Coming up at the Farm
Night Sky Viewing on the Farm, RESCHEDULED for September 16th, 8:30-10pm Come see what is shining in the night sky above Waltham Fields Community Farm!
Harvest Family Program, 9/16 and 9/23, 9:30-11am For kids ages 0-4 and their caregivers.
Waltham Farm Day, September 26th, 2pm-5pm Come help us celebrate MA Harvest for Students Week and farming in Waltham!
Felted Slipper Workshop, October 10th, 10am-4pm Get a jump on your holiday gift planning this year by learning the technique of turning wool into unique felted creations. There are openings now available for Children's Learning Garden Fall After School Program, Thursdays, 3:30pm-5pm, September 24th-October 29th.
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| Recipes |
We love getting recipes from our shareholders!
Do you have a recipe you'd like to share? Don't be shy -- let us know!
For more information, see our Recipe pages. |
| Fun for the Kids |
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Story Time on Tuesdays, 4-4:45
Boudicca Hawke (age 9) will once again do Story Time on the farm for children of all ages. It will be held each Tuesday from 4:00 to 4:45 at the meeting shelter. She will have a selection of books that are related to farms and the creatures that live on farms, however if anyone has a favorite book they'd love to share, please bring it as she will be happy to read that too.
Fun on the Farm, Tuesdays, 3:30 - 5:00 pm
Kids, please join us for free play, old-fashioned games, story hour (see above), nature drawing (bring supplies!) and a nut-free snack. About once a month, we'll do a special activity such as tour bee hives and chicken coops, inventory birds and insects, make cornhusk dolls and our famous Silly Olympics. Parents, nut free snack contributions would be great! Look for Anastacia near the distribution shed at 3:30. |
| CSA pickup schedule for the week
Tuesday, September
15 from 3-7 PM
Thursday, September 17 from 3-7 PM
Saturday, September 19 from 8 AM to 12 noon | |
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What's 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.
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Pick-Your-Own Crops
 Shareholders are welcome to pick-your-own anytime during daylight hours. Please remember to always check the white board on the red kiosk for updated PYO information. While some crops are available for unlimited picking, most do have a limit -- this will be posted on the white board every week.
PYO hint: weekend pickup times are busy on the farm. If you can do your PYO at another time during the week, you may find that crops are easier to find!
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Apple Shares are here!
If you've signed up for Apple shares from Autumn Hills Orchard in Groton please remember to pick yours up when you come to the farm.
To see what's in the fruit share this week, click here.
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Food Preservation Workshops
Three local workshops on Saturday September 19th
Home of Jill Ebbott, 70 Beaconsfield Road, Brookline 9am-12 noon, $32 NOFA members and $35 non members Various culturing methods for lacto-fermentation, including making whey/cream cheese, sauerkraut, lacto-fermented soda, yoghurt, raw seafood salad with whey/lime, kombucha, and beet kvass. Handouts provided. Instructor: Jill Ebbott, Pregnancy Nutrition Counselor, helping avoid complications and foster child's long-term health. Natick Community Organic Farm, 117 Eliot St, South Natick, 10am-4pm, $45 NOFA members and $50 non members Learn health benefits and practice of preserving food for your family. This hands-on class will move through all steps of lacto-fermentation. You will take home recipes and a jar of sauerkraut or whatever is being harvested. Handouts provided. Instructor: Sharon Kane, Musician, energy healer, organic gardener and improvisational cook. The Trinitarian Congregational Church, 54 Walden St, Concord, MA, 9AM-3PM, $45 NOFA members and $50 non members Elena will teach a Russian version of water bath canning for cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and bell peppers. Fermenting cabbage, dill pickles, and culinary herbs and making small fruit jams. Charlotte will teach creating flavorful