the new season newsletters

Finally, I'm catching up on posting these....

I'll also try to create some listings for photos of unusual veggies, so you can find them, and hopefully something to do with them here on this site.  I'm still getting the hang of this blog thing.  I enjoy veggies a lot more than computers!

from week 1, june 4

First Basket! Yay!

arugula

Thank you all for joining us. We hope you enjoy the veggies. It's great to have beautiful heads of lettuce to share again. There's still room for a couple more folks, so please spread the word to anyone else you know who might enjoy the service.

Here's the line-up this week. In one bag:

Lettuce – two heads. Wash, dry, store in the crisper. Eat in abundance – there will be plenty more.

Radishes and Salad Turnips – The red radishes do not thrive down here. By the time the soil gets warm enough for them to take off and grow, it's so hot that they get really spicy. Oh well – enjoy them while they last. The white bulbs are salad turnips – very tender and mild, designed for salads. We like these a lot. Cut the tops off both these bulbs and store them separately. You can saute radish and turnip greens for a side dish.

Oregano – the longish spikes with small round leaves are oregano. We like to chop some into our salads. You can also freeze or dry it for later use.

Mint – Boil a pot of water. Add the mint, turn off the heat and let it set 5 minutes or more. Sweeten to taste and add a squeeze of lemon. Drink that instead of soda on a hot afternoon. Some good habits come easy. We also add mint to salad. Gourmet food is for ordinary folks too!

Celery blooms – Mom always said to eat your veggies. She probably didn't often tell you to eat your flowers, but I will. These are leftovers from last Fall's celery row. The taste is intensified. Great in soups or salads. Seasonal treats.

Arugula – Spicy hot goodness in a little green leaf. These are the muddiest thing in your bag – but it's good clean dirt, so just rinse them well and use the water in your houseplants.

Sugar Snap Peas – We never know how well peas are going to grow in a Spring. Sometimes it gets too hot too fast. This year, we thought we were planting too late, but it worked! These Sugar Snaps are just getting going and we should have more to share next week.

In the other bag:

Rainbow Chard – large leaves with multi-colored stems. These want to be cooked, but not for long. This is a relative to spinach – you can treat it similarly.

Broccoli – Weather this Spring was not favorable for large broccoli heads. We cut the main heads and now there are lots of these great little side shoots. These should be eaten ASAP for best flavor. Both the Chard and Broccoli would be great in a quiche.

Garlic Scapes – Beautiful green flower buds of the young garlic plants. The taste is not as intense as the cloves. Use it just the same as you would ordinary garlic. Keeps well in a vase of water, or wrapped up in the fridge.

Sweet Potatoes – Again, these are left over from last Fall. They're lighter and drier than they were last year, but still very sweet. They cook quickly, too.

Here's a Basic Quiche Recipe to play with...

1  9-inch piecrust 2  tablespoons  olive oil

2  medium onions, chopped Kosher salt and black pepper

4  large eggs 3/4  cup  half-and-half (I use milk or even yogurt)

1/8  teaspoon  ground nutmeg or fresh thyme

8  ounces  Gruyere, grated (I use any kind of cheese I have or like – Feta is great)

4  cups  mixed greens (your Chard or Broccoli would work here)
Directions
1. Heat oven to 375° F. Fit the crust into a 9-inch pie plate. Place on a baking sheet.
2. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add the onions and ½ teaspoon each of salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the greens and let the wilt just a bit.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, half-and-half, nutmeg, and ¼ teaspoon salt. Stir in the onion/greens mixture and the cheese.
4. Pour the egg mixture into the crust. Bake until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. Let sit for 5 minutes.



Next week's basket will look very similar to this week's. The weather is shaping up well and everything is growing fast. We're thinking it's going to be a wonderful mid-season and we look forward to sharing it with you.



Enjoy! 

AND - week 2 - June 11  --

We're sure glad that rain stopped. Time to go do some more hoeing. There are more than the usual amount of slugs this year – we’ve found that soaking the veggies brings them to the top where you can find them before they reach your plate! I’ll try to post some pictures of unusual veggies along with the newsletter at: redspringsfamilyfarm.blogspot.com.

Here's the veggie line up – in one bag:

mizuna

Lettuce – Speckled – one of our favorites for its sweet buttery flavor and texture. It doesn't hold up to heat or keep well in a freeze, so we can only grow it in a narrow window of time – like now.

Arugula – Deeply lobed, slightly hair leaves with a really pungent taste. If its too much for you, try throwing it into a pasta sauce or onto a pizza (traditional in Italy) – the heat softens the flavor some.

Mizuna – light green leaves with lots of edges and white stems. The flavor is mildly peppery. It's a nice salad addition.

Cilantro – Yum. Use this wherever you like it best. Personally, I like it with Avocados, garlic, and lime juice.

Sugar Snap Peas – We're glad to report that the Sugar Snap Peas are still growing strong and we'll give more of them again next week. Chop them up in a salad with feta cheese and garlic scapes. Oh so good.

