Sharing good food

Take part in the "Locavore Challenge"...

Potluck across New York!

August offerings...

Many things are in full bloom at the farm these days-- sunflowers are the most spectacular right now! Unlimited pick-your-own items include green beans, all types of flowers, basil, dill, cilantro, thyme, parsley, oregano, sage, savory, marjorum, bronze fennel, garlic chives, & more! Cherry tomatoes are about to roll in by the hundreds-- next week unlimited picking probably. Also pick-your-own scallions now!
New items in the share this week include fresh onions, the first of the red peppers, and sweet corn! The onions will all come out of the ground this week, and we will "cure" them in the greenhouse to get those papery skins that help the onions store well on the counter for a long time. Take a peek in the greenhouse next time you're at the farm!

Did you know that all peppers start green and then turn other colors (like red, yellow, and purple)?

We also gave out amaranth greens this week-- a very nutritious but little-known green that cooks up similar to spinach (but loves this hot weather, unlike spinach!) Check out this blog entry for some ideas: http://kitchen-parade-veggieventure.blogspot.com/2006/07/amaranth-greens.html ...or google it to find out how important of a food amaranth was to the ancient Aztecs. Let me know how you like it, and I can grow more next year as a summer spinach-replacement (although chard is pretty good too).

Our garlic is just about cured in our neighbor's barn & we'll start handing it out soon. Yum! Please be careful with your garlic scraps though, as we don't want to spread the nematode (garlic disease) around to your gardens or to other parts of the farm. We are trying to quarantine it in the new compost pile. Strange how something so beautiful as a big bulb of glowing white garlic could harbor a tiny little invader that could destroy fields of crops. Nature is miraculous in her craftiness.

Next week, look out for purple and yellow carrots!
Here's a picture from the potluck picnic we had a few weeks ago:
Pictures from Luke's brother's wedding coming soon! The flowers looked magnificent and the carrot cake was delicious.

Squash for dessert!

A winner dessert recipe from last night's farm potluck:

Yellow Squash and Apple Compote
(serves 4)
4 small summer squash (about 1/4 lb each), peeled and diced fine
3 cups of sugar
1 1/2 cups water
Juice and grated rind of 2 lemons
2 whole cloves
1 tart apple, peeled and diced fine
Boil sugar and water together until syrup forms. Add lemon rind and
cloves. Add diced squash and apple and cook until squash becomes
clear. Remove from heat and add lemon juice. Let chill and serve
cold. (I also pureed it.)

Enjoy!
Lauren Moscoe

This week's share...

... will probably include:

Carrots
Beets
Lettuce
Leeks
Summer Squash
Cucumbers
Green Peppers
Eggplants
Tomatoes
Fennel

PICK-YOUR-OWN GREEN BEANS

Sunflowers too!

A good thing to do with eggplants...

Baba Ganouj (“Ga-noosh”)

Ingredients for single eggplant or for a crowd

• 1 medium eggplant (7-inch) or 9 1/2 lb Eggplants for a crowd

• ¼ c Fresh lemon juice or 2 c for a crowd

• ¼ c Sesame Tahini or 2c for a crowd

• 2-3 md Garlic cloves; minced, or 12 cloves for a crowd

• ¼ c Fresh parsley; finely chopped or 1 c for a crowd (optional)

• 1 tb Salt optional)

To Serve:

• Leaf lettuce, 12 Pita bread rounds; lightly, or 3 lb Feta cheese; crumbled for a crowd



Instructions
1. Pierce the skins of the eggplants several times and place them on a baking sheet. Bake at 400F for 40 minutes to 1 hour, or until the outsides crinkle and the insides become very soft. If the BBQ grill happens to be part of a meal, it's a great opportunity to grill the eggplant...cut in half & brushed with a little olive oil then skin side down for about 30-45 minutes. No piercing needed. I scrape off the charred surface before scooping out the inside.

2. When the eggplants are cool enough to handle, scoop out the insides.

3. Using a food processor (or just a fork if you like it chunky) puree the pulp with the lemon juice, tahini, garlic, parsley, and salt until smooth. Cool to room temperature.

4. Line a warmed pita pocket with leaf lettuce, spoon in the baby and serve as is, or, if desired, top with a sprinkling of feta cheese.

Meal Planning: *preparation Time: 15 minutes; Baking Time: 40 minutes. Serve with soup or salad. *Smoky eggplant flavor and creamy texture of tahini with lemon also makes a good dip with crudites. Prepare as a side dish for a Middle Eastern Combo Plate with Hummus (79) or White Bean Dip (87) and Carrot Salad (p321) *For a nondairy alternative, top with chopped fresh tomatoes, chopped black olives, and alfalfa sprouts. Per 6-oz serving with pita: 247 cals, 11.3 g fat, 496 mg sodium.

