Almost May

Today we made our first field plantings, one bed each of spinach, peas and fava beans. (That would be 300 rowfeet, 200 and 200, respectively.) We're looking forward to planting some mesclun, broccoli raab and radishes tomorrow. With all of the warm weather we've had recently, the fields have dried out nicely and it's been hard to keep myself from planting everything. We're still getting nights in the 20's, however, and it's important not to let freakishly warm weather fool you. So what have I been doing with these beautiful days? Working the greenhouse, of course. Today I finished potting up all of our heirloom and cherry tomatoes from the slot trays in which they're started into larger 2" soil blocks. This will give them some fresh soil to chew on and some more room to grow. In a couple of weeks, I'll pot them up again into 4" pots. I recently finished doing to our first planting of determinate tomatoes, which should be ready to go out into the field in a couple of weeks (with lots of protection, of course). The eggplant pictured in the previous post was potted up about a month ago and -- around 6" tall -- is ready for the 4" pot treatment itself. In addition to the tomatoes, I've seeded lettuce, chicory, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, pac choi, napa cabbage, Swiss chard and basil in the greenhouse.

And garlic! I completely forgot to mention that I unmulched our garlic a few weeks ago; all 1800 row feet. That's around 3600 potential heads of garlic. So, unlike last year, we'll have plenty of garlic.

On another note, we're happy to report that the state recently approved our kitchen for bread production. So our bread is official and legal and all that now. We'll be taking it to farmers markets as soon as they start up, which is ... this week! Our first market in Orono is on the 2rd and Waterville begins on the following Thursday, the 7th.

That it's for now. Stay tuned, though, for some info about a farm party we want to have in May.

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Farm Share Info for August 5

All shares contain:

• Zucchini, Summer Squash and Patti-pan Squash
• Cucumbers
  
• Cilantro
• Green Onions
• Garlic
• Loose leaf Lettuce (for salad)
• "Braising Mix" (aka "stir fry" or mustard greens)
  

"Full" shares also contain:

• more onions, zucchinis, cucumbers, garlic, lettuce and braising mix
  
• Sage
• Marjoram
• "Italian sprouting" broccoli
  

Veggie Notes

zucchini - We try not to give out really big zukes, with the exception of the light and dark green striped and ribbed ones. These are a variety called "Costata Romanesca" and are widely regarded to actually improve in quality as they get larger. Of course, they can quickly reach sizes over 10 pounds, and all of the squashes we put into the shares this week were positively tiny compared to that.

cucumbers - The whitish/yellowish cucumbers are an heirloom variety that originated not far from here in Livermore Falls, Maine. It's called "Boothby's Blond". The spineless cucumbers are a variety called "Diva" which was developed in Albion, Maine.

cilantro - Some of you will have received a funny looking kind of cilantro with frilly, feathery leaves. It's called "Delfino" and recently won a national award for it's uniqueness and high quality. Aside from the leaves, it's just the same as regular cilantro and can be used just the same.

Italian sprouting broccoli - These little tiny broccolis are delicious and very sweet when raw, especially when chilled. It grows differently than regular broccoli and has taken a little while for us to get used to, but we think we're getting a handle on it now. Please, let us know what you think of it.



As always, we welcome your feedback. Please let us know if you have any questions, concerns or problems.

We hope you enjoy the share!

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Farm Share Info for July 15 [Updated w/ notes & recipe]

All shares contain:

• fresh garlic
  
• collard greens
  
• scallions
• shell peas -- don't eat the pods, just the peas inside
  
• thyme
  

"Full" shares also contain:

• more garlic and peas
• "rainbow" beets
• baby zucchini

Veggie Notes

fresh garlic - This isn't the young, tender stuff we had earlier. As the garlic plant matures, the stem thickens and hardens while the skin around the bulb starts to become tougher. You can still use the entire bulb (wrapper skins and all), but you'll want to trim off the stem perhaps 1/2" above the bulb.

collard greens - Collard greens can be used just like other cooking greens, but they have a more assertive flavor (like that of kale and other brassicas, such as broccoli and cabbage) a more robust texture. Don't believe the old stories of fat, southern grandmas cooking these things all day with pigs feet; we boil them briefly in 1/2-3/4" of lightly salted water in a wide, shallow pan. You could also steam them. We also make a great tomato-based pasta sauce with collards for which I'm having trouble finding a recipe. I'll let you know when I find it.

shell peas - Unlike in previous weeks, these are shell peas and the pod cannot be eaten. I know, I know: it's a lot of work to shell peas, but -- to my tongue -- the convenience of snap peas still doesn't hold a candle to the great flavor of shell peas. While we cook snap peas in all sorts of dishes (stir fries and pastas, notable), we almost never cook shell peas because we always end up eating them all as we're shelling them.

beets - Remember that the leaves of beets (aka `beet greens') can be eaten like Swiss chard. The tend to be a bit more tart, but they're still pretty good. If you want to preserve the distinct colors of the rainbow beets, you should steam them or roast them. If you boil them, they'll all end up kind of red. See below for roasting instructions ... well, not so much instructions as guidelines.

Recipe Ideas

Finding recipes is perhaps the hardest part of writing these newsletters. We've been cooking with fresh, whole foods for so long that we don't really use recipes anymore, instead relying on "techniques" with generous injections of experience-influenced intuition to guide our hand to great meals. To that end, I'll treat one of our most versatile and trustworthy techniques as recipe.

Roasted Vegetables
Roasting is a wicked simple technique that works well for a lot of different vegetables. (And especially well for root vegetables.) Though we generally roast veggies during winter -- when the heat given off from the oven is a welcome boost to the wood stove -- there are a lot of great foods to roast in the summer too. Summer veggies such as beets, carrots, eggplant, peppers and new potatoes -- just to name a few -- respond well to roasting. So, here are our general guidelines for roasting:

You will need:
a vegetable, or vegetables, to roast
salt and pepper
a fat to roast in - bacon fat is best, olive oil is great, and other vegetable oils will work too
a pan to roast in - large enough to accommodate the veggies in a single layer
optional: seasonings such as herbs and/or chili peppers

1. Turn on oven and preheat to 350 or so.
   
2. Clean, trim and chop the veggies into pieces that are approx. the same same size. The size of gaming dice is a good size -- smaller is too much work and too much larger will take forever to cook.
   
3. Toss the veggies with the oil or fat, a good pinch of salt, several turns of the pepper grinder and -- if using -- the seasonings.
4. Spread the chopped, oiled, seasoned vegetables into the roasting pans and place into the oven.

Roasting times will depend upon the vegetable being roasted as well as the size into which it has been chopped. In general 30-45 minutes is a good amount of time to roast. If the veggies are cut smaller or thin, they will cook more quickly; if they are cut large or are spread in the pan thickly, they will cook more slowly. The test for being "done" is that the veggies will be "fork tender", i.e. that they will yield easily to a fork.

Roasted Beets
Using what we've just said, let's roast today's beets:

1. Clean, trim and chop the beets into 1/2" cubes.
2. Chop up about 1/2 of the bunch of thyme.
3. Drizzle the chopped beets w/ olive oil to coat and toss with the chopped thyme and a good pinch of salt and pepper.
4. Spread the beets into a roasting pan -- we used a 9"x9" pan.
5. Place in oven and roast. As I'm writing, the beets have been in for about 45 minutes and are getting close to done. By 1 hour, they should be perfect!

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please let us know if you have any questions, concerns or problems.

We hope you enjoy the share!

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