Hey CSA members,

Apologies for the belated mid-week newsletter. We harvested fava beans for your shares this past week and I meant to say something about them. I was pretty excited about them personally because we were only intending to grow favas for our seed company and as a winter cover crop (it’s an excellent nitrogen fixer), but on a lark I decided to save a bed and see how the beans did. When we went picking them I was really happy about the yields. Anyway, on to cooking them… One of our CSA members Ben makes a fava bean bruschetta by shelling the beans and blending them up, with olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper, to taste. That’s a simple way to start. Martha Rose Schulman, one of my all-time favorite recipe authors (I admit I sometimes rely on her sometimes too heavily, and I am actively trying to diversify my recipe pool), has published a great Moroccan Fava Bean and Vegetable Soup recipe.

We’re going to be putting a lot of green garlic (garlic that is harvested immature, before the inedible papery husks have formed) in the shares these coming week, and the New York Times has been going to town with green garlic recipes. This list is not exhaustive, but here are a few ideas:

• “When Garlic Goes Green” (an introduction to the crop)
• “Turning up the Heat on Lettuce and Green Garlic Soup” (this one was recommended by our CSA member J.B. White; nice find JB, it’s a double CSA item recipe).
• “Soba With Green Garlic, Spinach, Edamame and Crispy Tofu” (sorry we don’t have spinach, but maybe try it with chard?)

On the technology front, I’ve also been doing a little bit of tweaking to our newsletter system. From now on ya’ll are going to receive a weekly mailing that includes a Mano Farm masthead and aggregates the postings on our web site. This mailing will also include installments of this newsletter when we write them. We’ve also created a seed catalog and newsletter request form that is specific to our seed company. Also, if you don’t want to have anything to do with these mailings, there will be an option to automatically unsubscribe to them at the bottom of each email.

This coming Sunday, in addition to the aforementioned favas, we’ve got carrots, chard, broccoli, chicory, a culinary herb medley, probably a few bunches of radishes (perhaps for the trade bakset?)

Hope ya’ll are dodging the heat… if it’s any consolation, it’ll be much cooler on the weekend whereas it looks worse in the Midwest and east.

From the farm,

Quin

Dear CSA members,

The fennel bulb on the table this last week and present one is a variety called “Perfection,” which we have grown from our own seed on the farm (and if anyone is interested in growing this at home, we also offer this in our seed catalog). I meant to write about this last week, but things have been so busy here that the task just slipped away.

I like fennel because when the foliage is trimmed away (you should definitely do this for storing the vegetable) the remaining bulb looks like some kind of artery. Plus the cool, crisp texture and licorice flavor is a perfect field snack.

The bulb can be used either raw or cooked. In our farmer meals we often sauté finely sliced portions of the cheeks (just take off any outer layer of the bulb and that’s what I call a cheek) with onions prior to adding vegetables. Raw, it’s a nice addition to the base of a salad dressing.

The foliage can also be used: small portions can be finely minced into salads or added to a stir-fry, or alternatively, the foliage can be dried and used as a seasoning or for teas. Fennel is a strong digestive aid – the seeds, bulb and foliage all have similar effects.

Sometimes there’s a small portion of bolt in the center of the bulb, which is a fibrous woody stalk when the plant goes to seed. Watch out for this, as this experience of fennel will undoubtedly leave you gnawing on some fibrous flowering stalk wondering why everyone likes fennel so much.

Here’s a recipe for oven-roasted fennel that I have yet to try. However, I will note that I have unsuccessfully roasted fennel in the past, finding it too dense of a food to be broken down by the heat of the oven alone. So I’ve had an idea to par-boil a quartered bulb for 5-10 minutes prior to roasting in the oven.

We’ve got broccoli back in the CSA shares this week, which I suspect many folks will be happy about. There’s a bit of bitterness in the CSA share too – red-veined chicory greens. Use sparingly raw or cooked, and the bitter is something your taste palette (if it hasn’t already) will acclimate to.

This will likely be the last week of artichokes. Carrots and parsnips are on deck.

-Quin

P.S. This is again, a week late, but my Mom mentioned that last week’s episode of KCRW’s “Good Food,” discussed people foraging for wild fennel.

Hey CSA members.

Just a quick little update this week.

We’re going to try and post a listing of the entire CSA share on the bulletin board (this, in addition to anything that needs to be weighed by the pound) from now on. That way, folks know exactly what the share is composed of, and there will be no confusion regarding what to take. Anything that ya’ll want to trade for others items can be placed in our trade basket (which we are going to segregate from the main part of the people, so folks don’t accidentally take items from it).

