CSA Newsletter: Year 17, Week 18: October 13 - 17, 2008
Dear Friends,
Here is the list for this week. As we get deeper into October the light is shorter, the nights are colder, and only the hardier souls are still surviving. On warm days they grow a little, but for the most part the fields are acting more like a walk in cooler than a solarium. We fully appreciate each of the hours of warmth that come our way because that little bit of growth in this beautiful month adds sweetness to our crops.
So many greens! Yes, the staff of a healthy digestive system. Each of the Asian greens that you receive - this week arugula, tatsoi - has a special flavor to impart in a salad, a soup, a stir fry, a casserole or a breakfast shake. Arugula has a peppery flavor that most folks use to enhance their salad, but I use it any of the ways above. Tatsoi is as close to spinach as you can get (we have had tremendous spinach germination problems this year - and at that the seed is quite expensive). It is great in egg dishes. The lettuce isn't growing much, but we hope to give you field lettuce until Halloween. It still makes a great salad, though it will be getting smaller. Kale is coming into its own. With each succeeding frost it gets sweeter. The beet greens this week are our hedge back in August on a warm September (which didn’t come to pass). They won’t make mature beets, but they will make tasty greens. Parsley and cilantro remain our friends in the field. I have not had a more stalwart crop this year than the parsley. And the cilantro, though seasonal, is quite tasty. Each of these two herbs build the blood while also cleansing the system. They are truly nature’s gifts. We are closing out the radishes this week. Enjoy the few that you will get. We are back to potatoes this week. They will hold strong until the end. I have not been happy with the squash crop this year. Some are starting to turn soft and the size was never very impressive. I chalk this up to the quite challenging July and early August with cold and rain every day almost. Leeks are a closeout this week too. They have not had the size that I hoped for, but flavor of this allium has been quite good. Next year we will hope for more heftiness too. You will get something from the brassicas patch this week - broccoli, cauliflower or cabbage. Celery is in the share again this week. This strong vegetable is another great one for digestion and internal cleansing. We will have ½ lb of carrots this week. We near the end of this crop. As they were planted in our field that spent some time under water this summer, we were not able to get the volume of carrots we hoped for. We are meting them out carefully to get you as much enjoyment as possible. We have a very small dill treat this week - enjoy. And garlic will go up to four heads this week as we are able to better estimate the last of our supply. Keep these immune system giants in a hanging basket out of the sun, or in a nylon stocking hung up for good air circulation and they should last you some more months. Fruit shareholders will receive 2 lbs of pears this week. I like to eat these when they are still crunchy.
Twenty students with the Northeastern Honors Program spend time with Julie, Clare and Danny on Many Hands Organic Farm
Julie Rawson at Bash Bish Falls
Jack Kittredge at Bash Bish Falls
This week end Jack went to a retreat for the New England Grassroots Environmental Fund (folks who might fund our Many Hands Sustainability Center) while Clare and Danny and I stayed home to "entertain" twenty students from the Northeastern Honors Program. It was a very productive day with these brightest of the young intellectual Americans. All of them hard workers with active minds, most of them had no clue about food and how it gets onto their plates. It was a great day for all of us. Above, many of us are seen preparing new rhubarb and chives beds. Later we split up these perennial plants and replanted them in these new beds. This will show up in spring shares next year.
Recreation
There is an aphorism about "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Yet for years Jack and I have not been the greatest at taking time off. This fall we agreed to take a day off each month. We didn't pull it off in September, but yesterday took a day trip to Bash Bish Falls in Mt. Washington, Massachusetts (SW corner of the state). Here are a couple of shots of us enjoying ourselves.
At the end of the day we make our bi-weekly pilgrimage to the Worcester County House of Correction where we visited Brian, a former staff member who is back in jail because of his addiction. Through visits and frequent letters we have grown close as we share the challenges of people on the inside and on the outside. I feel ever blessed to have this opportunity to get an intimate look at life in prison. Please keep him in your thoughts as he prepares for the next step in his journey - work release with more freedom and with more temptation.
Happy Columbus Day - our son Paul (the MHOF webmaster) turned 30 today! Happy Birthday Paul!
