Late winter

The other morning it was 3 degrees when we awoke and the trees were covered with frost. Liz hurried outside to snap a few photos before the sun melted it all.
We have extended our greenhouse by 12 ft. Here we are moving the endwall with help from friends.

Here we are dragging our new hoophouse out the new field piece by piece so its all ready to be put together.


All of last year's CSA members should have received our winter letter and CSA membership form in the mail yesterday or today - if not let us know. If you plan to rejoin this year, please return the membership form with check ASAP to ensure we have room for you. We have a long list of people interested in signing up for the first time year. We like to give you a head start so we plan to send CSA information out to them in 2 weeks. Membership is first-come basis, though.

Our first seedlings have germinated! Onions and tomatoes were the first to pop up. We also have eggplants and leeks planted. I'm sure when its 110 degrees in the hoophouse and we are in there picking tomatoes we'll think back to now when they are so small and we have to do so much to protect them from the weather outside.

A minor case of "What did we just do?!"

Your vegetables for 2011 - in a different form.
Instrument that measures amount of shade throughout the year around a potential solar panel site.
The new hoophouse is here - though not installed!


We still can't believe we've done it considering how expensive its going to be - but we signed the contract to have solar panels installed here at the farm. So starting this Spring, Muddy Fingers Farm will have 100% solar electricity. Yes, we might be crazy, but at least we're committed to it. We signed for Halco to do the installation and they are helping us with writing the state and federal grants (actually they're pretty much doing it for us).
When will it be economically feasible for more people who aren't as crazy as us to install renewable energy such as this? Never? According to the prediction we were presented, our system will pay for itself in less than twenty years. This is taking into account inflation and the increasing cost of electricity. So I guess as the cost of electricity does increase in the next couple decades this may become a more attractive option. And if the cost of the panels could come down over time while their effeciency increases (our top of the line panels are only about 18-19% efficient) this could help, too.
Any comments?

What do we do in the winter?

winter market stand

evening song farm

The Rutabega Curl

"So what do you do in the winter?"
We get this question once in awhile from customers and people we meet. And I admit it has started to get on my nerves. They are not trying to be rude, but I get the feeling that the asker is thinking "what could there possibly be to do on a vegetable farm in the winter?" I do hope somewhere in the near future we won't have so much to do on the farm in the winter. It would be nice to do some volunteering and be a little more active in our community. But this winter so far has been a bit overwhelming and not too restful. I guess its better than being bored though!

Here's an update on some of the things we've been working on this winter:
Spending money!!! Beyond the normal ordering of seeds, organic fertilizer and yearly supplies we are also ready to purchase a new tractor-mounted rototiller and cultivation equipment.
The really big news (and big expense) though is that we are planning to sign a contract soon to have solar panels installed for the farm (and home)! When installed, the panels will produce about 100% of our yearly usage, though they will be hooked to the grid. We will post more info about these as progress is made. This is a HUGE investment for us. It is made possible partly by the NYSERDA grant and state and federal tax credits, but mostly because we were fortunate to receive an inheritance from our family.

We will be expanding our greenhouse by 12 feet so we will be able grow more seedlings. And our new hoophouse will be arriving Monday. We need to get that up as soon as possible so it will be ready for the tomatoes and cucumbers we plan to plant in there later this spring.

And we are putting our heads together to figure how to improve the Grove Park Farmers' Market in Elmira. We are still attending the winter market in Ithaca on Saturdays 11-2 at the Women's Community Building on Seneca St. See photo above.

And, oh yes, we did take a vacation from the farm to visit friends and family. During this trip we visited a couple good friends who are just starting to farm on their own. They bought a farm in Vermont last year and this will be their first year growing there. It was very exciting to visit and see and hear about all the progress they've made in such a short period of time. The two snowy photos above are from their farm.

As always we've been analyzing our growing practices and figuring out how to improve our systems. And we've been crunching the numbers on all the records we kept last year, we even wrote up our findings and sent them to a local farming publication, so they may go out to be of use to other farmers, and we're also figuring out what we want to do to get ready for this year. This means a lot of reading and "farm meetings". To this end we plan to attend an upcoming farming conference. We might come back with a dozen more items to add to our "to do" list. Ah well...
hope you are faring well this winter, matthew and liz

Winter Harvest

Ice lickers
Sprout mound
Hairy leeks
Isn't this fun?!
Visual oxymoron

HI ALL,

Life here at Muddy Fingers Farm has slowed since our last newsletter post, but our to-do list is still full!

Here's a few of the things we've been working on.

