Welcome to the 2012 season!
- At June 9, 2012
- By Jenny Wooster
- In Farm news
0
June 2, 2012
Dear Shareholders,
The 2012 harvest season is here! Welcome friends old and new! Thank you for joining us this year – we’re off to a good start and hoping for a fabulous harvest season. All told, it’s been a fine spring here on the farm. The strange weather hasn’t been nearly as strange as the strange that we’ve come to expect, so, we’ll take it. Fields are a bit saturated right now, but we’re getting back out there to plant the winter squash, another round of sweet corn, and fall cabbages as soon as things dry out a bit. There is a nice harvest of greens this week, with herbs for picking and strawberries ripening. We hope that you will enjoy the farm as a source of good food all season, and as a place to picnic, play, walk, and visit with the pigs or chickens.
We’ll have some goods for sale in our little farm shop again this season. This week, we’ll be sampling mustards and preserves from Cheshire Gardens, chocolate milk from Manning Hill Farm, and *new* cheese from Chase Hill Farm. Also check out the Picadilly eggs, maple syrup from My Old Farm, and yogurt from Side Hill Farm. Lots of good grub to go with your farm veggies.
We have some extra herb and tomato plants from our greenhouse – feel welcome pot a few up this week to take home for your own garden.
Do you have favorite farm-food recipes? Send ‘em along – we’d love to try them, and to share them in this newsletter.
SAVE THE DATE! Our first farm event this season is coming up soon, on Saturday June 23th. At our third annual strawberry shortcake concert, we’ll have hayrides, strawberry picking, plus homemade strawberry shortcake with local vanilla ice cream. And a fun, family-friendly outdoor concert presented by farm friends, the Family Folk Chorale from Arlington, MA. About 40 performers will sing – and ask us to sing along – in the yard outside the barn, at 1pm. We hope you’ll join us, rain or shine. This event is open to the public, and all are welcome. Here’s a sampling of what the Family Folk Chorale will be singing, a very appropriate song called “Greens” by May Erlewine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR-qzqieMYQ
THE PICK YOUR OWN GARDEN
Cilantro & dill. We plant these herbs in a bed together about 8 times over the course of the season, in the hopes of having them fresh most weeks. Snip what you can use.
Perennial herbs. In the raised beds just outside the barn, some of these herbs are ready for use. We’ll tell you more about each of these herbs, and how to use them, as the weeks move along. This week, pick mint, chocolate mint, sage, thyme, oregano
Strawberries are just coming on. In spite of losing lots of blossoms to those cold morning in mid-April, there are loads of fruits coming on out there. With a few sunny days, we’ll be picking.
WHAT’S NEW IN THE SHARE?
Spinach. A very pleasing first crop, with more to come throughout the month of June.
Scarlet turnips. A new spring crop for the farm. A little spicier than the white spring turnips, with nice leaves for cooking.
Arugula. a peppery green, nice in salads and on sandwiches, available spring and fall.
Lettuce. we plant about a dozen different varieties into 20 successive plantings, with hopes of offering lettuce every week of the season.
Salad mix. A mix of small-leaf cut lettuce with a nice blend of mild greens. To really make this and other greens last in your fridge, wash them again and then spin or pat the leaves dry. Storing the greens dry will help them keep longer.
Bok choy. Really beautiful this week. An elegant cooking green, most popular in Asian cooking. Try cooking the white stems for a little longer than the green leaves.
Mizuna. A classic element of a salad mix, also delicious on its own. Try slightly wilted with a nice dressing, or on sandwiches.
Tat soi. A lemony component of salad mixes, also nice in wraps or lightly wilted with rice.
Garlic Scapes. Scapes are the seed pods of the garlic plant, which we pick off at this time to encourage the garlic bulb to swell up into the garlic we all love. The scape has a mellow garlic flavor – chop and use the entire thing the same way you would use garlic. Sautee them with any of the greens, or try the pesto recipe below.
“Red Russian” kale. A flat-leaved spring kale. Remove the center stem before cooking.
Tips for storing and using greens, greens, greens!
Thanks to shareholder Laurie for sending these along
Storing greens dry will help them keep longer – wash and use a salad spinner to dry the loose greens in the share.
Use clean cooking shears for cutting greens.