Also, I wanted to reiterate that we don’t pick short on anything. Everyone who has a CSA share is guaranteed one of everything that we have on the table (except in the rare cases where we instruct you all to take either one item or another), and we leave everything out until sunset. If, for some reason, you don’t get an item that’s listed on the CSA share, contact us, and we’ll make it up to you somehow.

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We’re really happy to have leafy greens back in our life, and hope you are to. Our microgreen stir-fry mix is composed of baby broccoli and arugula greens. The lettuce is our Parris Island Romaine (grown from our own saved seed!).

Our chard is in its prime right now. My favorite way of making it is to sauté up some Mano onions along with chard stems, before eventually adding the greens and some salt to taste. I usually cook the greens long enough to the point where they are brightened and wilted, then cut the heat.

Or, if you’re looking for a more ornate way to prepare chard, check out Martha Rose Schulman’s “Valencian Chickpea and Chard Soup.”

Some Important Announcements: 

·      We have upcoming CSA picks on Christmas and New Years, respectively. In order to avoid picking on these holidays, we have decided to shift these picks ahead by two days. This means the Sunday, December 25^th share will be available on Tuesday, December 27^th and our Sunday, January 1^st will be available on Tuesday, January 3^rd. We’ll remind folks about this next week as well.

·      For a limited period of time we are offering yearlong CSA subscriptions to our members. Here’s how it works: you pay $1200 upfront for the year, and you get 52 pickups of Mano Farm vegetables. Paying up front is a win-win: you get a free month of CSA shares (if you were to buy four seasons of 12 weeks@ $300 a season, it would only be 48 weeks) and the longevity and finances of the farm will be substantially improved. This allows us to invest in new tools, seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, and labor – all the usual suspects. If you are interested in signing up for the year, email or call us.

·      In addition to all the wonderful vegetable varieties we offer, members renewing for the year can look forward to our fruit orchard (predominantly apples, peaches, and Asian pears, but we’ve also got almonds and mulberries in the ground), which will be in its second year, ideally allowing us to put fruit in the CSA shares. Our asparagus, raspberries, and artichokes will also be in their second year, so members can expect at least some of these items in the CSA shares. Finally, before the year is up, we’ll be adding 11 new first year fruit trees – four cherries, four Pakistan mulberries, two pomegranates, and a persimmon.

·      We are presently investigating the specifics of adding egg-laying chickens to the edge of our north field, which means that at some point next year members will also be able to purchase organic eggs as an add-on to their CSA subscription. 

Many find the rutabaga to be an unapproachable food. I had nearly forgotten about the root vegetable Brassica napus (cousin to the Siberian kale, which we’ve been slipping in your stirfry mixes) until I traveled to the Finnish province of North Karelia (which borders Russia) two years ago and met some subsistence farmers who anchored their diet around this mysterious root vegetable they called “swedes.” It took me awhile to realize this term was the more popular synonym for rutabaga. Folks in the northern parts of the world grow them because they are incredibly hardly and can withstand the cold better than any other members of the Brassica genus. The growing season up there in Karelia was about three months, or less. We ate mostly what the farmers or the outlying forest grew: potatoes, peas, and mushrooms. But rutabaga was always the centerpiece. They cubed them and dehydrated them; they ground up their dried rutabaga leaves and made something that resembled kelp flakes. We ate the rehydrated cubes as breakfast porridge along with copious portions of forest berries.

Beyond porridge, just how else can they be used?

You can peel, boil and mash them with potatoes to get an extra robust flavor. Or, you might cook them as I – ever the vegetable pragmatist, seeking maximum nutritional impact for the minimum prep time – do: Slice the ‘bagas thin and add them along with a spicy pepper to an onion sauté; crank up the heat and lid the frying pan to sear them (just make sure you have enough oil) before adding your other greens (which require less cooking time). Finally, you can also root roast them. Chunk them up and briefly parboil them with beets; add to a glass baking dish along with some chunklets of winter squash, add olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, rosemary: roast at 375-400 degrees until soft and/or crisp on the outside.

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We’re starting the feel the impending winter here. We have carrots, parsnips and lettuce in the ground, and a few flats of broccoli in our greenhouse. We’ve begun bringing baby onions into the mix, and have little shoots of pea sprouts coming up. As soon as it makes sense to (temperature and day length), we’re going to direct sow more spinach (this is something that we must grow much more of) and the rest of the usual suspects (chards, kales, collards, radishes). We’re starting to plan out our spring season and would like to hear if there’s anything folks would like to have more of / less of, etc, please do not hesitate to let us know. While it’s hard to accommodate everyone’s tastes at once, hearing feedback allows us to discover patterns, which in turn informs what we plant.

