This week we'll have new potatoes, buttercrunch and red sails "head lettuce" a bag of mesclun lettuce, 1/2 doz eggs, green beans, a small onion, a little Swiss Chard, cucumber and zucchini. My favorite vegetable combination this week is Swiss chard, cubed zucchini and onion steamed with butter and olive oil. I had that for dinner and scambled an egg into the leftovers the next morning. Jon Mason, Alana's chef, is visiting the end of this week and he cooked a fabulous chicken braised in a slow oven with new potatoes and then the last 15-20 minutes added cubed zucchini. It made a great single dish meal which we started off with a buttercrunch and red sails salad.

We purchased a "new" 1999 Dodge highliner box truck and traded in the white van this week, because we can't fit anymore vegetables into the van. Its pretty scary to drive but hopefully will be easier to load and get vegetables to you in better shape. We are working hard on getting things cultivated and can use a horse drawn cultivator and the tractor cultivator at the same time. We planted a second planting of beets, and the fourth planting of lettuce in the space where the peas and fava beans grew. John is working on staking our tomatoes and is about 1/3 done. The paste tomatoes don't need to be staked but everything else will be. All ground that we intend to plant is plowed up and by the end of this week everything will be planted with at least the first crop. We didn't get much rain which enabled us to get more field work done, but now we are wanting more rain! Farmers are never happy about the rain.

Have a great 4th of July, we will be at all markets Saturday.

Sandy

This week you will have fava beans, savoy cabbage, mesclun lettuce mix and a Tom Thumb butterhead, a few radishes and green onions, a zucchini and maybe a cucumber plus 1/2 doz eggs. Google fava beans for directions, they are a way cool vegetable and it is a measure of how good this spring has been that we have a successful crop. Fava beans are the oldest cultivated plant and where eaten in ancient Greece and Rome. They are a little bit of work to prepare as you must parboil them to get the bean out and then to cook them. I hope you enjoy them; like peas and beans, fava beans provide protein and good complex carbohydrates. If we were eating 100% locally fava beans would play an important role during in the seasonal space between peas and beans.

By popular demand the gourmet share will include sorrel with the suggestion of making sorrel lentil soup from Sue who just loves this soup. The recipe was taken from the Mark Bittman book "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian". "I make the Lentil soup with fragrant French Lentils and use your wonderful fresh Sorrel. Here's the address


http://books.google.com/books?id=gNAU05uZJ-MC&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=sorrel+lentil+
soup&source=bl&ots=G8raJNMdaz&sig=_o0Zw_EbVZsKl2v72AyDcxK549w&hl=en&ei=eCZCStLdH6CMtgfzoqSYCQ&sa=X&oi=
book_result&ct=result&resnum=8"

It has been a beautiful week and we were able to get sunflowers (for seed), pie and carving pumpkins, a 2nd planting of sweet corn, delicata and carnival squashes and the rest of the oats planted. We have purchased a new cultivator for horses so John and I can both cultivate at once. This is our main method of weed control and I haven't been able to do it enough on the tractor. Everything that we can get planted between the rains is growing like crazy. Everything that was planted last week is already up. I'm sure you are hoping for some non-green vegetables soon: the early yellow beans are flowering this week, the cherry tomatoes just barely turning and the carrots are thing little finger size--my guess is two weeks for the first non-green veggies (not counting radishes). It will be a while before our corn is ready but we might be able to get some from an Amish neighbor later in July.

The last of my beef cows were taken off the farm today. Although I wanted this to happen, it was still a little hard as I raised them all. There just isn't enough room/pasture for horses and cattle together and keeping up with fencing takes more time than we have. We still have one milk cow, Mitzi.

I hope you were able to get outside some this week and enjoy these beautiful days. See you Saturday at the North Market.

Sandy

This week we will dig the first new potatoes and we'll have peas to go with them. The first small swiss chard bunch will be ready,half dozen eggs, lettuce, purple radishes, green onions, and a zucchini.

We have been working like crazy, hired a local college boy so we could run two tractors, to get stuff planted and cultivated between the rains. The good thing about this rain is that we haven't had to water and it makes things grow really quick. Last week I planted an acre of beans and the first smaller planting of sweet corn and it was already up by Monday. The 1 1/2 acres of heirloom open pollinated corn didn't fare as well--but the crows sure enjoyed it! I planted Hariverts, provider green beans, roc dor yellow beans, Dragon langeire yellow/purple beans, rattlesnake pole beans, lima beans, tiger eye and king of the early dried beans! This week we planted out sweet potatoes, eggplant, basil, dill, cilantro, sage, more radishes, zucchini and other summer squash, okra, cucumbers. We started in the green house some more broccoli and all the winter squashes since we won't be able to get out in the field until next week or maybe the following week.


