2007 CSA Week 6

News from Windy Willow Farm: 2007 Week 6
windywillowfarm@verizon.net 627-0476

Reminder: July 5th is a Thursday pickup! Next week!
This week’s share includes:
Bag of spinach
1 head Bok Choy – I know I said it would be done last week, but it’s so beautiful, we couldn’t resist one more week of this great vegetable.
2 Qt strawberries – It’s sad to see the strawberry season come to an end, but this heat is going to expedite the remaining berries. You’ll notice that most of the berries are smaller than last week’s, and the flavor is different: even a little bit of rain, or cold weather changes the flavors. These hot, dry days should actually concentrate the sugars, so let me know how your berries taste!
1 head green buttercrunch lettuce
1 head romaine lettuce
1 head green leaf lettuce
1 bunch rhubarb – What is rhubarb without strawberries? I love strawberry/rhubarb pie a la mode.
1 bunch Swiss Chard – This is the beginning of our Swiss Chard season – it’s one of our anchor vegetables. Very versatile for eating and growing, one row of Swiss chard will keep producing for the entire growing season. My favorite method of preparation is as follows: toast pine nuts in a dry frying pan, boil water for pasta. As the pasta is cooking, sauté garlic (or garlic scapes!) in some olive oil, and sauté Swiss chard stems until soft. When the pasta is almost ready, add the roughly chopped leaves and cook until wilted. Toss with the hot pasta, top with toasted pine nuts and parmesan cheese (which I like to shave with a potato peeler), salt and pepper to taste. Finish with an acid (to balance the chard) of a tablespoon of either lemon or balsamic vinegar. You’ll love it.
1 bunch parsley
1 Qt snow peas – Crunchy and sweet, these edible-pod peas are great in stir fries, salads, cooked or fresh. They freeze nicely, too!
1 pt snap peas – We are just not successful pea growers, I have no idea why. Maybe it’s our soil, or our temperament. Every year we plant row upon row of snow, snap and shelling peas, and every year we have a disappointing harvest. Well, we’ve had nice snow peas in past years, but very few snap or shell peas. So, enjoy these lovely, sweet snap peas (you eat the entire thing, shell and all), and cross your fingers for more! One word of warning: snap peas don’t freeze terribly well, so enjoy them fresh or cooked. If they make it home, that is!
1 bunch lovage – I suggest you toss these into a bag in your freezer and take it out when your potatoes are ready. They make a great addition to potato soups.
free choice garlic scapes – If you’re new to scapes, these are the flower stalk of the garlic. At a certain point in garlic’s development, the plants send up their flower. If you allow the flower to mature, it straightens to show a lovely flower. Unfortunately, the resulting garlic bulb will be tiny. If, however, you cut the scape when it swirls around to make a circle, your garlic bulb will be big and beefy. In past years, we’ve cut scapes over several weeks. This year, they’ve all been cut, so if you like scapes, be sure to help yourself, because this is all we have. To use them, cut off the top flower part, and either slice, mince or process in a food processor. I love to grind them up and pack into bags. The secret is to freeze it flat; then you can easily break off a piece when you need some. It’s a nice interim allium for your cooking, before the garlic and onions are ready. Use them in any recipe calling for garlic. We love to put 3-4 ground with a package of cream cheese and salt, and dip pretzels in it. Very simple and elegant.
Best guess for next week’s share: Beets, zucchini, yellow squash, broccoli, baby carrots. Don’t hold me to it!

Our summer days start quite early in the morning, where we get to enjoy the (relatively) cool morning and the peace and quiet of the world waking up. When the sun peaks up over our trees to the east, we’re usually in the garden, starting the day’s harvest. We like to pick the perishable produce early in the day, with the dew still on the leaves. This keeps the lettuce from wilting, and helps keep it fresh.

