fourth week of september

sweet peppers

Hey all welcome to fall! This week we have turned the corner into the autumn. Worry not, the CSA goes well into the fall with the last week of pickup being the last week of october. I find as the days start to become noticeable shorter a lot of people start to ask when the CSA ends, getting tired of us already?

the one thing that is ending quite soon is our working share program. We have had five awesome working shares this season and they have been an immense help to us. On monday Danielle has heroically harvested what next year will be a two person job. On thursdays Ryan and Jane have helped us set up for the day and kept our boxes filled and produce piled for the first several hours. On Fridays Terri, Lydia, Reeder, Mark, Pat, Harold, and even a few times Linda. Have helped us pick our way through the field. Without their help the summer season would not have been half as fun and would have been at least twice as hard. Thanks guys.

speaking of working shares, we will be looking for at least three more next year so if you are interested please be in touch with us. Generally the trade is for 11 weeks of work (july-sept) four hours each week. We are looking for people who enjoy being outside, can handle the ups and downs of vegetable harvesting (that's literally getting up and back down), is reliable about showing up when they say, and enjoys spending time both harvesting with other people and yet will not wither way when left briefly (yet trained first) to harvest alone.

Last call on basil at market this week. We preserved a big batch of pesto this week and thought, too bad this will be the last of the year as the leaves are starting to get to be small. We wanted to give everyone the heads up, last chance to get basil as we will be mowing the bed in soon.

or a frost could take it. the last few years we have not had a frost until the middle or end of october, but we are nearing the time of year, where statistically 5 years in 10 there will be a freeze. (at least according to our soil survey book from 1974, 5 out of 10 years would have a freeze by sept 28). the other night a farmer friend was very close as some of her flowers were nipped by frost. Our location on the slope to the lake offers good air drainage and we are unlikely to actually freeze for several weeks, but again, its not impossible.

the perogie day was fun! thanks to julie, garet, evelyn, dorothy, sarah, margot, chris, david, mary, (and later joan, alan, and betty- hope you read the blog now~!) for coming out to make perogies with us.

kids reading books, instead of making perogies, i guess its the child labor laws...



farmer siblings making perogies with a blurry niece face

hey what is that hairy thing on the table this week? Well its celeriac, a super vegetable. It holds for months in the root cellar, when cooked, it has the texture of a potato, but a lovely celery taste. Can be used raw in salads or used lots of times in soups. there is a great article on the NPR website about it, included below is one of the 3 recipes from that article. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6551175


Boiled Celeriac with Butter and Herbs from NPR.org

3 large celery roots, peeled
Juice of 1/2 lemon, plus extra for acidulating water
4 tablespoons butter (1/2 stick)
1/2 cup chopped parsley, chives, tarragon, mint, lemon balm or basil (you can pick one or use two in a savory combination)
Salt and pepper, to taste

Fill large bowl with water and add lemon juice. Add celery roots as they are peeled.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.

Cut peeled celery roots into three or four thick slices, then cut each slice into three or four fat sticks, returning them to their bowl of acidulated water after each step.

Shape the sticks into "batons" by shaving off the square "corners" and pointing the ends (like sharpening a fat pencil) with a paring knife.

Place the batons in the boiling water. Add juice of half a lemon. Bring water back to a boil, then reduce heat and cook until batons are soft but not mushy, about 30 minutes. Drain thoroughly and return to the pot.

Add butter, herbs of choice, and salt and pepper to taste. Heat through before serving.


have a great week!
liz (and matthew)

Delicata squash

What can one do with a delicata squash?

Basic Baked (Winter) Squash
1 winter Squash, halved
2 pats of butter
2 teaspoons of honey or maple syrup
Salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees
Scoop the seeds out of each half with a spoon
Add 1 pat of butter, 1 teaspoon of honey or maple syrup, and salt and pepper to the hollow scoop of each half. Place upright on a greased cookie sheet and roast for 20 to 30 minutes or until tender when flesh is poked with a fork.
Enjoy just like this as a delicious, quick and easy side dish that is great anytime of the year. Or, leave out the butter and honey/syrup and use the baked squash as a great base for soups, put chunks of cooked squash into baked goods to add great nutrients and a little natural sweetness and nice texture to a quick bread, yeast bread, or pancakes.

Hope this helps!

Third week of Sept.

happy sunflower from our friend's kara and ryan's garden

We will be hosting a pierogie-making event on Saturday September 19. If you plan to attend, bring a filling that is suitable to go inside of a perogie. We will make the tasty little pockets and you will take a bag or two home to freeze (or eat fresh). Details on the event were sent to your e-mail. Please make sure to let us know if you are coming as we need to shop for ingredients.

