Waltham Fields Community Farm
CSA NEWSLETTER
     Week 2:  June 17, 2013                                        Like us on Facebook  Visit our blog 
 
In This Issue

Upcoming Events

 

Wild Foraging Walk

Tues., June 18

5:30-7:30

At the Lyman Estate

Tour one of our satellite fields with wild foods expert, Russ Cohen.

Click here for more info and registration.

Co-sponsored by Historic New England.

 

BIke Tune-Ups

Two Saturdays

June 29 & July 6

9am-1pm

At the Farm

$20 Includes basic cleaning & adjustment with Nathan Weston, Waltham Fields Board Member and bike enthusiast! 

 

Proceeds from the Foraging Walk and Bike Tune-ups benefit our food access and education programs.

 

Summer Programs for Youth in our Learning Garden!

Click here to learn more... 

Drop-In Volunteers welcome on Mondays (high school and older) and Saturdays (all ages), arrive at 9am sharp. 

Welcome Volunteers!

Napa Cabbage Salad with Buttermilk Dressing

 

This is straight from SmittenKitchen.com, and was adapted from Gourmet, 11/07.

...The dressing is a simple blend of buttermilk, apple cider vinegar, a touch of mayo, shallots, sugar, salt and pepper but the flavor is anything but. This is my new go-to creamy dressing. I am sure it would equally delicious with some crumbled blue cheese mixed in, if you're into that kind of thing. The dressing would be really great on an iceberg wedge or romaine hearts salad, or any kind of everything-but-the-kitchen-sink mega mixed bowl. Like your lunch tomorrow.

 

Ingredients

1/2 cup well-shaken buttermilk
2 T mayonnaise
2 T cider vinegar
2 T minced shallot
1 T sugar
3 T finely chopped chives
1 lb Napa cabbage, cored and thinly sliced crosswise (4 cups)
6 radishes, diced
2 celery ribs, thinly sliced diagonally

 

Whisk together buttermilk, mayonnaise, vinegar, shallot, sugar, 1/2 t salt, and 1/4 t pepper in a large bowl until sugar has dissolved, then whisk in chives. Toss cabbage, radishes, and celery with dressing.

 


Do you have a recipe you'd like to share? We love to include shareholder recipes in the newsletter! Please send it in to Susan Cassidy.

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. 

Lettuce: Crisp and delicious, great for salads galore, or for layering on your favorite burger. 
 
Spinach: This week's spinach is a little smaller than last week's, so the quantities are a little smaller too, but it's a bit more manageable to cook with.  Raw or cooked, spring spinach is a short-season treasure.

Kale You can cook it as part of any greens dish or try it in a raw salad, or make smoothies with it -- it's one of the most nutritious foods around.

Collard Greens These big, gorgeous greens can be intimidating, but they are really delicious and easy to prepare.  Try chopping them into narrow ribbons and steaming them until bright green, then serve alongside black beans and brown rice with your favorite condiments for an easy weeknight feast!

Swiss Chard: A close relative of spinach, rainbow chard is a farmer's favorite.  Chop fine, steam lightly or saute in olive oil and toss with pasta and parmesan for a simple, tasty meal.  High in folate, vitamins A and C, chard is also wonderful in a frittata or omelet or as a wrapper for your favorite veggies or meat.

Green Cabbage: These little beauties are not just for coleslaw -- think tasty tacos,  a hearty galette, or even stuffed cabbage on a cool spring night.  

Napa Cabbage: These big, healthy heads of crisp cabbage can be shredded for salads or spring rolls or thrown into a stir-fry.
 
Scallions: Versatile and easy to use, scallions are a spring favorite on the farm. 

Garlic Scapes:  The flower stalk of the garlic plant, scapes are only around for two weeks or so at the beginning of the season.  Farmers remove them in a semi-superstitious bid to make the garlic bulb larger, but they are also delicious, with a mild garlic flavor that is perfect raw or cooked. 

Beets with Greens:  Beets are one of those things that most of us didn't grow up eating, but fall in love with when we first tasted them fresh from the farm.  The roots and greens are both edible and delicious (just what you needed, right?  Another green!).  Beets are versatile, whether you use them raw or cooked, in a salad or even a cake!

Radishes: These are tiny, spicy radishes with lots of flavor, perfect in salads, shredded on tacos with cabbage, or lightly pickled on your favorite falafel sandwich. 

And a few surprises from Picadilly Farm, the great New Hampshire family farmers who provide us with 100 shares each week!
 
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. 
     
Possibly some snap or snow peasOur pea crop was hit hard this spring by a pest called seed corn maggot, a tiny fly that lays its eggs in large-seeded crops like peas.  We tried to outsmart them by putting our peas in the ground as transplants this year, but apparently they are a little smarter than we are and found them anyway.  (Although why they didn't find the cover crop peas, fava beans or green beans is mystifying even our UMass entomologist friends.  Maybe they like peas in rows.)  As a result, our pea crop is a little thin this year.  Please help us out by paying close attention to the amounts to pick listed on the PYO board. 
 