dried fruit, vegetables, and herbs, using solar and electric dehydration. She'll also force Belgian endive for delicious winter salads. Instructor: Charlotte Trim, Grew up on farm, learned culinary skills in France, gardener and food preservationist. Instructor: Elena Volkova, Educator with specialty in Russian cuisine. To register, visit www.nofamass.org, or contact Ben Grosscup by email or by phone 413-658-5374. Pre-registration is requested, but on-site registration is available for an extra $5 charge. If you are planning to do a walk-in registration, please call in advance to find out if there is space availability. A potluck lunch will be shared at the Natick workshop, and registrants are invited to bring something to share or bring their own lunch. |
High Summer Risotto and Thai Basil Soup
 Shareholder Barret sent in two recipes, saying It's getting to be that time! I LOVE risottos, and they're really not as tough to make as some would have you believe. Just keep stirring :)
High Summer Risotto
1 white onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic
¼ cup finely chopped basil, plus some slivers for the top
¼ cup finely chopped parsley
2T finely chopped sage
2T olive oil (I also use a little butter)
2 cups Arborio rice
½ cup dry white wine (can omit, just adds depth)
2 ½ cups seeded ripe farm tomatoes
2 cups zucchini or summer squash, grated
1 cup chicken or veggie stock, more if needed
½ cup parmesan
In a large heavy saucepan over medium heat, sweat the onion with the basil, parsley and sage in the oil/butter until the onions are very soft. Add the garlic for just a few seconds, and then mix in the rice and add salt and pepper. Stir slowly and when the rice starts to turn opaque pour in the wine. As soon as most of the liquid has been absorbed, add half the tomatoes and all the zucchini to the dish and mix well. Continue to stir frequently, and as the liquid in the tomatoes is absorbed, start adding stock until the rice is cooked. Arborio rice is cooked after about 15 minutes, when the grains are still separate but bathed in a thick sauce. After rice is done, remove from heat, stir in the cheese, the remaining half of the tomatoes, and the basil on top. I've also done vegan risotto (no cheese) and thought that the rice still was creamy and delicious.
Thai Basil Soup
I use zucchini galore in this soup, and any greens I want (not just bok choy)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 onion, thinly sliced in half-moons
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons grated gingerroot
Red thai curry paste
1 6-8-inch stalk lemongrass
1/2 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, or 1 package of firm tofu
2-3 cups water
14 ounces coconut milk (canned)
3-4 tablespoons fish sauce, or soy sauce
1 large baby bok choy, thinly sliced
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
Heat oil in small soup pot over medium heat. Stir in onion, garlic, and salt; sauté until onions are translucent. Add ginger, red pepper, coriander, and cumin; cook until fragrant (about 2 minutes). Bisect lemongrass stalk lengthwise and remove small core at bottom. Chop 1/2 inch or so of stalk where it is most tender. Add chopped lemongrass to other spices and set aside remainder of stalk. Tenderize chicken breast with a meat pounder on both sides and cut diagonally in thin strips. Add chicken to onion and spices and cook, stirring until chicken is white on the outside. Stir in water, coconut milk, fish sauce, and unchopped lemongrass stalk. Simmer until chicken is thoroughly cooked and flavors are well blended (15 to 20 minutes). |
Notes from the Field
Most of the time these days, it feels like all we do is harvest. In the mornings, we harvest for that day's distribution -- greens, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, carrots -- and in the afternoons, we often work on the big bulk harvests of melons and other crops that just don't fit easily into our daily rotation. Despite the challenges of this crazy Northeast growing season, many crops have produced well, and getting them out of the field, cleaned, and into the right conditions for storage (whether it's the walk-in cooler, the greenhouse or the hoophouse) turns into a very big job right around this time of year.
