Working on the Farm

CSA haul #8

Finally! We got a call from Marie asking us to come out to work on the farm. We went out early Friday morning. The temperature was perfect, a breeze was blowing, and the sun was shining down on us. With the help of one of our other CSA members, the four of us pulled up row covers and drip tape and gleaned what we could from the rows of carrots and radishes that didn't really make it because of the crazy ice storms we had. Once we had prepared the rows, a tractor tilled them up for us, so now they're ready for planting!

Marie told of us some of her plans for what's to come and we couldn't be more excited. Plus, even though there isn't enough for shares yet, those of us that were working got to take home an armful of goodies.


Pictured above (top, anticlockwise): a variety of carrots, turnips, two red radishes, a diakon radish, and some mustard greens.

The turnips, daikon, and some of the carrots are destined to become fish stew this week. The rest of the carrots, radishes, and some greens will be showing up in salads. The rest of the greens will be sauteed and eaten with salmon and asparagus tonight. We love our CSA and are so excited to get a little taste of what's to come this season!

Coming Soon...

Any day now, Guy and I expect to hear from our favorite farmer, Marie, calling us back to work on the farm. Maybe even as soon as next weekend!

To be frank, Guy and I chose to do the work share because it would be extremely difficult for us to afford 400$ three times a year for farm-fresh food. Our budget is really tight even just paying half that. We figured helping out on the farm would also allow us to assess our ability as gardeners and learn a lot about when and what to plant each season, preparing us for the the future when we can have a little land of our own. We also thought it would be kind of fun.

But I never expected to enjoy it as much as I do. I can hardly wait to get my hands back in that soil, pulling weeds or planting seeds.

CSA Haul #7: End of the Fall Season

This weekend at the farm was even more fun than usual. Guy helped Marie run rows of drop tape while I harvested lettuce, Pak Choy, and Mizuna greens. Then we both harvested chard. Marie stayed in the field working, while one of the other girls and I went to the front of the farm to start sorting out the food for this week's share and help the other CSA members get their haul.

When Marie came up to join us, she even made us cocoa and brought us cookies! This was a great treat, especially since the temperature dropped 10 or 15 degrees from the time we got there.

Here's what we got in our last share of this season:

From top left, anticlockwise: red and green mustard greens, green tomatoes and red tomatoes, Pak Choy, some kind of squash (Calabash, maybe, I don't know but now we have two of them), baby beets, half gallon of milk, dozen eggs, one carrot, 3 turnips, 1 daikon radish, 2 turban squash, bay leaves, chard leaves, and red and green leaf lettuce. :whew: We paid extra for the milk and eggs, which has been well worth it. (We get a better price from the farmer's because we're in the CSA.)

Folks, that's the end of our first season. Overall, we are both really pleased. Guy likes the structure it brings to our meal planning. If we get a basket a food that needs to get planned into meals for the week, we don't just play it by ear. Now we generally know what we're having for dinner every evening. I like that I am eating foods I wouldn't normally buy, like turnips, beets, and sweet potato leaves. Plus, we both enjoy working on the farm with Marie.

CSA Haul #6

This week our CSA was supposed to be fairly meager because of recent freezes. In fact, we expect that there will be only two more hauls before the winter break. Our next 200$ payment is also due this month. But none of that was a worry for Guy and I as we were excited to get our hands dirty on the farm again after two weeks missed.

We spent our whole two hours pulling up the weeds (:shakes fist at bermuda grass:) and such from rows of old tomato plants, getting them ready to plant snow peas. The time went by very fast; we didn't even have time for grasshopper catching! (Of course we made time before we left so we could feed the hens. It's one of our favorite parts of visiting the farm each week.)

When we were leaving, Marie told us to just harvest what we wanted and to grab a few things from the farm house that she had picked earlier. From the top left anticlockwise, a few leaves of Pak Choy, summer and winter squash (another pumpkin, 4 patty pans, and some unidentified dark green squash), red and green mustard greens, red and green mizuna, red lettuce, green tomatoes and Habaneros.

Instead of being a meager haul, this was our biggest box yet!

We joined a CSA!

Joining Eden's Organic CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) was a big step for us. We love the local food movement, seasonal eating, and the ideas behind CSA, but we were unsure we could afford it.

After going out to Marie's farm and getting to know her and her land better, we knew we had to get involved. And we have been since August.

We paid our 200$ (a full share for 4 people is 400$ or 200$ with workshare; we chose the latter) and started coming out each Friday or Saturday morning to work.

We moved compost piles, weeded, chased and squashed grasshoppers and caterpillars, planted

seedlings, and harvested whatever was ready. At the end of September, we got a surprise for all our hard work: our first little taste of what was to come.

There wasn't enough for shares yet, but here was our first taste of the farm.

A Cucuzza squash, a few fingerling eggplants, little spicy purple peppers, and a purple bell.

Neither of us had ever heard of Cucuzzas. It was our first CSA adventure and we loved it. We ate it raw in salads (like cucumber), cooked it into pasta sauce (like zucchini), and roasted it (like eggplant). This first taste of the farm became the better portion of two meals that week. Not really what we'd been hoping for with the CSA, but for a sneak peek, we were pleased nonetheless.

A few weeks later, almost 3 months since we paid and 6 weeks after we started working there, we received our first official CSA share.

It wasn't much bigger than our sneak peek. But the food was delicious and we told ourselves to be patient. This was the first week that the harvest was big enough to split between the 30 families that participate.

We received another Cucuzza squash, which got baked with tomatoes, Parmesan cheese, and bread crumbs. We had tomatoes and purple bell peppers for salads and pico de gallo. We roasted the Habanero peppers and added them to the pico. The Mizuna greens were braised and eaten with a slice of ham. We also got a bag of dried rosemary. Yum!

The next Saturday our share was even bigger. Our patience was paying off!

Our haul included green beans, Habaneros, Mizuna greens, sweet potato blossoms, fresh rosemary, fresh oregano, two Cucuzza squash, and four bags of sweet potato vine and leaves.

The green beans were a real treat. There were enough for two people for two meals.

We dried our herbs for future use. We ate all of the beans, greens, and peppers, but only one of the squash and only about half of the sweet potato vines/leaves. We ate our extra squash the following week and blanched and froze the extra sweet potato leaves. We did end up trashing some of the vines.

It was a good haul with a lot of food, but we found that the bulk of it (the sweet potato vines/leaves) were interesting but not our normal fare. We enjoyed experimenting with different ways of cooking them, but after eating them in some capacity every day for a week, neither of us wanted to see them in our next load of veg.