We are planning to host a concert here on our farm on Sunday October 4th. Singer/songriter/folk musician Dan Maloney (fellow CSA member) and banjoist Tim Newton will perform at 2:00.
Donations for performers will be accepted. Bring a chair and an instrument if you are so inclined to participate in a jam/folksing afterwards.

things you may see this week in your share:
tomatoes
peppers
eggplants
beans
cherry tomatoes
garlic
onions
delicata squash
cabbage
carrots
beets
chard
kale
tomatillos
patty pans/zucchini
potatoes
melons
raspberries
ginger
leeks
celeriac


a few yummy recipes!
Ginger greens tea:
cut ginger leaf stalk into about 1 inch pieces. add to a quart of water, simmer about 10 minutes. Serve with honey or brown sugar to taste.


red lentil dahl from journey's end farm camp cookbook:
1 cup dried red lentils
4 cups of water
pinch of salt
1 c diced carrots
1 celery stalk
3 T vegetable broth powder

1 t olive oil or ghee
1 T mustard seeds

1 t corriander
1 t tumeric
1 inch piece of fresh ginger root, grated
1 tsp cumin

2 T soy sauce

rinse lentils and add first group of ingredients to a stock pot.

in a skillet, heat the ghee and mustard seeds unil the seeds sputter and pop.

add third group of ingredients

add soy sauce and simmer over low for 15 minutes.
enjoy over rice or with chapatis!


thanks for checking in with us! have a splendid week!
liz and matthew

We've been falling down on our newsletter-writing responsibilities (as we are apt to do this time of year). But our niece Margot is visiting with us this eveing and she's asleep in the bedroom so its a good excuse to sit down and write.

The first piece of exciting news is that our experimental ginger crop is being harvested now and the yield is pretty decent - about what we expected. We planted it in the hoophouse, two beds, in late May after sprouting the "mother roots" for about a month and half. We will be evaluating the final yield and income earned from this crop and see if it something we want to add to our list of crops that we grow in the future. There certainly were many exclamaitions of excitement at the farmers' market on Tuesday and it sold very well. And we think it tastes pretty good too!

You may be happy to know that, based on demand from the CSA, we have also agreed to set aside our inherent greed and include raspberries and ginger in the CSA share. But be warned that these items are in short supply and you might need to get to market early as they usually sell out quickly. And we probably will not have raspberries at the Saturday market as they usually sell out the night before in Watkins Glen. And the ginger harvest will be a short one. We will have it this week and the next week and that will probably be it. This is fresh, immature ginger and should be eaten within a couple of weeks and should be stored in the refrigerator.

Right now we are trying to work some time into our schedule for post-CSA harvesting. Many beds are empty of vegetables but have weeds taking over or have vegetables that have already been picked over. These beds need to be mowed, the vegetation turned under and allowed to rot for 1-2 weeks. Then we will hope to plant either rye and vetch (a favorite winter cover crop), oats (another favorite fall cover crop that dies back over the winter) or some valuable crops for winter harvest such as carrots, leeks, greens, turnips or spinach. This is a part of farming into which we are still just getting our feet wet. We will be writing more about our efforts in preparing for a winter harvest in the coming weeks.


Cold Peanut Sauce
2/3 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup tahini (we often omit)
1/4 cup soy sauce or less
1/2 cup hot black tea (or hot water)
3 Tbs brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp chili powder or less
2 Tbs vinegar
4 cloves garlic
1 3/4" ginger root or less

Combine peanut butter, tahini, soy sauce, 1/2 of the hot tea, sugar and chili, vinegar, garlic and ginger. Blend until smooth. Add remaining tea to thin as needed.

Sound like a bizarre combination of ingredients? Maybe it is, but we love it as a topping on spaghetti. Had some for lunch and didn't want to stop eating it.

G!

We are not usually “impulse buyers.” But sometimes you have to be impulsive in order to get what you want. We try to keep an eye on the local papers for auction announcements just in case there might be something there that we could put to use on the farm. We are not seasoned auction-buyers, though. The only things we’ve bought in the past at auction are our refrigerated truck, our large hoophouse and some raingear. But when I looked through the auction section of the paper last week I spotted a listing for an Allis Chalmers G at an auction this past weekend. This is not a tractor we were planning to buy. But, then again, I’m not sure you can really plan to buy one of these. They are pretty rare and you’ve just got act on it when one comes up for sale.
Being a small organic vegetable farm, we don’t mind hand weeding. It’s somewhat inevitable. But by this time of year, things are always getting completely out of control. So many different beds are in desperate need of weeding, its tempting to just give up on all of them. So, we know that this is one part of our operation that needs some rethinking and improvement.
The Allis Chalmers G is pretty funky-looking. It is strictly a cultivating tractor and only has a 10-12 horsepower engine. They were manufactured in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, just before herbicides began to make them “obsolete.” But they have still been useful to many over the years because about half of the 30,000 made are still in use.
We ended up “winning” the G at the auction for the price of $1700 (only $200 above our the $1500 we said was our limit!). It needs some work (it came with no cultivators, nor the levers to operate them), but we hope it will help us keep out the weeds on most of our unmulched crops.
We are always leery about taking on new equipment since neither of us are mechanically inclined. But we think the pros will greatly outweigh the cons of owning this machine.