Add a drop of molasses to the cooking liquid for kale.
Sautéed onion, garlic, and red pepper flakes enhance the taste of most greens.
Lemon juice or balsamic or red vinegar are good finishing touches.
Try chopped, toasted nuts on top of greens.
A tiny bit of butter added to the olive oil will keep the oil at a more manageable temperature.
Braised Turnips with Soy Sauce
A good-sized pat of butter
A couple of scarlet turnips, sliced thinly
A couple garlic scapes, chopped
A splash of soy sauce
Finely minced cilantro
Turnip greens and/or braising greens, chopped
Melt the butter in a medium-hot skillet. Add the scapes and turnips and sauté for a few minutes until they start to brown. Add a splash of water, stir, and cover to steam-cook the turnips until tender, about 8 minutes. You can check and stir them periodically. Turnips should be golden-brown in places, almost caramelizing, when they are done, and in any case tender all the way through. Toss in chopped greens for the last two minutes or so. Add a splash of soy sauce directly to the pan and sprinkle on minced cilantro.
Garlic Scape Pesto
1 cup garlic scapes (about 8 or 9 scapes), top flowery part removed, cut into ¼-inch slices
1/3 cup walnuts
¾ cup olive oil
¼-1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
½ teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste
Place scapes and walnuts in the bowl of a food processor and whiz until well combined and somewhat smooth. Slowly drizzle in oil and process until integrated. With a rubber spatula, scoop pesto out of bowl and into a mixing bowl. Add parmesan to taste; add salt and pepper. Makes about 6 ounces of pesto. Keeps for up to one week in an air-tight container in the refrigerator. Make some pasta, eat it with this. Very pungent.
Enjoy the first harvest!
Jenny (for Bruce, Susie & the crew)
- At May 4, 2012
- By Jenny Wooster
- In Farm news
- 0
In the greenhouse as well, the season is moving along successfully. We brought back some faltering onions, with lots of TLC and extra boosts of our magic fertilizer blends; the onion transplants that we are plunking in the ground now are beautiful. In fact, most of our transplants look better than ever, and are settling into the warmer ground with little shock. With five hundred young tomato plants rooted in several of our unheated hoophouses, Bruce lights a few propane burners in the houses every frosty night, keeping the plants alive, growing and healthy.
But, twenty six degrees on the thermometer a few mornings over the past week. Typical for late April, but tell that to the strawberries! Like the lilac, apple trees, and all of the other perennial plants in our world, the berries are several weeks ahead of normal, meaning the buds are loosening and many blossoms have opened. Larger berry and orchard growers have frost alarms and appropriate equipment for irrigation protection of fields, but we do not. Our protective “blankets” give the plants a few degrees of frost protection, but can’t provide enough warmth when air temperatures are in the mid 20’s (and it’s usually a few degrees cooler at ground level). We have lost many potential fruits from this season’s crop. The nights look to be in the clear, frost-wise, for the foreseeable future, so we’ll cross our fingers that there are still plenty of younger buds out there to produce some fruit to go around.
A few Pick-Your-Own herbs are ready for harvesting now. Come on by the farm any time during daylight hours for herb cutting, in the raised bed just outside the barn. Park in the parking lot and walk through the barn; or park by the house, in front of the barn, and come through the fence gate. Right now, there are chives, oregano, thyme, sage and mint. Chives can be “clear cut” a few inches up from the base of the plant, while the rest should be trimmed by the sprig. Our fresh eggs are for sale as well, in a small black refrigerator inside the barn. While you are here, feel welcome to talk a stroll around, perhaps heading south out to visit our newest flock of laying hens. They are beautiful and calm, a breed called Tetra Amber. If you visit any of our animals, do remember that the fences are electrified.
PICADILLY EGG SHARES are now available for eastern Massachusetts shareholders! Our flocks of Rhode Island Red and Tetra Amber hens are out on pasture, feasting on bugs, worms and organic grain. And laying delicious brown shelled eggs, with bright yellow yolks. For those of you who would like to “add on” an Egg Share to your produce share, read on. Eggs will come weekly with the veggies boxes. We’ll expect to have eggs for 22 weeks (rather than 23 like the produce), as prolonged hot weather can cause a temporary dip in egg laying; so we may skip a week somewhere during the season. Choose either a full dozen a week for $121, or a half dozen a week for $66. About 100 dozen will available each week, so I’m guessing that these egg shares will sell out quickly. For more information on our hens, see this blog post by Bruce from earlier this year: http://picadillyfarm.com/2010/2012/03/19/hens-are-alayin/. Of course, we will also have eggs available at the farm during regular share pick ups here.
