Brainstorm by Julia

“I realize that many of you would rather get a mammogram than eat another chard leaf.  Or get a poke in the eye over another squash recipe.”  That’s why this week I passed out notes at market about FREEZING.  I myself am not that great at putting up food for the winter—afterall I’m only really 3 winters into my farm wifery.  Getting pretty good at hanging clothes on the line, but that’s about it.  In ten years I’ll be playing banjo and canning at the same time.
We do have squash coming out of our ears.  So let’s brainstorm.  What can we do with these vegetables that just won’t stop?  Here are some exciting key words and phrases:
PICKLE IN A SPICY BRINE!
DIP IN HUMMUS!
GRATE INTO POTATO HASH!
ADD CURRY SPICES AND COCONUT MILK!
HOW ABOUT THESE OLD AND NEW FAVORITES:
            QUINOA
            LENTILS (try the red ones—they cook quick and are creamy and delicious)
            THAT CHEESE THE CHEESE GUY SELLS THAT YOU CAN GRILL
            GARLIC CHEESE SPREAD (great—from River Valley, the mushroom people)
            BACON….
Don’t forget to try a tomato in your peanut butter sandwich today,
Julia
PS  On the farm, mosquitos are much better.  New additions to the Monday Harvest Team, Tazio and Glen.  Thank you!

The Kids Are All Right

The Kids Are All Right
I (Julia) was appalled to read this story yesterday. Looks like all is well and good now, thankfully. The city took back its cease and desist order.
Seems us CSA farmers have a ways to go before “CSA” is a household word. -Julia
CSA home drop offs nearly plowed under by city rules
Posted by Monica Eng (Chicago Tribune columnist, Stew Blog)
A city investigator swooped into an Andersonville home Wednesday, on a tip that that folks inside were dealers.
 
The merchandise: locally grown organic carrots, cucumbers, green peppers, bulb fennel and garlic chives. Not to mention heirloom tomatoes.

The investigator from the Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection mistakenly believed the family was selling the produce from their front porch, as a neighbor had reported in a complaint to 311.

But the family explained that they were just members of a community supported agriculture (CSA) club. Like thousands of Chicago area residents, they buy shares in local farms during the winter and spring as payment for boxes of fresh produce during the summer and fall. Members pick up their boxes during specified hours at homes, churches, farmers markets and even downtown’s Aon building this year.

But the business affairs investigator had never heard of this concept and slapped the Andersonville family with a “cease and desist” order and left.

The family called and e-mailed their alderman, Gene Schulter’s, office whose aides, in turn, e-mailed the business affairs office. An officer there sent a note back Thursday explaining mistakenly that “since food items are being sold, there should be a retail food license holder.”

Deb Hansen, the owner of Simply Wisconsin, the farm that runs this particular CSA, sent back a note explaining that CSA drop off points do not sell food. The officer then responded by citing ordinances that it is illegal to “warehouse” any goods in one’s home.

As late as noon today things were looking really bad for the dozens of Chicago area families who host CSA drop off points and the thousands who pick up from homes.

Then, in response to several Tribune inquiries, the clouds seemed to part and the DBACP issued the following statement:

“Our department responded to a complaint received through 311 that a residence was selling groceries from their front porch. On the 28th, an investigator issued a Cease and Desist order for operating without a wholesale food establishment license. Upon further investigation and in speaking with the supplier we have decided to remove the Cease and Desist order immediately.”

Bees

Our bees got a little too crowded in their hives and decided to move out! 

We still have thousands, though.

Beets In Public

Sometimes I eat in the country.  Sometimes I eat in town.
For those that don’t know, I hold an off-farm job still.  I often find myself doing errands along the shopping strip that defines a nearby town.  In the Target a couple of days ago, I sat in their café and opened up my amazing sandwich of beet spread and basil leaves.
If you’ve ever opened up a beet spread sandwich and tried to eat it in a public space before, then you will relate to the difficulty and near spectacle created by bright fuchsia and deep red blobs pouring out all over face and hands.   The fact that mung bean sprouts were toppling out everywhere, too, didn’t make things less conspicuous.  It felt natural and necessary to apologize to my onlookers while I quickly hid the evidence.
The above maneuver went over a little better yesterday at a different public sitting area.  I began by engaging a few nearby people in small talk and then explained the sandwich prior to unveiling it.
Beet juicing is even more of a bloody mess but worth it.
And, of course:
Equally alarming is the situation in the toilet, which is a perfectly normal bodily response.
-Julia

