Week 3; June 23, 2016

What's in the box?

Butterhead Lettuce
Red Russian Kale
Scarlet Turnips
Green Top Beets
Red Scallions
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Savoy Cabbage (medium and large)
Garlic Scapes
Salad Mix
Herb Pot

Notes on the box

The Beets and Turnips will store best with the tops removed from the roots.  My suggestion is to chop the stems below the rubber band so that your bunch of greens remains intact.  Store greens and roots in an open plastic bag.  Beet greens can be used as you would chard or spinach.  These beets are the nicest we have grown and we will have more in the coming weeks.  I don't peel the beets and they are still great.  We have been eating them raw cut into chunks.  They are so tender and tasty!  Great for a raw shredded salad, or dice, roast, and add them to salads. 

The Scarlet Turnips are great braised with their greens.  They are a little too tough for eating raw, I think.  But I sliced some with the mandolin and the kids ate them right up. 

The herb pots in the small shares have savory and parsley or savory and sage.  The Large share herb pots have thyme, sage, and parsley.  These will all grow into sizeable plants if you pot them out or put them in your garden if you've got one. 

All greens should be stored in a plastic bag in your fridge.  The cabbage doesn't need to be in a bag, but should be refrigerated.  This variety is really nice for fresh eating. 

Cosmic Wheel Creamery Cheese Share

If you have a cheese share, an eat like a farmer share, or an eat like a vegetarian farmer share please remember that your cheese is packed in a separate box at your drop site!  It is labeled "CHEESE"  Open the box and find the bag of cheese with the sticker with your name.  Don't forget your cheese!

Feta and Antares.  Yellow Feta!?  Whaaaaaat??  I hear it a lot at farmer's markets, but it's true.  Our feta looks like butter.  All of the cheese is yellow because of the cows 100% grass diet.  There's no color added.  It's just the carotenoids in the milk.  It's super healthy!  Enjoy it! 

The Antares is a cows milk Manchego.  I rub the rind with olive oil, chamomile, sumac, and calendula.  Antares is one of our most popular at farmers markets.  People seem to really enjoy the piquant kick at the end. 

The aged cheeses you get will store best if wrapped in parchment and then put into a ziploc bag.  Cheese is alive and needs air, but too much and it will dry out.  But you should eat it all before you have to worry about that! 

Recipes

10 Things to do with Garlic Scapes

Roasted Scarlet Turnips with Sauteed Greens

15 Unbeatable Kale Recipes

Farro Salad with Beets, Beet Greens, and Feta

On the Farm

This week is seeing lots of activity on the farm, as usual!  This year we were super lucky and got a grant from the Lakewinds Organic Field Fund to improve our packing shed.  We had a ceiling put in and are having the huge sliding door changed into a garage door and a service door.  This will help us to keep the birds out of our packing shed and will improve food safety on the farm and help to keep things cleaner.  The birds seems to have had no trouble finding new housing options on the eaves of the barn.  A BIG BIG BIG THANK YOU to Lakewinds and their customers for helping us with this project! 

If your box is missing or anything is missing from your box (especially eggs!) Please contact us so that we can make it up to you.  We do our best, but sometimes something gets missed on the packing line or a box might get mixed up on delivery. 

Thanks!

Next week...

beets
salad mix
scapes
spring onions
savor or tendersweet cabbage
swiss chard
head lettuce
bok choy?
summer squash?
cukes??
collards?

