Waltham Fields Community Farm
CSA NEWSLETTER
Week 18:  October 7, 2013                                      Like us on Facebook  Visit our blog 
 
In This Issue

Upcoming Events

 

ALL OF OCTOBER: Eat at Elephant Walk in Waltham!

We are delighted to be the October beneficiary, with proceeds from lunch, brunch and dinner at The Elephant Walk's Waltham location supporting our work. Enjoy a fantastic selection of French and Cambodian dishes. And try the farm-inspired cocktail too!


FOOD DAY BENEFIT DINNER AT THE ELEPHANT WALK
Thurs., Oct. 24
6:30pm
 
Join us for a special meal & conversation around Food Day principles.
Click here for registration info.
 

Farm Day a Success!

 

Thanks to all those who volunteered for and attended Farm Day.  What a beautiful day and beautiful scene!
  
  
 
2014 CSA Shares 
This is the time of year when we usually begin asking you to put down a deposit to renew your CSA share for 2014. Instead, this year, watch this space for a link to a brief survey to gauge your interest in some changes we're considering for next season. We hope to create a share that provides even more flexibility and satisfaction for you, while continuing to deepen the relationship between all of our CSA shareholders and Waltham Fields Community Farm. We hope to have the survey ready to go by next week!
 
What's In the Share This Week
Each week, we do our best to predict what will be available in the CSA barn and in the fields.  The CSA newsletter is prepared before we start harvesting for the week, so sometimes you'll see vegetables in the barn that weren't on the list, and sometimes vegetables will be on the list but won't make it to the barn.

Arugula
Mustard Greens
Broccoli Raab
Frisee Endive 
Broccoli
Cauliflower 
Bok Choy 
Potatoes
Sweet Potatoes 
Kale  
Sweet Frying Peppers
And a few other surprises from Picadilly Farm.

Pick-Your-Own Crops This Week 
Pick-your-own fields are open to all shareholders any day of the week during daylight hours. Please check the pick-your-own stand for maps and a list of available crops, along with amounts to pick. Please harvest only in labelled rows, and pay close attention to the amounts you harvest in order to ensure that there will be enough for all shareholders. 

Cilantro 
Dill 
Parsley 
Tomatilloes:  final week!
Okra
Perennial Garden Herbs & Flowers: Please pick carefully (use scissors), pay attention to signs, and watch your step in the perennial garden.  

Roasted Cauliflower à la Mary Celeste
 
A recipe from Clotilde who writes on the Chocolate and Zucchini blog. Serves 2 to 4.

one large head cauliflower

olive oil for cooking
1/2 t fine sea salt
2 T sesame oil
2 T freshly squeezed lime juice (lemon juice may be substituted, but lime is better)
2 T fish sauce, a.k.a. nuoc mam or nam pla in its respective Vietnamese and Thai incarnations (look for it at Asian markets)
chili sauce, to taste
one good handful hazelnuts, toasted and roughly chopped
one small bunch fresh cilantro, roughly chopped

 

First, prepare the cauliflower. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Remove the outer ribs and leaves, and save them to stir-fry later. Slice large florets off the center stem of the cauliflower, and tear those into smaller florets with your fingers. Trim and discard the bottom of the stem that seems woody. Cut the rest of the stem into 1/3-inch slices then quarter these slices.

 

Arrange the florets and stem slices on a greased rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt. Insert into the oven and roast for 30 minutes, stirring halfway through, until tender and dark brown at the edges (see note in post above). Let cool to room temperature, then transfer to a serving bowl. (This could be prepared a day ahead and refrigerated.)

 

In a small bowl, combine the sesame oil, lime juice, fish sauce, and chili sauce. Whisk to emulsify, then drizzle over the cauliflower. Add the hazelnuts and cilantro, and toss gently to combine. Adjust the seasoning and serve.

  
Do you have a recipe you'd like to share? We love to include your recipes in our next newsletter! Please send it in to Susan Cassidy
WINTER SHARES FOR SALE!

We are down to our last few WFCF winter shares.  See the CSA page on our website for more information! 
  
Winter shares are the perfect way to extend your CSA experience through the late fall and eat local (and delicious) for the holidays!  Winter shares are $200.00 and include three pickups at the farm on Saturday afternoons, November 9, November 23 and December 7. We plan for winter shares to represent the tasty bounty of the season, including carrots, beets, sweet potatoes, turnips, radishes, cabbages, lettuces, spinach, arugula, bok choy and kohlrabi, onions and garlic, and winter squash and potatoes from Picadilly Farm. Winter shares are available on a first-come, first-served basis until they are gone!
  

Notes from the Field:  CSA Share(d) Value(s)
many thanks to Saul Blumenthal for the photos!

Earlier this year, you paid us $650 to grow a summer CSA share for you.  For the past 17 weeks, we've been harvesting a variety of vegetables and you've been choosing the ones that you like to make up that share.  Thanks to a very useful spreadsheet that Sutton made for us over the winter, we've been keeping careful track of the value of the share that you choose from week to week.  Last week, in the 17th week of our 20-week CSA season, we reached a value of $650, including an estimate of about $100 in pick-your-own crops (that's about $5/week, about 3 bunches of herbs or 1 bunch of flowers). 

