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.

Dear CSA members,

This most recent rain was a welcome surprise, even though it was a bit intense – even breaking out into hail – at times. The earth is all the more vibrant because of it. This is also beneficial for us because we are going to be doing some perennial planting in the near future, and the soil moisture will be perfect. We’re going to be adding another 200 asparagus crowns, 100 raspberries (red and yellow) and 25 rhubarb plants. I’ve become pretty excited about perennial vegetables lately, which is why I’ appending this Martha Rose Schulman piece about artichokes. Also, I wanted to let ya’ll know if you ever get tired eating an artichoke the standard way, just bite off the whole end from the bottom. You get most of the flesh and the heart without the tedium of picking each petal from the immature flower.

Our leafy greens just keeping coming. We’re flush in them now. Arugula, chard, micro-greens, lettuce, et al. Now all we need are some roots. New carrots and parsnips (planted sometime in early February) are taking their time, but our early potato planting is looking great. We really got a head start on that this year and I think a late spring potato is likely.

As for summer, we’ve planted our first tomatoes last week – a round of Costoluto Genovese from second-generation seed we’ve grown on the farm. We’re pretty excited about our nightshade selection. In the greenhouse now are Sasha’s Altai, Thessaloniki, Ida Gold, Black Prince, and Black Cherry Tomatoes, as well as Black Beauty Eggplant, Chocolate and Sweet Beauty Peppers. We’re going off the hook with the spicy peppers this year. The list is too long to recapitulate here.

On off the farm news, Justin participated as a panelist during the recent “Ojai Forum on a New Economy,” which focused on the possibility of Ojai becoming an ecotourist destination. Speaking of which, we’ll be participating in a “Day on the Farm,” event on May 19th. Christel Stratton is organizing this event, which is basically an open house of every organic farm in Ojai. We’ll provide more details about our tour time once it’s been solidified. We’ll also have a booth at EarthPlay 2012, next Saturday April 21st at Oak Grove School (220 West Lomita) from 11am to 4pm. I’ve just finished the first draft of our print seed catalog, and hopefully we’ll have that available for folks at the event next week.

We thank you all graciously for your support. Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

-Quin

April 6, 2009
Recipes for Health
In the Humble Artichoke, a Lesson in Patience

By MARTHA ROSE SHULMAN
Whenever I find bitterness in a vegetable, I suspect that there are beneficial ingredients hidden within. Artichokes, for instance — although they aren’t overly bitter, the flavor has a definite edge. No surprise, then, to learn that they are a rich source of silymarin, an antioxidant thought to be the active ingredient in milk thistle, traditionally used in many cultures to treat liver, gallbladder and digestive disorders. Artichokes also are a good source of magnesium, potassium and fiber, and they contain folate and the carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin, good for our eyes.

Best of all, artichokes are wonderful to eat and very low in calories. Yes, they require a little work — but it’s time well spent. Good news for those of you short on time: I’ll be using frozen artichoke hearts in some of this week’s recipes.

Steamed Artichokes With Vinaigrette Dipping Sauce

Some people think that eating an artichoke is a lot of work. I think it’s fun. My son and I sometimes make a meal of a large globe artichoke, the kind that can be as big as a baby’s head. I steam the artichoke and make up a dipping sauce or two, and we work at it until we get to the heart. Then I scrape away the chokes, and we divvy up the prize at the middle.

This is the simplest way to prepare artichokes — there’s hardly any trimming involved. The time is spent in the eating.

2 large or 4 medium artichokes

1 lemon, cut in half

Dipping sauce, below

1. Lay an artichoke on its side on a cutting board. Using a large, sharp knife, cut away the entire top quarter in one slice. Rub the top with the cut lemon. Cut off the stem at the bottom, so the artichoke will stand upright, and rub the bottom with lemon. Pull off the tough bottom leaves (bracts). Then, using scissors, cut away the thorny end of each remaining bract. Rub the edges with lemon.

2. Bring two inches of water to a boil in a steamer or pasta pot, and place the artichokes in the steaming basket. If they are too big to fit, place them directly in the water. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer 45 minutes or until a leaf easily pulls away. Remove from the heat. Serve hot or at room temperature with a sauce for dipping the leaves. Use your teeth to scrape the flesh from the bottom of the leaf. Have a bowl or plate on the side for the discarded leaves. When you reach the papery leaves that cover the heart in the middle, cut them away along with the choke and discard. Divvy up the heart and enjoy.

