Hello folks…

Reminder of the LOCALVORE MARKET at Jubilee Farm in Huntington Center for the next four Thursdays. Come buy from your neighbors who raise, grow or make local food and plants. 4-7pm. Important: Huntington CSA pickup folks, this is your pick up location NOT our farm for 4 weeks. We will have meat for sale and I might bring our grill for hamburgers!

ON THE FARM:The animals are doing well. We just got our 125 turkey chicks and they are doing nicely. These will be organic pastured birds for Thanksgiving. If you would like to place an order for one, let us know. Good news, our pullets layer hens are slowly starting to lay their eggs, Ben found four today! On the egg front, we are collecting about 100 a day now so we are proud to be able to provide Beaudrys and the Green Grocer again with our delicious pastured organic eggs. (Also found at farmers markets and our CSA pickups).

We moved the lamb flock back into the field with the ewes who should be all dried off now. Thats a relief to only move one group of sheep each day instead of two. They are settling in fine though some of the large lambs still think nursing would be great and are trying to find some milk.

IN THE GARDEN: We had the crew out on Tuesday do a huge number on the weeds and the garden looks great! We had weekwackers, mantis tiller, “Troy” the tiller, hand weeders galore and it really helped get a handle on the wet weather weeds for sure. Thanks gang! Peas are gone now for the season but the beans are looking fabulous. We did a huge preharvest on Wednesday in anticipation of the huge rains on Thursday. I just hope we dont have too much standing water in the garden by the end of tomorrows expected rains.

THIS WEEKS HARVEST: MMM…more maple syrup! enjoy! Wet weather makes for large vegetables! You’ll notice some larger than normal cucumbers and some of the summer squash are large too. Still delicious though! Our harvest also includes beets, mesculin, cauliflour, broccoli, french beans, kale and flowers. I promise, soon we’ll have carrots and potatoes. Next week: Red cabbage.

IN THE KITCHEN:  A few ideas… Id like to hear what you are doing with the harvest. Email me at beth@otloose.com and I’ll publish your ideas.

Try a nice cool summer salad of cucumbers and tomatoes or blend up a cucumber with dill and yogurt for a nice dressing on your green salad.

Zucchini: try a stuffed baked squash with sausage, and cut up veggies and parmesean cheese.

Beets are great grated on your summer salad raw or boil them untill you can stick a fork in them. Make sure to cut the tops 1″ from the beet and then after they are boiled, you can just peel the skin right off and slice and eat. My kids love them!

Kale is nice steamed into scrambled eggs in the morning. One of the best sources of vit. A!

As always, enjoy the harvest and eat well.

Beth

Hello folks, here’s this weeks news. I hope your are enjoying the musings…

CSA members: PLEASE try to remember your pint jar returnables for the maple syrup. We’ll refill next week! YUM!

NOTE!!! Huntington CSA members: Next week July 24 and the following 3 weeks we will have the veggie share pickups at Jubilee Farm in Huntington Center. Sara Jane Williamson owner of Jubiliee is hosting a LOCALVORE MARKET for 4 weeks with many wonderful local goods for sale (baked goods, syrup, Maple Wind meats, veggies, jams etc. )  ALL WELCOME!!!! spread the word about this mini farmers market to all your friends.

ON THE FARM: Finally we have completed the water systems at Teal Farm for the lower fields. Bruce and the crew are very relieved to have that behind us and the water pressure is fantastic! Ben Cooley says “the cows will love it and we are ready to move them on Friday or Saturday”. They’ve been vacationing for 8-9 days up on high ground on an old air landing strip. To get them water, we’ve had to fill two water tanks using a pump from ponds on Melissa’s property. Every 24 hours 80 cows with their calves drink about 700 gallons!!!! We are still cutting and bailing hay- its been great weather this week for it!

IN THE GARDEN: Grow garden grow! All is well and we are hitting a nice period of harvest. We hope you are enjoying the fresh vegetables. I will say that soon we will enter into a slower “greens” period. I had a huge number of head lettuce bolt and also a nice patch of buttercrunch get bottom rot (from the wet soils from all this rain) so I had to compost them all. Head lettuce will not be very prevelent in the upcoming few weeks, my apologies. We’ll keep trying for loose lettuce until then. We got all the tomatoes trellised this week finally and they are loving the air and stretching in the sun! We can see many fruits but the ripe ones are still aways off.