Finishing the outdoor harvest. Most of the crops we are harvesting this time of year are inside the hoophouses, but there are a few that that have been outside braving the cold. These include salad turnips (at least we put some plastic down on top of them to afford them some protection), kale (can be harvested frozen stiff!) and leeks and Brussels sprouts (both of which we finished harvesting today and put in our cooler). Though calling it a "cooler" this time of year is not accurate. We've been running the air conditioner fan and turning on a small heater inside when necessary to keep the produce from freezing!

There are some crops we planted late in the season (onions, leek, carrots, mache) that we have covered by low-tunnels that we hope will survive the winter in order that we can get an extra-early harvest from them next spring!

And we are still at the market in Ithaca! If anyone would like to brave the cold, come on to Ithaca's outdoor market the next two Saturdays from 10:00-3:00. On the 18th of Dec. the market will hold the annual Rutabega Curl.

What, you may ask, do we have available at our stand? Brussels sprouts, kale, salad turnips, leeks, onions, garlic, celeriac, carrots, beets, parsnips, lettuce mix and heads and spicy greens mix.

We have also already started planning our next CSA season. We've been analyzing our crops from the records we kept this year. We will determine which are most profitable and which are least profitable so we can know which ones we need to improve upon our efficiencies in growing or even stop growing.

We learned last year that the CSA is an efficient way for us to market our vegetables - more efficient than at the farmers' market. Also this year our sales were down at our markets (except in Watkins Glen!). For these reasons (and for our sanity) we have decided to drop yet another market for next year. We are fairly certain this will be the Ithaca market on Tuesday. We plan to make up for this loss of income by increasing the shares in the CSA again next year up to around 90 shares.

We also realized the shares at the end of the CSA season (September and October) could have and should have been larger this year. There was lots of vegetables available, but we had priced our share for the fall to be smaller. Therefore we have decided to increase the cost of a share to reflect an increase in the size of a share for the months of September and October. We plan for the cost of a basic share to be $400 next year. And the cost of the larger share will be $520. We will still be providing the same 10-15% discount, only with more produce.

Offering low-income shares is something we have wanted to do for several years now, but we have never felt that it was something we were able to take on. But next year we are planning to raise funds for at least a few families to be able to join the CSA at no or reduced cost. More details about this later as we work them out.

We've also had compost to spread, eight months of messy farm to clean up and reorganize and/or repair.

And we've been loving this early blast of arctic air. We both love winter weather (though one of us enjoys working outside in it a little more). Soon we'll be able to go ice skating and hopefully cross country skiing, too.

week 21

thanks to all who came and helped us to plant garlic, we have never gotten so much planted on the same day before! julie, garrett, evie and dorothy deserve a medal for most garlic plantings under their belt!, thanks and different color medals to jane, david, mary and our mini crop mob of two, too! Today we spent some time spreading mulch to keep it from being heaved out of the ground by frost over the winter. Anytime it is above freezing this winter, the garlic will grow roots, anytime it is above 40, the leaves will grow, generally they don't poke through the mulch until next spring, about the same time as the daffodils come up~! nice to see food growing at that time of year!

the leaves have been just lovely at the farm lately and all around, too. we have a huge list of chores for the fall and are eagerly awaiting getting them started, october is when going to four markets a week gets in the way, there are just not as many hours in the day as there were a few weeks ago and lots of what we have on the docket takes two.

the next two weeks will involve some harvesting, going to markets and seeing all of your lovely faces another one or two times (depending which day you pick up and when you are reading this), mulching the rest of the garlic, hopefully planting two more beds (too wet to till before), moving our caterpillar tunnel (should have been done a week or so ago, but we are tired by this time of year, what can we say?), reviewing the season and starting to run our numbers on what crops are profitable and which are not.

we have done some talking already about next year and are thinking it would be nice to start a low income share fund of some kind. we have long been bothered that healthy food is considered "too elite" for low income people and wonder if we all chipped in $10-20 dollars, how many people could we feed? do you think you could spare a bill or two next year when you buy your share? more about that over the winter, i'm sure.


lots of warm filling recipes this week!

Garlicky Samosas from Jane:
Samosa dough:
2 cups flour
2 T butter
2 T yogurt/butter milk
pinch of salt
1/2 cup water

Filling:
1 carnival squash baked until very soft
3 cloves garlic (or less, this is really garlicky! baked with the squash)
1 can giany white beans

bake squash and garlic if you haven't done it already. combine it with the beans and puree.

divide dough into 6 balls and roll out into circles. spoon squash mixture into dough and fold over to form a pocket (like perogies). bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown.

red lentil soup: this soup and the following bread are our always good meal that we make in the winter for guests, if you get a dinner invite, this is almost surely what will be on the menu, its always good!)