 

 

Turnip Rock FarmerComment
Week 2; June 16, 2016

What's in the box?

garlic scapes
red romine lettuce (large and medium only)
red pearl onions
spinach
french breakfast radishes (large and medium only)
broccoli
lacinato kale
arugula
salad mix
butterhead lettuce
herb pot

Notes on the box

Still a lot of greens in these early season boxes.  We hope that you are enjoying having meals where salads fill up the majority of your plate.  And that you have been able to work greens into your everyday quick meals.  Add extra lettuce to wraps and sandwiches.  Serve chicken or tempeh on a bed of lettuce.  Morning eggs on top of spinach.  Chopped kale or broccoli can be thrown in with the cooking water of macaroni for the last few minutes when cooking pasta, and you can have instant kale mac and cheese!  We've been loving seeing all the salads people have been enjoying on our instagram feed!  Keep them coming! 
Garlic Scapes are a wonderful once per year treat that might be new to some of you.  The scape is the stem of the flower that the garlic sends up at this point in it's development.  We remove the scapes to help the garlic bulbs put more energy into the bulb so we get bigger heads of garlic later on.  And these scapes are SO GREAT!  They will keep for several weeks in your crisper if it takes you a while to get through them all.  They can be used as you would a green onion, but they will add a garlic flavor.  Or you can use them in place of garlic cloves.  Eating with the season! 
Radishes will store best and stay nice and crunchy if you remove the green tops from the radish.  Both can be stored in plastic bags.  The greens are edible as well.  You can add them to the Arugula in a pesto with the garlic scapes (see recipe in last weeks blog but use scapes in place of green garlic. 
Herb pots mostly have mint and Thai basil.  The Thai basil was used instead of Italian basil when we had very poor germination on the Italian basil.  You can use the Thai basil as you would any other basil, it will just have a stronger floral taste to it.  We will be putting Italian basil from the fields in future boxes.  You can pot out the herbs into bigger pots to let them grow larger or into your yard.  Be warned - the mint will spread and you will likely have a large mint patch that can take over gardens.  Don't plant it anywhere that it would be a problem later.  Small herb pots have thyme or parsley or basil or mint.   

All your greens-and broccoli- will store best in open plastic bags in your crisper drawer.  Everything in the box needs to be refrigerated.  Limp greens will perk up again after a soaking in a sink of cold water.  All greens are washed, but we suggest another rinse just to be sure you don't end up with any grit in your food. 

Recipes

favorite snack
Spread Quark cheese or butter onto slice of baguette.  Top with sliced radish and a sprinkle of black pepper.  Best snack ever. 

Roasted Radishes
If you don't like raw radishes or find them too spicy, try them roasted!  Remove tops, slice them in half, toss them with about 1 tablespoon of olive oil and some salt and pepper. Arrange them cut-side down on a sheet pan (a cast iron skillet is also good) and roast at 450°F for about 10 to 12 minutes.  Remove when the cut side is browned a little, but they're still firm inside. Sprinkle with salt, finely chopped green garlic or garlic clove, and some minced parsley.

Vinaigrette Recipes from Bon Appetit

Miso Tumeric Dressing - a favorite around here to do on salads or drizzle on cooked veggies

Baked Kale Chips

Cosmic Wheel Creamery Farmstead Cheese Shares

This week is Quark.  Quark is a soft cheese similar to chevre, but made from cows milk. Besides the above favorite snack, it's also nice with some pesto mixed or herbs mixed into it and spread on crackers, wraps, sandwiches, or dropped onto scrambled eggs at the end of cooking.  You can mix herbed quark into warmed drained pasta for an instant tangy, creamy sauce.  OR you can bake with it or serve with berries.  It's very versatile and will keep in the fridge for 2 weeks or more.  If you won't get to it in that time, it freezes pretty well.

The aged cheese this week is called Draco.  It's based on a Romano recipe.  Great to finish a pasta dish or to snack on.  These handmade long aged cheeses often have spots of mold creeping into the paste.  It's the nature of the natural rind.  Trim off these spots and enjoy the rest!

On the Farm

Thanks so much for your patience last week as our email server went down!  First week of delivery was a pretty stressful time to have it happen, but in farming we have learned that we can't get too stressed out about things that are totally out of our control.  We hope you all found your boxes easily.  Please remember every week to take the box labeled with YOUR NAME.  If you have any issues, contact your drop site host or the farm. 