Sweet Potatoes
Every once in a while, over the years, a hot topic arises regarding the shares (last year it was mesclun). The subject of much interest this week was the sweet potatoes that were in your share last week. As hard as it is to hear anything other than praise and adulation, I appreciate your candor when you aren't happy with our food. Please read and enjoy the comments below and add your own if you like.
Hi Julie,
I was very disappointed with my sweet potatoes this week, they were half eaten and encrusted in dirt, they very literally looked liked like bowel movements. I really expect a higher standard from you and I think its poor management to distribute such a poor product, and I truly think you will lose shareholders by doing so.
Tina
Hi Tina,
Sorry you feel so strongly about this. As Nina and I were weighing them up on Monday, I commented to her - I hope folks don't throw these away, because even though they look a little rough, they are very tasty once you cut off all the mouse eaten areas. In retrospect, we might have washed all the sweet potatoes (we ended up washing the ones we harvested Friday) to dress them up a bit, but didn't. As you might remember because you have worked here, I often worry about what level of cosmetic presentation is just right for folks, requiring that staff take of the bad leaves off beets, bottoms off lettuce plants, cleaning up the leeks, etc. But we only have sweet potatoes once per year and it was such a challenge to harvest them. I wish the mice hadn't gotten in and eaten parts of them, but they find them tasty too. If I were to cut off all the bad parts (they have sealed over), it would take a lot of time, and it would also introduce another scar, and then customers would have to cut even more away.
In part being in a CSA is about customer education. When folks buy things at the store they are looking at the 40-50% of the produce that made it out of the field. The part that is left behind is made into processed food products or just left to rot. Here at the farm the CSA is our major market and we don't like to waste food. I often take the marred and imperfect food for use here at the house, or Mary Lou or another conscientious working shareholder will take it home and make good use of it. But in this case we had a limited amount of sweet potatoes to hand out and wanted everyone to get some. For instance with the regular potatoes, you will remember that we keep the mouse eaten and mistakenly cut potatoes for farm use and save the best for the CSA members.
I hope no one will drop out of the CSA because of ugly sweet potatoes. I also hope that you all will clean them up and eat the good parts (they are mighty sweet as the mice know).
We will continue to (sometimes) agonize over quality and presentation for the produce that we have, but will probably decide in favor of including less than beautiful produce when the alternative would be nothing at all.
Julie
Hello Julie:
I am writing to express my disappointment with this week's share. Attached is a photo of the sweet potatoes we received. I don't think they are edible at all. I fully understand how a CSA works. As I told you before, this is not our first experience with an organic CSA farm. Simply put, the sweet potatoes we've got this week do not reflect positively on your farm's "quality" products and they shouldn't have been a part of the share.
Thanks for your time,
Taskin Padir
Hi Tashkin,
It is hard on a farmer's "ego" when shareholders aren't happy with our food. In this case you are the second person to write in concerned with our sweet potatoes, making it doubly challenging. I just want to point out that sweet potatoes don't grow in New England (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_potato#Cultivation). We went to a major effort to raise them in our hoop house this summer in order to vary the offerings for all of you, and because we love them so much too. It is hard for them to make it to full size in our climate, hoop house or no, and as they are residents of the earth, they are dirty. For us to carefully scrub 100 lbs of sweet potatoes would take a couple hours, and we made the management decision to leave that to you the consumers.
Perhaps we shouldn't have. Lesson learned. If you haven't thrown them away, I encourage you to wash them up and cook them in one of the following ways - baked and served with butter, or sliced thinly and stir fried with one of the greens that we sent along in your share. I get them almost tender and then add the chopped greens. I fry them in lard, but you could fry them in olive oil or butter. Add a little salt and you will find a dish that is out of this world. Part of this farm is about education. I could have not given you all sweet potatoes this past week, but in having done so I guess I have inadvertently provided an educational opportunity. Generally I am proud to pack your bags with our produce (I know, pride goeth before a fall), but I wanted to take a chance with these sweet offerings in hopes that you would discover the golden nugget hiding in this rough cloak. As I evolve as a farmer, and let you tell me, each year, even after of life of this, I learn more and more valuable information about how to better produce more high quality food, I hope to present our CSA members with good food that approaches 100% on the looks standard too. Your email is a reminder to us too, to be always professional with our presentation and to up the quality control in the field and while packing in the barn.
Thanks, Julie