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

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. 

We’re going to host a solstice party on Thursday, December 22nd. View our facebook page for more details.

Hey everyone. We are offering a farm tour this coming Saturday, August 20th, from 5:30-6pm. The farm’s address is 999 Fairview Road. The tour will basically be a walkabout on the field, with a little bit of background about the farm’s history, and it offers chance to see what we’re growing for our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares. If you have any specific questions at the time we’re happy to answer them. We’ve been doing these tours on the third Saturday of every month, so if you can’t make this one. Also, if anyone is interested in joining our CSA, we have space available. Please contact us at manofarmers@gmail.com or 541.543.5382 if you have any questions!

Hope to see you there!

-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.