Eggs and Meat for sale in 2011,

Order now while supplies last,

you can download and print order forms from our website…

if you pre-order lamb now you will get one pound of free ground lamb as a bonus,

if you have questions about how it all works, please get in touch fogandthistlefarm@gmail.com

we were working in t-shirts!

first day of fall shares

soaking in the warmth before the winter is upon us

On a more personal note we wanted to give a shout-out to Julia Wilson, an amazing chiropractor and CSA member who has been attentively taking care of our backs all season, helping us work through old injuries and new ones with adjustments, advice, and a good sense of humour!

She practices out of the Hudson Chiropractic Office at 64 Green St. and comes highly recommended from these 3 over-used spines. If you need an adjustment, give her a call…

this weeks haul…

salad mix

arugula

spinach

beets

watermelon radish

scallions

celery

cabbage

peppers

tomatoes

winter squash

ARUGULA PESTO

• 2 cups of packed arugula
• 1/2 cup of walnuts (or any nut or seed)
• 1/2 cup fresh Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 6 garlic cloves

put them all in a food processor and blend it up until you like the consistency…

in case the celery is a mystery to you, here’s a delicious dish a friend made last week:

SAUTEED CELERY AND WINTER SQUASH

Slice and rinse one head celery into half inch pieces, and one winter squash (acorn, buttercup or delicata!) into slivers after opening and seeding it. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a pan and sautee the celery on medium low heat, add a pinch of salt and a cup of broth and cook until it is desireably soft!

 

Week  14

“You can’t beat beets.”  That’s what my grandpa used to always say.  Of course he was referring to canned pickled beets, which were the only beets I ever knew about until I was 18 or 19, but I’d say the same is true of crisp fresh beets.  Try this great simple beet recipe and hopefully you will agree.

As the days get shorter and cooler, the summer vegetables are dropping off the menu, cucumbers, summer squash, eggplant, and eventually peppers and tomatoes.  They will gradually be replaced by roots, tubers, and hearty greens.  The fall crops are all looking lush and healthy, so you can rest assured that you’ll have some delicious eating in the last couple of months of the CSA.

We’d like to invite anyone who is interested to sign up for our autumn harvest share this fall.  It will go for 5 weeks from the last week of October up until Thanksgiving, and will include a plethora of your favorite fall vegetables.  Cost: $150.

On the plate this week: Beets, Mizuna, Salad Mix, Potatoes, Onions, Kale, Tomatoes, Basil, Peppers.

 Recipes:

Balsamic Marinated Beets

Ingredients:

1 bunch beets, boiled, peeled, and sliced

2 Tbsp Balsamic vinegar

1Tbsp Dijon mustard

1 small onion minced

¼ cu. Olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Optional: a bit of fresh or dried thyme

Preparation:

Combine vinegar, mustard, shallot and thyme, blend well. Slowly whisk in the olive oil until well emulsified. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Combine dressing with beets and let soak for at least 2 hours but overnight is better.

Wilted Mizuna Salad

Ingredients:

1 bunch mizuna, chopped

1/8 cup rice vinegar

1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoons finely grated peeled fresh ginger

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil

Preparation:

Heat vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, ginger, and sesame oil in a small saucepan over moderately low heat, stirring, until sugar is dissolved (do not let boil). Pour hot dressing over greens in a large bowl and toss well. Serve immediately

The function of a cover crop can be to accumulate nitrogen in the soil, suppress weeds, add organic matter, add phosphorus, prevent erosion, or even just some shade for the microorganisms in the soil and then later some goat food. We select cover crops for our fields based on the needs and challenges of that particular field or soil and the time of year we have a window to sow.

