Welcome Betty Lou

We ended up buying a lovely truck in Kentucky and christened her Betty Lou. (Mary Lou didn’t work out.) Make sure to check her out at the market—only a couple of weeks away!
Keeping all of our greens fresh: Some people say to wrap spinach and chard in paper towels and enclose in plastic wrap. We have found 
that this is not necessary. If we have already bagged your greens, like with the mixed greens, simply put them in your crisper drawer with the bag slightly open. We’ve had them last for up to 10 days in our refrigerator. In the days after harvest, the moisture from our initial washing will leave the bag. As the week goes on and the greens loose this moisture, sealing the bag with a tie is recommended.
Notes on Spinach and Chard: Both spinach and chard are excellent sources of vitamins A and C, potassium, and iron. Green leafy vegetables or “cooking greens” such as spinach and chard are also sources of calcium and magnesium. Chard, an offshoot of the beet family, is especially good for those with sensitivity to oxalic acid. One way to clean chard is to fill a large bowl with cold water and 2 tablespoons of vinegar or lemon juice. Hold the bunch by the stems and swish the leaves in the water several times. Any grit will sink to the bottom of the bowl. Since all of our greens have been through a wash bin at least once, you may not encounter any “grit” at all. Putting salt in a bowl of water and soaking greens is another tip.
A basic way to cook spinach or chard is to place washed leaves in a shallow saucepan with only the water that is clinging to the leaves. Cook, covered, for about 3 minutes, or until wilted. 
Or steam for about 3 minutes. The stems of Swiss chard should be allowed a longer cooking time than the leaves.
Anyone else have any tips?
Incidentally, I sat next to a genetic engineer for Monsanto at a Denver airport bar and grill this last weekend. We didn’t talk.
-Julia

Meet the Interns

Meet Peasant's Plot 2010 interns Joe & Meagan!
We are originally Chicagoland natives who spent a number of years in Central Wisconsin. We both graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Stevens Point, and while we were in college we became more and more concerned about the food system as a whole: where our food came from, the quality and diversity of ingredients, and what exactly we were putting in our bodies. Some pamphlets for a local CSA caught our eye, and we signed up to be worker shares for the 2007 season. The worker share opportunity was our first introduction to diversified organic farming, and it was a life-changing experience for us. The next season Joe was a part-time intern on the farm, working every weekday for about 4 or 5 hours. I worked 2 jobs at the time, assisting adults with disabilities and as the director of a child care center, but tried to make it out to the farm as much as possible.
By the end of 2008 it became obvious that we wanted to further our education in organic farming, and we applied for full time internships on a CSA in Western North Carolina. In March 2009 we packed up our cars and 2 kitties and went to live in the mountains. Throughout the season we learned most of the ins and outs of farming, as well as the many components of market sales.
The initial plan had been to relocate to North Carolina permanently, but ultimately wanting to live near our friends and family won out over the beauty of Appalachia. We spent the winter working sporadically trimming trees in Connecticut and researching farming opportunities for the upcoming season. We were so excited to have found Peasant's Plot online and are even more thrilled to be here. It feels great to have our hands in the dirt again!
It is definitely our dream to one day have a farm of our own, but for the moment we are focused on just living, learning, and enjoying the adventure.
Thanks for supporting local farmers and their interns!
-Meagan

Mary Lou

Mary Lou is our nickname for a truck we found in Kentucky.   We hope she is as nice in person as in the photos.  Of course we all know how photos over the interweb can be deceiving, but we really think this might be the real thing.  Mary Lou fits most of our specifications, including the fact that she is diesel and ready for biofuel.  Wish us luck on our first date with Mary Lou this Friday!
Our CSA is full and we are optimistic about the season.  It is hard not to sound cheesy when talking about the delights of spring and the sound of chirping birds, so I will leave the poetry to someone else.  It is enough to say that optimism abounds.
In the ground as seedlings: broccoli, lettuce, onions, kale and chard.  In the ground as seeds: spinach (just coming up), carrots, arugula, radishes, beets.  And 950 pounds of potatoes planted.   In a hoophouse (or coldframe) are tomato and pepper seedlings and more broccoli, leeks, chard, basil, more onions.  Under fluorescent lights inside are many more seedlings, mostly tomatoes, awaiting their time in the sun.
It seems like the most difficult part of putting up the new high tunnels is over, but there are several steps left.  The hoops are up on one (thanks to help from workshop participants in April) and purlins just finished.  Todd had to stand on a 12-ft ladder to drill and attach each purlin.
The farm crew is Joe, Meagan, Ryan, and a group of about 15 worker shareholders who will carpool out to us a few at a time twice a month.  Joe and Meagan live on the farm and help us out full time. They have had a huge impact on our rate of production already.  Ryan is a world-traveler who has logically ended up in Manteno on our farm part time.
As storms move across the south, keep us prairie dwellers in your minds and wish us free of tornados, free of hail.
Peasantly yours,
Julia

Food Safety

Take Action: Rescue Local and Organic
Farming in the Food Safety Bill!

