Picking, picking picking…

My interns know how fond I am of my bell curve graphs.  These graphs I use to describe the amount of work spent doing on our main work out here at the farm.  The spring shows a peak of planting activities, and June and early July shows a focus on weeding activities.   This time of year through the first freeze most of the energy of the farm is spent on gathering up the harvest.  In a typical year we will harvest well over 250,000 pounds of food over the course of the season, each week filling our refrigerator truck to the brim.    This leads to some long days of harvesting and packing.  Last night for instance the crew and I did not finish with the loading of all the boxes into the refrigerator truck until about 10 pm.

Facebook
Reminder: Ploughshare Farm is on Facebook.  Become a “Fan” of Ploughshare Farm by going here.

It’s a great way to catch additional pictures of the farm and the crew.  We also list the vegetables (approximately) you will be receiving on the Monday before delivery.  Suggest to your friends to become fans as well so that together we can help promote Ploughshare Farm.

Cookbooks
We highly recommend the cookbook, "From Asparagus to Zucchini" put out by the Madison Area CSA Coalition. It gives essential tips on how to use many of the typical vegetables you will be receiving in our CSA. I have gone ahead and ordered 75 of these books (even though only 30 of you bought one in advance).  I hope they will be in for the next delivery.  Go to our website to order online and receive yours. : http://www.ploughsharefarm.com/store/312 $18). At that time we will submit our order to the publisher and should receive copies in early July.

T-Shirts
We would like to get another order of Ploughshare Farm T-shirts.  You can preorder your shirt at http://www.ploughsharefarm.com/store/312

Show the world that you are a Ploughshare CSA Member with this originally designed T-shirt.  Made with Certified Organic cotton.
On the front: Ploughshare Logo


On the back: The act of putting into your mouth what the Earth has grown is perhaps your most direct interaction with the Earth."  Francis Moore Lappe (Author of "Diet for a Small Planet")

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From the interns...
In the great Kurosawa film, The Seven Samurai,  “granddad” is the wisest man in the peasant village.  When the frightened farmers ask him what they should do about the recent bandit raids, voicing their concerns about making tribute payments of grain and their eldest daughters, the old man cuts them off by saying “We’ll Fight!”.  He tells them to find hungry samurai who will defend the peasants for no other payment than the food to feed their sword arms. They find seven. I am one of the seven this year at Ploughshare. And a CSA, like a peasant village in feudal Japan, has much to fear. There is the always certain uncertainty of weather, the threat of too little rain, too much rain, crop destroying winds and hail, below freezing temperatures, the organic foods market, and even bandits (we call them potato beetles). This morning looking out the window of the leaky trailer which I have called home since April, I saw the straight line winds blow rain across the barnyard and push the trees, raking leaves from their branches. But even in the wind and the rain I saw people. Running scared, yes, but going out to face the terror of the winds. They were my fellow samurai farmers, racing from one farm building to the next, gathering their rain gear, preparing for another day of harvest, fearful of the weather, the rain, the warnings of tornadoes, but planting each footstep on the earth, into the mud, each footstep a young cauliflower, always growing, despite all terror the heavens might try to smash it with, because it must grow. This is the way of the samurai farmer.  To cling to the earth, and to fight.
- Max

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Cabbage
This week you will find a head of savoy, green or red cabbage. Savoy has crinkly light green leaves and a mild flavor and the smooth-leaf green and red variations offer a more pronounced flavor. Regardless of which variation you received, keep your cabbage in the fridge and it will last for a couple of weeks. To prepare, remove the outer leaves and cut away the core. Rating it raw in salads is great as is a light stir fry, sauté or braise.

Use your cilantro this week to create the delicious cabbage slaw from the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition cookbook:
1 head cabbage, cored and quartered, sliced thin by hand or processor
1 pound carrot, peeled and chopped
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
2 Tablespoons salt
1 Tablespoon ancho chili powder

Toss all ingredients, let stand for 1 hour, toss again and serve as garnish for tacos, side dish for sandwiches or as a picnic salad.