With our storage onions, shallots and garlic safely picked and stored (you'll see them alternating with leeks in the shares right up until the end of the season), the next big harvest challenge before us is the sweet potato crop. Sweet potatoes like heat to grow, and they were planted a bit late this year because of the never-ending rain that began right about the time that we usually put the m in. The real challenge with this crop this season is the balance between wanting to leave it in long enough for the plants to produce sizable roots while watching the soil temperature to ensure that it doesn't fall below 55 degrees, which can cause chilling injury to the potatoes and prevent them from curing and storing well. This means that we do a daily check of the soil temperature -- which is right now hovering around 60 degrees -- and know that we don't have much time to lose. When we're ready, we'll mow the tops of the sweet potatoes, then fork each row and dig out the roots, pile them in black bulb trays with lots of air flow all around, and take them to the greenhouse, where we can keep them warm and dry for the two weeks needed to develop their sugars and turn them into the delicious, versatile fall staple we all love. While this year's crop may be a little smaller than usual because of the weather, we are hoping that the flavor and quality will make up for any possible shortfall in quantity.
The other popular fall crop that we've been waiting for is red peppers. Since a red pepper is just a mature green (or purple) pepper, we've designated three rows of our best green varieties as "ripening rows" that we leave on the plant to see if we can ripen them up. With cool weather coming on so quickly, this is a challenging year to ripen a red pepper, but this week's sun and slightly warmer daytime temperatures may help our cause a little.
Our broccoli, cauliflower and fall cabbage should all be coming into the harvest over the next few weeks. We were hoping to begin  harvesting broccoli around the first week of September, but again, a late planting date and lots of weed competition (despite lots of cultivation and dedicated hand weeding by our staff and volunteers) have made it a little later than we had planned. Napa cabbage will probably be first into the shares, followed by green and red fall cabbage. We've been having some trouble with our fall spinach crop, which did not like the overhead misting system that we had to put in place to keep our strawberry plants alive in the greenhouse during our very brief hot summer this year. Many of our fall spinach transplants rotted and died in the greenhouse while the strawberries thrived. We'll direct seed some spinach which will probably be harvested as baby spinach towards the end of the shares.
The winter squash harvest this year is smaller and later than usual for many growers. Jenny and Bruce at Piccadilly Farm in New Hampshire, who grow our fall potatoes and winter squash, have begun harvested their winter squash crop but haven't been ready to distribute it yet. We are looking forward to their usual wonderful acorn and butternut squashes, even as we're enjoying their potatoes, which followed our own beautifully this season. In the meantime, our assistant grower Jonathan Martinez has grown a beautiful crop of pie and jack-o-lantern pumpkins, which he will offer for sale, along with Erinn Roberts's garlic and flower braids, at some of our distributions in October. These two items are an opportunity for Jonathan and Erinn to grow a crop on their own, keeping track of all their costs and income from the crop using a tool called an enterprise budget, and analyze its profitability to help with their planning for future farming enterprises. We'll keep you updated on pumpkin and garlic sale plans!
 Tomatoes continue to be a big question mark for us as we begin to plan next season. The questions of how much of this vulnerable and much-loved crop to plant, how to grow it (fieldhouses? weekly preventative copper sprays?), and how to quard against the possibility that late blight will overwinter in infected potato tubers somewhere nearby, only to appear again in an early season infestation, are ones that we'll be thinking about alot over the next few weeks as we develop a preliminary crop plan for 2010.
As always, we hope you enjoy the harvest this week. This season, we will offer opportunities for 2009 shareholders to hold their CSA share for 2010 in October. Watch the CSA newsletters and your email for reminders to hold your share, and please ask at any distribution if you have questions about next season's shares.
Eat well!
Amanda, for the farm crew
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Warmly,
The Staff of Waltham Fields Community Farm |
Jericho Bicknell, Education and Outreach Coordinator
Amanda Cather, Farm Manager
Debra Guttormsen, Administrative and Finance Coordinator
Paula Jordan, Spring & Fall Children's Learning Garden Assistant
Jonathan Martinez, Assistant Grower
Blake Roberts, Outreach Market Intern
Dan Roberts, Assistant Grower Erinn Roberts, Assistant Grower Nina Rogowsky, Children's Learning Garden Teacher Andy Scherer, Assistant Farm Manager | |
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