What happens to an unclaimed CSA share? In Kent the Portage County homeless shelter comes to the market and collects all any extras, in Clintonville a food justice group distributes extras and what is left from the North Market I deliver to the YWCA family shelter. Thanks to Sara for helping figure this out!

This week we should have the first zucchini's of the season, a new variety of pea called Frosty (we'll have to see if it is better than the last variety call Miragreen), some Tom Thumb butterhead lettuce, purple radishes, garlic scape's (which you can use as a mild fresh garlic--chopping up flower and stem), young turnip greens to braise, 1/2 doz eggs and mesclun lettuce mix.

Many of you have been asking so we will bring stinging nettles this week.

We have 5 quarters of the grass fed beef left. If you would like a quarter please give me a call at 740-484-0243.

Roseanna and I will be at the Kent Market this weekend, Sara and Meredith will be at the North Market and Jon and Abby will be at the Clintonville Farmer's Market. Enjoy!

P.S. Turnip greens are great braised with a little smoked meat and a small amount of water. Add a tiny amount of brown sugar, salt and cider vinegar before serving. The greens are good added to a stir fry or cooked with pasta. Turnip greens need to be cooked 2-3 times as long as you cooked spinach. They are extremely nutritious.

Last Tuesday, we had some ripe peas that of course wouldn't hold until Saturday so we brought them to the local produce auction. In part because none of the senior Amish farmers had peas ready yet and there is a bit of a contest to see you gets the first crop ready. Because a lot of people were thinking that they were snap peas I wrote on the tag that these where English peas, forgetting that the Amish refer to non-Amish as English. When the auctioneer talked about the peas he said "well she has Amish working for her now so these are really half English and half Amish peas."

I thought you might what to read a summary of my Kent speech: I believe it is critical to the survival of our civilization that we change the way we produce food, more people should grow their own food and should buy from local farmers. Our current agricultural practices are causing 6 really big problems.

1. We are destroying our top soil so that food quality is measurably worse, and the amount of top soil is declining. Rodale institute has measured food quality for more than 50 years, all vegetables today have less nutrients than 50 years ago. Sustainable organic practices can change this.

2. We spend many times more calories getting our food then we get out of our food. If a squirrel spent more calories getting its food than the food was worth the squirrel would die, as we eventually will.

3. Some experts predict that all current antibiotics will be rendered useless in 10-20 years because the overwhelming majority of antibiotics are added to feed for confined animal operations creating a perfect environment for the development of antibiotic resistant bacterias which are then spread throughout the ecosystem.

4. We are using up our fresh water for farm irrigation to farm in arid places in ways that require lots of water. You may have heard that India is now pushing organic farming because among other things it uses less water.

5. In the US we have lost sustainable farming knowledge/skills. It is incredibly hard to manage a diverse farm that grows all your own food. A couple generations ago almost all farmers knew how to grow food to eat, and there were a lot of farmers, now there few farmers and most of them grow only one crop, often one that is not exactly edible (eg. corn or soybeans).

6. The quality of our food is so low that it is causing an increase in several chronic diseases and a decrease in our life expectancy.

The good thing is that we can fix this by growing our own food and by buying food from farmers who are trying to farm sustainably. Grow Swiss Chard with your flowers!

There are three books that I think are important to read: Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle, Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, and Jared Diamond's Collapse.

Everything that is planted is growing like crazy. So are the weeds! I do wish for a little dry spell so I can get more things planted but boy it is better to have a little extra rain that too little rain!

I had a fun time in Kent last Monday giving a talk about how important it is to improve our food. They had a big sign featuring the famous Sandy Sterrett which made me laugh.

This week we should have a little spinach YEAH. I'll get you a small amount of strawberries so you can have a spinach strawberry salad! We'll have a few more peas this week another large bag of lettuce and a 1/2 doz eggs. I'm not sure if the next planting of radishes will be ready or not so there might be a break in those. The gourmet share will get some baby mustard greens.

See you Saturday.

Sandy

This week you will get another dozen eggs (after this I will be caught up and it will go back to 1/2 doz), a large bag of mesclun, some peas, a bunch of radishes, and a bunch of really cool Japanese turnips. They are small and sweet and can be eaten raw or cooked in stir fry. The greens are good to cook as well.

Today is my mother's 80th birthday and tomorrow my parents will have been married 60 years. That is certainly going to be rare in my generation!

We mowed hay on Monday and it hasn't rained too much on it but it won't be ready to bail for a few days yet. I'm hoping the flood warning predictions for this evening are way off!
I was also able to get a couple of acres more plowed and John has worked on the vegetable processing shed and on digging a ditch and laying new pipe for water to the chickens. The pump man should hook up the water to the vegetable processing shed before Friday. But we still don't have electric finished. The Ohio Department of Agriculture sent out an egg inspector this week so we are officially approved to sell eggs to the public at farmers markets.

