CSA Newsletter ~ Week 1

Getting ready for planting in our new hoop house.

Here it goes the start of our 6th CSA season.

A huge Thank You to everyone who has signed up for this years CSA at Strattons Farm and for choosing to support a local farm and to eat seasonally over the next twenty weeks!

It has been a roller coaster weather ride so far this year from a very hot May which effected some of our seed germination and caused some of our lovely Asian greens to bolt early, no rain for 39 days and then to cap it off a killing frost which now is nearly forgotten as all the plants have bounced back, been reseeded or replaced with spares we had available. Then we entered June.... and I think we have been making up for all the rain we did not get in May!  Weeding and transplanting has been fun in the mud!!!!

So here's hoping for a season of warm weather and regular evenings filled with rain, but a few days without rain would be lovely so hay making and weeding can start!  

Over the next twenty weeks we will include lots of recipes in the newsletters but do remember to read through some of last years recipes or if you find a recipe you love then please e-mail it in with a photo or you can post it directly to our Facebook page. We have also been adding recipes to our Pinterest page as well.  Our aim is to get the newsletter up and ready by Monday but please do not hold us to this! Between the two of us we do rather a lot at the farm, and some evenings all we want to do is crawl into our beds, but we will do our best to have the newsletter up a few days before the first pick up of the week.

Here are some great resources (books and websites) that we love using for finding different recipes from!  If you have a favourite book or website please let us know and we will add it into the newsletters.
This is also a great read on how to not get behind on your CSA vegetables.
Riverford Farms
Abel and Cole
Jamie Oliver
River Cottage
"River Cottage Veg everyday" by Hugh Fearnly Whittingstall
 "Jamie at Home"  by Jamie Oliver 

This weeks basket:
Mustard Greens This weeks is greenwave! Has a nice bit to it, can be eaten raw, cooked or turned into Pesto!
Lettuce - Why not try cooking your lettuce and trying a lettuce soup
Swiss Chard - Always feel a bit sorry for chard, everyone seems to want kale! Chard actually ranks higher in nutrient density than kale according to the Centers for Disease Control!
It can be eaten raw or cooked.  We really like the sound of this gratin dish.
Kale - Lemony kale just exchange the garlic for the scapes you have in your basket.
Turnips - These are spring turnips and you will get a mixture of white Hakuri and pink Scarlet queen.  These are delicious raw! Grated into salad, added to a coleslaw mix or of course you can cook them too.
Spinach - Do not wash spinach until you need it!

Garlic Scape

Garlic Scapes - The bunch of green curly things are scapes! It is never a very long season but one that lots of us get very excited about! Garlic gives us not only the bulb but also the flower head which is the scape, these are milder in flavour and it has been said that if you are unable to digest garlic, then scapes may be easier for you.  They can be roasted, added to stir frys, made into pesto or even pickled.
Pac Choy/Bok Choy - They do have a few holes in them! We covered everything but due to the high heat in May the flea beetles had already made camp in the soil!
Rhubarb - If you do not want to use it now just chop it up place in a ziplock bag and pop it in the freezer till winter.

Fall CSA Newsletter ~ Week 2

Last week should have been a simple week of vegetable deliveries and field clearing and storing!! It ended up being one of those weeks! As one of our customers said "CSA builds community" and we could not agree more.

We delivered our first box on Tuesday morning all excited, jumped back into the truck to head off to the next delivery and the truck just died on us!!!!! 

Long story short the starter motor had gone.  We have to say a huge thank you from us to our CSA members and one of our friends Marj, who were all ready to come to our rescue.  

We were certainly very lucky that where the truck broke down our CSA family were home. We took over their home, phones and phone books in order get the truck towed and to figure out how to do deliveries.  

We had several of our CSA families offer to come and get us, loan us a vehicle and one of our families offered to chauffeur us to complete the deliveries. So I spent the afternoon cackling away with Linda as we drove around Belleville doing vegetable deliveries while Michael got the truck towed and headed back to the farm.  So again a huge THANK YOU to all of you who offered to rescue us on Tuesday we would not have got through the day with out you. 

You will notice you will be getting some of the same greens again this week.  They have held on really well in the field under fleece covers so while these vegetable remain happy in the field we are going to keep filling your boxes with fresh greens rather than root vegetables. 

We love receiving pictures and recipes of what you are all doing with your produce from the farm.

Colleen sent in her Fall Stir fry with left over roast pork.  As Colleen said in her e-mail, everything was from Strattons farm! 

We have added Debbie's picture to the recipe list below for radicchio.

This weeks basket

Potatoes - Great recipe for hiding those greens in foods! Why not try Kale and potato cakes
Carrots - carrot mash
Radish 
Kale - kale, potato, celeriac Stilton Pie You could replace the Stilton with any blue cheese!
Lettuce
Spinach - sag aloo spinach or chard and potato
Pac Choi - With the winter nights drawing in why not try a chicken broth and pac choi broth.

