Sweeping our floor

On this weekend's long "putting up" list: drying tomatoes and peppers. Our kitchen stays busy most of the time this season.

Ours is a dirty house. Sweep as many times as I may, it’s never enough. Not with two doors that lead directly to the outside, where an entire farm rises up, full of adventure, food and dirt. Toddler and preschooler skip outside for a quick run around and come back in with toys covered in sand or branches for our “nature table” or bits of half-chewed fennel tops. And then the farmer himself comes home, and he’s covered in dirt too. Clods fall off his shoes at the door, and his dusty pants sprinkle a bit every where. Oh, and has anyone seen young children eat? Too bad we don’t have a dog to eat all those bits dropped on the floors at mealtime.

A few times in my life, I’ve found this constant flow of dirt and such into our house to be a source of frustration. But, of course, this is how it is on a farm. One of our favorite books on the subject of farming (and the inspiration for our own Full Diet CSA) is aptly titled The Dirty Life. Casey and I routinely find ourselves sharing the observation of someone new we’ve met, “He was so clean!” Because, nothing in our life is ever perfectly clean. If a clean person steps into our house, be warned!

I had to laugh today as I was sweeping our floor, because I realized how much the contents of the dustpan tell about our family. Not just that it’s dirty here, but also what we are up to this season. Our dustpan is very seasonal. How appropriate.

Here’s what I found today (in addition to the usual dirt, dirt, and more dirt): I found kernels of dried corn, hazelnut shells, and pepper seeds. Lots and lots of pepper seeds. It’s like a little September story, all piled up in a dirty heap.

The corn is from our several acre field of dry corn, which we are growing for both animal and human consumption this winter. The ears are almost ready to pick, but Casey’s been bringing home some to trial along the way. He dries them in our food dehydrator and then he and Rusty shell them with a “hand corn sheller” (like this one), which is effective but also unpredictable. Kernels tend to fly everywhere, landing in all corners of our house (especially when said sheller is wielded by a four year-old).

The hazelnut shells are from our very first hazelnut harvest here on the farm! We planted two and a half acres of hazelnut trees back in 2012, and they’ve been slowly getting established. This is the first year they’ve produced really any fruit, and it’s still a very minor amount on a farm scale. But our little family went out a few weekends ago and hunted for hazelnuts at the base of the trees. We found a handful under each one, and after going through two rows, we had a little bag full. The kids have been cracking these at snack time, to eat with their apples. Do I need to point out that kids cracking their own nuts is hardly a tidy, precise activity? (If you’re wondering how our kids manage to crack their own nuts, the secret is this truly awesome nutcracker.)

Finally, all those pepper seeds? They seem to fall so easily off the counter when we are cooking. Somehow, they just fall, fall, fall so that our kitchen floor looks like it has some kind of pepper seed confetti all over. But this weekend in particular, we processed extra peppers — not just to eat but also to dry (yum!). And, it was time to save seed from our peppers too — peppers being one of many crops that we like to save our own seed from year to year.

I imagine that in a few weeks, I will find different things here, telling a little condensed version of the Big Story Outside. Perhaps a bit more mud. Pumpkin seeds from carving. Eventually even some conifer needles!

Fall is upon us, and how it seems already to be flying by. This season is so sweet — so full of delicious gifts and comfortable, refreshing days of breezy weather.

We hope that you too are finding little pieces of joy tucked into surprising places in your houses this season! (For that’s one way to look at sweeping!) Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

P.S. Welcome back to all our newest members! We hope your first week of Oakhill CSA eating was super awesome!

~ ~ ~

Payment reminder! I want to remind our Vegetable CSA members that you may still have a balance remaining due on your account! We’d love to receive all remaining payments by October 1 (that’s this week), unless we’ve made other arrangements with you. I mailed out statements a few weeks back, but please email me again if you have any questions or need a reminder of your balance. Thanks so much everyone!