UPCOMING PICADILLY FARM DATES:
Friday, May 11th
Open House in Belmont, at our pick up site at the home of Jocelyn Milton and family, 18 Emerson Street.
5:30-7pm, light refreshments
Join farmers Jenny & Bruce, and our site hosts, for an informal meet-and-greet. All are welcome, whether or not this is your regular pick-up site.
Friday, May 18th
Open House in Watertown, at our pick up site at the home of Andy Fehlner and family, 75 Laurel Street.
5:30-7pm, light refreshments
Join farmers Jenny & Bruce, and our site hosts, for an informal meet-and-greet. All are welcome, whether or not this is your regular pick-up site.
Saturday, May 26th
Spring Open House and Planting Day at the farm – usually we plant the PYO garden on this day. And we’ll likely have extra tomato & herb plants for you to take home, if you plant your own garden.
Saturday June 2nd through Thursday June 7th
First CSA Share distributions of the season!
Saturday June 23rd
3rd annual Strawberry Concert, with homemade shortcake, Picadilly berries and local ice cream served at intermission. 1pm.
Hope to see you soon at the farm!
Jenny & Bruce
Plowing Days
- At April 2, 2012
- By Jenny Wooster
- In Farm news
- 0
In our efforts to reduce field tillage overall, we have moved away from using a traditional moldboard plow. With our light, sandy loam soils, a disk-chisel-type plow serves us well. Seven shanks run as deep as 14”, or as shallow as 6”. These chisels, in combination with two gangs of rolling disks, loosen the topsoil and break up the roots of our winter cover crops, without flipping or churning the soil excessively. The ground we plowed yesterday will fill up throughout the next month with lots of good food – the first greens and roots, then 2½ acres of potatoes, followed by an acre of onions and leeks. We’ll seed down a handful of acres to oats, to be cut in June for straw. Then we’ll use the straw to mulch pathways between beds of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, as well as to top off strawberries and garlic in the fall.
Our propagating greenhouse is 90% full of seedlings already. Crops look great, with two plantings of lettuce and the first beets and cabbage already up. Radicchio and rainbow chard seedlings are just peeking through this morning, giving the first hints of red in the trays. Onions are “damping off” a bit in the flats: the tiny seedlings rot right below soil level, when the “wrong” soil fungi gain a foothold over the “right” ones. So, onions are on the TLC train, getting extra boosts of fish fertilizer and beneficial bacteria and fungi. Our planting buffer will come in handy for this crop this season. In spite of the new challenges and lessons learned every year (and perhaps because of them), I always circle back to the understanding that this whole activity of growing food is a miracle, only peripherally controllable by me. These thousands of small, hard seeds that roll through our fingertips into the soil: the life that bursts forth is an astonishing gift.
The Picadilly chicken population is expanding! Bruce and I have been raising small flocks of laying hens for ten years or so. For the past three seasons, we’ve run bigger flocks of a hundred or so birds. We’ve been dialing in efficient systems for managing a good-sized flock rotating on pasture through our fields, both for the egg production and for the manure benefits to our fields. This spring, we’re ramping up to 350 birds, in anticipation of offering an Egg Share to eastern Mass. produce shareholders. Yahoo! I am still working out all of the logistics with our site hosts, and will let you all know shortly all the details and how to sign up.
We’ll be bringing our shares to a new site, at a shareholder’s home in North Reading, on Park Street five minutes off exit 39 of Route 93. If this site is more convenient for you than where you are currently scheduled to pick up your share, send me an email and we can switch you over. Join us for an Open House in North Reading on Friday, April 13 from 5:30-7pm. Bruce and I will be there, with our site host Cheryl, to meet you and talk more about what’s happening on the farm. All are welcome. 479 Park Street. We’ll have more Open House dates at a few other sites in May.
That’s the news for today. We’re excited to be in the fields and planting for all of us!
Jenny (for Bruce & Susie)
