In Your Share This Week

• Broccoli
• Lettuce
• Carrots
• Red Russian Kale
• Dino Kale
• Turnips (depends on your pick-up site)
• New Potatoes (depends on your pick-up site)

This past weekend was crazy hot – over 100ºF!!! Thankfully, Sunday cooled down, and by Monday, the temperature has gone down over 20º. It’s still spring. Sort of. Needless to say, we had to keep everything well watered this weekend. It was all about irrigation and not melting while outside! We’re going to let the beets size up a bit more before we harvest them again. The carrots are doing pretty well aside from the voles munching a few of them. The lettuce was starting to flower, so we harvested as much as we could. This week’s variety is a romaine called Freckles; we got it as a free sample from High Mowing Seeds at a farming conference. Lettuce put out tons of seeds.

On Sunday, we had some guests visit and made a super easy kale-carrot salad. We pretty much just put the kale and carrots in the Cuisinart and dressed the chopped up greenery. Once it had chilled in the refrigerator, it was very refreshing with our pulled-pork and roast beef sandwiches.

For a quick tofu and broccoli dish to try from Mark Bittman’s Kitchen Express (Simon & Schuster, 2009):

Poached Tofu with Broccoli

Field Notes

We finally got all the first hay off the pasture and are selling the hay to start paying off one of our tractors. It will feel good to chip away at that debt. Sweet corn and beans are in the ground, as are eggplant. The tomatoes are growing well, and we see blossoms on the greenhouse cucumbers. One variety of potatoes should be ready for harvest in one or two weeks.

We’re actively watching the development of AB 224, a state bill currently in the Senate that would regulate CSAs in California. It’s another permit program to make sure any food going out into the public is “safe” and traceable to its source. At the moment, it doesn’t include any enforcement, although there will be an annual fee and paperwork. Agriculture is heavily regulated in California, and there are so many hoops to jump through and papers to file, it’s no wonder that there aren’t more small family farms. We sincerely hope that it won’t get to the point where we need to hire a “compliance officer” to make sure we can stay in business and actually farm.

Eat well,

Adam & Paula

• Baby Carrots
• Beets
• Broccoli
• Swiss Chard
• Scotch Kale
• Turnips
• Radishes

The broccoli is just starting to flower, so there isn’t quite enough for every pick-up site to receive broccoli this week. Next week, we’ll switch it around so everyone gets their fair share. The carrots are starting to size up. Little carrots like these are good for snacking or roasting whole. Try them roasted with Morrocan spices. This is the last week for radishes as it is way too hot for them now, and they get woody.

The broccoli is probably best cooked, like lightly steamed. With this past weekend’s heat, the sulfur content in the broccoli plant most likely increased, giving it a spicy bite when eaten raw. We are keeping the broccoli well-watered in this heat wave so that the turgor pressure of the plant cells can counterbalance that sulfur. Broccoli prefers cool weather.

Expect more cooking greens this coming week, as well as some lettuce. We have been experimenting with Swiss Chard. For lunch, we used a raw chard leaf to wrap a slice of leftover meatloaf (with mayonnaise of course) for a meatloaf-chard taco/wrap thing. That was yummy. We also like torn up chard in a quick quesadilla. Greens like these are so versatile, it’s easy to get their nutrition into your meals.

We hope you picked up uour Veggie Tip Sheets on Swish Chard and Beets this week!

For an in-your-face (note: not for children!) blog on healthy eats, check out Thug Kitchen and how Swiss chard compares to Swiss cheese.

Also, Swiss chard is a great substitute for spinach, which did not germinate very well this spring.

Field Notes

Along with keeping crops irrigated in the heat and continuing with transplanting, weed management, etc., our hay crop is keeping us occupied. We just got one of our main hay fields cut and baled in Potter Valley, and it has been quite an ordeal so far. Just like vegetables, quality hay has a timeframe in which it needs to be harvested and taken off the field. Currently, we don’t own any of our own hay-making equipment, and we don’t have the time to do it ourselves, so we prefer to outsource that job. Unfortunately, there aren’t very many folks in our valley who actually cut and bale hay anymore, so finding someone to do the job has been tricky.

Eat well,

Adam & Paula

A bee buzzing among blackberry blossoms in Potter Valley.

Mendocino Organics Vegetable CSA - Tuesday, May 28, 2013

The weather has taken us for a spin again, as the week is starting off quite wet, gray, and a bit chilly. It’s not usual for us to harvest spring produce in the rain. The forecast online is calling for very warm days later this week – all the way into the 90s. Nothing keeps us on our toes like Mother Nature.