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Cauliflower
Providing us with valuable protein and minerals as well as vitamins A, B, C and E, the immature flower buds of the cauliflower give our whole system a healthy boost. Nutrients can be lost a bit with cooking, especially overcooking, so enjoy this tasty vague raw or lightly steamed, braised, glazed or roasted. Keep your cauliflower in the fridge loosely wrapped in plastic and use it up within a week or so.

To prepare, take off the outer leaves and if you like, separate the florets by cutting the florets from the core at the base. When cooking your cauliflower, only cook until tender enough to pierce with a knife. A simple steamed cauliflower tossed with some butter, olive oil, and/or lemon juice is as easy as it is delicious. Or for a really special addition to your cauliflower, try sautéing over medium heat: 1/4 c olive oil, a few chopped anchovy filets (or more if you love them), minced garlic, and some red pepper flakes. After about 5 minutes the anchovies will start to break up. Add steamed cauliflower (slightly underdone) and turn up the heat to high and cook a few minutes more until the cauliflower is coated with oil and heated all the way through. (From Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything)

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Cilantro
One of the most distinctive herbs, is a member of the carrot family and is actually the leaves of the coriander plant. Used widely in Mexican, Carribean and Asian cooking, these leaves add a fresh and delicious dimension to cooked and raw foods. Unless of course you are one of the unlucky few for whom cilantro has a soapy taste. The belief is that these people have a genetic variation in the taste perception gene.

But for the rest of us, fresh cilantro is fantastic. Use it to make guacamole, top soups, tacos, salads, anything you can think of. For a simple and delicious guacamole, mash several avocados with a fork, add chopped cilantro, a small red onion and a squeeze of lime juice. Eat on chips, veggies, burgers, or just with a  spoon.

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Addional Recipes
Kelibasa and Cabbage
Ratatouille
Margharita Pizza
Sauteed Kale

This Week’s Box
The past two weeks of sun and then rain has made it wonderful vegetable growing weather.  You’re beginning to see in your box many of the delights and diversity of mid-summer.  Root crops (beets and onions), fruit crops (summer squash), leafy crops (spinach and lettuce) and seed crops (broccoli) are all together in this week’s box.
According to Rudolf Steiner, in his lecture “The Evolution of Earth and Man and Influence of the Stars:”
“The root primarily nourishes the head (the nervous system).
The middle of the plant, stem and leaves, primarily nourishes the chest (the rhythmic system—heart and lungs).
Fruit (including fruiting vegetables, such as squash and cucumbers) nourish the lower body (the metabolic system—digestive organs).”

This week’s activities—
It’s amazing how quickly vegetables grow this time of year.   In fact, yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to find that the crew came back with a few hundred pounds of cucumbers when just last week I only found a couple.  We must make sure that items such as summer squash and cucumbers are picked three times a week so they do not get too big out in the field.  They are then stored in our large walk-in cooler until packing day on Wednesday.

Interns:
The following is an excerpt from Mary Jo Forbord’s essay What Comes Next:

