Barking Moon Farm

I made a perfect meal the other night. I pan sautéed brussels sprouts (trimmed and halved) with butter, Full Circle Ranch bacon and garlic until slightly browned and seared. I then sautéed a package of Full Circle Ranch andouille sausage in olive oil and added a whole  lot of braising mix to the pan and let it cook down a bit. I served these 2 dishes with a nice full glass of Wooldridge Winery’s malbec. Yum! It was such a perfect combination of flavors, quality meat and yummy BMF veggies. If you are a meat eater, I highly recommend these combinations.

Things are moving along nicely on the farm.The greenhouse is filing up. Crop planning is happening and we will be ordering our seed for the 2012 season soon. We’re finishing putting up our 3rd hoop house and even got some tractor work done in all that dry weather! And having lots of downtime too and slow mornings. Soaking up the wintertime before it gets too busy again.

In your boxes this week:

• 2# Red & Yellow Onions
• 5# Carrots – We are giving you more this week — everyone seems to love them and can’t get enough!
• 2# Potatoes
• 2# Parsnips — Yum! I love parsnips. We had quite a bit of gopher damage on our parsnip crop. This is the first year we’ve actually successfully grown them. We’ve had trouble getting them to germinate the last couple of years. They can take up to 21 days to germinate in the field and you must keep them watered and wet that entire time. Tricky, but we pulled it off this year, but the gophers took out about 1/2 the crop, so we’ve pulled all that we had for you this week. Try using them as a topping for Shepherd’s Pie. Check out our recipe.
• 2# Beets — There have been requests for more beets, so here you go!
• 1# Leeks
• 2 Stalks of Brussels Sprouts — We thought you’d appreciate more of these. Man, we want to grow an acre of these next year. We love them!
• 1/2# Spinach — A new crop coming out of our hoop houses.
• 1 Green Cabbage
• 1/2# Salad — A mix of asian greens. lettuces and arugula.
• 1 Delicata — Not a lot of winter squash this week. We had some damage on the delicata and had to throw out 1/2 of the squash. We have an insulated room, but we think it got too cold in there and some of the squash rotted as a result.
• 2 Kohlrabi — I know these look weird and big, but they are tasty and delicious. These are a large storage variety of kohlrabi called Kossack. Try out our roasted kohlrabi recipe. You’ll be a forever convert! I’ve also included some kohlrabi cooking tips if you are just mystified by this vegetable.
• 1.5# Braising Mix – The italian kales have been taken over by aphids, so the mix is now just redbor and winterbor kale, napa cabbage and chard.

And recipes for the week: January19CSARecipes

Have a happy week! -M, E, A, & J

Happy new year to everyone! This week, believe it or not, we start seeding in the greenhouses for early spring production. We have three large hoop houses, which give us the ability to grow vegetables in the early part of the season while it is still cold. This week, we are seeding chard, lettuce, chicories, and peas — all will be planted in February destined for grocery stores, restaurants and farmers’ markets in March, April and May! It is hard to believe the 2012 season is already underway. For us, there is always a combination of uncertainty, excitement, and trepidation in starting a new season. On one hand, it is another year and a new opportunity to begin again on the farm — make changes and improve on what we did last year. On the other hand, there are so many unknowns and questions in farming that this can be interesting to navigate. Will it be a good year? What does the weather hold for us? Will we fulfill our potential? Will there be markets for our produce? The list of questions goes on. Mostly though, we get excited about planting those first seeds knowing that in a few months we will be eating fresh succulent spring peas or chomping on fresh escarole and lettuce salad. And, more excitement for bringing that food back to the community at farmers’ markets.

Stay tuned for information about our winter brunch for the CSA on Sunday, February 5th. It is going to be a lot of fun for the whole family! Farm tour, music, good food and community!

Here’s information about your boxes this week.