In Your Share This Week

• Lettuce (depends on your pick-up site)
• Radishes
• Salad Turnips
• Fava Beans or Peas (depends on your pick-up site)
• Kale
• Onions

After this week, the over-wintered fava beans will be no more. We’ll be turning in the legumes to make room for summer crops. The salad turnips are one of our favorite spring vegetables. Unlike the big white purple-top turnips that are great for winter eating, these sweet, crunchy white turnips are satisfying raw or cooked. In the brassica family of crops, turnip leaves are good eating as well. The onions this week look a little alien, mostly because of the dry soil this late winter. Don’t worry – they’re still good for cooking! Cooking greens are starting to appear – this week we have Dino Kale and Red Russian Kale (depends on your pick-up site). The flea beetles are rampant again this spring, hence some bug holes. We still think the freshness and flavor of our kale can’t beat what you find in the store! Next week, Swiss chard will be ready to harvest. Greens like these are perfect for incorporating into other dishes you already know how to cook. For example, you can chop them up and throw them into soups, pasta dishes, and tacos.

As we mentioned in an earlier newsletter, we are enjoying getting weekly newsletters from FOOD52. This week, they talk all about kale being a staple dinner ingredient and how to enjoy kale more often. Recipes include: Kale Chimichurri, Kale & Eggs, Sushi Bowl with Crispy Kale, Spanakopita, and Spanish Chickpeas with Kale. Check it out!

http://food52.com/blog/6661-a-few-bunches-of-kale-5-dinners?utm_source=FOOD52+Subscribers+List&utm_campaign=4eef1b0438-digest5_26_135_24_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_191568346e-4eef1b0438-19205801

Honestly, we farmers are scratching our heads as to how kale has gotten so much attention the past few years in the “foodie” world. It’s true – kale is packed with nutrients. We know lots of people who enjoy it in their green smoothies. It also boggles us sometimes how much the market price for kale can fluctuate from week to week, anywhere between $1.25 to over $3.00 per bunch at retail. The commodity market is a rough game…

Don’t forget to pick up this week’s Veggie Tip-Sheet all about Kale, with even more recipes and guidance on prep, storage, etc.

Field Notes

The high tunnel is very much transitioning out of lettuce and into cucumbers and tomatoes. We trellised about 50 tomato plants in the 30′ by 70′ high tunnel (aka big greenhouse). Carrots and beets should be ready for harvest in a couple weeks. We spotted dodder – a parasitic plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuscuta - in the Coyote Field garden at Heart Arrow Ranch, as well as in one of the rangeland pastures. We’ve never seen it before and need to remove it asap to ensure it doesn’t take over. Last week, we had a bit of light frost in Potter Valley, so we had to cover the 1/3 acre of potatoes and 3/4 acre of field corn. Since the potatoes were already starting to flower, they are pretty tender and would not have made it through the frost. Had we not covered them, the frost damage would have knocked the potato yield by about half. We had to cover the corn anyway, too, because ravens were starting to pull the young plants out of the ground. We were also able to get some mechanical cultivation – weeding – on our main field of spring brassicas, chard, and lettuce. Next, we’ll hit the summer alliums with the weeding tractor. That particular field has very cloddy soil. This is due to lack of calcium in the soil – a common characteristic of soil in our area.

Eat well,

Adam & Paula

Potatoes under row cover.

Another quick dinner made from random ingredients from the farm – fava beans with ground beef.

We can’t help it, but we have a thing with Spanish cuisine right now. The climate is similar to our’s, and we both have Spanish blood running through us. Last year, we borrowed and watched all the episodes of Spain…On the Road Again. Who can resist Mario Batali, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Bittman, and Claudia Bassols on an eating road trip through Spain, and a theme song sung by Willie Nelson? Fortunately, there is a companion book to the show, including recipes and cultural notes about the places they visit.

Flipping through the recipes of fried eggplant, cordero lechal, and images of jamon, there’s this great transcript of a conversation between Mark Bittman and Gwyneth Paltrow when they were visiting the Alhambra. There’s a bit of the conversation that is actually really poignant in the current conversation about getting back to eating locally and seasonally, and ultimately about revitalizing cooking at home. If you’re just learning how to cook and look to cookbooks in particular for guidance, these are some helpful insights.