THIS WEEKS HARVEST: Cucumbers (salad and pickling), Summer Squash, Basil, Cabbage, Chard, Scallions, Arugula (the swiss cheese kind with flea beetle marks but still tastes fine), and some cut red lettuce. There may be more surprises…

IN THE KITCHEN: We have great dill heads in the pick your own herb gardens so take some home and make a jar of pickles! Easy and fun! For many pickling recipies I highly recommend “Putting Food By” by Janet Greene. Very comprehensive on freezing, canning, and preserving all vegetables, fruits and meats. It is quite the bible of food preservation. Its put out by Plume Press. I think I got this used on Amazon.com.

Quick Pickles

10 pickles, 1/4 c. sugar, 1/4 c. pickling salt, 1/3 Quart vinegar and 1/3 Quart water, fresh dill heads.  Optional: garlic cloves or whole picking spices.

Mix together sugar, salt, vinegar, and water to a boil. Scrub cucumbers, remove stems and blossom ends; cut lengthwise in halves or quarters (not longer than the jar) Put a dill head in each clean hot jar. Pack the jars with cut cucumbers upright, then tuck in garlic clove if you like. Pour in boiling vinegar mixture, leave 1/2 inch headroom. Adjust lids. Process in 185F/85 C water bath for 10 min. Remove jars and complete seals if necessary.

Steamed Chard with Candied Ginger

3/4 lb chard leaves, salt and pepper to taste, 1 TB olive oil, grated lemon or orange zest or lemon juice to taste, chopped candied ginger to taste

Wash chard then chop coarsely. Steam leaves 5-10 min. Toss chard with remaining ingredients and serve warm.

I welcome any great tasty dishes you may want to share with the other members, Email me and I can add it to a newsletter.

Have a great week.

Beth

Summer is in full swing! I hope you all are enjoying splashes in a nearby river or waterhole on these hot days!

Reminders: Please bring your pint jars back tomorrow for a refill of maple syrup soon! Thank you! Any extras would be appreciated. Dont forget your bags and some folks are reusing their produce bags- way to go!

Kudos to the Williston families who carpool their veggies…4 families share Maple Wind CSAs and they each rotate a week to pick up for each other. Maybe you have a neighbor in our CSA to do the same thing and save some gas or time.

ON THE FARM: We are still finishing the work at the Teal Farm with water systems as our next project. By the way, the Teal Farm is having a open to the public free tour this Saturday July 12 at 10:00am. Bruce and Nate spent a good bit of last week on an excavator installing the spring and now this week our focus is fencing and running the ground water line. We are taking more steers to the butcher on Monday as well as a few pigs so expect more great product at Farmers Market. Its not too late to order custom meats!

IN THE GARDEN: Weeds.. We’ve enjoyed the rain but so have the weeds. We are tackling them with a vengence and just had a huge crew out there yesterday in the humid weather taking care of business. Are you looking down from route 2 to see the garden as you drive by? Its really taking on some beautiful colors. No sign of the wood chuck from last year thank goodness. The broccoli are coming along nicely as are the cauliflour. Our squash plants are at least 2 1/2 feet high and thriving! I can see some winter squash forming!

THIS WEEKS HARVEST: Colorful and flavorful. Summer is kicking in! ENJOY!!!! yum.

You’ll find summer squash, cucumbers, beets and kale. Also some mixed mesculin greens, garlic scapes and some more peas (PYO at Richmond again). The pickers in Richmond last week were troopers in the rain…out there with umbrellas and all!

IN THE KITCHEN: Thank you Jodi  from Maple Wind Farm for supplying these tasty zucchini recipies. Members are always welcome to email me a great recipe they know or would like to suggest to all of us and I will post it here.

FRIED ZUCCHINI

8 tblspn flour

9 tblspn water

salt

1lb zucchini

9 tblspn yogurt

1 tblspn olive oil

1/2 bunch of mint

1/4 tspn ground cumin

oil for frying

~In large bowl stir together flour, salt and water until smooth to make batter. Let stand for about 1 1/2 hours.

~Wash zucchini and slice about 1/2 inch thick.

~Put yogurt, mint and olive oil in food processor. Season with cumin.

~Lay zucchini slices in batter. Heat oil in wide pot or wok. Remove zucchini from batter, let drain a little. Carefully place slices in oil and fry about 5-8 minutes or until golden and crispy.

Serve with yogurt dip.

ZUCCHINI-POTATO FRITTERS

1/2 lb potatoes

1/3 lb zucchini

1/2 tspn corriander and cumin

2 heaping tblspn whole wheat flour

salt and fresh ground pepper

sweet paprika

3 tblspn oil for frying

~Peel and rinse potatoes and zucchini, then grate. In small bowl combine potatoes, zucchini and corriander ~Add cumin and flour. Season with salt, pepper and paprika. Mix well.