~ ~ ~

A different way to roast cauliflower! My mom introduced me to an exciting new way to roast cauliflower: WHOLE HEADS! She saw the recipe on Facebook, and here’s a link (I’m sorry that folks without Facebook accounts might not be able to see it!). It’s basically an entire head of cauliflower, rubbed all over with a spicy yogurt sauce and then baked whole! My mom cooked one tonight and shared it with us — it was beautiful and the spicing was a delicious pairing with the cauliflower. My two comments would be: be prepared that it is spicy (Rusty had a shock!), and I’d cook it longer than the recipe called for. Of course, the head my mom cooked was GIANT, and who knows how big the heads were that the authors of the recipe cooked (cauliflower size ranges quite a bit!). But just give yourself plenty of time before dinner to let it go 1-2 hours, and check it after 40 minutes to see if it’s done enough for your preference. Ours was good, but still fairly crunchy. Some people might prefer it that way! I love my veggies well cooked (I think because I am a slow eater and can ingest a lot more when my food is mushy — ha!).

~ ~ ~

• Tomatoes — Savor these fresh tomatoes while they last. I know that in late September, it’s so easy to take fresh tomatoes for granted, but really they are here for such a relatively short amount of time!!!!! I’ve been adding tomatoes to every dish that I can. Casey even slices one to eat with his breakfast every morning. The sight of that deep red tomato next to his eggs is quite beautiful (why not on my plate too? I don’t know; I can eat a lot of things at breakfast, but not tomatoes. Go figure!)
• Green peppers
• “Jimmy Nordello” sweet peppers — I know! These look like they should be hot, right? And, every now and then, you may encounter one that has some heat, but Jimmy Nordello peppers are sweet. These are a favorite with local restaurants. They have a thinner, dryer wall than a classic bell, making them especially well suited to drying (see our photo above!). We generally just chop them and add them to whatever else we’re cooking. With any kind of pepper (sweet or green), I love to chop them fine and throw them in the pan when I’m sautéing onions at the beginning of a dish. That smell is divine.
• Sweet corn
• Cauliflower — Check out that whole roasted cauliflower recipe above! But if you haven’t heard about cauliflower “rice” yet, you’re in for another treat. This is a super easy dish to make, and we’ve received so many rave reviews (no, we did not make this up — it’s a pretty standard dish amongst the Paleo food community). Here’s how easy it is: take some cauliflower florets and throw them in a food processor. Pulse until they are “riced” (i.e. chopped into little bits). Put them in a fry pan with plenty of butter or other fat and pan fry on low-medium heat until the bits are turning golden and cooked through. Some people add a little bit of broth or liquid and put the lid on to speed up the process. Depending on how much cauliflower “rice” you add to the pan, the cooking can take 10-20 minutes. We eat this just like rice, either with other goodies piled on top or mixed in. It’s a favorite in our house.
• Carrots
  
• Kale
• Cucumbers
  
• Summer squash & zucchini — One last mention of our a new household favorite: SQUASH-A-GANOUJ! Casey “invented” this dish this summer, and it’s been a staple at our table ever since. We’ve always loved babaganouj, which is sort of like hummus but with roasted eggplant instead of garbanzo beans — so eggplant plus tahini, olive oil (or butter), garlic, lemon juice (or vinegar), and salt. But eggplant season is relatively so short that we’ve never gotten our fill of babaganouj in a season. In a moment of true inspiration, Casey tried making the same recipe but with roasted zucchini and summer squash instead of the eggplant. Oh my. If possible, I think we love this dish even more. We especially love it with cucumbers. We don’t use an exact recipe; Casey just puts all the components into the food processor until it looks and tastes right. He says that for a tray full of squash, he’d include 1/4 cup of olive oil (or half a stick of butter), 2 Tablespoons tahini, 2 Tablespoons vinegar, about six cloves of garlic and salt to taste. Those are approximate. Each batch varies a bit, and it always tastes awesome. Just start with your roasted squash and add the other ingredients slowly so that you reach perfection. Enjoy!