The weather recently has been fantastic, plenty of rain and great temperatures for working outside.
So we will be rewarded, I think, with some nice produce in the next few weeks.
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There was a fire at cayuga pure organics, the place that we get the beans (and that grows some of the wheat for the flour) that we offer in the CSA share.  apparently their insurance won't cover the cost of rebuilding and they have a campaign to help rebuild.  check out the site, this is an important part of our food shed!  we'll be making a donation, we value what they are doing....want to learn more, check out their indiegogo site! http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-cayuga-pure-organics-an-organic-non-gmo-farm-rebuild-after-fire?c=home

Choose 6:
spicy mix
baby beets/beet greens
lettuce heads
kale
Swiss chard
cilantro
parsley
baby carrots
garlic scapes
spinach
cucumbers!!??
also local, organic dry beans and flour

expected for next week:
all of the above plus new potatoes, broccoli,  maybe a few zucchini/summer squash and green beans

 This is why we haven't had any sunflower shoots lately. Wow the birds, chipmunks and squirrels REALLY love them. I think the chipmunks have been taken care of, now the squirrels are getting in.

Um, I think we should have picked this lettuce a little sooner.

Week 2:
Well, it looks like more rain headed our way for this week. I say bring it on! What a beautiful day today, though, after all that rain. Wow! the plants are just about popping with energy. Unfortunately so are the weeds. And with the oncoming rain, the next few days won't be good for cultivating or weeding.
Sorry no new pics yet this week. I'll try to rectify that soon!

This week's CSA
Choose 5:
spicy mix
lettuce heads
cilantro
parsley
baby carrots
garlic scapes
spinach
cucumbers!!??
vegetable transplants
also local, organic dry beans and flour

available plants

Available Plants (can get as a share item for the first week)

Herbs parsley, basil and dill

pickling cucumbers

Slicing Tomatoes   Rose de Berne, taste test winner dark rose color

                               Garden Peach, fuzzy like a peach! Sweet for a tomato

                                         Green Zebra, green with yellow stripes medium size
                                         Paul Robeson, black heirloom tomato
                                         Goldie, large yellow beefsteak meaty texture

Cherry Tomatoes Sungold, orange and sweet

                            red cherry

                            Black cherry farmer favorite!

                            Yellow mini, prolific producer!

                            Snow white, very light yellow, nice flavor!

Paste tomatoes red or white

Peppers new ace- Green to Red Bell
                                    Golden Treasure, long pepper that turns brilliant orange     

                            Jimmy Nardello, sweet frying heirloom pepper

Hot peppers Jalapeno, habenero, cayenne

Yellow Onions

lettuce cut and come again style or head lettuce

eggplant long skinny asian eggplants or Rosa Bianca an italian heirloom

husk cherries and tomatillos

zucchini

kale green curly and red russian heirloom

broccoli

Beans Haircort verts fancy green beans

Oh yeah, we will also have parsnips available for CSA this week.

Hi,
Welcome to the first week of CSA!
Well, as always we are starting slow. Here is what you can expect this week.

Choose 5 items:
Lettuce
Lettuce Mix
Spicy Greens Mix
Spinach
Cilantro
Baby Carrots
Vegetable transplants

Plus we'll have local, organic flour and dry beans (black and red) as part of the CSA too.

The start is near....

Chickens in the orchard.  We added laying hens to our farm because we wanted to use their manure in our fertility cycle.  The eggs are just a delicious side benefit!  Since organic growers must wait 120 days after fresh manure is added to the field, until they can harvest a crop from that ground, thre are times when they don't fit in our crop rotation cycle and can't be on the vegetable grounds.  When this is the case, the fall back location is in our small orchard, where they happily peck around for insects and their eggs, grubs and larvae and eat the grass and other greenery that grows between our trees.  Here they are last week when most of the trees were in resplendant bloom!  (The white "cube" on the right holds water for them)

 

We've noticed that people love firm veggies.  The kinds of things that thrive in the heat of summer, foods like cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and summer squashes.   (This is in contrast to cool season veggies that can take the cooler conditions of spring and all tend to be leafy and green.)  Because of this preference, each year we choose to take some calculated risks to get the earliest warm season crops to market that we can.  In this photo is one method of insurance that we use to help protect summer's heat loving crops from the last few frosts of the year.  Under the row cover (basically a blanket for veggies) are summer squash and zucchini plants that (mostly) made  it through last sunday's frost event. 

 

GOATS IN COATS!

Our goats get summer hair cuts two nights too early!  Ever the soft touch, liz hated to see them shivering through the night, so here they are all decked out in sweaters to keep the chill off!  Think the new doos will be appreciated when the heat turns up, though. 

 

KALE PESTO!

 

We've been enjoying some incredibily tender kale this spring!  The plants that fed our fall and winter CSA came through the winter just fine and now that it is spring, they are eager to fullfill their destiny!  No, not to kill some dark wizard- but the real goal of all plants- TO MAKE SEED!  For a few weeks (alas, before the summer CSA starts) they send up amazingly tender and delicious leaves (and then seed stalks) that we have just been eating up! 

a friend reccomended that we try kale pesto and i now wholeheartedly recommend it to you!

Use your basic basil pesto recipe, and swap in kale for basil.  here's how we had it, it was lovely over pasta! 

 

1 bag of kale

1-2 cloves of garlic

parmesan cheese, maybe 1/2-3/4 cup

nuts or seeds of your choice, perhaps 2 cups

olive oil to make smooth

(adjust to taste)

 

 

It is our goal to finish all of our major planting before the CSA starts on June 3rd.  It is hard to do much else besides harvest and go to market once we get into the swing of marketing 3 days a week.  We are getting quite close and as we wind it up, weed control will become the next priority. 

 

Still looking for a market helper in elmira and have room for more shares there and in Watkins, too.  Know anyone who would enjoy the CSA?  Please pass on the word. 

 

Happy Spring!

liz and matthew