Meet Kale

Official Introduction:
Meet Kale.  Kale is one of our favorite crops for many reasons including taste, cultivar variety, nutritional value, and hardiness in the field.  This spring we were amazed that some of our kale plants overwintered.   We gave them no special attention last fall.  The first frost in November gave them an extra sweetness. Then after a couple of really hard frosts, the plants appeared to wither and die as the brutal cold crept in. In the early spring new plants miraculously emerged from the old stems.  They were smaller leaves on little mini kale plants, so kind of weird but miraculous still.  Eventually we plowed the bed to replant for this year’s vegetable crop.
We will be presenting 5 different kales to you as the season unfolds.  The green curly stuff is the kale you normally see in the grocery stores.  The same leaf with a purplish red color is “red curly.”  The finger-like leaves are on Russian kales, either white or red.  And, still growing in the field, look forward to the infamous Dinosaur Kale.
Unlike chard (beet family), kale is in the brassica family along with cabbage and broccoli.
The leaves of this plant are sometimes described as “tougher than other cooking greens” so many people use the leaves in soups or dishes that require long simmering.  It is true that the longer you cook kale, the more tender it gets.  Russian kale has a softer, more tender leaf than the standard curly kale.  Russian kale is especially good to sauté. Todd and I are fans of kale cooked all ways:  simmered in a little water or in soup, steamed, sautéed, juiced, raw in salads, and even baked. Baking kale can result in this yummy thing called Kale Chips.  The recipe is on our website along with a variation entitled Revolutionary Kale Recipe.  (You may also have heard its other name, Crispy Kale.)
If you are sautéing kale or eating it raw, consider chopping it into small pieces or strips. We have some customers who sneak kale puree and juice into their kids’ meals without them even knowing. 
Sesame Kale Salad
Remove kale leaves from stems.*
Chop kale into small pieces or strips.
Dressing:  Whisk together 2 parts sesame oil with one part apple cider vinegar or lemon                                     juice.  Add salt to taste (do add salt—it helps soften the leaves).
Drizzle dressing over kale and toss to coat.
Sprinkle salad with sesame seeds
Eat immediately or after chilling. 
*If you don’t like chewing on kale stems, you can always use them for a soup stock:  Boil alone or with other vegetables.  After boiling for a while, remove the stems.  Cool the water and freeze in containers for later use.
Another Introduction:
We often bring beets from Deer Creek, which is the farm that we share our booth with at market.  The beets are organic and grown with care, just like vegetables from Peasants’ Plot.  Jeff Franklin, the farmer of Deer Creek, started his farm the same year we started ours and we enjoy the camaraderie.  Why are the beets so obscenely large?  We wish we had his recipe.  The truth is that each farm’s soil is different and conducive to growing certain crops.  His soil is especially sandy (he is close to the Kankakee river), so his root crops can expand without restriction.
We have beets in the ground at The Plot, too, so do look forward to those.

The back side of veggies and market customers.  

No kale in this photo, just cuteness..

Tomato Freedom

OPERATION: TOMATO FREEDOM
Throughout history third parties have inserted themselves between sparring rivals, often to assist the weaker of the two. This effort on the third party is seldom made altruistically; it is made to attain resources, power, etc. We on the farm have recently been battling all kinds of forces in order to save the tomatoes, not just because we want them to have a long and enjoyable pest-and weed-free life, but because we dream of one day devouring their sweet, juicy goodness.
Right off the bat, tomato plants are pretty labor intensive compared to most crops. With all that trellising and all... My entire childhood my mother grew tomatoes. She would buy some plants, stick 'em in some cages, and pretty much call it good. But on a farm there aren't usually hundreds upon hundreds of tomato cages laying around, so you have to build something. And then affix tomatoes to said something, and then repeatedly make needed adjustments throughout the season as those babies grow bigger. So we built something, kinda. Then we laid some red plastic mulch to keep the beds weed-free, in theory, and planted seedlings into it. And then we kind of forgot about the tomatoes for a while... But hey, cut us some slack, we were focusing on plants that are either making food to be harvested right now or crops that would surely be lost without immediate attention. And gosh darnitt, before we knew it, the tomato hoophouse looked like this:

Specks of red plastic still visible, but a 4-foot solid sea of green. The aisle ways flush with weeds totally digging the Amazonian climate we've had as of late. We had no choice but to rip those gigantic jerks out by hand. Panicked at the thought that this very same thing could happen again if we dared to look away for a minute (or a month) we decided to permanently smother those weeds with a seemingly enormous amount of cardboard. We broke down and tore apart anything close to resembling a box and laid it down in the aisles. It actually looks kinda cool-

albeit unfinished. We were only able to scrounge up enough cardboard to cover 2 and a half of the 5 aisles. Alas, in times of war, some mission details are overlooked prior to engagement. And sure, we left half the aisles totally exposed, but at least we weakened the threat of total weed takeover.
Then as we were tidying up the few weeds that appeared here and there through any and every hole in the plastic mulch I noticed some strange, blackish, pellet-y stuff under one of the plants. I showed it to Todd, who said he wasn't sure, he'd seen it before and every time he panics and thinks its eggs or poop from tobacco hornworms, but he hasn't seen any hornworms so he doesn't think we have them. And then his eyes got real big and he said “YES WE DO! LOOK AT THIS *EXPLETIVE*!” And that was our first hornworm siting, about a week ago. Since then we have found more and more each day, and they are some beasts of destruction. Numerous plants have had much of their leaves stripped off, and many an unripened tomato has been chomped on. Look at the size of these guys-

They can do some serious damage. So they must go. So far, our plan of attack is to hunt them down following trails of poop/eggs or eaten plants, rip them off, and stomp on them.

War ain't pretty.
-meagan

 

Lactuca sativa

Lactuca sativa
I started several trays of lettuce plants today. New Red Fire and Two Star are our tried and true, slow-to-go-to-seed lettuce varieties that have been able to handle the extreme heat of this early summer. Some of you got some small Rossimo lettuces bundled together this week; they were small because if we would have let them go any longer in the field, they would have succumbed to the heat, felt it was their time to reproduce, and shot up a seed stalk (what we call “bolting”), rendering the leaves bitter and tough. But we wanted to share these tasty little red-leaved heirlooms with you before they gave up the ghost. In the weeks to come, expect to see larger heads of the two lettuces I planted today, as well as a nice romaine called Jericho that has been specifically bred to tolerate the heat. No promises, but I've seen Jericho heads hit the six pound mark on the scale (though no lettuce is gonna get that big in the heat of the summer).
We're trying to bring you the best lettuce varieties so you can enjoy beautiful salads and thick, fresh sandwiches throughout the year. During my farm journeys through three states, I've found that not many small farmers have the guts to grow cool-weather loving lettuce during the hot months (for the aforementioned problems of smallness and bolting). But the Peasants won't let a little heat get in the way of a nice head of greens. We hope you're making lots of great meals with your lettuce.  
~joe