Spoutwood Farm CSA Harvest Guide: Week 4- June 30, 2005
To view the second harvest for this week, click here
To return to the 2005 Harvest Guide page, click here
WE NEED MORE MEMBERS!! Tell your friends and family! Remember you can receive a $32 rebate with a successful referral. Have interested people contact Liz or Rob. (Our phone numbers are above.) Large shares are regularly $550 and medium shares are regularly $340. Prorated prices for each week missed are as follows, $20/large and $10/medium.
WORK HOURS: Please contact Liz ASAP (by phone or e-mail) to confirm a day and time you are planning to work on your share hours. THIS IS IMPORTANT! We need to know in advance that we have help on the schedule.
MEETINGS: July 2, 4 pm followed by potluck is the next Core Group Meeting, the governing body of the CSA and all are welcome.
It’s fun plus GET CREDIT for two work share hours in the process.
July 9, 9am-5pm -- Straw Bale Greenhouse Mud Party (More info here)
Strawberries – The strawberries didn’t continue as we had hoped. We’re sorry and are looking into a better crop next year.
Chinese Cabbage – Chinese cabb again. This may look overwhelming, but it cooks down tremendously, esp. stir-frying.
Cauliflower – These cauliflower, cooked or raw, I think have more flavor than their paler grocery kin. Feedback welcome.
Swiss Chard – A most wonderful vegetable coming in green, red, yellow and orange. Use raw in salads or cooked any number of ways. Great cooked, butter or olive oil and seasonings added to the hot greens.
Lettuce – Red or green leaf lettuce to start the season. Also, some lettuce thinnings are available.
Endive – Very frilly cousin of lettuce. It has a bitter taste that blends well in a salad. Bitter foods are good for us as our ancestors knew, but we’ve forgotten in the modern rush to sweetness.
Beet Greens – We’ve been thinning the beets again. Some of the plants may actually have small beets attached – small cooked beets have a delicate flavor. This variety, called “Chioggia” is a fire engine red color outside and a neat surprise inside. Hint: cut one of the beets cross-wise. Very thin slices can don a salad. Beet greens are a delight in salads or cooked like spinach. We love to steam them lightly and put butter or olive oil and seasonings on. Yum!
Greens (Mizuna, Mustard) –Mustard is a bitey addition to a salad and great on some sandwiches. The mizuna is a mild oriental mustard that is good all around, in salads or cooked by steaming, stir-frying, or lightly boiling
Kale—Curly Green or Red Russian are a nutritious, steamed or stir-fried treat. Great also in soup and in salads, esp. the Red Russian which is closer to the texture and tenderness of lettuce!
Garlic Scapes – These are the flowering stems that we remove allowing all energy to go into the bulb. Fortunately these undesirables in the field have added benefit in the kitchen, esp. via stir-fry.
Herbs – Dill and Mint. Dill is incredibly versatile and you’ve got to make tea from the apple or spearmint (1 T/cup boiling water steeped for 5 min.)
Flowers – Native rose clusters and cosmos within the leaves and flower of the shrub, oak leaf hydrangea.
Couscous with Greens and Sun-Dried Tomatoes
1 medium onion, finely chopped
7 garlic scapes, chopped, or 2 cloves garlic, minced
2 T olive oil
6-8 sun-dried tomatoes, re-hydrated for 5 minutes in boiling water and chopped
¼ t dried thyme
6 leaves Swiss Chard, chopped
6 leaves Kale, chopped
1 ¼ C water
1 C couscous
1 t lemon juice
In a large skillet, sauté the onions and garlic in oil on medium heat. When onions begin to soften, add sun-dried tomatoes and thyme. Bring 1 ¼ C water to a boil in a separate pot, then add couscous, take off heat, and let sit for 5 minutes. Add Kale and Swiss Chard to skillet, and continue stir-frying until greens just begin to wilt. Take off heat and add lemon juice. Fluff up couscous with a fork and serve with stir-fry on top of couscous. This is great with a dash of Tamari soy sauce as well.
· Don’t forget July 2nd is our Core Group Meeting beginning at 4 p.m. and ending with a great potluck. Earn two hours credit towards your share hours and eat yummy food in fellowship with other CSA members.
· Newsletters are on the way!! Pick up your copy with your weekly share in the upcoming weeks. Look for new recipes, a member profile and educational pieces on environmental awareness.
· Straw Bale Building- Saturday, July 9th , 9am to 5pm –We need to get the final coat on our greenhouse/shed by the field.
· Straw Bale construction has become far more fashionable than when we started with it 9 years ago. We have two structures now, the mushroom-like building on Frodo’s hill, dubbed Frodo’s Eye and the CSA Straw Bale Greenhouse. Straw bales provide an excellent way to use a renewable resource, compressed straw, as a main construction material. Despite the story of the three little pigs, straw is fire retardant. It also packs a whopping insulation value and is a very democratic material: anyone can take part in the construction process. There are two basic ways to use straw bales in that process: load-bearing or in-fill. Frodo’s Eye bears witness to both processes, with a 4” slab sill-plate at 9 feet, cabled down atop the stacked bales and a timber frame construction for another 7 feet with straw filled in. The CSA Greenhouse is simply for the most part stacked bales bearing the load of a shed roof. The final wall treatment in both types of straw bale construction is to put two coats of mud (clay earth, sand and a little cement binder) inside and out to protect against the weather and burrowing animals. It is to finish the greenhouse final mud coat that we need your help July 9. There will also be two more mud workshops to finish Frodo’s Eye, July 23 and Aug 20.
If you have comments or suggestions about this website, please send email to:
and we will hammer things out.
Home - About Us - Education - CSA - Observatory - Events - Contact
©2002 Spoutwood Farm, Inc.