Seeds! Our collection is growing … we are still waiting for orders from many companies! The Butternut squash seeds in the bag at the top of the photo have been saved here in our very own kitchen from the best of last year’s squashes! We love saving seed!
Monday this week marked a very important moment in the season: the sowing of the first flats in the greenhouse!
First, Casey reassembled our heated tables in the hot house. We had dissembled them last fall with the idea of upgrading but found that simply tinkering and putting everything back together fresh and clean was more than adequate to keep the same set-up going! I love it when time and attention is sufficient to save the farm money.
For the first time ever, we’ve chosen to buy a pre-made soil mix. Up until this year, we’ve always favored mixing our own, partly because that’s how we learned to do it back at the farm we trained on. I think we also thought it would save us money and give us more control. But over the years, we’ve had inconsistent results with our germination, and it’s a lot of work to mix so much heavy stuff each time we go to sow!
So, this year Casey carefully opened the bag of beautiful soil mix and attentively watered it with warm water and then enjoyed a day of sowing seeds in the greenhouse while listening to chamber choir music. These early days of the farming season can be some of the most relaxing and exciting. The season is still all glorious potential — the freshly arrived seed packets are full and organized (and clean!), and we can do these simple tasks while whatever weather passes over the farm outside. Seeing those first emerging seed leaves is so exciting too — the season begins with those very tiny little green things in our hot house, and grows and grows and grows! Seeds! They are so amazing!
I’m sure you’re wondering what Casey decided to sow first! These earliest sowings represent both some of our earliest crops (things we want to get in the ground quickly, like salad turnips and lettuces) and some of our longer term crops (like leeks!). Other items included fava beans, chard, celery root, mustards, kale, collards, summer squash and one flat of tomato seeds (we’re aiming to have some very early squash and tomatoes this year!).
This weekend we also scheduled our meat bird chick orders. We’ve decided to keep this part of our operation relatively small this year, because our experience with poultry is that it’s very energy intensive (both in terms of handling and feed). But, um, these chickens we raise are the most amazing meat, so we’ll have three batches of 100 birds each. We’re taking orders for meat chickens now! Since there will be so few available, we recommend placing an order soon to reserve your birds. You can find more info about the chickens here and place an order here.
Finally, in other winter-y routine news, early next week our farm family is heading to the mountains for our annual farmer retreat at Breitenbush Hot Springs. This will be our ninth time attending — truly a tradition for us! We are so looking forward to catching up with all far-flung farmer friends and getting even further inspired for the coming season! I’m sure I’ll have lots to share about that event in next week’s newsletter (CSA operations will go on as normal! I will be out of email contact for three days, but there will be plenty of folks here on the farm holding down the fort and keeping things thriving).
Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
P.S. Did you know that I very carefully edit our list of veggies and other items each week? I try to keep it up-to-date with current info and provide a few extra cooking suggestions each time. So I encourage you to skim these lower sections each week, even if on a surface level it looks very similar to the week before!!!!
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Meet this week’s vegetables: Remember to check our recent newsletters for more servings suggestions and cooking ideas! Imagine that some of these winter vegetables are starting to become more familiar to you! We encourage you to keep trying new things!
- Field greens — Another great mix of hardy winter greens that would be suitable for a finely chopped dressed salad or for cooking with!
- Celery leaf
- Brussels sprouts
- Kohlrabi
- Winter squash
- Parsnips — Parsnips have become so familiar to Casey and me over the years that sometime I forget how maligned this vegetable is in the wider culture! So maligned that I actually wrote a bit of a “love letter” to parsnips when I was in graduate school (it was an essay called “How To Love A Parsnip,” and I offered five ways). The parsnip has the distinction of being quite a unique vegetable. While it is in the same family as carrots (umbels), it is not terribly closely related and it has no other kindred spirits. The parsnip stands alone! Other interesting things about the parsnip from a botanical standpoint — it has incredibly unique looking seeds. They resemble little flat disks that are surprisingly large and maddeningly hard to germinate (we’ve figured out the tricks finally, but it’s not a simple feat!). Also, the parsnip plant itself contains a chemical called furanocoumarin, which can cause “phytophotodermatitis” — a fancy name for blisters on the skin! Casey and I learned this the hard way back when we were first farming. The weekend, after a good weeding session in the parsnips on a hot summer day, we found ourselves with painful blisters all over our hands! The chemical in the foliage essentially makes affected skin super sensitive to the sun, so the blisters require exposure to sun — we had the perfect storm! Anyhow, now we know to wear long sleeves and gloves when working in the parsnips in the summer. But you, dear eaters, will not be weeding parsnips this week. You will simply be eating them. And, here are some tips. First of all, parsnips are sweet. Apparently this is news to some folks, so I’m telling you that now. They are very sweet. Hands down, our favorite way to eat parsnips is to roast them (yes, we roast a lot of our veggies!). I peel them first and then chop into bite-sized pieces and roast with liberal amounts of butter. I stir them a few times to make sure the butter evenly coats the parsnips and to keep them from getting too dark and crispy on one side. These are a kid favorite. I’m sure there are other good ways to eat them to, but honestly we are so pleased with this simple preparation that we don’t experiment too much anymore! But they are nice in soups too!
- Carrots
- Beets
- Potatoes
- Garlic
- Apples
And this week’s extra goodies from the farm: Remember to bring containers when appropriate! We will have some jars for sale for kimchi and such at pick-up, but we know you’ve got loads of empty jars in your pantry already!
- Corn flour — $5 lb
- Oat flour — $5 lb
- Walnuts — $5 lb
- Kohlrabi “kimchi” — $5 pint; $3 half pint ~ Casey was pondering making a different kind of fermented food for this week, but everyone was still raving about this particular recipe, so kohlrabi kimchi gets at least one more week! We may just need to procure another crock so that we can expand our options (Casey is really hankering to try making fermented beets!).
- #2 Apples — 4lb bag for $6
- Eggs — $6 dozen ~ Volume is up again this week! Hoorah for lengthening days!
- Ground beef — 1 lb packages; $7 ea.
- Pork, roasts & chops — Prices vary ~ Check with Katie at pick-up to see what we have in the freezer and the prices! We only had one small hog slaughtered last week, and the pork was popular, so don’t dilly dally in trying it out! We’ll get more slaughtered soon too!
- Lamb roasts — We still have many different cuts available, at varying prices (ranging from $5 – 14 lb). Ask Katie at pick-up to walk you through what’s in the freezer!
- Beef organs — $6/lb for beef liver and heart
- Lamb organs — $8/lb ~ These were popular last week! We may have a few kidneys left, but I’m pretty sure all the packages of liver and heart were sold (I will check though).