~Heat oil in pan. Form the mixture into six fritters. Then fry over medium heat until crispy brown.

Enjoy your week.

Thank you for eating locally and reducing your “miles per gallon quotients in your diet”.

Beth

Hello and Happy 4th of July weekend.

A bit of Housekeeping….

CSA members, please remember to contact me if you are not going to be picking up your share for the week. Also, call my cell phone if you know you will be late and we’ll put a bag together for you and leave it on the porch of the Andrews Farm or on the table in our barn. I hate to see a whole share go to waste. Id rather it stay in the field until next week. Beths # 233-3862 Don’t forget to bring your bags and some of you are reusing the produce bags, thanks!

Let us know if you would like some meat brought to the pickups for your weekend meals.

News of the Farm

On Monday, we had a HUGE day. We had an awesome crew of 12 that processed our first round of chickens…300 of them! Its not too late to pickup a fresh chicken, just come to the Andrews Farm from 3-6 Thurs or call us and we can bring one for you to a market on Saturday before they go in the freezer! All are between 3.5-5 pounds and look marvelous!  On Tuesday, Jodi, Lucy and Beth weaned our lamb flock from their mothers. The lambs seemed to be fine, enjoying frolicking in their new pasture by themselves. The ewes spent the first two days making a bunch of noise calling for their little ones. We do this so the mothers can dry up their milk production and the lambs can be more independent grass eaters for the summer. The crew making hay took 57 gorgeous bales of hay off of the southside pasture on the Teal Farm on Wednesday. When we get our next good weather window, we’ll cut the north side.

News in the Garden

We are happy with the growth of the garden. New varieties are soon to come ready for harvest. With all the rain we are trying to stay on top of weeds which is always a challenge. The plastic mulch is great under the plants, it the weeds in between the rows we have to stay on top of.  Many of the potatoes are flowering which means they are creating tubers. We should have some fingerlings soon!

This weeks harvest

Enjoy some early season cabbage, chard, head lettuce, leaf lettuce, and some summer squash. In Richmond, you will be invited to pick your own peas and boy o boy are they delicious…bursting with flavor! 

(Huntington, we’ll be picking for you) There will be herbs as always. 

The arugula (that I hoped you enjoyed last week) has bolted (gone to flowering stage) so we are going to pick the flowers. Jodi suggested that they are tasty on salads so give it a try!

As always, we welcome your feedback and comments. Please call or email.

Beth

In the kitchen

Did you know dill heads go well in potato salad and look nice too with great flavor. We hope you are enjoying all the great herbs.

Try this slaw recipe for your 4th of July picnic. Great with Maple Wind Farm ribs, pork chops or hamburgers.

SUPER SLAW

6 tablespoons rice vinegar

6 tablespoons vegetable oil

5 tablespoons creamy peanut butter

3 tablespoons soy sauce

3 tablespoons (packed) golden brown sugar

2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger

1 1/2 tablespoons minced garlic

5 cups thinly sliced green cabbage

2 cups thinly sliced red cabbage

2 large red or yellow bell peppers, cut into matchstick-size strips

2 medium carrots, peeled, cut into matchstick-size strips

8 large green onions, cut into matchstick-size strips

 /2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Whisk first 7 ingredients in small bowl to blend. (Dressing can be made 1 day ahead.

Cover and chill. Let stand at room temperature 30 minutes before

continuing.)

Combine remaining ingredients in large bowl. Add dressing and toss to coat. Season

with salt and pepper and serve.

Bon Appetit

July 1998

What a week! If you dont like the weather, wait a few hours (minutes even!)

On the farm: Another great week, we are busy cutting more hay on our leased fields in Richmond and watching for our third sow to have her babies…any day now. The herd of cows on the home farm here in Huntington is just about finished rotating these fields and they will go early next week to their new summer home at the Teal Farm in Huntington Center. The crew here on the farm has been working dilegently setting up a whole new fencing system on Melissa Hoffmans property as well as a water system (including digging and establishing a spring). We will graze her property with the cow/calf group and bring all of them back in 5-6 weeks to the home farm for some high density pasture grazing.

Farmers markets are going well. Its so nice to see friends, make new ones and serve up some grilled sausages and hamburgers (soon). Come visit us and enjoy all the other hardworking farmers, artisans and growers. Richmond Fri. eves. Middlebury Sat a.m. and Shelburn Sat. a.m.

