CONTACT INFORMATION:
Coordinator: Mike Rabinowitz Before 5:00 p.m. House Phone: 895-2884. Leave Message
Tuesdays: Oz Cell: 689-7693 6 – 6:30 pm
Wednesdays: Mike’s Cell: 749-2884 6 – 6:30. pm
Mike reminds us that he will try to get the packing slip posted by 5 pm the day of pick-up, but it is not always realistic, given the unexpected things which happen during the day.
INTRODUCTION
This is week 5. FARM NOTES HAVE BEEN CONSISTENTLY LATE. I HOPE THEY WILL BECOME MORE TIMELY. However, if you have time to read them as they are posted, things are pretty current, in spite of the actual date posted. Except that we had 2 hours of sunshine on Sunday, the first in weeks, a little more on Monday and more on Tuesday. Today, Wednesday, July 29, it looks like a full day but the word on the telly is that we can expect a whopper storm tonight, which will continue over the weekend. Mike is doing his daily walk-about and comes back with daily reports that are not so good. We have already done the fingers crossed, sun dances and prayers; now, it is only patience, which we are running short of. Some members have written encouraging notes, explaining they are amazed we can offer anything at all. I am also amazed, given that most of the picking/ packing during the last three weeks have been in the cold and actual rain, with staff in their raincoats which have hoods and water dripping down over their faces as they bend to pick.
THIS VERSION OF FARM NOTES INCLUDES:
What’s In the Bag this week? Turnips and Greens/ Soul Food in Tuesday Bag
Potpourri for Wednesday Bag!
What’s Happening On The Farm? Bumper Crop of Peas in Greenhouse #5. More being planted.
Young People with Go Project Visits on Sunday.
What’s Happening Off The Farm? Chelsea training to become a mid-wife.
New Recipes for Rhubarb. One from Veggie Member and one from Botanical Gardens Cookbook
WHAT’S IN THE BAG?
Tuesday: Scapes, Green Onions, Kale, rhubarb, Romaine Leaves, Snow Peas and Summer Turnip.
Wednesday: Lettuce Mix instead of Romaine and Chard instead of Kale.
Let us know how you are getting along with the scapes. We are fortunate to have romaine leaves. A member sent in a picture of the salad she made with goodies from Week 3.
Steamed Summer Turnips
There is not much to talk about this week except the summer turnips. In farm recipes, I have already wrote about being from the South, where we actually plant turnip seed in the fall, to have fresh greens and reported that I did not like white turnips because my mother boiled them to death until they had no texture or taste; also, the greens. We steam both the turnip chunks and the greens. Because there are not many greens, we steam them separately and serve them together in the same bowl. Peel and cut turnip into reasonable sized chunks and steam lightly until tender. Remove from steam pot and let rest in Pyrex bowl next to stove. Add greens which have been prepared by rinsing and removing yellow leaves to the steam pot. Include greens with ragged leaves and insect damage. This is a guarantee that your greens have not been sprayed with insect sprays and they may have had to wait a few days to be weeded. Mike and I had a “mess of greens and turnips” last night – without the cornbread and side dish of boiled eggs, which is usually the way they are served. If turnip and greens don’t appeal to you, leave them in the swap box for the next brave soul!
Wednesday group will have a potpourri! In some circles, a potpourri is a collection of dried flowers displayed in a decorative open vase. In a CSA, it is a way of distributing several different vegetables with similar value and character on the same day. For example, there are a few kohlrabi going out this week, some yellow zucchini and turnip. There are not sufficient numbers for the whole group, so everyone will not get the same. As more of these veggies get big enough to pick, hopefully there will be sufficient vegetables of each kind for the whole group; then, rotated to the other group . Consider your potpourri this week as a sign of good things to come as the season unfolds.
Calling all Lemon Balm Users!
The herb Wednesday is Lemon Balm. Some people like cutting up lemon balm in their salads or sandwiches. My daughter sometimes uses it for tea. Several websites write about lemon balm as a medicinal herb. We usually send it out one time each season and keep it for special orders. If you use Lemon Balm on a regular basis, please let us know.
WHAT’S HAPPENING ON THE FARM!
Alice is back from visiting family in Holland. Mark is visiting family in England and Diane is also on vacation for the week. Earlier in the year, Diane said she was going camping with her family. Last week, when staff wished her good weather, thinking she was going camping, she only grumbled saying that she didn’t care about the weather; she was cleaning house. Even so, house cleaning must be more pleasant than tromping around the field in the rain, trying to burn holes in ground cover with the propane torch for planting squash.
Best Crop of Peas, so far!!
Our members already know about the day to day struggles with the weather, but perhaps you do not know about the pea production in GH#5, the huge greenhouse Mike built after Hurricane Leslie torn the top off the Greenhouse and flattened the outdoor pea harbours at the height of production in 2012. This was when Mike decided the only way to farm in Newfoundland was with greenhouses. He put geothermal heat in an existing green house, GH#1, which was built in 2001. In 2013, he undertook an initiative to built a bigger – both longer and taller – greenhouse to grow other crops such as peas and squash that are normally grown outdoors. It took 2 years to get the basic structure in placed for requirements for the crops in GH#5 in terms of ventilation, netting as plant support structure and the larger puzzle of when to plant crops and how to rotate winter crops into summer crops.
Pea Crops
Mike has picked almost every pea harvested this year, with a little help. He is very proud of his pea crops. He picks every day, usually in the evening until it gets too dark. After dark, he records the weight for the day and has weekly records from the first small pilot crop in 2013. This year, 2015 is our best crop so far and we are still learning! This week, Ryan is undoing the ropes, taking out old vines and getting ready to replant. The peas are seeded directly into the ground. We hope to get a second crop before the season is over. When you toss your last few peas into a stir fry this week, say thanks to Mike for his tenacity for following through on his ideas, no matter the challenges.