Vegetables available this week:
Pretty much the same as the last few weeks except that we have a few cantaloupes (if you're early you might get one).
Leeks next week and probably more cantaloupes.

you must take squash!

these patty pans just won't stop!


Harold and Linda hard at work!


Rainbow cherry tomatoes

A busy week at muddy fingers farm. We are still managing to keep the late blight away from our tomatoes and our late season potatoes, so that is good news! We are using several management strategies currently to keep the late blight contained to where we first spotted it. we are also having some help from several things that are just dumb luck. First the weather has been less conducive to blight. We have been having warm days and warmer nights and it has been drier. Secondly, the early and midseason potatoes are planted separately from the other vulnerable things, and they are physically separated by a windbreak.

We are also actively taking steps to contain the late blight that we do have. First of all, when we discovered the disease very early in the outbreak in our early and mid season potatoes, we pulled the infected plants and any near them, that was about four 100 foot beds. Those pulled plants are under a piece of plastic, cooking in the sun to kill any spores that were on them. Then we noticed that the rows below the first 4 had also become infected, so we took the brush hog through and mowed those plants to the ground to stop more spores from forming and spreading to other plants both here and on our neighbors land (another 8 beds, I think).

Thirdly, we are spraying copper hydroxide which is what is recommended for organic growers to prevent the late blight. This treatment if preventative only, so the leaves must be sprayed with a coat of it before the spores land on them, meaning after rain and every week or so they must be sprayed again. According to the Umass extension website, oral toxicity of copper is low (lower than aspirin or caffeine), but washing tomatoes is still recommended before consuming. We are washing our tomatoes and potatoes before we give them out. But this is a general reminder that it is always a good idea to wash all produce before you eat it. We are extremely careful about hand washing and hygiene, but unfortunately, not every person who picks up produce before you is as conscientious.

When mowing the potatoes last week, it was sad to know that we were cutting their growing season short, but we know that they were mostly sized up already and we may be able to save our tomato crop as well as the storage potatoes that have not yet sized up. So, it was a hard decision that we felt was the only way we really could go. As I was mowing the plants, two things came to me. The first was the smell of the late blight. I had read that the extremely fast decomposition of the plant material caused by late blight infection can cause an intense smell. I accidently hit the corner of the plastic covering the pulled up plants from the first few beds, and the only two words that can describe the smell are GAG REFLEX! Wow! The poor irish! As the boats left the island after the famine, the smell of rotting potatoes must have followed them miles out to see, the last memory of their homeland must certainly have been the awful odor of rotting potato plants.

I haven’t mowed anything taller than a lawn in a while and I had forgotten the way the barn swallows swoop excitedly around the tractor as it scares insects up for them to eat. The little nestlings in our barn and carport were well fed the night, and it made me smile to see the birds swoop and dive snatching up insects. I felt like part of the flock as they soared at eye level dipping down and grabbing their prey. Even if we were mowing growing plants, life does go on!

On the bad news front, this will most likely be the last week for cucumbers as the downy mildew has finished them up. Get them while you can (see the recipe below for cucumber soup!) In reference to the title, the squash are doing great, please, please take them and eat them and LOTS! in case you need inspiration, see several recipes below.

In the news that could have been worse department. We have been pulling onions this week and they managed to size up pretty well before they got downy mildew. We even pulled one that weighed in at 2 and a quarter pounds before it was peeled and cleaned!

We had a nice time at the star gazing sleep out, but who knew so many people go on vacation in august! There were lots of people who expressed interest in coming, but in the end it was a small group of us who slept out and a bigger group who enjoyed the dessert potluck. We haven’t scheduled or planned September’s event yet, but keep your eyes out, we are talking about having a perogie making day!

Things you may see this week:
squash
last of the cukes
potatoes
squash
tomatoes
cherry tomatoes
celery
lettuce
carrots
peppers
eggplants
beets
squash
edamame
basil
parsley
chard
kale
beans
cabbage
dill
lettuce mix
garlic
onions
squash


try this delicious heirloom tomato salad recipe from the Edible Finger Lakes magazine!
3 lbs heirloom tomatoes, cut into wedges
1 garlic clove grated (or minced and mashed with salt)
3 T extra virgin olive oil
1 T red wine vinegar
1/2 cup basil leaves, torn
2 stems of oregano leaves
1/2 tsp coarse salt, more to taste
1/4 tsp. fresh ground pepper

put tomato wedges in a bowl and whisk together the other ingredients, then toss it over the tomatoes. this recipe is great tossed with feta or goat cheese!