Yogurt-Mayonnaise Vinaigrette

Traditionally steamed artichokes are served with drawn butter or with a mayonnaise. I use a vinaigrette-based sauce thickened with just a bit of mayonnaise and yogurt.

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar or sherry vinegar

Sea salt or kosher salt to taste

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 small garlic clove, minced or pureed

2 tablespoon Best Foods or Hellmann’s mayonnaise

2 tablespoons plain low-fat yogurt

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

Freshly ground pepper to taste

1. Whisk together the vinegar, salt, Dijon mustard and garlic. Whisk in the mayonnaise, yogurt and olive oil, and blend well. Taste, adjust salt, and add pepper. Use as a dip for artichokes or other vegetables.

Yield: 3/4 cup

Variation: Substitute 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice for 1 tablespoon of the vinegar.

Martha Rose Shulman can be reached at martha-rose-shulman.com.

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.

*

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.

*

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’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

Your farmers: Justin (805.758.3184) & Quin (541.543.5382).  

Web: http://www.manofarm.org Email: manofarmers@gmail.com

Justin and myself consistently have dialogue about how to simplify and improve our CSA members’ experience on pickup days. Throughout the summer we’ve been revamping our shade structure to keep your vegetables fresher throughout the hot days, but now we’ve turned our attention toward the produce itself. We’ve noticed that while it’s been a relatively straightforward endeavor for someone to pick up vegetables we’ve bunched (say, kales or radishes) we’ve noticed our members sometimes under-select the vegetables we harvest in larger and indeterminate quantities (tomatoes and peppers, for example). This has frequently resulted in substantial leftovers  — not in itself a problem, as we generally eat them throughout the week — but I was definitely thinking, “I bet some folks would have loved to take more tomatoes… peppers… onions.”

One reason it has been difficult to communicate the quantities to take is because both our harvests and vegetables themselves vary in size considerably from week to week. A way we’ve thought to solve this dilemma is by starting to post suggestions of what to take in terms of weight. So starting this Sunday we’re going to leave a scale out for you all to take and post a conspicuous sign that lists the quantities by pound. Simply grab your vegetables and put them on the scale until you reach the appropriate allotment. We’ll always list the upper limit of what you can take, yet of course, if there’s something you don’t want, you’re always free to leave it — I can confidently say that none of our food goes to waste. Even the heaping wheelbarrowfulls of zucchini are being donated to food banks.

If you have any comments, suggestions, or thoughts about our scale system, please let us know. We always appreciate your feedback in our striving to create an elegant Sunday pickup for all of you!

—Quin

Your farmers: Justin (805.758.3184) & Quin (541.543.5382). Web: http://www.manofarm.org Email: manofarmers@gmail.com

• Someone had left a note on our CSA table with a question about pickling cucumbers. We haven’t planted a pickling variety per se, but we encourage any picklers to experiment with the two varieties that we have planted: lemon and marketmore 76. They’re absolutely delicious.

• On our CSA table this week you will find kale vegetable starts and “Support Local Agriculture” reminder bands. If you’ve read the most recent issue of Edible Ojai you’ll know Justin and I are starting a seed company, and these kales are a sampling of our first offerings. The four packs of kale starts are two dollars apiece and are a variety called “Fizz,” that we have nurtured from seed to seed. Kale is not typically a summer crop but if you get these in the ground now they’ll still be around when the weather turns cooler. We’ll also have packets of Fizz Kale seeds available through when our All Good Things Organic Seeds web site — http://www.agtoseeds.com — is open. The reminder bands are $5 and are available in three sizes (child, medium, large) and four colors (green, forest green, lime green, tree frog) and proceed will support just what they say. If you’re interested in taking any of these items home, just leave some cash in our CSA payments box stapled to the shade structure.

• This will be the last cabbage of the season.

• Upcoming: more red potatoes, more slicing tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, sweet and spicy peppers, eggplant, amaranth greens… more varieties of winter squash in the late summer (mini butternut squash & cabbage)… dill and parsley, and more cilantro. Our onions and garlic should hold out for the foreseeable future.

• We’ve mapped out our autumn planting schedule: Onions, garlic, leeks, broccoli, lacinato kale, perhaps some collards, Swiss chard, spinach, carrots, radishes, gold and white beets, parsnips, mustard greens, lettuce… and undoubtedly a few surprises.