It’s amazing that last week I was wearing two thick fleece jackets and a hat to keep warm in the windy, chilly days. This week I’m dunking my feet into buckets of water to cool down! Our crazy weather is difficult to acclimate; once you’re used to the heat, it gets cold again. The garden doesn’t understand what’s happening either, the zukes and squash were chugging along last week, then stalled with the cooler weather. We’ve been irrigating, so I’m hoping to have nice zucchini and squash next week. Mark estimates that we’ll have Sun Gold tomatoes in two weeks, weather depending, of course.

Most farmers with livestock are currently trying to get their hay needs met for the year. Our hay fields are ready to be cut, and we’re waiting for 3-4 nice, hot and dry days, with little chance of rain. Fat chance! Once the hay is cut and drying on the ground it would be terrible if it got rained on. Rain lowers the quality and nutrient content of the hay, and we’d probably just sell it for mulch hay and try again. We will have fewer animals to over winter this year, but we still need 600-700 bales of hay. I’m always nervous until the hay is cut, baled and stacked up in our hayloft, safe and sound for the year. We don’t have our own hay equipment, so we rely on the kindness of friends to cut our hay for us. We pay by the bale, and unload it ourselves from the hay wagons. It is part of our summer rhythm, and one we will be glad to have as a memory. (If anyone wants to experience it with us, let us know! Imagine a hot summer’s day, wearing long pants and picking up 50-60 pound bales of hay and loading them on a hay elevator to the top of the barn, and stacking them 8 high! That’s a day you earn your keep.)

Last week someone asked me where we purchase the tri-colored stone for our driveway, but I can’t remember who it was. I mistakenly told them we get it from Cranesville Block. Actually, we get it (and got a load this morning) from Santos Construction. According to Mark, it’s cheaper and nicer than Cranesville’s rubble.

Thanks for your support,
Gwen, Mark, Sarah and Jason

© Gwen Hyde 2007

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie
3 cups rhubarb stalks cut into 1/2 inch pieces (Trim outside stringy layer of large rhubarb stalks; make sure to trim away any and discard of the leaves which are poisonous; trim ends.)
1 cup strawberries, stemmed and sliced
1 cup sugar
3 Tablespoons of quick cooking tapioca
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of grated orange peel
Unbaked pastry for two-crust 9 inch pie
(If making a 10 inch pie, or just want more filling, use 4.5 cups of rhubarb, 1.5 cups strawberries, and 1 1/4 cup of sugar)

Preheat oven to 400°F.
1 Mix the rhubarb and the strawberries with the sugar, tapioca, salt, and orange rind. Let sit for 10 minutes.
2 Turn into a pastry lined pan. Top with the pastry, trim the edge, and crimp the top and bottom edges together. Cut slits in the top for the steam to escape.
3 Bake at 400°F for 20 minutes, reduce heat to 350°F, and bake an additional 30-40 minutes longer. Cool on a rack. Serve warm or cold. If you do cool to room temperature, the juices will have more time to thicken.

Ginger-Lime Noodle Broth with Snow Peas
6 cups good-quality vegetable broth
1/4 cup grated fresh ginger
2 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce
Juice of 2 fresh limes
1/3 cup loosely-packed fresh cilantro or flat-leaf parsley leaves
Pinch red pepper flakes
Salt to taste
1 cup extra-firm tofu, in 1/2-inch cubes
1 1/2 cups snow peas (or sugar snap peas, asparagus in 2-inch pieces, or broccoli florets)
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil (optional)
1 package Japanese udon noodles or your favorite noodle1 tablespoon sesame seeds (optional)Fresh cilantro or parsley, for garnish (optional)

1. Combine broth, ginger, tamari, lime juice, cilantro, and red pepper flakes in a soup pot and bring to a boil, then cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 15 minutes.
2. Add tofu and continue to simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, cook noodles according to package directions.
4. Add snow peas to soup and simmer 5 minutes, then add sesame oil. Taste and add salt if needed.
5. To serve: Mound drained cooked noodles evenly among 4 bowls and top with tofu. Pour hot soup on top, then add sesame seeds and fresh cilantro, if using.
Serves 4.