"Quick Zucchini julienne" from "more house specialties"
heat 2 T olive oil in a large skillet
saute one medium onion, thinly sliced
add 1 lb (4 cups) of matchstick sized zucchini until lightly browned and crisply done
stir in 1 T sesame seds and 1 T soy sauce, add salt and pepper if desired.


Zucchini-potato pancakes:
2 medium zucchini, grated (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 large potato peeled and shredded (about 1 1/4 cups)
1 small onion, grated
2 T. cornmeal
2 T flour
3/4 t salt
1 egg, lightly beaten
oil for frying

sourcream if desired for serving.

Drain zucchini, pressing out as much liquid as possible, mix with potato and onion. stir in cornmeal, flour, and salt and egg until well mixed.

lightly grease griddle or skillet. cook using 2 T for each pancake, pressing down to flatten, 3-4 minutes per side, until lightly browned. Serve with sour cream.


this recipe from our friends, kara and ryan, sounds so good, can't wait to try it!

BEET CHIPS
MMMMmmm... even non-beet-lovers enjoy this snack.

4 beets, scrubbed -- do not peel
1 Tbsp. olive oil
sea salt to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Using the slicing blade of your food processor, a mandoline or a sharp knife, slice beets as thinly as possible. Toss with olive oil and salt. Spread evenly on a cookie sheet. Roast 30 minutes to 1 hour, turning halfway through, until crisp. Check often to make sure they don't burn. Let cool and enjoy!

on the same note, try roasted green beans! large beans are especially good for this recipe!
toss beans with olive oil. bake at 450 for 20-22 minutes, turning after 10. salt the beans and serve, they are like green bean french fries, really great!


last chance for this recipe, i guess:
cucummber soup:
place 2 peeled cucumbers, one shallot(or small onion), 1 tsp dill, and 1 tsp. parsley in the food processor and puree. Add 1/4 cup yogurt and 1-3 tsp. cider vinegar. season with salt and pepper to taste.


hope the week is super! liz and matthew

2nd week of August

What a day!
Powerful thunderstorms succeeded a sweltering, thick-aired morning. (So this is what summer feels like?)
A couple hours of heavy rain and thunder and lightning surrounding us sent us inside for a couple of damp breaks from harvesting. At least no hail!

Liz mowed the rest of our late blight infected potatoes today. Unfortunately that was this morning right before the thunderstorms struck. We hope the infection doesn't wash down into the soil to infect the tubers.
The infection is evident by the brown splotches on the potato leaves in the pictures. As you can see its not too bad, yet. Maybe we have a less virulent strain.





this is the big picture of that spot.



a little friend got washed out in the storms, seen here taking a break with liz.




You are all invited to join us this Saturday night for a campout to watch the Perseid meteors. We'll have a campfire and some treats to eat and breakfast in the morning (homemade granola and blue berries). Feel free to sleep out overnight or just join us for a few hours Saturday night. We'll be starting at 8 Pm with a dessert potluck, bring your favorite and try some one else's favorite while you are at it! Bring a tent or don't last year just about everyone slept out without the tent as the stars are so spectacular that way. The moon will be quite dark, so it should be a great night! Come on out!



Vegetables you're likely to see this week:
tomatoes
eggplant
peppers
squash
zucchini
celery
*edamame soybeans
lettuce
potatoes
onions
cucumbers
herbs
garlic
beans
kale
chard
carrots
tomatillos

Edamame Soybeans are served in Japan and China both as a vegetable in meals and as a snack food. Edamame soybeans are easy to prepare. Just remove them from the stems and place in salted, boiling water for about ten minutes. They are delicious and nutty as well as being extremely nutritious, with all of the much celebrated health benefits of soy beans. Edamame is traditionally drained and salted with coarse salt then removed from the pods as they are enjoyed at the table or bar, just slip them out of their shells and pop them in your mouth. (When boiled, the beans easily slip out their shells.) To skip adding the salt, you can boil them in salted water instead or just forgo the salt all together.


grilled tomatillo salsa
you need: fresh tomatillos
garlic cloves, unpeeled 1/2 cup fresh cilantro
onion, coarsely chopped lemon or lime juice
Hot Pepper 2 teaspoons coarse salt

Preheat broiler.
Broil chiles, garlic, and tomatillos on rack of a broiler pan 1 to 2 inches from heat, turning once, until tomatillos are softened and slightly charred, about 7 minutes. Peel garlic and tomatillos pull off tops of chiles. Purée all ingredients in a blender. • Salsa can be made 1 day ahead and chilled, covered. Makes about 3 cups.

hope to see you this weekend, have a great week!
matthew (and liz)