Tuesday, October 27, 2015

CSA Newsletter ~ Week 20

Here we are at week 20 and the final week of the main season CSA.  Garlic planting has commenced at the farm with the thanks to several of our CSA members that have been out to help crack bulbs and plant cloves.  As of Tuesday afternoon we have 4800 cloves planted and we are aiming for 6000!

A huge "Thank You" from us both to all our CSA member families for your support this year.  We hope you have enjoyed the bounty of the last 20 weeks as much as we have growing it for you and your families.  Don't forget to fill out your CSA survey.  It should only take about 5 minutes to answer the 10 questions and we do appreciate all your feed back on the CSA this year.  
Thank you for allowing us to be the farmers that have fed your families this year and we look forward to doing it again next year.  

 

This weeks vegetable basket:
Potatoes - Kale and anchovy spuds
Kale
Onions
Leeks - Remember just slice them and freeze them for winter stews and soups
Chicken and leek stew
Garlic
Carrots
Celeriac - Cumin roast celeriac and parsnips
Escarole - This is the first time we have grown this and we are rather excited to be cooking with it this week! According to the Kitchen we should be dropping the lettuce and using escarole instead.
Escarole and Bacon
Instead of using sausage you could make some nice Berkshire pork meatballs! Italian sausage and escarole stew.
Escarole and bean soup
Martha Stewart escarole recipes.
Cabbage - The 10 best cabbage recipes.
Herbs - We have thyme again this week.  If you would like to dry it, place in a brown paper bag, once the leaves are dry store them in an airtight jar. Please remember in your survey to add any other herbs you would like to see us grow at the farm next year.
Kalettes - Yes they are odd looking but they taste great! We pinched the tops out of them this year which has created this huge amount of leaves to eat on the top and tiny little bumps on the bottom to pick off and eat.  You can eat these like Brussel sprouts, they are great in a stir fry, roasted with other vegetables, saute with garlic, onions and a little bacon. 
Swede - Nigel Slater's swede recipes
Roasted swede with Parmesan
Swede and coconut daal

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

CSA Newsletter ~ Week 19

The first heavy frost hit the farm this weekend! All the tender vegetables were covered with floating row covers to keep them protected over the very cold nights and so far all is looking good under the covers.









This weeks basket:
Sweet potatoes - Just in case you are running out of ideas of what to do with your sweet potatoes here are 45 delicious and healthy sweet potato recipes
Garlic
Onions
Lettuce

Sweet Peppers - We promise this is the last week! We have had a bumper crop this year and just before the heavy frost we harvested the last of them for this season.
Parsnips - They are not huge but we do have parsnips fresh out the ground after the two heavy frosts this weekend.  At this stage you can just give them a good scrub and not bother to peel them.
Sage - It did get a little frost damage but not much, to dry your sage hang upside down in a paper bag in a cool dark room.  Once dry crunch the leaves into pieces and place in an air tight jar.
Watermelon Radish
Asian Greens




Tuesday, October 13, 2015

CSA Newsletter ~ Week 18


When the trees start to turn at the farm that is when we feel like Fall is finally here!
As ever the market garden has kept us both busy this week along with all our animals!
Three little pigs actually three very large pigs left for the abattoir along with 25 turkeys on Friday for Thanksgiving and the last batch of our pasture raised chickens left this morning.






This weeks baskets
Cauliflower - Cauliflower and chickpea curry
Sweet Peppers
Lettuce
Kale - Ribollita is a great soup. This is the recipe we use but I add home made tomato sauce, rather than plum tomatoes and we use fresh beans. For the greens you can add this weeks kale, or use up last weeks Chinese cabbage, whatever you choose to use it is great for dinner and even breakfast. Hugh's Ribollita.
Radish - This week we have Alpine Daikon radish, they are slightly smaller than the traditional daikon that we grow.
What to do with Daikon radish
Root Vegetable latkes
Ginger carrot daikon radish salad.
Tomatillos - We started to clean out our second hoop house and found some more ripe tomatillos.  To get the best of their flavour and sweetness roasting is the best way to use them unless you are making salsa.  At this time of year we even like to make soup or a stew with them.
Pork and Tomatillo Stew, Exchange the potatoes for sweet potatoes and you can use any cut of pork for this stew.
Tomatillo and sweet potato soup
Golden turnips - We grew these for the first time last year and everyone loved them! Seed orders went in this year and the seed company forgot to tell us they would not be having any seeds due to crop failure! Panic set in as we could not find them in North America! Thankfully my big sister came to the rescue and found the seeds. She sent them to us just in time for them to be seeded.
These turnips can be eaten raw, turned into a yummy curry soup or you could try one of the following:
Ginger glazed turnips
Roast turnips with Parmesan and thyme
Beets - Gill Meller's beetroot soup
Sweet potatoes - Warm vegetable curry
Curried Sweet potato soup 
Asian Greens - This week is green wave mustard greens.  These are great cooked or eaten raw.
Herbs - Parsley the easiest way to preserve parsley is to remove the stalks place in a freezer bag and freeze, then just add to soups and stews as needed.
Kohlrabi - They are small but prefect! We lost all our storage kohlrabi this year to rot due to so much rain after transplanting so we did a re-seed and under the covers this weekend we discovered some small but prefect kohlrabi to harvest. Do remember you can eat the leaves in stews, kohlrabi is great raw added to salads or a daikon radish dish or can be roasted with other root vegetables.
Help yourself to hot peppers - This will be the last week of hot peppers so take what you need! 

Monday, October 5, 2015

CSA Newsletter ~ Week 17

High winds, over 1and 1/2" of rain in two days, two very patchy frosts, Nigella the pig farrowed and we are just waiting for Ina, Fleur and Tilly moved in with Cosmo, a week of harvesting vegetables, clearing the field, prepping for garlic planting and getting the greenhouse and hoop house ready for winter greens, mixed in with a little bit of puppy training seems like a normal week at the farm!

 



This weeks vegetable basket:
Potatoes - Three winter potato recipes including pan haggerty!
Sweet Peppers
Swede/Rutabaga/Turnip - Everyone seems to have a different name for this! Sadly the swede's this year are not going to be as large as last! Due to the aphid attack it has caused the roots to be more long and skinny.  So you may find over the last weeks of the CSA you may end up with two!
Swede, leek and apple bake
Beans - We love making Ribollita.  Most recipes call for canned beans but we always use fresh.  For the greens you can use anything from napa cabbage, to kale or even your radish tops. 
Asian greens
Lettuce
Celeriac - This warty nobly ugly vegetable is amazing! Has a mild celery taste to it.
Celeriac Crisps 
Celeriac and potato mash 
Spiced celeriac soup 
spiced celeriac with lemon 
Watermelon radish -   We love these radishes at the farm. They have a nice bite to them and can be eaten raw or cooked.  As this article states which includes recipes 'if Cinderella were a vegetables she would have been a Watermelon radish'! don't forget to use the tops Radish top soup and slow roasted radish.




Cauliflower - cauliflower crust pizza
Chinese/Napa Cabbage 
Spinach or Arugula
Herbs - This week it will be thyme.  If you want to dry it just place in a brown paper bag for a few weeks.  Once the leaves are dry just run your fingers down the stem to remove all the leaves and store in a jar.