• 1.5# Mixed kales, chard and napa cabbage — I don’t know about you, but we eat this mix at least twice a day — usually breakfast AND dinner. Kales this time of year are just so tasty! Great for soups too. Check out a recipe that CSA member and awesome fellow farmer, Glenda Ponder, sent over. Thanks Glenda!
• 2# Mixed yellow and red onions — Remember, alliums are so good for you! If you have too many, think about caramelizing a whole pan and putting it on top of meat or other vegetables. Heidi, a fellow CSA member, recently did this and topped her roast. Yum!
• 4# Carrots — We just started digging from a new bed that has smaller carrots. So sweet! Try a shredded carrot/raisin salad for something different.
• 1# Beets — Sweet, red and yummy!
• 2# Russet Potatoes — I love russets because they are the best for making oven baked fries. Mashed potatoes too. Every year, I make Josh plant these just because I love them for the above two reasons.
• 1/2# Salad Mix — A mix of red lettuce, mustard greens and arugula.
• 1# Black Beans — Yes, we grew these as an experiment this year. We are trying to expand our winter CSA offerings by providing other portions of your diet in the boxes (like the popcorn). In general, the beans were pretty low maintenance in the field. We harvested them into the back of our Ford truck and then threshed them on tarps. We did not clean the bag of beans, but here are some suggestions for cleaning out chaff, seeds and rocks. Rinse them in a bowl of water to float the light woody stuff and separate those out. Then, you might want to spread the beans on a plate to pick out stones, pebbles and bad beans. We’ve given you about two cups, so after they are soaked and cooked, it should expand to about 5 – 6 cups. Just enough for burritos, enchiladas or other yummy dishes!
• 1 Green Cabbage — Sweet and delicious!
• 1.5# Golden Turnips
• 3 Stalks Brussels Sprouts — Probably the best treat in the box and the best thing we’ve grown this winter! So so good. We’ve given you the brussels sprouts on stalks. These are easy to prepare for eating. Just pinch off the sprout from the stalk and peel outer leaves. Trim end and toss with olive oil, salt & pepper and roast at 350. So delicious and so good for you.
• 1 Spaghetti Squash
• 1 Rutabaga — We grow ALOT of rutabaga. We love it so much. We hope you do too. You must try the rutabaga fries recipe! Yum, yum! By the way, these rutabaga are gigantic. Don’t think you need to eat the whole thing in one sitting. I chop off one rutabaga for awhile. Just store it in a plastic bag and keep using it in your soups and mashed potatoes!

And here are your recipes for the week: CSARecipesJanuary5th

Have a great one!

M, J, E & A

The harvest and packing went a lot smoother this week, even with still colder temperatures than last delivery. We also had the help of one of our CSA members, Heidi Dawn, who spent Wednesday morning helping us pack boxes. Thanks Heidi!

All is well on the farm. Besides harvesting carrots and veggies every week for CSA and wholesale deliveries, we’re spending time cleaning up the farm as well as putting up our 3rd hoop house! We also purchased a very nice refurbished Allis Chamers G cultivating tractor. We’re excited about adding this tractor to the season next year. It should really help reduce our weeding costs as well as speed up the time we spend on cultivation. Between projects and harvesting, we’ve also been sleeping a lot and hanging with our kids during this dark time of year!

So, onto your boxes. Here’s what is in there this week with accompanying notes:

• 4# Carrots
• 1 Bu Arugula
• 1# Leeks
• 3# Pie Pumpkins — I’ve been making pumpkin cookies with the flesh. Yum!
• 3# Savoy Cabbage — These should be especially flavorful with all the cold weather!
• 2# Yellow Onions
• 1 Green Kabocha Winter Squash
• 1# Beets
• 1.5# Purple Top Turnips — We’ve noticed that while cutting into some of these, there is a browning occurring in the middle. While we throw a lot of turnips into the compost and to our chickens, it is sometimes hard to tell which turnips might not be good without cutting into all of them. The turnips with brown in the middle can still be eaten — just cut that part out. If you receive any really bad or rotting turnip, let us know! It can be hard for us to identify bad turnips.
• 1.5# Braising Mix — A mix of kales, chard and napa cabbage. You may find a yellow flowering leaf/stem in the braising mix. This is called Hon Tsai Tai – an asian green. We planted this in the hoop houses and unfortunately, it went to flower before we could bunch them for you. But we harvested what we could and tossed it into the braising and salad mix this week. Just throw the whole stem and flower into your pan. So sweet and delicious!
• 1/2# Spinach
• 1/2# Salad Mix — This week, a mix of red lettuce, mustard greens and Hon Tsai Tai. Our green lettuce is kaput unfortunately. We’ll be looking for tougher green lettuce varieties for next year that can withstand the low temperatures, if that is at all possible. It has been stressful and a bummer to lose so much lettuce, but we hope that with the light returning and possibly some warmer weather, our lettuce crop will start re-growing in the next few weeks. We haven’t even been able to irrigate our hoop houses because the irrigation pump and pond are frozen and haven’t thawed out in weeks! We’re ready for some rain and warmer nights, hopefully. We’ll continue putting as much salad into your boxes as we can, but it has been the biggest challenge for us so far. A fellow farmer mentioned to us that he thinks with climate change occurring that this may be the standard for our winters — really low temps with dry weather. Interesting to think about how this will affect farming in the future.
• 3# Potatoes — Yukon Gold this week.
• 1# Popcorn — Yes, we did grow this! It is an heirloom variety called Tom Thumb’s Popcorn. We popped it yesterday while packing CSA boxes. It pops small kernels and takes a couple of ears of the corn to get a nice snacking bowl. We popped in a combination of olive oil and coconut oil, but I think this popcorn would do well in an air popper. Don’t miss out on eating this. Such a special treat. You can take the kernels off the ear in a couple of minutes with your fingers. My 4 year-0ld had a great time doing this yesterday.

And here are this week’s recipes:December22nd.Recipes

Happy hanukkah! Merry solstice! Happy Christmas! Happy New Year!

M, J, E & A