My crystal ball is experiencing some technical difficulties, so I hope you will help me envision what comes next for Minnesota agriculture.
As I look around my farming community, it seems we have run the course of six generations of northern European immigrant farm families since the homesteading days of the 1860s. The earliest settlers staked their claim in the rich and deep prairie soil, but it was a tenuous beginning at best. Survival for the first white people through the first winters was possible only because of food and medicine offered by indigenous people. In desperation, white settlers dug into the prairie and overcame their fear and trepidation of the native people to accept their gifts of survival.
The settlers moved in quickly, the Indians were relocated to reservations, and the medicine bundles that held the botanical cures were burned in great bonfires to remove the last traces of the indigenous culture. Carving subsistence from the soil with oxen, horses, mules, and many strong backs, yields and railroads grew to supply wheat to Minneapolis, known by 1880 as the “Flour Milling Capital of the World.”
By 1927, 2 billion people lived on the planet, 119 million people lived in the United States, and the farm population was at 28 million, almost a quarter of the total population. The USDA Yearbook of Agriculture heralded the “eastern march of the combine” and “a tremendous increase in the use of large power units in agriculture”. The 1927 Yearbook forecasted that “increased efficiency resulting in an increased output per worker may necessitate a reduction in the number of farmers.”
Fast forward to the 21st century. With 6.6 billion people living on the planet and the U.S. population topping 300 million, less than one million people in the U.S. now claim farming as their principal occupation. The decline is evident as I look around my community and to my
neighbors, mostly descendants of the first white settlers, mostly older couples or widowers past 70 years of age, their children living elsewhere, and far removed from farming. Most now rent their farmland to larger operators. With 50% of farmland transitioning in ownership in the next 10 years, I am more than curious about the fate of farming and my community. I hope some answers will be found in the statistics of the 2007 Census of Agriculture, which promises that “your response will provide a brighter future for you, your operation and your community.”
Wow, I can hardly wait to see that promise come true, but the 2007 data won’t be released until 2009. For now, the 2002 statistics will have to do:
• The average age of all U.S. farmers is 55.3 years, an increase of about one year per year since 1978.
• 26% of farmers are age 65 or older.
• 5.8% of farmers are less than 35 years old. The number of farmers under age 35 has dropped by about 20 percent in each census since 1982.
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With the average age of a farmer in the United States today now approaching 60 years old I feel it is critical to now be asking ourselves, “Who is going to be growing food for our communities in future generations?”   Farming requires many skills that take years to master.   This is one of the reasons that Ploughshare Farm’s internship program is such an integral part of what we do.  Many who come to our farm for our internship program have no previous farming experience. Most of them are idealistic (and HOPEFUL!!!), college aged young men and women, wanting to spend a summer getting their hands dirty.  I would say, without exception, that their experience on our farm is the hardest work that they have ever done and for most of them will ever do in the future.  However, (also without exception) their year on Ploughshare Farm ends up being one of the most memorable experiences that they have, gaining knowledge that they can take with them no matter where their lives lead.  Many of our interns (we have now had over 30 interns come through our program) decide that the work is too hard and the profit margins are too little to actually make a living in farming.  However, we also have had several interns that I know that have gone on to work and manage other farm operations or have gone into a farm related educational program.

Our interns receive a wage, room and much of the board when they stay here.  In addition, this year we have enough interns on our farm that we passed the legal threshold so that we now have to pay for unemployment insurance as well workman’s compensation.  Because of these added costs, our internship program has become a very large expense for our farm.  
  We now have a way for you to support our internship program with a scholarship.  You can now donate online and the money will be spent to help defray some of the costs associated with our internship program by giving a donation of $50, $100, $500, $1000 or even $5000. You can go online to http://www.ploughsharefarm.com/store/326 if you wish to donate.
You will also be hearing from interns in the upcoming newsletters tell about their experience on the farm.

One of the most versatile and easy to enjoy items of the summer harvest is summer squash. Yellow squash and zucchini are included in this week's share and both are tender, mild and delicious. Store your summer squash loosely wrapped in plastic in the fridge, but make an effort to use these veggies (or if you want to get technical, fruits) right away for the best flavor and texture.

Summer squash makes an easy addition to whatever you are already making. Grill, steam, roast, saute, bake, fry, braise, often all you need is a bit of oil or butter and a light seasoning of salt and pepper. A simple way to enjoy your summer squash is to trim the ends, chop and saute with onions, garlic, mushrooms, or any other veggie you have on hand. Toss with al dente pasta and enough of the pasta water to make a sauce and top with parmesan cheese. This dish makes a hearty dinner one night and the leftovers are a fresh tasting cold salad to enjoy the next day.

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Fennel

Not the ruffled kind that you find on garnishing your plate but the flat leafed kind that will enliven just about any dish, fresh Italian parsley is anything but ordinary. Basil tastes as good as it smalls and adds a fresh dimension to your meals. It is not difficult to find occasion to use either of these herbs as they can both play an important role in soups, sauces, vinaigrettes, and salads as well as pasta, vegetable and egg dishes.

To make traditional pesto, simply combine the basil leaves, rinsed and dried, with a half of a clove of garlic, a tablespoon of pine nuts or walnuts and 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil in a food processor. You can also double the batch by adding your parsley leaves. Once processed, top with a bit of oil and store in the fridge for a week or in the freezer for a couple of months. Stir in freshly grated parmesan just before serving.