The Go Project
This is the third year the Organic Farm has helped with a a local initiative under the sponsorship of the United Church of Canada. The idea of the project is to bring together 10 or 12 young people from across Canada to one place such as St. John’s, where they are housed and work together for 11 days. The youth visit local programs based on social justice and food security themes. The idea is not only that they have the opportunity to visit various places, but to also work and learn together. For example at a food bank or community garden. The only date they were able to arrange transportation was on Sunday, July 26th from 10:30 – 1 p.m. This meant asking two young people from the farm to work on Sunday. They agreed. Projects such as this is part of the Organic Farm’s Mission.
After I greeted the group with basics of organics, our philosophy and vision and a mini-lecture on composting, Kat and Emily gave them a farm tour of greenhouses and gardens using the farm map. Next they took them to their work, which was, guess what? Weeding! They took compost buckets and weeded for an hour in a field that I cannot personally walk to. One volunteer came to kitchen with me to make rhubarb custard squares, as well as Tabouli, which has mint, green onions and parsley, which she helped pick before we went inside. The plan was for them to meet us back in the kitchen for a “cuppa” and to taste the rhubarb squares and Tabouli before they went home.
Rhubarb Custard Squares (posted with farm recipes).
I put the ingredients and the baking pan on the table next to mixing bowl and finished cutting the rhubarb while the young woman read the recipe and set up things to make the squares. I chose the recipe because it seemed easy and was not like the rhubarb square recipes that have oats. Everything when according to plan. I soon learned that her previous experience with cooking was from brownie and cake mixes; nothing from scratch. Not a problem. We read and worked through the recipe one step at a time, A Tablespoon of this, a fourth teaspoon of that. She wanted to be sure that all the measurements were exact, which meant finding measuring spoons and cups that I seldom use. Also explaining that baking soda and baking powder are different and encouraging her to smack the egg on the edge of the bowl, rather than the edge of the table. When I am working with someone, adult or child, in a cooking project, my first rule is to never put my hands on the tool, egg, mixing spoon. It is so easy to take the cup out of the hand of the person trying to read the side of the cup, or being slow about combining sugar and butter but if I do, when will they ever become comfortable with that tasks. It is like someone, my son or husband, coming into help me learn how to do something on the computer. Move over. Zip Zap, It is done – which leaves me left wondering how to do the same things next time.
It took us longer than expected to get the squares ready to go into the oven. We had just started chopping up ingredients for Tabouli when they arrived in the kitchen; we gathered enough chairs for them to sit around the table and then distributed chopping boards, knives and scissors for sharing the tasks as we read the recipe from the farm recipe file. The parsley, green onions and mint was certainly more finely chopped than any recipe I have ever made. Kat and Emily put out cups and organized herbal tea for those who requested it. I asked what they had learned today. One comment was that potatoes are really seeds; another was seeing how compost turns into rich, soft soil, which was one of my goals. When we began to serve rhubarb custard squares and tabouli, one young woman asked if it was gluten free. That’s when we realized there were no gluten free snacks. I looked quickly around for something else and brought out the pre-sliced packages of Jarlsberg Cheese. When the first slice was displayed, several of the people around the table looked at the cheese with surprise and said they had never seen cheese with holes that big. The leader of the group asked where we bought it. No Mystery there. It is from COSTCO.
The visit was pleasant for the Go Project as well as us. Each year, things are a little different. Kat and Emily spent the rest of their shift on Sunday weeding and/or washing pots and trays for use again next spring. As it turned out, Mike liked both the tabouli and Rhubarb squares as did other people who worked on the farm on Monday. I made a second batch on Tuesday with one square left this morning. Today, Wednesday, I invited a new farm volunteer from British Columbia into the family kitchen and went through the same process of letting her make the Rhubarb Square recipe without interfering. Her mother is from St. John’s originally and she returns with her parents for a month each summer. She was very pleased with her squares and asked to take some home to her Dad!
WHAT’S HAPPENING OFF THE FARM?
The Unfolding of the Mid-Wife movement in Newfoundland.
Most people may know that if people wanted to become Mid-Wives, they had to be trained elsewhere.
So far, there are no registry for mid-wives in our province, although at one time, there were various ways mid-wives were approved to practice, especially in Labrador. I have just read a very long essay about the history of midwifery in Newfoundland. There is an active discussion ongoing, with the last major report about pending legislation being late fall, 2014.
When we hired Chelsea in the spring, she told us she was training as a Mid-wife and would be away from time to time, around once a month to attend a birth. This fit for our values. She also told us that she had bought some land on the Southern Shore a few years ago with the intention of building a house and living off the grid – someday. We didn’t think any more about the mid-wife training until one morning the second week of July she called to say she unable to work because she was attending a birth in the city. Later in the week, she send a text to say she was accompanying a Mid-Wife to Grand Falls to attend the birthing of a friend. It was one of those weeks with horrible, bad weather. It rained on Wednesday all the way out; it rained on Thursday, the day of the birth and on Friday, all the way home. Chelsea checked in on the weekend to report that both births went well and sent pictures; she was ecstatic with the experience and grateful to farm staff who graciously covered her work at the farm. As for us, we are pleased to know this woman who is contributing to the development of Mid-Wife practice in Newfoundland. __________________________________________________________________________________
Please send in your feedback and recipes for sharing.
The Little Red Hen
July 29, 2015