2 cups of red lentils
4 cups of cold water
1 T salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup butter
2 tomatoes
1 large onion
1 T dill
2 cloves garlic
2 bay leaves

you can saute the onions and garlic first, or not, i usually just throw it all in the pot and let it simmer, i often replace the water and tomatoes with a quart of home-canned tomatoes.

Cheese-herb bread

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried dill
1/4 tsp. dried marjoram (i usually omit, since i don't "stock" this)
1/4 tsp. dried thyme
2 eggs
2 T honey
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup oil
1 1/4 cup grated cheddar cheese (or more!)

mix dry ingredients, mix moist ingredients then mix them together until blended add cheese and mix thouroughly. bake in greased 9"x5" pan at 350 for 50 minutes.


this recipe will be good only if you still have ginger left:
we've been enjoying healthy smoothies made with this customer recipe:
concord grapes (seeds included)
fresh ginger
maple syrup
cinnamon

blend together, sit on the porch and enjoy as you spit all those seeds, very tasty!


apple ginger cobbler:
chunk up one or two apples per person
cut ginger finely to taste

top with a simple crumb topping:
local flour
walnut oil or butter
maple syrup (or sugar)
cinnamon (opt)
bake at 350 for 35 minutes or until done, great dessert!

i can't believe i haven't put this recipe up here yet!

Baked Kale Chips!
from smitten kitchen.com

1 bunch (about 6 ounces) kale (I used Lacinato or “Dinosaur” Kale but I understand that the curlier stuff works, too, possibly even better)
1 tablespoon olive oil
Sea salt, to taste

Preheat oven to 300°F. Rinse and dry the kale, then remove the stems and tough center ribs. Cut into large pieces, toss with olive oil in a bowl then sprinkle with salt. Arrange leaves in a single layer on a large baking sheet (I needed two because mine are tiny; I also lined mine with parchment for easy clean-up but there’s no reason that you must). Bake for 20 minutes, or until crisp. Place baking sheet on a rack to cool.

these are fantastic! Really, try them!

have a stupendous and delicious week!
liz and matthew

Garlic Planting Is Still On

We have been getting worried we would not be able to till the soil to prepare the beds for garlic planting this weekend (or anytime before there's a foot of snow on the ground for that matter). With all the rain we've been receiving and more in the forecast for Thursday and Friday we knew if we were going to get ready for the garlic it had to be today before the rain moves in. So we rushed through our harvesting today and threw compost on the beds and tilled them. They were a little too wet in some spots, but I figured it was probably now or never (well, maybe next spring).
So, anyway, the beds are prepared and garlic planting is still on for Saturday 2pm with dinner to follow. Please RSVP if you can. Its gonna be muddy and chilly but we hope you'll still be up for it!

week 20

hello all, hope the week is great for you! we had a great turnout and a great time at our perogie making day! Thanks to all who made the trip for the event, the fillings were varied but all were delecious! I hope to post at least one of them in the upcoming days.


don't forget there is one last CSA event coming up! we are planning to plant garlic on saturday oct 16th at 2 pm, (though we may have to reschedule as our soil is quite wet right now and we may not be able to work it with out damaging it before saturday, we will keep you posted via email if the event is to be rescheduled.)

also upcoming the local foods fest, it is targeted at schuyler, chemung, and steuben county residents, this is where you can learn where to get local meat, eggs, cheese and more! friday oct 22 5-8 at the corning museum of glass, see last weeks post for more details. or call 607-664-2300 for more info.

and the last announcement, on thursday october 21st, we will be packing up from market 15 minutes early or so, an email reminder will be sent, but please be aware, we will be leaving market a tad early on thursday the 21st to attend a meeting.




the leaves are just lovely this fall! We're glad that many people got to take a tour of the farm in all of its fall glory, and were really impressed at how eagle eyed you all are! People had great questions and obervations when they got back to the kitchen, several people noticed what a pretty color the hazelnut bushes we planted this spring are turning, the blueberries are also very nice right now!




try this great chard recipe from trisha via mary martin, simple and easy!
wash chard and slice the stems,
cook five minutes in lightly salted water
add leaves and cook until wilted,
pour off water, pour swiss chard into oven proof casserol
and sliced onion, garlic, and soy sauce, top with parmesan cheese.
bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

have a super week!
liz and matthew