September 3, 2012
CSA Distribution Week #13
  cabbages

Waltham Fields Community Farm

 

CSA Newsletter

 Find us on FacebookVisit our blog


What's in the shares this week

This list is prepared before we harvest 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.  

 

Mix-and-Match nine items this week from the following list: 

 
KaleKale should be around for most of the rest of the season.  Enjoy all three 'Red Russian', 'Winterbor' (curly) or 'Dinosaur' (Tuscan) varieties! 

Swiss Chard:  Colorful and packed with folate, vitamins A, K and C, magnesium, potassium and fiber, chard is one of the healthiest vegetables we grow.

Collard GreensTender and delicious, collards are an underappreciated member of the greens family.  Give them a try -- they'll be around for the rest of the season. 

Lettuce:  A mix of greens and reds

Beets:  They're back!  This round has some nibbles from some nearby voles and bunnies -- don't be alarmed, they still taste delicious.   

Carrots:  The latest stand of carrots have tops that are poor for bunching, so you'll continue to see them loose.

Zucchini
We grow three different types of zucchini:  the traditional green, a beautiful gold variety, and an heirloom variety called Costata Romanesco ('Roman Rib'), which is tasty even when it's very large, which, because it can hide easily in the giant leaves of the plant, it often is.

Summer Squash:
The traditional yellow 'Slick Pik' is joined by the green and yellow patty pans and the beautifully striped 'Zephyr'.  All are delicious on the grill, sauteed in butter, or made into summer's best enchiladas for a special meal.
 
Eggplant Long, thin 'Orient Express', dark purple 'Italian' style globes, and tiny, beautiful 'Fairy Tale' eggplant are all tasty on the grill, in baba ganoush, or in ratatouille. All are on rotation on the stand this week. 

TomatoesStill coming!
 
Okra: Delicious on the grill.
 
Mustard Greens:  The beginning of the transition from summer to fall crops is usually marked by these delicious "greens" (though some this week are purple...)  A spicy addition chopped into a salad, also great sauteed with some garlic, tomatoes and lemon juice!
 
Cabbage:  The harvest isn't getting any lighter.  We've got some beautiful heads of fresh, tasty cabbages ready to come out of the fields.  You can make cabbage rolls, a tasty grilled cabbage slaw, or an autumnal salad -- there are lots of options for these sweet, crisp beauties!

Napa CabbageKimchihot and sour soup, tasty summer rolls or sweet slaw are just a few ideas of great seasonal meals to make with napa. 

Kohlrabi:  Back for its fall appearance a little earlier than we had anticipated, kohlrabi can be used in a curried couscous salad, a summery compote, or a tasty salad as well as just peeled, sliced, and dipped in your favorite spread or dressing. 

Radishes:  We'll have a few of the French Breakfast and the beautiful red round Rover variety this week; more are on the way as well!
   
Potatoes:  Keep the taste of summer going with a delicious potato salad, or just stock up on this staple!
 
And farmers' choice of a few surprises throughout the week! 
 
Pick-your-own crops this week:  Please note that when harvesting pick your own, you'll often find the easiest and most abundant picking at the middles and far ends of the beds.
  • Perennial garden herbs   
  • Basil
  • Dill
  • Parsley   
  • Hot peppers:  
  • Tomatilloes 
  • Husk cherries
  • Cherry and plum tomatoes:  please harvest only if plants are dry 
  • Flowers  
  • Raspberries: Spotted wing drosophila, the new scourge of the Northeast organic berry grower, is back.  This tiny fruit fly lays its eggs in ripening fruit.  You can soak berries in salty water to make larvae float to the top in order to use the berries in a recipe like raspberry freezer jam.  The larvae are not harmful to consume, but most people prefer to forgo the added proteain.  

logo smaller

Quick Links

 

WFCF CSA Info & Pickup Times 

 

Weekday shareholders:  Please remember to pick up on Tuesday or Thursday evenings!  This becomes even more critical during the fall months.  Email Amanda at the beginning of the week to request a one-time switch if you need to.   

 

WFCF Recipes

 

Events and Programs

 

Save The Date(s)

 

Waltham Farm Day
Sat., Sept. 22. 2-5pm. FREE event, no registration required. All are welcome!

 

Seed Saving Workshop with WFCF member Brian Madsen. Sat., Oct. 20, 2-4pm. Registration required.

 

Kids Corner 
 
raddichio
NAME: Radicchio.

FAMILY: Chicory (along with endive, escarole, and dandelion - all known for their great nutrition and bitterness).

NUTRITION: Vitamin A, C, E, K, folic acid calcium, potassium, and magnesium.

FUN FACT: Pliny the Elder (23 AD - 79 AD) was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher. He is most famous for his book Naturalis Historia (Natural History) which became and is still today a model for all encyclopedias. It is also the largest book we have today from the Roman era.
Unfortunately he was not able to write a final copy ˚due to his tragic death during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius." In his book Pliny said how awesome radicchio is, he even said that it could clean your blood and help you sleep if you were having trouble sleeping.

