Let’s get this party started! But first a few announcements.
We have three EggShares remaining. If you want EggShare this season let me know ASAP.
Still taking orders for JamShare. I need to have your order by the end of day Friday if you plan to participate.
The harvest season starts this week. Plan to pick up your produce at your produce pick-up location at the produce pick-up time.
Farm News
What’s happening on the farm.
It occurred to me as I was working through the list of tasks to accomplish prior to the start of the harvest season that farming — at least the style we do here at Fresh Earth — is a lot like this episode of I Love Lucy except instead of a single conveyor belt we are hopping between several to many. At the beginning of the season when all there was to do was greenhouse seeding it seemed to be manageable, we just stuck to the greenhouse seeding conveyor belt. The activities on this belt were spread out to the point that they could all get the attention they needed. Then the weather warms up and it is time to fire up the transplant things outside conveyor belt. So now we are hopping between the greenhouse seeding conveyor and the planting outside conveyor. Not long after the transplanting outdoors the weed management conveyor activates. Now mind you the greenhouse seeding and the transplanting conveyors are still going and in fact increasing in speed. The weed management conveyor ramps up relative to the increase in all the plants that we transplanted. Oops, don’t forget about the pest management conveyor. It has been going for a while and you just didn’t notice it. Then the weather conveyor sends either too much rain, too much heat, too little rain or an unexpected frost. Each of these throws another bunch of tasks our way while we are still greenhouse seeding, transplanting, managing weeds, managing pests, and of course the direct seeding conveyor started while you were busy handling the weather conveyor.
And unlike Lucy if we miss something on a conveyor and the task gets missed the task becomes more difficult or the plant succumb to disease. Wait, there is another conveyor, the disease conveyor? Yes, we forgot and lost all our tomatoes to a disease as we moved sprinklers and hoses around to cover all the plants because despite the forecast for 4″ of rain we only got around a 1/2″. Well the moving of hoses and watering are true but we haven’t lost the tomatoes. It was just an illustration of what can happen if you aren’t managing all the conveyors.
It seems for every task we cross off the list three more are added. Plus every day new tasks arrive that had no preceding task. The tasks just keep coming and coming. They’re relentless. Come to think of it, maybe farming is more like this example from Seinfeld. Instead of a barcode reader breaking down we have the Allis G. And instead of Publisher’s Clearing House Day we have harvest days and of course those start this week!
The only ray of hope at this time of the season is we are finally done — at least for a while — with greenhouse seeding. We still have plants in the greenhouse needing care but we finished seeding most of the fall transplants last week. But with this ray of hope comes the ramping up of the harvest — which isn’t just a harvest but a harvest, wash, pack, distribute, repeat process. Fortunately we live in Minnesota so there is an end to the season.
What will we have this week?
I haven’t been asked this question is quite some time so I’m glad you asked! We will have lots of green garlic, green onions, chives with chive flower (yes they are edible), lettuce, chard, bok choi, leftover onions/shallots from 2019 (use them quickly since they will have a tendency to want to grow. Also these are pungent onions so best used for cooking, not raw), and maybe a few odds and ends that aren’t quite ready for prime time. The zucchini/summer squash are starting to set fruit but not nearly enough yet to give out.
CoffeeShare is this week. No FruitShare, EggShare, JamShare or FlowerShare.
Recipe of the Week
This week we will be giving out Green Garlic. What is green garlic? Green garlic is to garlic as green onions are to onions. It is an immature garlic plant. You can use the whole plant as long as it hasn’t formed a tough demeanor, er, stalk. If the stalk is tough cut it off and use the rest of the plant. I’ve heard that you can dehydrate the tough stalk to turn into garlic powder. Anyone want to give it a try and report back with the results?
I put out an assignment to our Facebook forum to come up with uses for the green garlic. We got a number of responses including dehydrating it for garlic powder, the always popular favorite pesto and a new to me idea Chinese Scallion Pancakes, also knows as Cong you bing — replacing the scallions with green garlic! Google will help you find a recipe.
We used about a dozen stalks of green garlic to make a shredded garlic paste. We washed them then cut off the yellow leaves and roots. We separated the lower stalks from the upper leaves. We put the lower parts in a food processor and tried to grind them into pieces. It actually shredded them more than ground them. We added some oil until it turned into a paste. We then put it into a pint jar and into the fridge to be used whenever we need to add garlic flavor to a dish.
We took the upper leaves and shredded them in the food processor then added them to a brine we made for a rotisserie chicken. The garlic flavor in the chicken wasn’t very strong so I’m not sure the leaves imparted any flavor but it was a good try.
I think that is more than enough for today. I have to get back to the list of tasks before it starts growing again! As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, suggestions, jokes or brain teasers.