In the garden: We planted the pumpkins this week, weeded the onions and hilled the 1700 feet of potatoes amoungst other chores. We uncovered some remay off the summer squash and were excited to see small fruits forming and the plants look wonderful! So many veggies are really coming along nicely!

This weeks harvest:

Head lettuce, Spicy greens mix, Swiss Bright Lights Chard, Scallions, Herbs and Red Leaf Lettuce. There might be enough peas for PYO in Richmond…stay tuned!

Ideas for your kitchen: 2 recipes for our greens this week! Simple and tasty.

Simple Swiss Chard (serves 2, prep 10 min cook 10 min)

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 bunch Swiss chard, stalks discarded, leaves cut into wide ribbons
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• salt and pepper to taste

Spicy Greens with Warm Balsamic Dressing

1 bunch arugula, cleaned, trimmed and chopped
1 head radicchio, chopped
2 cups chopped escarole, 1/2 head
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, cracked
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper

Arrange greens on a large platter. Heat oil and garlic in a small pan over moderate heat. Simmer garlic in oil to infuse the flavor. Remove the garlic from the oil and transfer it to a small bowl. Wipe the pan and return to heat. Add balsamic vinegar. Raise heat to high and reduce vinegar by 1/2, 30 seconds. Stream oil into saucepan and whisk to combine with vinegar. Drizzle dressing over the salad and season the greens with salt and pepper.

 Please tell your friends they can sign up for this posting if they want on our website. Enjoy your week!

Good news, beef is coming back from the butcher - the first of 2008! See you at the farmers market for best selection.

Be well, Beth & Bruce and family

Quote: “Living the slow life with food as the focus is as rewarding as it is easy, and it can be done daily by each one of us. Ultimately, it is about pleasure and taste, knowledge and choice. Once we begin to take an interest in the enjoyment of food, and in finding out where our food comes from, we can begin to see the effects of these choices. When we shorten the distance—both literal and figurative—that our food travels to get to us, we are participating in the Slow Food movement. Slow Food is about coming together as a food community—connecting producers and co-producers, coming together on the farm, in the market, and at the table—to create and enjoy food that is good, clean and fair.”

Well folks (all 26 of you that have signed up for this blog-type email newsletter) here it is. You dont have to be a CSA member to recieve this posting to your email. We had our first CSA pickup for 2008 last week on June 12th. We are off to a great start, a week earlier than last year. Our harvest was small but we were so excited to get things going. It was wonderful to meet our new members and see some return faces! Here’s hoping many of you had a delicous breakfast last weekend and indulged in some Maple Wind Farm liquid gold (aka maple syrup!).

I am going to try to put this newsletter together on Wednesday prior to the Thursday pickup. There maybe times when I get behind or something comes up and I wont forget. Its busy around here and sometimes computer time is at a minimum.

HARVEST for June 19th: will include some loose greens, beet greens, head lettuce, herbs and maybe some other surprises we decide to pick tomorrow. The garden is really starting to show itself now. Each week should be gaining momentum as certain varieties are coming into harvest. Expect Chard next week for sure! Peas are coming along nicely.

KITCHEN IDEAS:

Wilted mixed greens from Gourmet | May 2003

NEWS ON THE FARM: In the last week, two of our four sows have farrowed (given birth to piglets). We have a nice group of 17 market pigs born last December that will become our next group to go on to grace the tables of many of you, local restaurants and other localvores buying at one of the 3 farmers markets we do each week. The pigs usually take at least 6 months to get to the weight we are looking for (200+lbs) before they are ready to go.  Our pigs are really living “high on the hog” as we are feeding them 6+ gallons of milk from our Brown Suiss cow, Eliza Jane, each day. YUMMMMM!

I want to express my gratitude to our hardworking apprentices this summer, Lucy, Oliver, Ben and Jodi. We have great crew this summer and these folks are so dedicated, fun, and ready to learn about our farming operation. So introduce yourself if you see them around.  Also it goes without saying that our farm manager, Nate Holmes, who as of April has been with us a year, has been working hard, solving problems and keeping us on track. Thanks Nate!

UPCOMING EVENTS: Last minute notice but we will be at the Intervale Thurday June 19th (same eve as the CSA pickup) cooking up some organic pork sausages and fresh picked green salad for the Intervales Food Hub/Summer kick off celebration. Music, food, activities down at the Intervale. If you can make it, should be a great evening of fun.

Thanks for reading! Eat well, eat local and enjoy!

Beth