them again. However, if you want to use them with family activities, please feel free to keep them. And, we did wash and sun dry the cloth bags that were returned, to be ready for the next time when it is raining at pick-up time.
Holy Vegetables!
Holes, nibbled by insects is common in leafy vegetables such as kale and chard. In fact, if the leafy veggies you see at the supermarket are free of holes, it probably means they were sprayed, not once but frequently throughout the growing season. Ten or twelve years ago, when the children of Bob and Heather Patey were preschoolers, Bob referred to the kale as “holey.” The Patey family is a church going family and the children were a little confused by the word, “holey.” Bob explained that the kale had holes, but it also meant the kale was good. The Pateys are still coop members, the children are teen-agers and the kale and spinach is still holy!
Over the Sink, Please!
This is something I usually suggest early in the season, especially for new members. It is best to hold the bag over the sink and take out your veggies in a way that any unsuspecting insect will fall into the sink, instead of scurrying across the counter top to hid under the toaster. You have already learned that Chinese cabbage is a luxury hotel for insects and head lettuce is a lower class motel. Although we keep the fields clear of weeds, which is the best way to guard against monumental insect damage in an organic garden, when an insect finds a home to snuggle into and have a good snack, they usually have children to take advantage of the good accommodation. You may also find small earth worms nestled in the folds and lower sleeves of brassicas. If you have a compost, add them to the compost; if not, try placing them outdoors near a damp, dark place. These little creatures are part of natures clean up crew. Try to return them to a natural habitat so they can continue work on this earth.
Salad Soup
You probably don’t have too much lettuce this week, but thought I should share this story with you anyway for when the time comes. Several years ago, Roxie was a graduate student in Psychology Department at MUN. She was a vegetarian and talked her husband into joining the Veggie Coop, even though he hated vegetables. What to do with those early greens and lettuces? Oh, well, why not? Roxie put them all together and made soup, which Cary admitted he liked. Later, this young couple moved to Ontario. They meet us at a Child Development Conference in Albuquerque and joined us for dinner at a Japanese restaurant. Cary was surprised when he saw the grilled zucchini, served along side the steak teriyaki. Admitting that the lettuce soup was the closest he have ever gotten to trying “real vegetables”, he did try grilled zucchini. We are still in touch with Roxy and Cary and glad to report that Cary now eats his vegetables – in fact, he has become a vegetarian! She is now a research psychologist in an Ontario Hospital and he is designing jewelry for Tiffanys in New York. More about these interesting people another time.
Good Bye, Gesa!
Gesa is a WWOOFer from Germany. Although the meaning of the word has changed over the past year, it still stands for something like Willing Workers On Organic Farms. It is an international program which matches farms with people who want to explore different parts of the world and hopefully are interested in learning about organic practices. We have hosted dozens of WWOOFers over the past fifteen years from many places including Autralia, Scotland, England, China, Tawain with the most being from Germany and Japan. Woofers tend to be in their mid-20s, having finished University and often coming to Canada to improve their English, before going to second stage careers.
Generally, they are pretty good workers and independent tourists, but a few years ago, some of the young people literally destroyed the sofa and damaged other furniture. After that, we made a new policy; no woofers younger than 18. It took several e-mails in the spring for Gesa to convince us, especially Louis that she was serious about “working” on an Organic Farm. Finally, we were convinced. Gesa had her seventeenth birthday last week. Here is how she convinced us. She had a friend living in St. John’s for the year. The friend’s mother was a Newfoundlander, who married a German soldier and has been living in Germany for the past twenty years. This was Gesa’s opportunity to be with the friend, who is here age for a couple of weeks and then transition to the farm when they went back to Germany in late June. Gesa turned out to be a delight, willing to help with any jobs, helping with kitchen, chopping and cooking, sweeping the kitchen floor., etc. She also took care of her own adventures; joining East Coast Trail hikes; riding the bike to Bell Island and also went on mine tour on her own. She walked or rode her bike swimming and sometimes went twice a day. When Louis and over-night farm guest went to Beachy Cove for a bonfire with the dogs, she made bread to cook on a stick and took along the jam to fill it. This morning she went kayaking at Bay Bulls after the trip was rained out on Saturday. The only challenge was the rides she needed at times to do the things she had chosen on the Internet. Great kid, but no need to feel sorry for her. She is off on Tuesday morning to meet her mother and friends in New York City for a week in the Big Apple!
Melba Rabinowitz
July, 2013
