| Bring us your
compost! |
|
Bring your own household compost
if you don't mind the walk to the compost piles.
Acceptable compost ingredients include all
vegetable and fruit scraps, eggshells, bread
crusts and coffee grounds. Please, no
other animal products. Thanks to everyone
who has helped us build our compost
piles! |
| Lasagna with Chard, Ricotta, &
Walnuts |
A shareholder sent
us a link to The Veggie Project, a blog
devoted to cooking family-friendly meals with
local produce. 1 cup chopped
walnuts salt and pepper 2 to 3 pounds of
chard or other dark, flavorful greens 2 T
olive oil plus more to oil the dish 3 large
garlic cloves, minced 1/3 cup white wine (you
can substitute vegetable broth, if you
like) 1 cup ricotta cheese 1 cup grated
parmesan 8 oz shredded mozzarella 1 and
1/4 cups milk 1 8 oz box lasagna noodles,
precooked or uncooked, depending on your
preference 1. Boil a large pot of water
for the pasta. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees
and toast the walnuts on a baking pan until they
are gold and fragrant, about 7 to ten minutes.
Chop finely and set aside. 2. When the water
boils, add one tablespoon salt and the chard or
other greens. Cook until tender, about five
minutes, even if the water doesn't return to a
full boil. Scoop the chard into a colander and
press out most of the water. Reserve some of the
cooking liquid. Finely chop the greens. 3.
Heat the oil in a saute pan and add the garlic
and then the greens. Cook over medium high heat,
turning frequently, for a few minutes, then add
the wine and allow it to cook down. Turn off the
heat. 4.Combine the ricotta, parmesan, and
about two thirds of the shredded mozzarella in a
bowl. Stir in 1/3 cup of the cooking water, then
add the chard. Mix together and add salt and
pepper to taste. 5. If you are using no-boil
pasta, you can reheat the remaining chard water
to use to soften them. If you are using boiled
pasta, bring the chard water back to a boil or
use a new pot to cook them. Lightly oil a 8x10
or 9x13 inch baking pan. Drizzle 1/4 cup of milk
over the bottom of the pan. It won't go on
evenly because of the oil, but that is all
right. 6. Layer the lasagna noodles on the
pan, sprinkle with 1/4 cup of the milk, a third
of the cheese and greens mixture, and 1/4 cup of
the walnuts. Repeat twice, then add a fourth
layer of noodles and top with the remaining
milk, mozzarella and walnuts. Cover with foil
and cook at 350 for 35 minutes. Take the foil
off for the last ten minutes if you like a
crispy top on your mozzarella. Let sit for ten
minutes after cooking to set and then cut and
serve. Many thanks for the recipe
suggestions and links you sent in last week --
keep 'em coming! Need
more ideas? Visit our Produce Info and Recipes
page. | |
Welcome to the 2008 Harvest
Season!
CSA Pickups at the Farm this Week:
- Tuesday, July 1
from 3-7 PM
- Thursday, July 3
from 3-7 PM
- Sunday, July 6
from 3-7 PM
CSA Pickup in Davis Square (for pre-registered shareholders
only):
- Tuesday, July 1
from 5-7
PM
| |
What's New In the Share
This Week
 Please note:
This list is prepared the week
before you receive your share. Some
guesswork is involved!
We do our best to predict which
crops will be ready to harvest, but sometimes
crops are on the list that are not in the share,
and sometimes crops will be in the share even
though they're not on the list.
Once
again, weather tricks us! Spring crops
moved along and are out of the fields quickly,
while the crops of deep summer are not quite
here. This week's share may be a little
smaller (it'll help you catch up on your greens
eating from weeks past) but never fear -- the
tomatoes are just waiting for a warm week, and
the summer's bounty is right around the
corner.
|
|
Pick-Your-Own Crops This
Week
 Shareholders are
welcome to pick-your-own during daylight hours
Mondays through Thursdays and Sundays. (Keep an
eye out for the killdeer nests -- that's a shot
of the eggs.) Check the white board on the red
kiosk for PYO information.
- Basil
- Parsley
- Last of the snow peas
- Fava Beans
- Perennial Herbs and Flowers
- Possibly snap beans by the end of the
week
|
Fun on the
Farm!
A
group of families are hosting activities for
children on Tuesday afternoons during the CSA
distribution. This week brings the Silly
Olympics! Events will be Backward
Running, Crab Walking, Somersault Races,
Wheelbarrow Races, Going Very Slowly Races,
Three-Legged Races and maybe a relay. Kids of
all ages invited to compete. Winners will be
crowned with an edible medal (a carrot on a
string). Starting after Boudicca Hawke's story
time. Meet at the white tent.
|
Notes from the
Field
Rain
Farmers are
notoriously obsessed with the weather and
fatalistic about its impact on their
crops. Even some of our relatively young,
college educated farm staff have a suspicion
that setting up irrigation and a cultivating
tractor brings rain, while transplanting a water
sensitive crop in a field without irrigation is
a sure recipe for a few sunny days. If
anyone figures out what combination of
butterflies flapping their wings causes summer
thunderstorms, let us know.
Of
course, there's no predicting the weather
patterns from year to year, and compared to last
year's drought, we'll take this crazy series of
thunderstorms any day -- but they do have
consequences, some positive, some not so
positive unless you're a big fan of amaranth and
lamb's quarters. The warm weather and
regular rain showers (the other kind of
precipitation, which shall  not be named here, has so
far skirted our farm) are great conditions for
growing all kinds of plants, especially the
kinds of weeds that like to grow near
vegetables. So while our crops have taken
off in the past couple of weeks, so have our
weeds. And to make matters even more
challenging, wet weather every afternoon makes
it hard to get cultivating equipment -- or even
people with hoes -- on the fields to combat the
weeds. Sometimes the storms even seem to
undo the work that we are able to get done
during the dry spells. One farmer we know
was singing an old Gershwin tune with some new
words the other night: "Summertime... and
every time I weed the carrots a blinding
thunderstorm comes along and drives the weeds
back into the soil again."
This
week, we called out the reserves, our wonderful
group of shareholders who volunteer to be on our
"emergency field hand" list. They
responded to an email by coming and weeding
during the night, like elves -- we almost had
tears in our eyes when we arrived at the farm on
Thursday morning to find a bed of basil and
parsley liberated from the weeds.
In the
meantime, we're still planting even as we
harvest and try to keep up with our weeds.
Early July is second only to the end of May as
one of our largest planting periods of the year
-- fall broccoli, collards, kale, cauliflower
and brussels sprouts will soon take the place of the beautiful
buckwheat that has prepared the fields for them
during June. We'll plant lettuce every two
weeks until September, and we have one more big
planting of carrots and beets that goes in in
early July and is harvested until
December. Our crew is developing into a
finely tuned harvest and cultivating machine,
with the addition of our two part-time hourly
staff people, Dan Roberts and Amanda
Jellen. They can sing, too, which helps
with those long afternoons of weeding... if we
get a dry day.
Enjoy the
harvest,
Amanda
| |
|
Warmly,
The
Staff of Waltham Fields Community Farm
|
Amanda Cather, Farm
Manager
Debra Guttormsen,
Administrative and Finance Coordinator
Amanda
Jellen, Farm Crew
Paula Jordan, Children's
Learning Garden Assistant
Claire Kozower, Executive
Director
Jonathan Martinez, Assistant
Grower
Dan Roberts, Farm Crew
Erinn
Roberts, Assistant Grower
Andy Scherer, Assistant Farm
Manager
Mark Walter, Children's Learning
Garden
Coordinator
| | |
Waltham Fields
Community Farm