Our local farmers do a baby sitting coop and kids from several local farms are at Turnip Rock on Thursday.  We will do our very best to answer your questions, emails, and phone calls right away, but there might be a delay in getting back to your or some joyful noise in the background of phone calls! 

Did you know your farmers were featured in Acres Magazine this month?  Our friend, fellow farmer, and neighbor, Andrew French did a really nice write up about our farm and resilience.   Acres isa farming publication that we have used as a reference since beginning our farming journey.  It's such an honor to have Andrew write about our farm for this magazine.   

This week Otto was a superstar in the field bunching onions and cutting lettuce and helping out in the cheese room with putting labels on the quark containers.  This time of year is the height of activity on the farm with seeding, planting, harvesting, and weeding all being done at the same time.  The long hours of daylight are totally necessary for the amount of work that needs to be done.  We thank you for your support in allowing us to do the work that we love! 

Turnip Rock FarmerComment
Week 1; June 9, 2016

All CSA boxes have been delivered to their drop sites!  Our email program is down so we haven't been able to send out notifications.  Sorry for any inconvenience!  Contact us if you have any questions.  Thanks!

What's in the box?

Red Russian Kale
Red Romaine
Spinach
Green Garlic
Bok Choy
Choy Sum
Hakurei Turnips (large and medium only)
Arugula (large and medium only)
Spinach

Notes on the box...

This first box is full of greens!  It's going to be a bit of a challenge for some of our new to CSA members and has more oddballs than we will include later on. But most people know Spinach, lettuces, and Kale has even become a staple.  The baby kale is more tender and doesn't need to cook as long as adult kale.  It's also nice chopped and eaten in a fresh salad.  The Green Garlic is easy to love.  Just use it as you would a green onion, but you will enjoy a nice garlic flavor for this spring only treat!  Try chopping a stalk of green garlic and your arugula together and blending with some olive oil and a squeeze of lemon for a really wonderful spring pesto.  Hakurei aka Salad Turnips will store best with the tops removed.  The tops are edible, so you can save them as well.  They are sweet and mild little treats that kids generally love to snack on raw and that are also lovely cooked (recipe below).  Bok Choy and Choy Sum are wonderful in stir fry! 

All your greens will store best in open plastic bags in your crisper drawer.  Everything in the first box needs to be refrigerated.  Limp greens will perk up again after a soaking in a sink of cold water.  All greens are washed, but we suggest another rinse just to be sure you don't end up with any grit in your food. 

Recipes

Spinach and Ricotta Fritatta
3 tablespoon olive oil or butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
1-2 stalks of green garlic or minced garlic cloves
Salt and pepper
1 bunch of washed and chopped spinach or chard
8 eggs
1 1/2 cups ricotta
1/3 cup grated cheese (romano, parm, or another favorite)
About 1/4 tsp. freshly grated or ground nutmeg
Preheat oven to 375.
In a 10-to 12-inch ovenproof skillet, add the olive oil or butter, heat over medium.  Add the onion and garlic.  Cook, stirring often, until onion softens, 6 to 7 minutes. Add the spinach and stir to wilt, 1 to 2 minutes.
In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, ricotta, cheese, and nutmeg until smooth; season with salt and pepper.  Pour the egg mixture over the spinach. and move pan into the oven. Bake until the center is set, 15 to 20 minutes. When cool, run a knife around the skillet edges to release the frittata. Invert onto a work surface and cut into wedges or serve straight from the pan.

Green Garlic and Arugula Pesto
1 buncharugula
2 green garlic (including white stalk and a bit of the leaves)
2 tablespoons toasted sunflower seeds, pine nuts, or other nuts or seeds of choice
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese (optional)
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
Freshly ground pepper
squeeze of lemon
Combine all the ingredients in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade and pulse until the pesto is smooth. Store refrigerated up to 2 weeks and frozen up to 1 year.