Next Monday I will be at the Kent Library talking about sustainable agriculture.

Suggest getting a Farmer Johns Cookbook for CSAs; it is the best seasonal vegetable cookbook I've seen plus it explains about farming in side notes.

BRAISING GREENS: We all need to eat more greens and yet it is a rare that we do and not exactly in our food culture. I will give you some kind of cooking green every week to try to improve our health and diet and will try to give you some ideas of how to cook them. Always the easiest way to use greens is to chop and add as the last ingredient in the stir fry. Braising greens means to add some kind of fat or oil and a small amount of liquid and cover to cook until tender. I often enjoy my greens with eggs for breakfast and as a side dish. I also like to make soup and add chopped greens just before serving. I will use the turnip greens braised with a little bacon and then add some cider vineger before serving.

The turnips themselves I plan to juliane slice with the radishes and put in a vineger marinate to serve with a salad and perhaps some mozzarella cheese.
See you Saturday

THIS SATURDAY IS FIRST PICKUP OF THE 2009 ELIZABETH TELLING FARM CSA AT CLINTONVILLE FARMERS' MARKET (IN FRONT OF DONATOS); IN SPACE 14 AT THE COLUMBUS NORTH MARKET, AT THE SITE OF THE KENT HAYMARKER FARMER'S MARKET in Kent Ohio. We will be at each place from 8am til noon although the Clintonville Market doesn't offically open until 9am. On Tuesday May 26, is the local pick up at Bethesda's Market from 1pm til 8pm.

You can expect a whole dozen eggs this week, a large bag of beautiful mesclun letuce mix with a tiny green onion, a small bunch of arugula, pink radishes, and some tatsoi. The gourmet share will get wild greens, cilantro and arugula flowers.

Some tough farm news this week--two days of frost hurt some of our tomatoes and the asparagus, today's high temperatures burnt out about half of our perfect celery plants and on Saturday the deer wiped out more than 2000 of the cabbages and broccoli plants. Many neighboring farmers lost most of their crops to the frost so we a lucky there; it was colder on higher farms and we are in a valley and benefited from a low lying fog that kept the frost off of the potatoes and lettuces.

Some good news: It is finally dry enough to plow more ground and today we finished with all the spring potatoes--a total of 2350 pounds of seed potatoes are in the ground. Yeah! This takes up about 3 acres. The very first potatoes we planted are up and looking pretty good. I was able to cultivate those early potatoes, the onions, carrots, spinach and the 2nd planting of peas and lettuces. The first planting of of peas is now flowering and setting teeny tiny peas. Its been several years since we have had a cool enough spring to grow good peas.

John is building a summer kitchen for Elizabeth as she plans to bake honey wheat bread and cinnamon rolls for you. It's just too hot to cook with wood in your house during the summer. Its not really true that the Amish build a house in a day; John has worked for several days cutting and organizing the wood so today they were able to get the walls and rafters all up in a single day.

See you Saturday.

We worked like crazy on Wednesday to try to get as much planted in between the rains. John's parents were visiting so his father helped plant potatoes and then Elizabeth had to help for the last few rows (one on the planter and one driving the horses). Altogether they planted 1250 pounds of seed potatoes on Wednesday! All 1000 pounds of the Kennebecs are in and 150 pounds of the early Red Norlands and then 3 different 50 pound bags of specialty potatoes for the gourmet shares.

The very first potatoes we planted are coming up and look beautiful.

While they were planting potatoes I was plowing and discing ground for tomatoes, and I planted Swiss Chard, Mammoth Melting snow peas, mizuma, Beedy's camden Kale, and one 300 foot row of early yellow beans. Then after dinner, John and I (using a transplanter) and got in about 1000 tomato plants-- Grandma Mary's Paste, 4 kinds of cherry tomatoes, Elizabeth's low acid tomatoes and Rutgers.

The first planting of peas is flowering and the lettuce and radishes look great. See you on May 23 for the first CSA delivery although I will be at the North Market on Saturday May 16 trying to sign up a few more CSA shares and I'll have some eggs and beef to sell. See you soon! Sandy

Its still raining which makes me nervous about getting behind in the planting schedule or having the creek flood. But worrying/complaining about the weather is one definition of a farmer, right? So far the creek has not come close to going over its banks.

We rowed across the creek yesterday to check on the spinach and carrots planted there (the creek is too high to ford). There is good germination of both of these tricky crops/ the spinach should take about 30 days to mature so probably it will be ready either the last week of May or the first week of June, carrots take longer and won't be ready until the last of June and first of July. The first lettuce crop looks good, as do the peas and fava beans. The early plantings of cabbages and broccoli look very nice as do the second planting we made with Roseanna last week.

I am retiring the numbering system this year; you can just sign in on a list that is in alphabetical order. The first pick up is May 23 from 8 am til noon.


Sandy