In one of our fallow fields right now we have sudex or Sorhum-Sudangrass, a relative of corn that grows up to 10 ft. tall and creates an amazing amount of biomass and organic matter while putting it’s roots down sturdily making channels will provide pathways for water and air to move easily through the soil, once the sudangrass is dead. The Sudex is planted in the ¾ acre field next to the new hoophouse that we cleared just last winter. There are still quite a few formidable tree roots in that field and so the extra organic matter and the aggressive rooting of the sudex works to our advantage in breaking them up. The goats make quick work of taking it down and turning it into even more available nutrients in their delicate little poo pellets, broadcast all over the field.

Another of our fallow fields in the back has a young stand of oats and clover. This field over the years has developed a horrific seed bank of Galinsoga, a very tenacious weed. Because of this problem we have left that field to bare fallow this whole summer, cultivating it from time to time to wipe out as many generations of germinating Galinsoga as we can and then cover cropped it, the oats as a weed suppressor and a nurse crop for the slower germinating clover, which will fix nitrogen in the soil. well… enough about us let’s talk about you for a while…

This weeks goodies:

Carrots, Chard, Mustards

Garlic, Leeks

Lettuce

Tomatoes, Potatoes, Eggplant

and a recipe…

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SWISS CHARD AND LEEK PIE

3 medium leeks
1 bunch chard
3 T. cooking oil
1 T. balsamic vinegar

1 T. Butter
3/4 C. whole-wheat flour
1 t. salt
pepper to taste
4 eggs, beaten
2 C. milk
1/2 lb. cheese crumbled or grated
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Slice leeks (white and tender green parts) into 1/2-inch discs, and rinse in a colander. In a frying pan, heat the oil, butter, and balsamic vinegar over a low burner and saute the leeks in it for 15-20 minutes until they brown a bit.

Strip Chard leaves from stems, rinse and add to leeks, put a lid on it and cook until they are softened.
Combine the flour, salt and pepper and make a well in the center into which you pour the beaten eggs and milk. Whisk until smooth — about 1 minute — then stir in cheese, leeks, and chard.
Grease a pan then pour in the mixture. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until a knife blade inserted in the center comes out clean. This pie can be served warm or cold. If serving warm, let it rest for 5-10 minutes before cutting it.

Our new deer fence is really paying off- one example is the head lettuce that’s been in your shares the last 2 weeks.  Earlier this season we had a 6 week supply of head lettuce eaten by deer.  Then our next 2 plantings we had covered to protect from the deer but it was too hot underneath the covers and the lettuce all bolted.  So, we are extremely happy to have lettuce back again. 

Nicholas’ niece was here this week and was a big help around the farm, particularly with the carrot harvest.  We harvested our storage onions and they are curing in the greenhouse.  As our fields continue to empty out, we are preparing to put some of them to bed for the winter by incorporating crop residue and planting cover crops.

Our tomato plants are continuing to pump out fruit so we hope you are enjoying them.  In your share this week is:

Watermelon, tomatoes, carrots, mustard greens, braising mix, fingerling potatoes, summer squash, sweet onions, choice of herbs, lettuce.

For us one of the most exciting things about the CSA model is the opportunity to be a known and trusted source of food for people that live right around us and that we can be both accountable to and supported by. In thinking about the growth of this farm, an obvious and profitable route would be to mechanize more and expand our vegetable operations and grow our vegetable CSA memberships. For us as farmers, a more meaningful route is to stabilize in size and add breadth and diversity to your plate. We want to make a bigger dent in your supermarket trips and provide you with more of what you eat at an affordable price.

It is just a guess that you eat more than just these vegetables but I guess it’s possible that everyone of our members is a juice-a-holic and spends five months of the year on a liquid diet of fog and thistle farm produce. Doubtful. So this week at pick-up we have a survey that we would love for you to fill out to help us get an idea of what else you would be interested in getting through our CSA. So fill out a survey and enjoy your vegetables!

