EverGreen Farm

CSA Newsletter, Week 17

If this isn't the biggest share of the season, it's pretty close.

• Head Cabbage
• Yellow Walla Walla Onions
• Red Onion
• Carrots
• Golden Beets
• Cucumbers
• Shell Peas - last of the season
• Salad Mix
• Basil
• Cilantro
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower - possibly the last of the season, depending on the bug situation
• Tomatoes
• Squash
• Zucchini

Shain headed back to work this week.  I miss him already.  Not just because of his help with the harvest.  Not because he sometimes has lunch ready for me when I come in from work.  Not because he takes care of so many small details so I can focus on managing the harvesting and workshares.  We are a team running this farm and it's hard with out him here.  Most of all, I miss seeing him throughout the day and his random acts of kindness he does to make my day go a little better.

Eli heads back to school next week.  He starts middle school this year and will be at the same school Shain teaches at.  I may just miss him too.  It gets pretty interesting around here when school is in session.  I'm confident the workshares and I are up to the task of keeping this place running smoothly through the end of the season.  (Though I'm sure I don't always look so calm in the process.)

We've been making some wonderful bruschetta with our tomatoes.  Heavenly!  Shain is also making this Restaurant Style Cabbage Slaw/Salsa recipe.  It doesn't quite taste like the appetizer at our local Mexican restaurant, but it's very tasty and addicting.  (Sometimes I get frustrated wanting to figure out a restaurant recipe so we can make it exactly the same way.  Recently a friend reminded me that sometimes restaurants or other store bought foods are not necessarily made with fresh, raw, organic ingredients.  This means there could be MSG or other chemicals in the recipe that trick my mind into loving it so much.  Something to think about.)

It's been absolutely busy here lately.  We've crammed a lot of end of summer activities into these past two weeks and have been away from the farm for several weekends in a row.  I'm ready to stay home for a while.  We start a new harvest schedule this week, which includes harvesting some crops on Saturday.  This will help ease the workload on our other work days.  A few new crops are ready to harvest and will be in the shares soon.  We are starting to watch night time temperatures and taking precautions with the forecast looks threatening.  It's hard to believe we could be getting frosts already.

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies.

Tara

 

CSA Newsletter, Week 16

In your share this week:

• Salad Mix - Yeah!
• Cucumbers
• Carrots
• Italian Parsley
• Dill
• Zucchini and/or Squash 
• Tomatoes
• Shell Peas
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Sweet Walla Walla Yellow Onions
• Red Onion

A mighty fine haul of veggies again this week.  We are at the height of the season and the farm is producing more food than we can keep up with.  Sometimes we have to decide what not to harvest based on our limitations of time and help.  A good dilemma to be in.  We hope you are enjoying the abundance.  If you have any great recipes, please share.  Shain is learning to cook vegan/vegetarian as part of our new, healthier lifestyle.  Today for lunch he made a vegetable curry dish (with yellow onion, broccoli, peas, squash, zucchini and carrots) served over wild rice.  Yummy! 

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies!

Tara

 

 

CSA Newsletter, Week 15

Our biggest share of the season! 

• Walla Walla Sweet Yellow Onions
• Cucumbers
• Golden Beets
• Carrots
• SHELL peas (the kind you pop open and eat the peas inside)
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower (enough for Jackson only, next week to the other half of the CSA)
• Swiss Chard
• Cilantro
• Basil
• Zucchini
• Summer Squash
• Tomatoes (Afton, Alpine, Smoot.  Next week enough for everyone!)

Greens like the kale and spinach are done for the year.  The Swiss chard is full of bugs now too so I'm not sure if we'll get another harvest out of it or not.  Meanwhile, the next batch of salad will be ready next week.  Dill is also ready.  And more parsley.  The tomatoes are really on now and starting next week there should be enough for everyone on a weekly basis until it starts freezing at night. 

Broccoli and cauliflower are looking good right now!  Last year these two crops were full of caterpillars!  Disgustingly full of caterpillars.  Shain used an organic spray this year to prevent a reocurence and it worked well because there were hardly any caterpillars when I washed the broccoli and cauliflower on Monday.  Unfortunatley, life on the farm isn't that simple.  Instead, the ear wigs are out of control.  There were so many ear wigs in the cauliflower that I started collecting them in a bucket to feed to the chickens.  For the rest of the day I felt like there were bugs crawling on me.  2012 is now the year of the ear wig so keep an eye out for them in the produce.  I hate ear wigs!  DIE!!!

On a side note, I was commenting the other day that we haven't really seen that many grasshoppers this year.  Some grasshoppers, but not like people warned us we'd see with all this warm weather.  Shain told me he'd already used some organic control for grasshoppers.  Either it wasn't a bad year for grasshoppes or the stuff he used works well too.  Now, he says, it's time to find something we can use all over the farm for ear wigs.