If you can't use your parsley and basil soon after you get your share, take the time to place the plants stem down in a jar of water with plastic loosely placed around the leaves. Set the glass in the fridge and change the water daily. Or to save yourself the hassle, just chop them up and enjoy right out of the box. Toss it on your salad greens, with your sauteed summer squash and onions, or atop your grilled fennel. Its hard to go wrong with with these versatile herbs.

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Onions
This week you will find spring onions in your share box. These fresh veggies should be kept in the fridge until use. It is unlikely that suggestions are needed for onion use as they are one of the most common ingredients in meat, vegetable and pasta dishes, so perhaps you might like to try something different with these onions to really explore the wonderful flavor of your local, organic vegetables.

If you have never caramelized onions, you are in for a treat. This slow cooking method changes the flavor of the onion from, well, oniony, to a sweet taste that is full of depth. Simply slice or chop your onions, cover and cook in a skillet over medium heat. After 15 minutes they will become dry and start to stick to the pan. When this happens, stir in a bit of butter or olive oil to coat the onions and add a pinch of salt. Now just let them cook over low heat, stirring occasionally and adding more oil or butter when they start to dry out. Be careful not too add too much fat, which will make the onions greasy. Now is the fun part. Cook them for any length of time you wish, they will change from soft and mildly oniony in taste to sweet and brown with a jam-like texture. In fact, if you let them cook long enough you will have an onion jam that is great for thickening sauces, spreading on sandwiches or flavoring any other dish. The jam will keep in the fridge for a few weeks.

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Napa Cabbage
With a ruffled elongated leaf, the Napa cabbage has a wonderful mild taste and works really well raw as well as cooked. Just keep this veggie in the fridge and use it within a week or two. To use, take off the first few layers of leaves until you reach the tightly packed head. Then remove the core by cutting around it on the stem end and pulling the core out. The head can then be shred by cutting it first into quarters and then crosswise into strips.

If you wish to cook your cabbage be sure to refrain from overcooking. It is so much tastier and enjoyable when it it prepared al dente, that is, crisp and tender but not mushy. Cooking it in boiling water for about 5 minutes and tossing it with melted butter and a dash of salt and pepper will do the trick.

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Broccoli
Notorious for being the vegetable children are forced to eat, broccoli never lives up to its bad reputation when it is fresh. Keep your broccoli head in the fridge loosely wrapped in plastic and use within several days. To prepare, remove the leaves (which are also edible and can be cooked with the florets) and remove the dried out end of the stalk. Take off any rough outer skin with a paring knife or vegetable peeler. Separate the stalks from the florets and cut into bite size pieces.

Broccoli tastes great raw, stir fried, steams, boiled, brazed and sauteed. The stalks will need to be cooked a bit longer than the florets so start them first. If you like it crisp, cook it just until it is bright green. For a more tender bite, cook a few minutes longer, but be careful to not overcook or you will end up with a mushy texture. A good rule of thumb is to cook until a knife can easily be inserted into the stalk.

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Recipes
Zucchini Bread
Roasted Carrots and Beets with the Juiciest Pork Chops
Shrimp and Egg Fried Rice with Napa Cabbage
Potato-Fennel Gratin
Sauteed Summer Squash Video

Newsletters
Many of you have given me some good feedback on our new newsletter format.  Thank you.  I would also like to thank Victor (our intern) for taking many of the photos as well as Heather von Ruden (our Fergus drop site coordinator) who has taken time each week to pull together information on vegetables and works on formatting the newsletter.

Cookbooks
We highly recommend the cookbook, "From Asparagus to Zucchini" put out by the Madison Area CSA Coalition. It gives essential tips on how to use many of the typical vegetables you will be receiving in our CSA. I have gone ahead and ordered 75 of these books (even though only 30 of you bought one in advance).  I hope they will be in for the next delivery.  Go to our website to order online and receive yours. : http://www.ploughsharefarm.com/store/312 $18). At that time we will submit our order to the publisher and should receive copies in early July.