This weeks goodies:

Beets

Kale

Bunching Onions

Garlic

Herbs

Cabbage

Lettuce Mix

Cucumbers

Tomatoes

Eggplant

Green Pepper

Summer Squash

and a recipe…

CREAM OF CUCUMBER SOUP WITH HERBS

3-4 cucumbers

1 bunch summer onions

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

3 cups broth

1 cup water

1 cup dry white wine

2 teaspoons salt

¼ cup quick cooking farina (cream of wheat)

¼ cup herb of your choice (mint, dill, basil, or parsley)

¾ cup light cream or half and half

Slice cucumbers into 1 ½” lengths. Slice summer onions. Warm oil in medium pot. Add scallions and sautee browning just a bit. Add cucumbers, broth, water, wine, and salt. Bring to a boil and stir in farina. Simmer partly covered about 20 minutes.

You can serve this cold or hot. Either way puree it in a food processor gradually adding the cream and then garnish with your chopped up herb of choice.

The focus this past week has been on building a deer fence around one of our fields, which we hope to finish in the next few days, and planting our fall brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, kale, collards) and lettuce, which we had been holding in the greenhouse until more favorable planting (and growing) conditions arrived.  We’re happy to have those planted because they were starting to get rootbound in their containers and the potting mix was running out of juice. 

All in all, the summer crops are looking great, and you can look forward to more eggplant, tomatoes, squash, cukes, and soon melons, peppers, watermelons, sweet corn, and lettuce in the coming weeks.

This week’s share includes:

Beets, Chard, Cucumbers, Eggplant, Kale, Candy Roaster Onions, Salad Mix, Tomatoes, Basil, and choice of Cilantro or Parsley.

Recipe ideas:

Try boiling the beets until tender, then plunge them in icewater and slip the skins off.  Cube them and put on top of a salad with roasted onions and candied walnuts. 

Slice eggplant into 1/2″ rounds, salt heavily, and let sit in a bowl for 30 min-1hour to remove any bitterness.  Rinse the salt off and then toss with oil, pepper, and salt to taste if necessary.  Cook in the oven at about 420 on a cookie sheet for 15-20 minutes or until tender.  Flip them halfway through.  Serve with pasta and fresh tomatoes and basil, or something else similarly delicious.

And a trick of the trade to make them even more delicious: cut your cucumber an inch from the end and rub the two pieces together in a circular motion for 30 seconds or so. You will see foam emerge up through the skin, the bitterness is coming out of the peel. Toss the short piece, rinse the rest of the cucumber and enjoy it in it’s new sweeter form!

In other much better news we harvested all our garlic last Wednesday and it is hanging calmly in the barn. We were nervous that yields would be greatly reduced from lack of rain but in pulling it all we were pleased with the average bulb size.

This weeks goodies:

Beets  & Carrots

Swiss Chard

Bunching Onions & Garlic

Herbs

Cabbage

Lettuce Mix

Cucumbers

Potatoes

till next time…. – Ashley

ooh and a recipe

Beet and Apple Salad

1 bunch of beets

1 or 2 apples, preferable a tart variety

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons white wine vinegar

1 teaspoon honey

1/2 cup or more of finely chopped scallion

1/2 teaspoon salt

Fresh ground black pepper

1 teaspoon lemon or orange juice, plus 1/2 cup water

In salted simmering water, cook beets whole until tender, about 45 minutes.  Drain and cool until you can handle them.  Peel the outer skin and julienne.

Combine olive oil, vinegar, honey, and scallion greens in a small bowl. Add the beets and coat with the dressing.

Peel, core and thinly slice the apple.  Toss in a small bowl with citrus juice and water to coat.

On top of salad greens, arrange apples attractively, spoon beets over apples and drizzle dressing over the entire salad.  Finish with a sprinkle of kosher or sea salt and fresh ground black pepper.

We’re very excited to report that our walk-in cooler is complete.  We just packed the last of your veggies for this evening in there where they are chilling at a nice 38 degrees. 

We hope you enjoy your vegetables this week:

Carrots, Cucumbers, Kohlrabi, Rainbow Chard, Cabbage, Scallions, choice of Radishes or Salad Turnips, Head Lettuce and Lettuce Mix, choice of Herbs