(CSA Newsletter: Week 6)
Meet this week’s vegetables:
This week was up and down here at the farm. Perhaps most notably, the weather fluctuated dramatically from gorgeous calm sunny to blustery, cold and wet within just a few hours.
Also, as we prepare to begin the farming season in earnest, we’re finding ourselves with the usual series of successes and ‘uh ohs.’ A few of the notable successes were: making good progress on some building projects and using our new tine weeder cultivator implement for the first time.
The tine weeder was constructed by Market Farm in Pennsylvania, and we just finally received it last week. Of course, it fit almost perfectly in the mounting area below our G cultivating tractor (one of the minor uh-ohs that was quickly fixed with a welder friend’s help). It technically fit, but the tines got in the way of the tractor’s clutch and brakes when in the up position — oops! But the initial misfit wasn’t enough to stop Casey from eagerly trying it out on our over-wintered crops. It’s awesome!!!!!!!!!!!! Casey was able to ‘blind’ cultivate (running over the whole bed without aiming) the garlic, over-wintered onions, and chard without harming any of the existing plants — but the weeds popped out beautifully! We can’t wait to see how we can more effectively weed many of our plantings this summer!
Another of the inevitable farm season start uh ohs: trying to start the big tractor and — oops — it wouldn’t start. We were hoping to get some quick ground prep done at the end of last week’s dry spell but couldn’t after all because of this problem. We’re not sure at this moment whether the tractor won’t start because the battery just needs to be jumped or something else (we have a perennial problem with the starter), because of course the front loader is in place and in the way of opening the hood to access the battery. Oops, again!
Oh well. At this point, these sort of minor bumps in the road are completely expected, and no longer represent true crises. (At one point, they would have felt like major set-backs.) We’re grateful for the perspective of several years so that we can simply sigh and figure out how to fix the problem. Plus, we know that no matter how wet it is today, there will be another dry spell.
Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
Mindful Plate: A great food blog!
I wanted to share with you all a great new food blog that focuses on conscientious (and delicious!) cooking: www.mindfulplate.com. The co-authors are Sheila Jaillet, another local CSA farmer, and Lisa Betancourt, a member of our CSA.
There are a lot of great food blogs, so — besides being locally produced — what makes Mindful Plate note-worthy? Well, for starters the emphasis on seasonal and regional foods. The entries are “tagged” with relevant subjects for easy searching and reference, including the season the food might be available. So, if it’s October, you can click “Autumn” in the sidebar and find a whole list of recipes and preparations that might be perfect for your dinner.
But, what’s especially great for other Oakhill CSA members is Lisa’s weekly meal planning list and CSA-share based recipes. Casey and I are not meal planners — even big important events tend to be planned just a day or hours in advance. Most meals are thrown together when it’s time to cook, based on what we have available.
This method of cooking works well for us, although our lack of pre-planning probably leads to slightly reduced creativity in our range of meals. In our rush to prepare meals, we tend to rely on a few key preparation methods and then simply vary the specific ingredients. Our meals are always yummy, but not everyone is probably as content as we are with eating a simple meal of roasted potatoes and fried cabbage twice or more times every week.
So, for those people who like trying new recipes and planning ahead, Lisa’s tips on cooking will be more relevant than mine. As she says in the blog’s first post: “I’m not an off-the-cuff meal preparing kind of cook. I am religious about making a weekly meal plan, based, first, on what we are receiving in our weekly CSA share, then taking into consideration the meat we have in our freezer and items we have in the pantry and fridge.”
Since Lisa has been posting the results of her meal planning soon after the CSA pick-up each week, she’s generously provided all of us with a great list of meal ideas for each week’s share!!!!! If you’d like more ideas for your week’s vegetables than we’ve provided on the newsletter, check out Mindful Plate for more real life suggestions. An example meal from Lisa’s list for last week’s share: baked beans, sautéed cabbage, and braised salsify and sunchokes. Yummy! (Lisa also provided the idea for this week’s turnip salad suggestion.)
Even though they’re not directly tied to Oakhill veggies, Sheila’s contributions are also based on what’s seasonal here in Oregon. Often our two farms are harvesting the same things each week, so I’m sure you’ll find many great ideas in her posts too. Happy reading!