Recipe From: Moosewood Restaurant Cooks for a Crowd: Recipes with a Vegetarian Emphasis for 24 or More, by The Moosewood Collective

Water and things that grow from it

Well, we finally got some decent rain. The fields were getting really thirsty & we were ready to start pumping from the creek again, after a few weeks of having city water on 24-7, switching valves to make sure everything got a drink... and feeling like we could hardly keep up with the sun's evaporating rays. More on this later.

We had probably the best share yet this week! The tomatoes have started ripening, much to my amazement (I'm still in emotional shock from last year's blight experience)-- the eggplants are huge, the cucumbers and squash are prolific, and we have carrots, beets, scallions, and beans out our ears now. And speaking of ears, the corn is growing them-- and melons are secretly rounding out under the dense tangle of vines. We are pulling weeds like madmen.


I turned 30 years old yesterday, and what a better gift than to have the heavens open up and drench us with solid bucketfuls of "natural irrigation." This means I get to have a nice day off, sleep in, and not worry about watering.

But we've had a crazy summer so far in that realm, reminding me of farming in California, where the very existence of vegetables in summer means hooking them up to life-support. So far we had gotten by on just irrigating with the landowner's household spigot-- we can do this because in upstate New York it usually rains regularly all summer! But this spring we had to hook up a really old antique pump to 1,000 feet of tubing to get everything watered.

Why 1,000 feet you say, when Mud Creek is right behind your fields? Well, because we are just downstream from a wastewater treatment plant. And although they just got an $18 million upgrade, I trust my nose more than government-accepted levels of "safe". And it's not poop that I'm worried about. It's everything else that people flush down toilets, use in the shower, and spread on their bodies. The smell I get when I go down to the creek to dip my feet is one of a chemical shampoo cocktail.

The guys at the wastewater treatment plant were really nice, letting us use their access road to move the pump to a new location, upstream of their effluent release in Mud Creek. The site we had irrigated in the spring from was Fish Creek, a tributary across a stretch of floodplain, but the neighbors had a really hard time listening to it. Gas-powered pumps just make a lot of noise. And they wouldn't have it. So we hauled everything over, all 1,000 feet of line. We're hoping the new location won't bother anyone. Farming in the suburbs.

We were told at the plant that the water they release is cleaner than the water in the creek. They add chlorine to sterilize it, but all the chlorine is off-gassed before it is released. The new thing that they've had to start adding was alum, which removes phosphates. I don't know much about this, but I do know that phosphates have something to do with why the pond at the corner of McMahon Road and Plaster Mill is completely covered with a sheet of algae-- I'm guessing the fertilizer used on the golf course has something to do with it. Poor blue heron stands there looking for fish all day, but the fish are probably dying due to lack of oxygen from that algae growth. So we can golf on green.

Anyway, I wasn't taking any chances with irrigating from our treated wastewater. Even with no phosphates or chlorine, who knows what other kinds of elixers are created when you mix Drano with Purell, or Herbal Essence with Off!. In my daily life I try to use only biodegradable products. Everything gets recycled in the great compost dance of growth and decay. And we could have healthy streams & rivers that we could still play in and water our food with.

We went to the nearby neighbor's house to let them know we'd be running a loud pump occasionally. Wes was his name, and he'd lived there 60 years. Gave us the historical tour-- right behind his house is the old stone mill, that used to grind grain using the power of Mud Creek. Then it was an ice-house -- a field was flooded in the winter, and then cut & stacked inside the super-thick stone walls, to keep food fresh all summer until it melted! He spoke of mill races, and how all the neighborhood kids would skate down the creek all the way to Macedon. Back then, he said, if you were thirsty, you'd just stick your skate blade through the ice, and take a drink. Not now, though. The creek doesn't even freeze now, with the warm water release from the plants.

My other neighbor spoke of catching tons of huge, delicious fish, and a swimming hole that the locals used to call "Bare-Ass Beach" ... I still found the giant tree that created a dam across the creek to make that nice, deep, cool water. But no one swims there now. You can see the shampoo-esque bubbles floating slowly through the place.

What happened to us, that we turned our back on our creeks like this? I know we didn't do it on purpose. Everyone wants a clear running natural water source, that our kids can skate on or wade in. Maybe we wanted other things more. Like chemically-created products to serve our every need or whim. And an easy *flush* to carry them away when we are done with them.

But, gosh it is hot working long days in the fields, and I sure could use a swimming hole. And ultimately all of our nourishment relies on the pureness of the water we use to keep our vegetables alive.

Spring cabbage haul