-Quin

 ·      If anyone has a need for baked goods for your holiday, email our artisan baker/CSA member Ben DiGregorio at bencooksinojai@gmail.com.

·      Give the gardeners and small farmers in your life the gift of organic seeds. Visit our seed company’s web site at http://www.agtoseeds.com to find seeds for many of the vegetables we offer our CSA members. On-farm pickup is available for the orders – we can have them available for you on CSA pickup day.

·      FYI: We can now accept credit card payments for CSA shares via the Square/iPhone setup. This, in addition to EBT/SNAP (food stamps), cash, and check.

Apologies for the excessive advertising preamble. Autumn has set in here on the farm: daylight is dwindling and everything is slowing down here in the fields. Thanksgiving week is upon us, and if the weather cooperates, we’ll hopefully be eating outdoors this Thursday, cooking up dishes both traditional and eclectic in character. Yet even as this season brings more flexibility to our schedule than the spring and summer, farming in this region remains a year-round effort. These recent mild rains have aided us in our recent fieldwork, and we’re slowly chipping away at our garlic planting. About a third of our field will be planted with a number of heirloom varieties, and we started on Saturday with four beds of Czech broadleaf softneck garlic.

What would the holidays be without pumpkins? I’ve been thinking about this recipe since we started harvesting our New England Pie Pumpkins late in the summer (which performed just wonderfully in Southern California). This will definitely be making an appearance on our thanksgiving dinner table.

Let the holidays begin…

-Quin

PUMPKIN SOUP IN ITS OWN SHELL

(from Animal, Vegetable, Miracale: A Year of Food Life byBarbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver)

·  11 five lb. pumpkin (if smaller or larger, adjust the amount of liquid) Cut a lid off the top, scoop out the seeds and stringy parts, and rub the inside flesh with salt. Set the pumpkin on a large roasting pan.

·      1 quart chicken or vegetable stock

·      1 quart milk or soy milk

·      1⁄2 cup fresh sage leaves (use less if dried)

·      3 tbsp chopped garlic

·      2 tsp. sea salt

·      Pepper to taste

Roast garlic cloves whole in oven or covered pan on low heat, until soft. Combine with liquid and spices in a large pot, mashing the cloves and heating carefully so as not to burn the milk. When the pumpkin is ready, fill with the liquid and replace the lid, putting a sheet of foil between the pumpkin and its top so it doesn’t fall in. (If you accidentally destroyed the lid while hollowing the pumpkin, just cover with foil.) Bake the filled pumpkin at 375° for 1-2 hours, depending on the thickness of your pumpkin. Occasionally open lid and check with a spoon, carefully scraping some inside flesh into the hot liquid. If the pumpkin collapses or if the flesh is stringy, remove liquid and flesh to a blender and puree. With luck, you can serve the soup in the pumpkin tureen.

The sweet potatoes on the table this week are culls from a breeding project that we’re undertaking on the farm. In January, we planted about 20 varieties of heirloom sweet potatoes we got from Sand Hill Preservation Center in Iowa, and planted about 150 slips total (slips are the foliage the sprouts from the sweet potato). From these trials, we’ve saved the most ideal roots and will be holding them over to start slips of our own next year. Breeding is a slow process, but we hope that by this time next year we will have determined the best varieties and growing practices in order to produce consistently abundant quantities.

In the meantime, the culls on today’s table are a mixture of all the varieties. We’ve noticed the white roots are the most problematic, so didn’t include many of them in the selection.

-Quin

·      We have opened the All Good Things Organic Seeds web site at www.agtoseeds.com. If you want to make an order just email us and we’ll bring it to the CSA table all packaged up for you.

·      Check out our resident bread baker Ben DiGregorio’s holiday and bread specials. We’ve got pumpkins coming for you, and he’s going to be making pies from some of them for the holiday season. For anyone who’s interested, there’s an information sheet on the table, and you can also email Ben at twoswords@aol.com.