Mark: I always say that there are four stages of learning how to cook. The first is you slavishly follow recipes; the second if you look through cookbooks, compare recipes, and pick one that makes sense to you; the third is you look at a bunch of recipes, then you walk away and cook something based on them but loosely; and the fourth is you don’t think about recipes at all, you just take the ingredients and start cooking. The fourth is liberating. You just look in the refrigerator or market and start cooking.

Gwyneth: I’d say I’m about halfway there.

Mark: Well, it’s not that it’s really a goal, it’s an unconscious process. And you just get there at some point. What I find is that as I get older, I just keep cooking more simply; everything is getting simpler.

Gwyneth: Also, you feel good when you eat simply. 

Mark: It’s a lot easier to get really good ingredients.

Gwyneth: And not have to season and disguise them so heavily.

Batali, Mario, with Gwyneth Paltrow. Spain…A Culinary Road Trip. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. 2008.

Potatoes growing in Potter Valley

Greetings, adventurous eaters and members of Mendocino Organics CSA! We are happy to have you all join the farm this year. This is our second season with the Spring-Summer Vegetable CSA, and many of you are new to our farm this year. This growing season already started off quite differently than the year before – it has been an incredibly dry and warm early spring. Water is always precious here in the West, and we are fortunate to have water available for food agriculture. 

In Your Share This Week

• Lettuce
• Radishes
• Snap Peas or Young Turnips (depends on your pick-up site)
• Fava Beans
• Spring Onions
• Shallots

This is a typical early spring harvest. No tomatoes or watermelons yet, although it has been warm enough to crave them! In one or two weeks, the cooking greens will be ready to harvest. We were lucky with the fava beans, which were over-wintered at the 3WG Ranch in Potter Valley. They were hit badly by frost but bounced back in late winter. Fresh fava beans require some preparation, but the work is worth it. They are delicious just sauteed in butter or olive oil. First you pop the beans out of the pods. Your kids can help with this. They you parboil them for a couple minutes, just so that you can slip the beans out their hulls. The recipe below suggests using a knife, but we just use our thumbnail. CUESA is a great organization with loads of information about different Northern California local produce, along with recipes.

http://www.cuesa.org/recipe/baby-fava-bean-breakfast-radish-and-spring-onion-crostini-bellwether-ricotta

Throughout the season, we will include recipes in your weekly newsletter. You will also find useful Vegetable Tip Sheets, or Veggie Tip Sheets at your pick-up site. They include nutritional info, storage and preparation tips, suggested recipes, and some interesting factoids about your vegetables. Many of these come from Just Food NYC’s “Veggie Tip Sheets” booklet, along with other good reference books and cookbooks. Feel free to grab a copy for each of the vegetables, especially if you are unfamiliar with a particular crop.

The shallots were stored from last fall. Shallots are a sweet substitute for onions in your cooking. The radishes will spice up any salad. If you want to try something different with your lettuce, check out this suggestion from Mark Bittman’s Kitchen Express. We are just discovering Mark Bittman’s cookbooks, and this one is pretty good. It’s divided up by season, the recipes are so simple, and there’s a whole section at the beginning of the book about what to keep in your pantry and substitutes for different ingredients. It’s everything to make you feel like a confident cook, even with a busy schedule.

Seared Fish with Lettuce Leaves

Use anything sustainable, good, fresh, and firm.

Warm a couple of tablespoons of sesame oil (or use olive or peanut oil; something with flavor, in any case) in a skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle fish chunks with salt and pepper and sear until just done. Wrap at the table in leaves of Boston or other tender lettuce, or grape leaves from a jar, garnished with lemon juice and fresh mint or lime juice and basil, mint, and/or cilantro.

Field Notes

A lot of the lettuce is maturing much earlier than usual due to the warm spring. We were able to get a January planting of broccoli in the ground, which should be ready to harvest in one to two weeks. Just like every spring, we are waging a war with the mice in the propagation greenhouse and the gophers in the garden (aka Coyote Field) at Heart Arrow Ranch. If you were unaware, we grow crops at three different locations. We have been growing early spring and greenhouse tomatoes and cucumbers at Heart Arrow Ranch near Redwood Valley. We also lease 3WG Ranch in Potter Valley for main season vegetables, and we lease another smaller parcel also in Potter Valley for more veggies (potatoes and some melons this year). 