Braised Hakuri Turnips and Choy Sum with Miso and Butter (adapted from Vegetable Literacy by Deborah Madison)
1 bunch Hakurei turnips
1 bunch choy sum
3 tbsp butter at room temp
2 tbsp mirin (or rice vinegar or dry white wine plus a 1/2 tsp sugar)
3 tbsp white miso (or any miso)
1 tsp black sesame seeds (or white), toasted in a dry skillet until fragrant
3 green onions (or 1 green garlic), white parts plus an inch of the greens, slivered
Sea salt
Remove greens from turnips and chop roughly.  Also chop roughly your bunch of choy sum.  Section the turnips into quarters. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a skillet over medium heat, add the mirin, then the turnips, and cook, allowing them to color, for several minutes.
White the turnips are cooking, stir together the miso and the remaining butter. When the turnips are tender, add the greens and add the butter miso mixture and allow it to bubble up, coat the turnips and greens, and just heat through. Transfer to a serving dish, finish with the sesame seeds and green onions, and serve. This dish probably won’t need salt, taste to be sure.  Nice with brown rice. 

Cosmic Wheel Creamery Farmstead Cheese...

Cosmic Wheel Creamery lives at Turnip Rock farm and is part of our whole farm ecosystem!  The whey from cheese making goes to feed our pastured pigs, the manure from the dairy cows is composted and provides fertility for pastures and crops, grass is a fantastic carbon sequestering crop that provides habitat for wildlife, and cheese is a wonderful food that rounds out the diverse offering of our farm! 

This week we have some whole milk ricotta and an aged Jack that we call Aquilla.  The Aquilla just celebrated its one year birthday on June 6.  I made it in the morning before going to our good friends wedding and I'm happy to be putting it in their CSA box for their first anniversary!  One wheel had a happy accident of some blue mold growth from where I used a tool called a trier to taste the cheese several months ago.  When I cut into it, there was quite a lot of blue growing inside.  I didn't include that in our members shares (except for a bit as an anniversary present) but we have been eating it and it's inspired me to try out making a blue cheese!  It might not be ready for another year, but I'm excited about it anyway!  In the mean time, enjoy this salty yummy aged jack.  The rinds of our cheese are natural and are edible, but they rarely enhance the flavors of the cheese.  you can give it a nibble if you like, but I usually suggest trimming it off and enjoying the rest!

The Ricotta is whole milk wonderfulness that has been drained and is a whole different thing than the liquid filled stuff from the store.  It is nice with honey and fruit, used in a savory or sweet tart, or in a classic lasagna. 

On the Farm

It's here!!  The first CSA box of the season!  "Hi there!" to our returning members and "Welcome!" to our new members!  If you have any questions about your CSA share, please call or email!  Sometimes there's some getting started hiccups and every year your farmers get some pretty serious first box jitters!  We are keeping fingers crossed for an uneventful first delivery and that you are all feeling hungry for fresh greens and salads! 

We have been planting, building, seeding, weeding, spreading, covering, uncovering, cultivating, harvesting, milking, making cheese, rotating animals on pasture, and if we get a moment, we enjoy a break.  Seems the only thing we haven't been doing it blogging... sorry about that!!  We have another stellar bunch of workers with us this season.  Haley is in her third season at Turnip Rock and is managing the crops alongside Josh.  Liberty is our new livestock manager, and with Hannah is doing the day to day milking. Liberty is also managing our flock of sheep and pigs and the calves.  Aimee has been here since March and has been Haley's right hand woman in most all the planting, weeding and day to day work.  We will also have some part time help from Andrew, Anna, and Miranda pitching in again this year.  We are trying to gently coax Otto into helping out in the field a little bit, but his mid is squarely set on playing all day. 

We will update you on more farm news in coming newsletters.  Here's the best part of the blog...  the pictures!  Thanks and we look forward to next week!

 

 



 

Turnip Rock Farmer Comment