Garlic Scapes – Beautiful green flower buds of the young garlic plants. This is the last week of scapes. Sad as that may be, it means that garlic harvest time is soon.

Green Onions – These are the thinnings from the storage onion bed. We'll have another week of these and then some scallions.

In the other bag:

Radishes and Salad Turnips

Rainbow Chard

Broccoli – We may get one more week of shoots from these plants before we need to use the space they're taking for something else.

Next week – we'll have kohlrabi, and hopefully some early 8-Ball Zucchini.

Enjoy! Paul, Coree, Lulah, and Levon

seedling list

Well, the inventory is finally complete.  I'm posting here a list of all the seedlings we have left to pass along.  They are $3 each, and will mostly come in 9 oz. plastic cups.

Paul and Lulah will come to town Saturday morning, May 4, to the Farmer's Market.  There are plenty of some, and few of others.  Place your orders early and we'll set them aside for you. First come first serve.

We may have a few dozen eggs available as well.  Let us know if you want some.

We hope you're all enjoying this long slow Spring.

the list:

CHERRY TOMATOES

Peace Vine - classic little red fruit.

Black Cherry -  Beautiful dusky purple-brown. They have that rich flavor that makes black tomatoes famous. Large vines yield very well.

Honey Drop - orangey-yellow, juicy with a fruity flavor - a lot of genetic diversity in this variety - can bear any variety of shapes and colors.

Frosted Green Doctor - these cherries are green when fully ripe - looks like frosted grapes.  sweet fruit.

PASTE

Polish Lingusia - huge, sausage shaped paste tomato with excellent flavor. 

San Marzano La Padino - classic paste tomato - low water content and open seed cavities - high yielding. 

REDS

Cosmonaut Volkov - great flavor on a standard red heirloom from the Ukraine.

Big Beef - hybrid - combining traditionally delicious flavor with today's disease resistance. 

Goliath - hybrid - long season with wide adaptability and disease resistance.

PINK

Mortgage Lifter - large smooth fruit with rich sweet taste. 

Rose de Berne - Swiss heirloom with sweet and sturdy 4-8 oz fruits.

BLACK

Paul Robeson - If you know us, you know this one is a favorite - medium sized fruits with interesting navels and intense flavor.  We've saved this seed for several years and feel that it's well adapted now.

Sara Black - purplish brown that we're trialing this year.

Morado - large black tomato (up to 1 lb), purplish pink with green shoulders.

ORANGE

Jubilee - old standard with sweet mild flavor - good size and yield.

Woodle Orange - good main season producer of round tangerine colored fruits.  One of our favorites.

Dad's Sunset - trialing this one - claims to be a good keeper.

Djena Lee - another trial variety - this one won first prize at the Chicago Fair 10 years in a row.

YELLOW

Lillian's Yellow - meaty creamy flesh in a light yellow fruit.  bi-lobed and lopsided, but great flavor on an unusual beefsteak type.

PEPPERS

SWEET

New Ace - hybrid,  thin-walled, not blocky, turn red early, good for the home garden.

Carolina Wonder - heirloom (our first year saving, so could be variable in its type) - nice green bells that turn bright red when mature. 

 

Golden Treasure - one of our favorite keepers - Italian heirloom - long golden yellow fruits, so sweet!

HOT

Jalapeno - classic - brown nettign appears as fruit ripens from dark green to dark red.

Lemon Drop - Seasoning pepper from Peru ripens to a clear lemon yellow, sometimes with a dark purple blush. The flavor is a very clean, uncomplicated, slightly citrus-y heat. 2-foot plants are covered with the thin-walled, conical fruits which reach 2-3 inches in length, with very few seeds.

Dorset Naga - The Dorset Naga, a chili from Bangladesh, has a Scoville rating of more 1.6 million units, making it the world's hottest chili.

Bhut Jalokia - Also known as Ghost Pepper, Naga Morich. Legendary variety, one of the world's hottest peppers, if not the hottest, with readings in excess of 1,000,000 Scoville units! Bhut Jolokia starts out slow but eventually makes tall plants, exceeding 4 ft in favored locations. The thin-walled, wrinkled, pointed fruits reach 2-3" in length, ripening mostly to red.

African Cayenne - Large vigorous Cayenne pepper.

new season old habits

Amazing.  The coldest night of the winter was the first night of Spring.

It was 17 degrees down here.  We covered the plants in the greenhouse and brought the most tender young plants indoors.  Everything made it.  Honeybees, snails, mosquitoes, butterflies have been knocked back, but there will still be blooms for them when they come back.

The greenhouse is nearly full already and we're feeling behind planting.  Very soon, plants will have to leave the greenhouse and go into the ground.

Old habits die hard, I guess.  We went ahead and got a permit for the Cookeville Farmer's Market.  So, even tho we're not selling shares, you may see us this summer.  Lulah has a nice flat of snapdragons started and we may have to bring her in with flowers, and tomatoes.

It's good and well time for this season to crack open.  Let's hope it's a good one.