The U.S. Senate will vote shortly on a sweeping overhaul of federal food safety law (S. 510).  The House food safety bill passed last year (HR 2749) included several measures that potentially threaten small-scale local farmers and organic producers, including a blanket application of complicated monitoring and traceability standards -- regardless of one's farm size — and a potential $500 fee for any farm engaged in onsite processing (i.e., maple syrup production, sun-dried tomatoes, salad mixes, etc.).
The vast majority of recent food safety scandals in the U.S. — E. coli on fresh spinach, melamine in dairy products, Salmonella in peanut butter — were all linked to industrial agribusiness practices.  There's no doubt that industrial agriculture and its international supply chain need better oversight.  But, family-scale local and organic farms are probably the safest in the nation -- they are part of the solution, not part of the problem -- and need to be protected!
What You Can Do
Now is your chance, as a supporter of sustainable family farming, to help fix these problems. Senator John Tester (D-MT), a certified organic farmer himself, is proposing an amendment to S. 510 that would exempt small-scale farmers and food processors from the most burdensome regulations.
Please contact your Senators today and ask them to support the Tester amendment to S. 510.  Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 to find their phone number: 
For the more information on the amendment, go to:
http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/04/action-alert-rescue-localorganic-farming-in-the-food-safety-bill/
Your Voice Makes a Difference.   Thanks for your support of organic, local and sustainable farmers!

Frontera Grant

We are proud to announce that we are 2010 Frontera Farmer Foundation Grant Recipients!


http://www.rickbayless.com/news/index

MW Organic Fest

Todd and I just returned from the Upper Midwest Organic Conference.  I can’t write too lengthy of a report here, because my head is swimming with so many other things.  All of the workshops I went to were highly charged and emotional.  The most heart-palpitating session had to do with the state of organic seed and the slippery slope of allowing genetically modified alfalfa and sugar beets into our food system.  These seeds are already out there, but efforts by organizations such as The Center for Food Safety and others are trying to spread awareness to the public and to our government.  A lawyer spoke at the convention about his involvement with a current battle to reverse the “okay” already given to GM alfalfa.  Please read more about this by the group that seems to know most:  www.centerforfoodsafety.org and stay tuned.  The result of GM alfalfa could lead to the disappearance of this crop as organic, because it is hard to control the spread of pollen.  If an organic alfalfa field is next to a GM alfalfa field, one would contaminate the other.   Since alfalfa is used as pasture for cows, milk that is now certified organic may ultimately lose their label.  This is how I understand it.
We use alfalfa as a perennial green manure crop.
Since GM sugar beets are currently allowed, organic table beets and organic chard are endangered.
If you want to know even more about this topic, you can do what our friends do:  1) rent one of two films:  Food, Inc and/or The Future of Food, 2) inadvertently consume an entire bottle of wine (per person), and then 3) make a hysterical call to us asking us what to do next.  What to do next?  Keep informed by visiting www.centerforfoodsafety.org from time to time and tell your friends about what you learn.  Support organic products whenever you can.

Paraphrased

Lately, there’s been a lot of great press surrounding the small organic farm scene.  In this month’s Mindful Metropolis, there are two stories about two different farms, both started around the time we started.
Anyway, these newspaper articles have us thinking about how our own story might translate to this format.  We have had some time in the media spotlight, since our first year’s NPR story, but we feel that the best story about us hasn’t happened quite yet and that the NPR story may have missed something.
The story that seems almost expected is this, paraphrased:
Just a few years ago, a young urban couple felt disgruntled by the corporate work-a-day grind [The Man], so they shed their city shoes for farm boots and moved to the country to live off the land.  Their new lifestyle involves waking with the crow of a rooster and the physical rhythm and serenity of farm work.
Our story might be more like this:  
Many years ago, when they were young adults, two people separately decided they wanted to commit their lives to something basic and pure.  They met each other and became a young urban couple.  One of them inherited some land and thought the best use of this land was a little thing called food. The couple shed their city shoes, went into sizable debt, kept their other jobs, and stressed about the weather.  Their new lifestyle involves waking with heart palpitations and the physical discomfort and drama of farm work.
Todd and Julia have the same human tendency as everyone to stress about their jobs, off-farm and on-farm.  They sometimes don’t have time to cook.  They sometimes order pizza made with highly-processed ingredients for delivery. Like many new farmers now, they didn’t grow up farming and they don’t have degrees in vegetable growing or business management.  They don’t have a savings account.  The real story is that they jumped right into this world of organic farming with nothing but the conviction that they were headed towards the place they were always meant to be.
We were meant to be here.  And we’re not leaving.
When Todd and I hung out for the first time at a party together, he asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I said that I didn’t have any great ambition. He said the same.  In fact, this is exactly what he said: 
“I don’t have any great ambition either.  I just want to be an organic farmer.”
What could be easier?
(sigh),
Julia