The potatoes will be ready earlier than usual; they are looking very healthy and will get mounded with our cultivating tractor. With potatoes, you have to mound, or draw dirt up to the plant so that the potatoes – the roots – develop properly. We are growing five different kinds of potatoes this year, including our favorite to eat – German Butterball. 

Until next week, eat well!

Adam & Paula

Momma pig had her babies this morning!

There is lots going on at Mendocino Organics as we prepare for the 2013 Vegetable CSA season, which starts next week. The climate is definitely changing and being less predictable, making crop planning and farming more challenging. As local farming changes because of this, we farmers will need to work with the community, like you, our CSA shareholders, to ensure longterm food security! We do not usually count on the late winter and early spring being so dry and warm. Cultivating and getting crops in the ground is usually challenging on the North Coast. This year, many farmers are needing to irrigate or were hoping for more rain, as the ground has been TOO dry to cultivate. We’re also going to be cutting our hay almost a month early this year.

Nonetheless, we are still on track for our first CSA harvest next week, and the crops are all doing generally well. We’ve been fortunate to hire a little part-time help from a couple young farmers in Potter Valley. They are helping us transplant crops and may work some harvests. One piece of equipment still on our wish-list is a transplanter. For now, we still transplant vegetable seedlings, alliums (onions, shallots), and potatoes by hand. It’s a big help getting all the crops out when we need them in the ground. Plus, we can provide some mentorship and a small source of income to these new farmers. Organic vegetable production is very labor intensive, so us two farmers and our one full-time employee need the extra help now that it is spring. We are also working with another young farmer to grow 1.25 acre of field corn – Oaxacan Green corn and Abenaki Calais Flint corn. We are growing it for nixtamal or masa, which you can use for tamales, tortillas, posole, etc. (This is outside of the Vegetable CSA…)

Our application to accept SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits has finally gone through at the USDA Food and Nutrition Service, but it will still be some time before we can process SNAP benefits (aka food stamps) for the CSA. For us to accept SNAP benefits, instead of paying upfront, those member will pay each week when they get their vegetables. If not this year, by next year, we hope to do much more outreach to SNAP users.

Next week, we expect to harvest lettuce, radishes, sugar snap peas, fava beans, spring onions, and various greens – your typical early spring harvest. We are starting to transplant greenhouse cucumbers and tomatoes to have some early for you. If you are unfamiliar or new to eating seasonally and locally, we hope these weekly newsletters will help you understand the unique climate of Inland Mendocino County. Our region, the North Coast, has a different growing season than other parts of California, like the Central Valley, Central Coast, or Imperial Valley. Most of the vegetables you find in the grocery store come from these regions that are typically drier than here and have a longer growing season.

We also aim to provide you with food preparation and meal planning tips in your weekly e-newsletter. Along with borrowing cookbooks from the library, we like to check out FOOD52 http://food52.com/ and the USDA recipe finderhttp://recipefinder.nal.usda.gov/ There are so many resources available online, and we’ll share with you our own experiences with meal planning with the weekly CSA share. Of course, don’t be shy – connect with your fellow CSA shareholders for ideas on using your veggies, and if you want to contribute something to the newsletter, feel free to contact us!

Just to refresh your memories – next week’s pick-ups will be

Ukiah - Westside Renaissance Market, Ukiah Valley Medical Center, Head Start on Orchard Street - Tuesday, May 21

Redwood Valley - Heart Arrow Ranch - Tuesday, May 21

Willits - J. D. Redhouse - Thursday, May 23

In the next couple days, we will be sending each pick-up site group an email with details relevant to your individual site, like specific times and how the distribution sorting system works. Remember, if you are planning on missing a pick-up anytime this season, please find someone to pick up your share for you.

Also, if you are interested in purchasing a 100% natural cotton tote bag (19″ x 15″ x 6″) with the Mendocino Organics logo, please let us know. They are perfect for carrying your vegetables each week! There is a quantity discount, so the price will depend on how many people are interested.

Just for fun – check out this fun infographic from the Union of Concerned Scientists explaining their vision of a healthy farm!http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/solutions/advance-sustainable-agriculture/healthy-farm-vision/ Mendocino Organics strives to accomplish many of the aspects valued here for a healthy farm using agro-ecological practices…

Eat well,

Adam & Paula Gaska

We’ve been insanely, zanily busy! Getting crops in, keeping animals happy, but not keeping up with email or blogging, so thank you for your patience! Thank you, CSA members for supporting us this year! More to come later. Love, Adam, Paula, Lorenzo & the part-time crew