Perennial Garden Herbs: Comfrey
Our new perennial garden coordinators, Kristen and Shirley, have been at the farm every afternoon weeding, mulching, planting and labelling herbs and flowers for you to pick in the herb garden.  Please pick carefully (use scissors), pay attention to signs, and watch your step in the perennial garden.  There are many great herbs that are going to be ready later in the season!  
EGG SHARES AVAILABLE

When Eric of Eric's Eggs decided to market his eggs only through Farmers To You (see below), we didn't think we'd be able to find a sustainable egg producer large enough to offer egg shares to our CSA shareholders.  But David Petrovick at Caledonia Farm in Barre is willing to expand his flock of layers and build an additional chicken house if there is enough interest from folks at Waltham Fields. 

If you would be interested in purchasing a 25-week share to provide 1 dozen eggs/week for $150, please indicate your interest by e-mailing farmer Dave at caledoniafarm@charter.net. If there is sufficient interest, Dave will visit with the shareholders in Waltham and initiate egg share CSA contracts to deliver to Waltham Fields Community Farm on your vegetable pickup day.  Caledonia Farm will consider delivering year 'round as well if the sharers express interest. Any and all questions would be welcome -- email Dave!
Farmers To YouFARMERS TO YOU
  
Waltham Fields Community Farm is excited to begin a partnership with Farmers To You, a unique company that works with Vermont farmers and artisan food producers to bring delicious regional products to Boston-area consumers.  WFCF shareholders can pick up a weekly order of some of New England's finest cheeses, eggs, dairy products, and pantry goods and other goodies at the same time as you pick up your CSA vegetables.  You'll go home with all the makings for your week's meals -- all regional, and all in one stop!  We tasted the Deep Root Coop pickled carrots, the delicious Cabot clothbound cheddar, and the exquisite Butterworks Farm cultured butter last week, and can't stop thinking about any of them!
  
FTY pickups will begin as soon as 25 families have signed up -- there are only 7 more to go!  FTY is offering 10% off your first order for the pioneering families who sign up for the first distributions at WFCF!
NOTES FROM THE FIELD:  Too Much of a Good Thing
 
Plants need water.  This is one of those basic lessons you learn in elementary school (or, in the case of my personal houseplants, you keep on learning -- sorry, plants). When it's raining, we don't have to irrigate. When it's raining, we can get other work done. 

Rows of seedlings These are the things we kept telling ourselves last week when it just kept raining. We got six inches of rain between Friday the 7th and Thursday the 13th -- more than in the entire month of May. It rained while we were doing our first harvests, re-learning all the things we knew last season about picking and packing and washing and storing. We got a few beds of okra and lettuce planted in between the showers. We seeded lots of fall broccoli and cauliflower in the greenhouse. All of the other tasks that farmers need to do in June -- cultivating, turning in cover crop, seeding, making beds for crops that need to go in, fertilizing plants that need a little extra after the rain washes it all out, scouting for all the pests and diseases that can pop up in cool, wet weather -- had to wait. Even the weed crew, who just started June 4, had two days when they helped harvest instead of weeding last week as the rain made it too wet to pull weeds in the field.

The trick with the wet weather is the mind games it plays. We know we shouldn't be in the fields when they're that wet. Even the pigs know; they stayed inside their Pig Palace for most of last week. But farmers sitting on their hands in June, when we should be at some of our busiest, makes for some cranky farmers. We should be out killing weeds. We should be out seeding carrots. We should be out plowing in rye and vetch to make room for fall crops. But we can't. And so we wait.  And worry. We pace, and complain, and put on the rain gear again, and get used to the ache in the feet from the rain boots that -- let's face it -- just aren't that comfortable, and try to remember all the lists of things that we had on our rainy-day list back when it was sunny and warm. 

The wise farmer Dan Kaplan, of Brookfield Farm in Amherst, said of last week "at times like these we try to remember that what is required is a spiritual practice. We can only change what we can change.  And for all else, we have to learn acceptance."    

Container plantings By Friday, acceptance came a little easier. We remembered how to deal with wet weather.  You put all your plans on the shelf and seed in the greenhouse. You eat a little rhubarb snacking cake (thank you, Lizzie!) and catch up on your paperwork. You settle in to the sound of the drops on the barn roof and greet all the shareholders who don't mind picking herbs in the rain, and enjoy the sight of all the brightly colored rain gear in the fields. You wait for the rain to stop and the sun to come out so that you can check out all the crops, see how things fared in the rain, and catch up on everything else.   

Enjoy the harvest,  

Amanda, for the farm staff:  Andy, Erinn, Dan, Sutton, and Zannah
Quick Links

 

www.communityfarms.org

240 Beaver Street
Waltham, MA 02452 
Deb Guttormsen, Admin and Tech Coordinator
Marla Rhodes, Development Assistant
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

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

Lizzie Callaghan, Sage Dumont, Maggie Haaland, Jesse Santosuosso, Weed Crew

Mikaela Burns, Andrea Coughlan, Matthew Crawford,  Farm Educators