RECIPE: Mom's split pea soup. 
  • Equal portions yellow and green split peas
  • Carrots
  • Maple syrup - to taste
  • Sea salt - to taste
  • (Black salt if you have it)
  • White pepper - to taste
  • Medium size radicchio
In the early morning slice the carrots into coin size slices and then put all ingredients in a crock pot except the radicchio. Cook all day in the crockpot on low (approx. 12 hours). About 1 hour before serving, chop radicchio into small pieces and mix well in the soup. Make sure to let it cool before serving! Enjoy! (This is our older sister Boudicca's favorite food!)     
Notes from the Field:  Abundance 

All morning with dry instruments  
The field repeats the sound 
of rain 
from memory... 
It is August 
The flocks are beginning to form 
                       -- WS Merwin, from Provision 

It's everywhere in the natural world:  spiderwebs and seedheads, the slant of the sun ever further to the south, the deep colors of goldenrod and purple asters, young hawks riding the air currents over the farm all day, the small flocks of migrating geese already in the air at dawn and dusk.  Summer is maturing, beginning to give up the fight, but glorious in its decline.  The harvest is rolling in.   

plantings for fall harvest
This is what we plan for in January, poring over seed catalogs and spreadsheets.  Our seeding and transplanting for the season are almost complete, right on schedule -- just one more round of lettuce and bok choy and a couple more seedings of arugula and mustard greens to go.  There are a few more weeks of good growing weather left, but the sunsets are creeping ever earlier and time is growing short to have any impact on the crops, except for pulling them out of the field.  Some crops are coming in much better than we had planned -- cucumbers, tomatoes, and garlic, for example.  Some are not as good -- the leeks and onions in our unirrigated Lyman Estate field, for example.  It's becoming very clear that unless we can figure out a way to irrigate that field, we won't be able to continue to use it in future seasons.  There are successes and challenges in any season, but the general -- and beautiful -- impression of this time of year is that of abundance, of enough to go around.  Abundance is satisfying at a primal level, an old fulfillment of the promise of the spring, somehow related to the fleeting sadness we have in these cool, beautiful evenings.  It is satisfying to us as farmers because enough is our goal, the destination of every season in which we set seed into the earth.  Abundance is beautiful.  It is also backbreaking.  
 
far row of brassicas Now there are days when all we do is harvest.  In the mornings, the crops that benefit from being picked cool:  lettuce and greens, cabbage and broccoli.  In the afternoons, the crops that like to come in dry:  onions, curing in the greenhouse still, another round of melons, tomatoes.  Tomato picking at the end of July is a technical art:  hunting for ripe tomatoes in cascades of green leaves, working from newest planting to oldest in order to minimize the spread of disease, etc.  Tomato picking in early September is an endurance sport.  Two at a time, we fill two five-gallon buckets at a time, carry them to the ends of the rows, sort, repeat.  Abundance says:  did you think enough would be easy?  

weeded beds On the rare afternoon when we don't have to harvest anything, we have tractor ballet.  Three or four tractors at a time get attached to the mower, the disk harrow, and cultivators and make their way around the farm, tidying up, turning in, and killing weeds in the beds and pathways of the tiny fall greens.  This is the other satisfying work of the late season:  putting the field to rights for the winter.  Turning in crops that are finished, preparing the fields for cover crop seeds later in the week, making neat and orderly what was bountiful and chaotic. 

There's a lot of harvest still to come. But this fleeting moment of abundance, where tomatoes, basil and zucchini overlap with broccoli, radishes and fall cabbage, comes only once a year. Enjoy the harvest.
[Quoted text hidden]

Waltham Fields Community Farm Year-Round Staff  

Claire Kozower, Executive Director

Kim Hunter, Education & Volunteer Coordinator

Amanda Cather, Farm Manger   

Andy Scherer, Gateways Field Manager

Dan Roberts, Field Manager

Erinn Roberts, Greenhouse & Field Manager

Marla Rhodes, Development Coordinator

Deb Guttormsen, Bookkeeper & Tech Coordinator

 

Assistant Growers

Sutton Kiplinger, Zannah Porter   

Field Crew

Alison Denn, Anna Linck, Katherine Murray, David Taberner 

Weed Crew  

Becca Carden, Kathryn Cole, Annabelle Ho, Meghan Seifert

Learning Garden Educators

Rebecca Byard, Alison Dagger, Ian Howes

 

Work Sharers

Graphic Design, Neva Corbo-Hudak

CSA Newsletter, Susan Cassidy

Learning Garden Maintenance, Rebekah Carter

Container Garden, Dede Dussault

Perennial Garden Maintenance, Sabine Gerbatsch and Amy Hendrickson

Farm Work, Naomi Shea

CSA Distribution Coordinators: Joy Grimes, Natasha Hawke, Deepika Madan, Eileen Rojas, and Aneiage Van Bean  

www.communityfarms.org          781-899-2403  

Waltham Fields Community Farm | 240 Beaver Street | Waltham | MA | 02452