Anise Hyssop making a start to the season.

For more season's greetings, check out www.radicalfarmwives.com tomorrow for my post there.

the 2013 season

It usually takes us until about mid January before we are settled down enough to begin to think about the year ahead. This year it has taken a little longer. We have been contemplating some dramatic changes in our personal and professional lives. It is with great trepidation that we have decided to not make veggie deliveries to Cookeville this year.

For a number of years we have been trying to find a balance of what really works in our farming adventure. As many of you know, our land base is quite small. The total space of our gardens is a little less than one acre, and there's not really any room left to expand. Because of this, there are efficiencies of scale in farming that we cannot take advantage of. So, we have tended to work our little space quite intensively. The soil continues to improve and the food is good, but the process ends up working us hard too (maybe we should say 'too hard'). The year we tried having an intern was helpful, but that too was difficult in our small space.

We have been looking for a larger farm for about five years now, but haven't found one that feels just right. We seek land that will allow us to expand our farming operation without sacrificing the natural beauty and the amenities that we appreciate at our current home. The plan is to spend more time looking for a new farm this year, regroup, and hopefully be back in a year or two.

That said, our hearts are heavy. It has been wonderful to be CSA growers. We have so much appreciated the relationships we've made with each of you over the years. We love tending to the land, growing food, and sharing quality food with the Cookeville community. We will continue to work our land, less intensively, and your invitation to visit the farm – even to get food from our gardens – is still standing. It's just time for us to make some changes, and some changes really take time.

Thank you for the time we've spent. We hope you continue to eat well, and hope to see you again, one of these fine days.

Warm regards,

Paul, Coree, Lulah, and Levon Entwistle

PS - We will persist to keep some updates posted on the blog and Facebook sites, and you can also check out the blog that Coree is working on with some friends: radicalfarmwives.com.  Thank you!

silver linings

There's nothing like a family illness to make one grateful for the return to health.  The days slowed down, and they're still not up to their usual clip.  Intense variable weather helps keep us moving slower too.

And in the meantime...

I dreamt, in the first night of good sleep I'd had for awhile, that I was not just knitting but purling.  I'm not an accomplished knitter (yet), and so far, purling has evaded me.  My sister in law tried to show me, and my friend Cher tried to show me, but it just didn't click.  So when I saw my hands purling in the dream world, I woke with a new urge to TRY.

With books laid out, kids absorbed in books and naptime, a new skein of beautiful red merino wool from Traditions Fabric and Yard in Lafayette (love them), I tried, and it worked.  I'm not consistent yet, but I'm fascinated.  No one could have told me how absorbing the repetitive action and creation of knitting would feel.  I love the challenge, and the satisfying success, of it.

Lulah working on her

Levon and Dougie sporting new pants.

So, since I was on a roll, Lulah and I started up the sewing machine and worked up some projects long overdue.  Dougie Doll, made a year ago for Levon, still has no hair (poor little guy), but at least he has pants now.  And Levon has pants to match.  It does a mother's heart good to see her two year old son working hard to put on the pants she just made for him (out of a salvaged flannel shirt, yippee!).





Most of what we share on here is about the farm, the outdoors, and food.  But here's our inner craftiness coming through.  It's a silver lining in these quiet, grey, winter days.  It's a way for our spirits to recover, along with our bodies.

the coldest night of the year

Maybe it will be maybe it won't, but there's no denying that it's colder than it has been.  The wind was positively frigid, and as the sun sinks, I can feel the intensity of the freeze increasing.

We scurried around this afternoon, packing on a little extra remay here and there, bringing in some food, giving the chickens some treats, and enjoying the sun.  My big monkey ran over the hillsides with a light windbreaker and mudboots with NO SOCKS!  No complaining, either, so I guess I'll just take it as a small victory that she's wearing shoes at all.  Amazingly, the rain barrel spigot was not frozen so the little puppy boy got to do one of his favorite things - make mud.  There will be beautiful mud crystals in the morning ice.

Now, time for fire wood and dinner, a long night of bright stars.  It's good, so good.

I hope you're all gratefully warm out there!

sun sun sun

It's been a beautiful crisp clear day and we're all so grateful.  From the time the light shone around the curtains, I could feel the difference between grey and blue in the sky.

Our batteries are charging, inside and out.  The chickens and turkeys have been preening in the light, though the ground is still to wet to find a proper place for a dust bath.  Farm Cat Wowee has perched himself in the warmest places he could find and basked.  We all have that feeling about us.

I know the long grey spell is nothing new for winter.  In fact, it's normal, and we're glad to have normal weather whenever possible.  I have loved the sound of the creek.  With such dry spells as we've had this year, the creek makes too small a song to be heard from the porch, but after the rains, it has been audible again, reminding us about the realities of where we live. We made the most of the low light in our solar home by finding our old Aladdin lamp and using it in the evenings.  It's light was warm and sweet and perfect for a family meal, a game of Uno, a storytime.

The dark makes us all the more grateful for the light.

Peace.
Coree