In a perfect world, we'd love to give you a 10% return on your $650 investment, which enables us to purchase seeds, compost and other farm supplies, fix tractors, and pay farmers without as much anxiety about cash flow as a farm without a CSA. That's what we'll be working on this week and in the two weeks to come. 
 
Why does it matter?  CSA, after all, is a partnership between a farm and its customers that creates a "share the risk, share the bounty" relationship.  In a good year, like last season, everyone feels the bounty, and shares are more abundant.  In a more challenging season, everyone takes the risk together, and shares are smaller. 

This is true on our farm, but it is not the whole picture.  As many of you know, our CSA was created as a way to help support a year-round farmer in the service of Waltham Fields' efforts to provide fresh, organically grown vegetables to those in need in our community and beyond.  This is the reason we exist, and the work that we carry on today.  Our outreach market, at which local residents can buy the same vegetables that you get in your share for prices far below market value, ends this week.  More than 130 bags of vegetables moved through the market last Tuesday, more than the volume that we distributed at the CSA pickup on the same evening.  It costs us the same amount to grow and harvest a bunch of kale whether it ends up at the CSA barn or the outreach market, or in the Waltham Public Schools, where more than 1 in 3 students receive free or reduced price lunches, and where Waltham Fields lettuce will make an appearance this month.  It costs the same amount to bring cabbage to the CSA barn or to harvest it and pack it for donation to Food for Free, which distributes it to food programs in Cambridge, Somerville and Boston, or to Healthy Waltham, which provides ingredients for Thanksgiving dinner for recent immigrants with preschool-aged children enrolled in Waltham's Family School. Ten of our CSA shares that are sold at half-price to households that qualify for federal food programs; these cost the same amount to produce as the shares that we sell at full price. 

Why bring this up now, in the context of a newsletter article about our CSA share value?  Because we believe in CSA as one model of supporting farms and connecting with community, but our CSA is not the only thing that makes us Waltham Fields Community Farm. The price that you pay for your CSA share, that $650, covers the cost of producing only your food. It does not contribute to the production of our food access produce. Membership and donations, along with grants and other charitable income, cover the cost of producing and distributing the food that we give away for free or provide at reduced prices, along with the on-farm education programs that reach thousands of low-income youth and families from Waltham and other cities.   

When you purchased a CSA share at WFCF, you became a shareholder in a community farm, a farm that works to be responsive not only to the desires but also the needs of its community. We believe that this is one of the responsibilities of a nonprofit farm, and it's a responsibility that we take seriously and with joy.  We believe in the radical notion that healthy food is a tool for social change.  Our location in a diverse urban community gives us the opportunity -- and the obligation -- to try to effect that change every day.  All of you, as CSA shareholders, know how it feels to sit down to a healthy, delicious, home-cooked meal at the end of a long day; we all know that good food nourishes the body and the soul.  If your day includes financial stress and uncertainty, this feeling is not only healing, but empowering as well.  If you can feed yourself and your family with good, healthy food grown in your community, that's one less choice you have to make between food and a utility bill or a rent payment.  One less source of stress is one more step towards true health and well-being.  And the health and well-being of everyone in our community, regardless of income or background, is what we believe in and strive for as a community farm.

Some of you have been with us for a long time and are as deeply committed to this mission as we are.  Some of you have volunteered at the outreach market, worked with children in our Learning Garden, delivered food to meal programs, watched the change that happens when people reconnect with the land.  Some of you may be with us for the first time this season, and you may not even have known about our other work when you signed up for the CSA; you may just have been looking for a convenient source of healthy, tasty food.  We hope that you feel like you've found a home at WFCF this year, despite all the ups and downs of the season.  We are grateful to each and every one of you who, as CSA shareholders, help keep our farm in operation.  But there's more work to be done as we move into the season of thanksgiving; one more outreach market to harvest for, more bags to fill, more donations to make.  You are part of all of that community work through your memberships and donations.  We're a tiny little farm, a drop in the ocean of need.  But we'll be there, and we're glad that you'll be there with us.

Enjoy the harvest,

Amanda, for the farm staff 
Quick Links

 

www.communityfarms.org

240 Beaver Street
Waltham, MA 02452 
Marla Rhodes, Volunteer & Development Coordinator
Amanda Cather, Farm Manager
Erinn Roberts, Greenhouse and Field Manager
Dan Roberts, Field Manager

Sutton Kiplinger, Assistant Grower
Zannah Porter, Assistant Grower
Andy Scherer, Farmer
Naomi Shea, Field Help

Hector Cruz, Maricela Escobar, Amber Carmer Sandager, and Lauren Trotogott: Field Crew

Lizzie Callaghan, Sage Dumont, Alice Fristrom, and Eli Shanks: Weed Crew

Mikaela Burns, Matthew Crawford, and Fan Watkinson: Farm Educators