Napa Cabbage - Why not try roasting your napa cabbage this week!
Leeks - We like to find you different recipes and this weeks leek is for cottage pie with leeks and potato topping
Mustard Greens
Celeriac - This vegetable may come under the ugly category but it is yummy added to mashed potatoes or roasted with other root vegetables
Radicchio - Debbie sent in this photo and recipe for her Radicchio.

Quarter and wash the radicchio. Dry on a tea towel for 1/2 hr or so. Put in a baking dish. 

Make dressing. Mine has apple cider vinegar, thyme, salt, pepper, olive oil, lots of chopped garlic, Dijon mustard and sun dried tomatoes. Crumble  bacon on top and pour dressing on top. Cover with foil at bake at 350 for ~1 hr or how ever you like it cooked. 

CSA Newsletter ~ Week 19

Mud, mud, glorious mud!! I think the only animals on this farm that are enjoying all this rain and mud are our pigs! 

We finished the garlic planting last week and final count was 3004 cloves! We are feeling slightly nervous about the garlic patch as a mole seems to have moved in to the beds! Not much damage has been done to the beds though, he seems more focused on the newly prepared ones, rather than the ones we have planted!! 

Apart from all the mud, field clearing continues, along with the harvest of crops to be stored for our Fall Baskets which start the first week of November.  If anyone is interested in signing up for November weekly or bi weekly baskets please contact us for a registration form.

This week we say goodbye to our Group A half shares and then next week is the end of our 20 Week Summer CSA! We have to be honest we are not sure where the last 19 weeks have gone, it really seems to have flown by this year.

To all our half shares who have their last pick up this week, if you have time we do appreciate your feedback and the survey link is attached in the e-mail that went out on Sunday.  

A huge thank you from us to you for your continued support and we hope you have enjoyed this years CSA and eating seasonal vegetables as much as we have enjoyed growing them for you.

This weeks box:

Carrots - Why not try a sweet dish with your carrots this week! We are going to be trying this one and replacing the sugar with half the amount in honey carrot halwa

Parsnips - This has been a crop we have seeded each year and has never germinated.  Germination was not fantastic this year but 100% better than any other year!!!   They do take a really long time to grow (think we will try seeding a little earlier next year to see if we can get them bigger) and they are much tastier after a really heavy frost. So even though they are heading out in the boxes this week they are not huge and the quantity is alot less than what we would like. But if we can do it this year here's hoping for a better crop next year.

Kale - If you do not want to eat your kale and want to keep if for winter then just place it in a Ziploc bag straight in the freezer.  Kale is really nice to add to any stew or soup over the long winter evenings.

Potatoes - This weeks potatoes are Gold Rush. We have found some really yummy Winter potato dishes for you to try.

Turnips - As I write this newsletter I am in the middle of cooking a potato dauphinosie. What I like about this recipe is it has a couple of variations one using turnips and one using celeriac.

Acorn Squash - Here's a great recipe for stuffed squash.

Swede/Rutabaga - If you have not guessed we love to cook and eat swede so have found this amazing recipe that we will be cooking this week for spiced swede cakes

Garlic

Leeks - We have found this great recipe for Cottage and Roots pie it uses leeks but also if you are struggling with the celeriac or turnips this is a great recipe to use those vegetables in too.

Chinese white radish Moo/Mooli or Daikon - When I worked in South Korea this was one of my staples, I love this radish! It's crispy, peppery, spiciness and sweet flavour is just amazing eaten raw, added to stir Fry, salads or you can make one of my favourites which is radish Kimchi.

Cauliflower or Broccoli - This is week four and we are really making up for all the years we have struggled to get these to head up at the farm! Last Saturday when we picked we found one that weighed in at 2lbs15oz

Arugula - Is a great spring and fall crop. The leaves are very peppery and make an amazing salad, pizza topping or you can even turn it into pesto! 

CSA Newsletter ~ Week 18

We hope that everyone had a restful Thanksgiving with friends and family.

This last week has seen our first really heavy frost at the farm, blue spotted salamanders and a huge chunk of our garlic planting completed! As of this evening 2321 cloves are in and we have about another 1000 to go! This is our largest garlic patch ever! Compared to some this is tiny but each year we keep enlarging the patch. I did suggest to Michael we should aim for 6000 next year!! If we do that, we might have to have a CSA garlic party! 

Thank you to everyone who filled in the winter vegetable CSA survey. Once our 20 week summer CSA ends we will running a Fall CSA Box for November. You will be able to choose a weekly or bi weekly box and in December we will be offering bulk vegetable boxes.  These bulk boxes depend on how well the greens do in the greenhouse, along with our cold storage! If all goes well we will offer more bulk boxes in January and February.

Everyone who has said yes to extending will shortly receive an e-mail with a registration form with all the in's and outs of how the November shares will work. We hope to have this done and updated on our website by this weekend!

Watermelon Radish

This weeks basket:
Carrots
Beets
Cauliflower
Golden Turnips
Onions
Watermelon Radish - These can be eaten raw in a salad or roasted
Sweet peppers - This will be the last week of these.
Cabbage
Spinach - Yes the leaves are huge, but very sweet and tender.  We do not wash the spinach as it keeps longer.  So wash as you need it.
Mustard greens
Celeriac 
Lettuce