Category: CSA season

Starting a new CSA season

June 27, 2014

I’ve been blogging about our farm since 2006 and today marks the beginning of my weekly blogging for 2014.  I’m really off and on during the off-season, but, since this is the first week of the CSA, I consistently write about farm issues and provide news from Lida Farm every week as well as provide information about what’s in the CSA box with a recipe. 

Like a teacher looking at the new school year, I’m always a bit apprehensive about a new growing season.  Will first box be ready in time?  How do the veggies look?  Will insect pressure overwhelm us?  How about weeds? Weather?  Stress?  Kids?  Oh, boy, no matter what’s thrown at us, the season is started and there’s no turning back for the next four months.  
Putting together the box for today, however, a lot of those beginning of season fears fall away as the lettuce looks really good as we’re harvesting, there’s more broccoli than I thought, and, yes, we actually got a cultivation in with the tractor before this weekend’s rain.  A sign which gave me even greater comfort was the garter snake which surprised me this morning near the lettuce patch.  Like any reptile or amphibian, the snake is a sign of good health and I appreciate their presence even though I’m deathly afraid of them.  It was almost as if he made his appearance today to welcome us to a new season.  
In the Box: 
Green leaf lettuce 
Bok Choi (small stalk with round, green leaves)
Green onions aka scallions
Swiss Chard (bunch of greens with colorful stems)
Mizuna (bunch of light greens with jagged edges )or Tatsoi (dark green bunch of greens with round leaves):      These are both Asian green which are great to add to a stir-fry right at the end or simply saute a bit and        top eggs
Broccoli 
Arugula (bunch of greens with elongated oak-like leaves): I like these in pasta or raw in a Italian-style salad with olive oil, balsamic, and parmesan cheese…you can also make an arugula pesto.
Parsley
Recipe of the Week:
Arugula Pesto from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything
2 cups arugula
1 clove garlic crushed
2 T. walnuts or pine nuts, lightly toasted in a dry skillet
Salt and ground black pepper to taste
3/4 cup olive oil, more or less
Place arugula in a food processor or blender with the garlic, nuts, salt and about a 1/4 t. pepper.  Add 1/4 cup olive oil and pulse a few times.  With the motor running, add additional olive oil to make a creamy sauce.  Use within a day.
We like to add cheese and use it as a substitute for traditional basil pesto with pasta. You can also throw in some of the parsley to make the arugula taste more mild.  Bittman suggests using the pesto on grilled chicken or shrimp.

Missing the Sweet Corn Craze

July 27, 2012

There’s probably no other occasion in the Midwest produce season quite like the beginning of the sweet corn crop.  So you can understand my frustration, when, everywhere I turn, I see some guy (or usually kid) at the side of the road selling sweet corn, and I find my own to be a few days short of ripe.  People have been asking me about sweet corn easily for the last 4 weeks even though it would take some kind of magic corn to be ripe at the beginning of July.  I keep thinking these “fake roadside stands” that simply truck in corn from Iowa and Nebraska really early are messing with people’s sense of season and sense of what we can actually grow in Minnesota, especially when they put sweet corn next to some peaches next to cherries in mid-July.  Still, when actual local growers are at the side of the road, I have no excuse.

Sweet Corn on Lida Farm

Raising produce commercially is often a huge juggle where each year one crop or another under or over-performs.  I’m always out in the fields telling myself “That should have gotten in the ground 10 days earlier” or “Man, I should have weeded that patch earlier.”  Throw in some interesting weather-a little hail here and there-and I really should be amazed that any crops come at all.  The trick in what we do is to keep as many of those balls in the air as possible and keep all of them moving forward and growing.  I commonly work through 5-7 different tasks a day in June and July (maybe starting with cultivating on the tractor, hand weeding a few crops, then moving to wheel hoe a couple other beds, etc). If I get stuck too long on any one crop or job, I can easily miss the window to take care of another crop, and, yes, sometimes a crop just gets written off.  So, in the context of all this juggling of 60+ different crops, sweet corn appearing a bit late shouldn’t be the end of the world, but I still feel a bit like a professional musician who missed hitting a C chord on stage.

In the box:
Norland Red Potatoes
Bunch of Carrots
Cucumbers
Green Beans
Fresh Oregano: Tiny fragrant bunch of greens with a red band
Fennel: The frawns (greens) has a pretty strong anise flavor, but the bulb itself is more mild (see recipe below)
Cilantro
Peppers: One Islander (purple) and a couple green

Fennel goes especially well with chicken and fish.  Here’s a simple recipe using chicken: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/dining/313lrex.html