CSA Newsletter ~ Week 3

Well what can we say about last Tuesday! The rain overnight on Monday filled the cistern and flooded our basement.  We got all the shares picked and then at 10.30am the heavens opened for about 30 minutes!

We had directed seeded 400ft of beans the day before, they are doing great and have already germinated.  We are however, a little concerned about the 500ft of carrot seed we planted. Time will tell if they washed away!

We have to store the ladybugs in our fridge!!

We also found we had a lot of aphids on our storage kohlrabi and our rutabaga/swede transplants. So after washing each individual transplant in water we put in a call to the Natural Insect control and purchased 2000 lady bugs. We released them under insect netting which is protecting the crops from the bad bugs in the hope the lady bugs will deal with any remaining aphids.

One of the best tips we can give for using your vegetables is to exchange ingredients for what is in your box.  i.e if you need onions use your salad onions if you need garlic use your scapes, if you are making slaw and need cabbage and carrots then use your napa cabbage and kohlrabi instead. 

This Weeks basket:

Napa/Chinese Cabbage - A few different recipes for your Chinese cabbage 

cabbage wedges, chinese tom leafery, chinese leaf parcels

Radicchio - Our radicchio is not like the traditional red variety, it is large and green! It has a bitter taste to it but I have to say it is in my top ten vegetable list! The following recipes are a great way to cut the bitterness so that everyone in the family will enjoy it radicchio mushroom frittata. grilled baked radicchio

Lettuce

Turnips - Try roasting your turnips,

Radish - You could even roast your turnips and radishes together.

Kohlrabi - kohlrabi and turnip slaw

Scapes - We like to freeze some scapes for winter.  Chop your scapes into chunks place them in the food processor with some oil and blitz.  Then place into ice cube trays and freeze.  Then during the winter months these scape cubes can be added into soups, stews or spread over a pizza base.

Beets - Beets can be boiled, roasted on the BBQ Grilled beet burgers, another burger recipe beetroot burgers kale quinoa salad, Don't forget to use the tops as well beetroot braised beet tops

Peas - Hopefully we do not need to give any recipe suggestions for these! Will they make it home even??

Kale - Add it to a lasagna.

Parsley - If you do not want to use your parsley you can place it in a Ziploc bag and put it in the freezer and then just grab out what you need when you need it! Our you can try one of the 10 best parsley recipes.

Spinach 

Don't forget you can post your photos and recipes of your meals on our FB page or e-mail them to us.

Winter Newsletter...

Tilly just loves the camera!

We have had a few cold days so far this winter but nothing like last year's, but we are missing the snow here at the farm! We have lots of ice to skate around on while we carry buckets of water and feed around the farm for all the animals! I think everyone is missing the snow, but with 51 days till spring here's hoping for a nice big dump of snow sooner rather than later!  

A huge thank you to everyone who has had bulk boxes this winter.  We have been providing vegetables now for nine months and it is so nice to see so many people keeping it local not just through the summer months but also through the winter.  Due to the demand this year for winter vegetables we are looking at expanding our box availability for next winter.  

We are now sold out of our bulk boxes but still have root vegetables available in our stores.  So before heading out to the grocery store please contact us for our vegetable list of what is still available at the farm.  

Market Garden Spring 2014

As we enter our seventh year here at Strattons Farm preparations are well under way for our sixth year running our CSA.
Seeds, organic potting soil and organic compost have been ordered and our kitchen table is full of spread sheets and field plans for the coming season. It's always odd for some when we are in the depths of winter to be thinking of spring greens, summer tomatoes and fall squashes but shares for the 2015 Summer CSA are selling fast, so don't leave it too long to register for this season.

Nigella's piglets in 2014 sharing some loving! 

Along with the market garden preparations, Elly and Eva are due to kid in March,  then April will see Delia pig farrow and our first batch of spring chicks arrive so we will have another busy spring on our hands.

Don't forget if you want to receive our monthly newsletters with up to date farm news and along with notifications of when we start taking pre orders for pork, poultry or the CSA then please sign up to our mail chimp newsletters.  Remember to add our address to your safe list as due to last years legislation on Spam newsletters can end up in your junk box rather than your mailbox.

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. 

Fall CSA Newsletter ~ Week 1

Thank you to everyone who signed up for our inaugural Fall CSA. We had limited shares for the first one but we had such an over whelming response we are already looking forward to enlarging the offering of Fall boxes for next year.

It Feels very odd being in November and we are starting at week one all over again! We have been busy bringing crops in for storage as well as experimenting with some late seeding in our hoop house and the unheated greenhouse we have.

Our aim is to make sure you get a mixture of root and leafy greens in your boxes for the next four weeks.  This week everything has been dug fresh from the field including the carrots! 

Please remember for those having delivery to doorstep 

to leave either a cooler box or large tote out for us! 

Please do look back over the last few weeks of the summer CSA Newsletter for additional recipe ideas.

Pac Choy under fleece.

This week basket: (click the top photo to enlarge, we have labeled all the vegetables for you in the photo!)
Daikon Radish - Can be eaten raw like any other radish, added to stir fry etc.
Carrots
Swede/Rutabaga - This is becoming one of my new favourite vegetables very versatile in so many dishes.  This one comes with a little spice! Indian spiced swede
Hakurei turnips - These can again be eaten raw or you could do a braised carrots turnips with honey

Napa Cabbage - Lots of different idea for napa cabbage in the summer CSA newsletters
Radicchio - We grow a green radicchio over red. I have found a very nice risotto recipe.
Lettuce - Not in the mood for salad then why not try  braising your lettuce instead!
Pac Choy - Great in stews, stir fry, salads.
Kale - We have put the kale in freezer bags in case you do not want to use it straight away all you need to do is pop the whole bag into the freezer for winter use.
Ruby Streaks Asian Greens - This is a mustard green but we have found the plants on the field (after the very heavy frost on Saturday night) seem to have mellowed the flavour compared to the plants growing in the greenhouse.  This can be eaten raw, added to stir fry or made into pesto.
Cauliflower - The little green pointy things in the box this week are cauliflower they are called Romanesco.