Tag: recipes

New Season New Energy

June 23, 2025

Well, season 21, here we go!

Our lives unfold each year with different color and energy and each farm season is no different with different weather, issues, and crew. For the beginning of the season, we had Gen Z Farm going on with the Sylvia and Camila show (both 20 years old) until Sylvia went to Ann Arbor to study biostats. With this much youthful labor we were keeping up on things even as the weather was throwing us some curveballs – 90 degree heat and dry in May, followed by 34 degrees and wet. Some crops were casualties, but others did awesome. All told, I’m feeling great about the state of the farm as of mid June.

We also try new things each year. This year I went deep into changing up the production system to permanent raised beds in our two oldest fields.

For the last 6-8 years we’ve been moving towards more intensive plantings of crops on smaller 30-inch beds in contrast to a typical 60-inch bed made with a tractor. Although the effort is great on the front end to built up these beds, the end result is beautiful. Each bed is easier to handle, really productive, and standardized so irrigation and covers planted really intensively and producing well. The big thing is we’re focusing our energy on these small intensive plots instead of a larger space and things are going well. I’m sure I’ll recap the experiment as we move through summer, but right now it’s looking good:

In the box:

  • 2 Bok Choy: We made a great rice noodle dish just a couple days ago which used bok choy. An example is at https://choosingchia.com/15-minute-sesame-ginger-noodles/ but I just made one up. Sautee the stalk together with an onion, add the leafy part after the onion and stalk soften just before the sauce (mix of rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, hot sauce, with a T of corn starch or a person could just use a pre-mixed sauce like Bachans). Top this over the prepared and drained noodles, mix, and serve.
  • Basil
  • Garlic Scapes: The bunch of long curly things. Wherever you would use fresh garlic, use scapes. They are a bit more mild than garlic cloves.
  • 2 Big Beets: These greens are about as good as beet greens get, so you can certainly put into a salad, smoothie, or saute
  • Green Leaf Lettuce: This is just straight-up lettuce – pretty delicate with good nutty flavor grown in the high tunnel.
  • Salad Mix: A mix of lettuce colors and varieties in the produce bag.
  • 2 Radish Bunches
  • Swiss Chard: The rhubarb-looking stuff for those of you not familiar with chard. Taste just like beet greens. One idea I do most mornings this time of year is to saute with those garlic scapes and top your morning eggs or fold into an omlette.
  • Kale: Standard curly variety called Winterbor. Can be used fresh or cooked.
  • Fresh Mint: Mojito anyone?
  • Fresh Terragon: Pairs nicely with chicken – think Mediterranean French cooking 🙂

Abundance Sells

September 23, 2024

A long time ago, I stepped away from our farmers market stall towards the end of the market, looked back, and thought, I wouldn’t shop at that stand! On the table sat something like one last pint of cherry tomatoes, a bunch of radishes, and two misshapen cucumbers. It was a sad sight, but also explained the adage I learned from a wise greengrocer at Mississippi Market Co-op in St. Paul where I worked for three years, “People eat with their eyes.”

It’s so true. Even if the three items left over on a market table are good, it doesn’t matter. We as humans are attracted to abundance. Whether the piles of turmeric that caught our eyes when Mar and I visited the spice market in Istanbul or the two stories of toilet paper that reel customers into Costco all day long, the attraction is the same. It’s built into our DNA as mammals who scoured a world of scarcity for millennia to feed ourselves.

That’s why my most popular posts of all time are simply piles of produce. One of favorites from years ago was when my apprentice Sarah and I jammed my Honda Fit to the brim with red peppers like it was some kind of circus act. But pet plus abundance works, so does people plus abundance or pickups weighted down with so much squash that the suspension is strained – you get the idea.

In the box:

Veggies, Ahoy

June 17, 2024

We’re setting sail on a new season to ports unknown. It takes faith each year to launch and hope all the necessary pieces line up well enough to make for a solid 16 weeks of CSA boxes. This is season #20, which is hard to believe. For 20 years we’ve been assembling a crew, putting seeds in the ground, and hoping for the best. We’ve had super rocky starts, terrible weather, and a range of farm mishaps, but we’ve also seen glorious harvests, perfect rains, and near flawless vegetables.

Each year, it’s difficult to know what’s in store. I do think of it like a voyage, but not like a cruise in the Bahamas, more like a whaling expedition circa 1750. We push off shore and labor on the ship for days on end. Some days are boring where we’re handweeding for hours in the sun. Other days we see some action, batten down the high tunnels and hope the hail stays north or reel in a huge harvest of potatoes. To take this stupid sailing metaphor a bit further (honestly, where am I going with this?), I know we have a very capable chief mate in Mason Berube, who has two seasons of farming under his belt. The family crewmates have dropped off since Sylvia’s gone off to college. This summer she’s working at a music camp in Wisconsin and the boys are not much for farming.

Lots of things are on the verge of getting ready, but not quite there yet – makes for a box lighter than I like, but that seems to be the nature of the first box of the year.

In the box:

  • 2-3 garlic scapes: These are shoots that come off the top of hardneck garlic -chop up and use wherever you’d use green onions…got a mild garlic flavor. I put in eggs.
  • Radishes
  • Mizuna: Red-banded green with frilly leaves. See recipe below.
  • Cilantro
  • Arugula: Red-banded greens with oakleaf shape. Commonly used in a pasta or as a salad – think Italian with parmesan.
  • 1-2 Sprigs of Basil
  • Fresh mint: Mojitos?
  • Bunch of kale: Big bunch of greens with a blue band. This is young and especially tender as the first kale of the year, so maybe try your hand with kale salad.

SIMPLE MIZUNA SALAD

from https://dishingupthedirt.com/recipes/simple-mizuna-salad/

PREP TIME: 10 MINUTES    COOK TIME: 0 MINUTES    SERVES: 2-4

  • 1 large bunch of mizuna
  • 2-3 radishes, very thinly sliced
  • 2-3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 tablespoons fresh lemon juice + additional to taste
  • flakey sea salt
  • 2 Tablespoons sunflower seeds, lightly toasted on the stovetop for  a few minutes
  • a few thin slices of fresh Parmesan cheese (optional)
  • a few pinches of micro greens (optional)

Preparation

  1. In a large bowl toss the mizuna with the radishes and drizzle in the olive oil and lemon juice. Toss well. Sprinkle the salad with a few healthy pinches of flakey sea salt, the toasted sunflower seeds, shaved parmesan (if using) and micor greens (if using). Serve immediately.

Notes*Use this recipe as a guide *Adjust measurements and ingredients as necessary