We were running out of bed space for autumn planting, so I made a call and pulled the two remaining tomato beds. They were ripening sporadically; not frequently enough to give to everyone. Me and Julia (who’s WWOOFing – that stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms – with us until the middle of October) picked everything we could off the vines, resulting in the small share of ripe tomatoes and the big crate of green ones that grace today’s CSA table I think many of the greens would ripen up if given enough time, so take home a good share of them. However, don’t forget to consider the classic fried green tomatoes, which I had not tried prior to tonight. My Mom was visiting the farm and saw some of the green ones on the counter, and googled up the first recipe she found (enclosed in this newsletter on the table, or access it at http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/best-fried-green-tomatoes/detail.aspx). Right as Julia and I were coming in from picking my Mom had prepared this delectable recipe. They were so good I didn’t even grab my own dinner plate; just picked them up and ate them, listening to the sound of the crickets (which to me, is the sound of the earth breathing) as I chewed. For a moment there I felt like I was in the South. All that was missing were the collard greens.

This week we have some of our new romaine lettuce for ya’ll, along with another micro-green stirfry mix of baby swiss chard and rutabaga greens. I noticed that the last time we had both lettuce and microgreens on the table some folks only took one bag, and we were left with a lot of lettuces. We’ve been trying to differentiate between the two mixes by keeping the piles of bags in separate places, but please make sure to check.

This may very well be the last week of onions as well. It’s been an incredible run — I’d have to check to be sure, think we’ve put onions on the table every week since early March. We’re planted some purple onions that will start to be ready by the early spring.

Also, you may be wondering what to do with all those spicy peppers. The cayennes and aji amarillos can be dried pretty easily by making ristras from them. Check out this guide at http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_circulars/circ533.html

One good use for the jalapeños is Jalapeño Jelly, the end product of which can be preserved using canning techniques. One promising recipe is here: http://www.texashomesteader.com/2009/06/11/blue-ribbon-jalapeno-jelly/. I have yet to follow it, but I plan to get to work on some of my own this coming week.

-Quin@ManoFarm

• We’re proud to announce that Mano Farm has achieved USDA organic certification status through our certifying agency, Oregon Tilth. This is a major achievement for us. Most importantly, it will allow us to sell our farm-grown seed varieties as certified organically grown to the general public through our fledgling seed company, All Good Things Organic Seeds.
•  There are two types of melons on the table — take either one or the other. The netted one is called “Rocky Ford” and is green-fleshed, and the white one is called Honey Pearl and is white fleshed.
• The large, white bulb is a sugar beet. We grew a lot of these last year and these are the off types from a breeding project that we’re working on. By next year we hope to offer a certified organically grown sugar beet that’s adapted to this climate. You can use this beet like you would any other. We’ve enclosed a recipe for chocolate sugar beet bread.
• There are four spicy pepper varieties on the table this week: The Poblano (1,000 - 2,000 SR), Jalapeño (2,500 - 8,000 SR), Aji amarillo (30,000 - 50,000 SR) and Cayenne (30,000 - 50,000 SR). The “SR” unit is shorthand for the Scoville scale, developed by American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville to indicate the amount of capsaicin (the active component of chili peppers) present in each variety. This ranking would make the Aji and the Cayenne the spiciest and the Poblano the mildest. However, various climatic factors influence the capsaicin content of different pepper varieties, and we’d definitely rank those Jalapenos closer to the Aji’s and Cayennes. Enjoy your cooking and be careful!

Vegan Mexican Chocolate Sugar Beet Bread

1.     Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

2.     Dry ingredients:

·      3 ¼ cups pastry flour

·      2 tsp cinnamon

·      1 ¼  tsp baking soda

·      1 tsp baking powder

·      1 tsp salt

·      ½ tsp nutmeg

·      ½ tsp ginger powder

3.     Wet ingredients:

·      Mix separately: 3 tablespoons of ground flaxseed in 9 tablespoons of water. Set aside.

·      2 cups grated sugar beet (if you’re short, then you can substitute with either a summer or winter squash)

·      1 cup oil (sunflower or safflower preferred; soy or canola also works fine; use less oil and more apple sauce if desired)

·      ¾ cup cane sugar (turbinado, sucanant also work great)

·      ¾ cup apple sauce

·      2/3 cup orange juice (fresh squeezed preferred)

·      ¼ cup coconut milk

·      2 tsp vanilla

·      grated lemon peel (or lemon extract): add to preferred taste

Mix the wet ingredients together, and then mix the dry ingredients into wet. Pour flax into the dry/wet mixture and mix. Pour into a greased baking pan (I like to use coconut oil) with dimensions of approximately 9.5 by 13.5 by 2 inches deep. Glass baking pans with gas ovens cook things the most evenly; electric ovens and metal baking pans are less ideal. However, work with what you’ve got. Bake 45 minutes to 1 hour 15 minutes, depending on oven. Stick a knife in the bread; if it comes out clean, it’s done. Cool considerably, as I’ve noticed vegan pastries that use flax need the co