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies!

Tara

Worshares needed

We have two openings in our EverGreen Farm workshare program.  Unfortunately, two of our workshares are unable to continue with us for the remainder of the year (one moved and the other started a new job).  Being a workshare is a great opportunity for people who love to eat great tasting, high quality, fresh, organic produce.  Workshares receive a weekly CSA delivery of produce in exchange for their help on the farm one morning a week.  There are usually a few extras to take home each week too. 

Come help us harvest, weed, or work on other projects for 4 to 5 hours per week.  Then we take care of all the equipment, watering, constant care, and commitment to growing in this chanllening climate.  As one workshare stated, "I couldn't grown this variety, quantitiy or quality of food on my own with only 4 to 5 hours work per week.  Nevermind that I don't have the greenhouses or equipment."  Another remarked, "I get all the benefits of growing a huge garden with very little input on my part."

The specifics of our CSA and Workshare program are explained in detail in the following two documents.

Download 2012 Workshare Contract

Download 2012 CSA Sign Up Form

Please contact me for more information. 

Tara, 884-6423, tara@svwy.net

 

CSA Newsletter, Week #14

In your share this week:

• Another bulb of fresh garlic
• Snap Peas, for all pick up sites except Smoot (Smoot folks got the first batch of peas a few weeks ago.)
• Kale
• Basil
• Cucumbers
• Zucchini
• Squash
• Sweet Walla Walla Onion
• Carrots
• Golden Beets
• Head Cabbage
• Tomatoes, only enough to send to Jackson this week. 

I picked the last peas from our first row of snap peas.  Next week the shell peas should be ready.

Yes!  The tomatoes are ripening!  There were only 26 pounds ready to pick this week which was just enough to send to Jackson.  We will rotate tomatoes to the other pick up locations next week.  Soon there will be enough for a nice sized bag for everyone.

We are seeing the mid-summer transition of vegetable production the farm goes through each year.  Some of the crops we've been enjoying for weeks (mostly the leafy greens) are nearly done for the season.  In their place we will be harvesting head cabbage, peas, onions, and tomatoes.  There are some broccoli and cauliflower heads on the plants.  The red onions will be ready soon.  The leeks look amazing! 

I am happy to report that we got all the garlic dug last Saturday.  We had a great group of helpers come that morning and finished before noon!  It is now bunched and hanging to dry in the shed.  This curing process usually takes 2 weeks.  Then we'll start cleaning it up to bag and distribute.

 

This is a picture of greenhouse 4 that I took a few weeks ago.  If you'll remember, greenhouse 4 is the last hoop house we built.  We've planted in this area of the farm for many seasons (it was previously referred to as Field 1) but this is our first time using this ground as covered "greenhouse space".  One great thing about greenhouses is that it gives us a defined space where we can concentrate our efforts for maximum vegetable production.  As you can see, we've been able to keep up on the weeding here and it looks really good.  We are currently in the middle of composting here as well.  After that, we will start spreading a layer of mulch.  Over time, rough and weedy areas of the farm are all getting a makeover.  It's nice to see these improvements!

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies!

Tara

CSA Newsletter, Week #13

In your share this week:

• Sweet Yellow Onion
• Cucumbers
• Squash
• Zucchini
• Carrots
• Golden Beets
• Snap Peas
• Swiss Chard
• Salad Mix
• Cilantro

This week's CSA share is being delivered one day early so we can enjoy family who are coming from out of town.  We will be back on our regular Wednesday schedule next week.

So much for delivering a a "smaller share" due to us only harvesting two days this week.  The farm is overflowing with wonderful food and with the help of our awesome workshares we keep putting together some great shares of summer produce. 

Unfortunately, there are some crops that aren't doing well in this heat.  The spinach has bolted and is no longer worth the amount of time it would take to get enough for the CSA.  The salad is growing well but is very buggy and time consuming.  It's quite likely the salad will be skipped every once in a while or we will only be able to give smaller bags.  We are starting to see more bugs in the Swiss chard and kale too.  Keep your eyes open for caterpillars, aphids, ear wigs, or other critters and where they've layed eggs on the back of leaves.  We do our best to sort and look through the greens muntiple times, but I'm sure we aren't 100% perfect.  Hey, it's organic!

As some crops struggle, others are maturing and are ready to harvest.  The onions look and smell fabulous.  We are growing both yellow and red onions in a hoophouse and they are doing very well.  We anticipate having onions on a regular basis from here through fall.  The tomatoes are slowly starting to turn colors.  The basil is looking beautiful and after we get it weeded this weekend, it should be ready to harvest in two weeks. 

This is a picture from last week of the inside of greenhouse 6, also known as the big tomato greenhouse.  The basil is growing under the black shade cloth just to the right of center.  From left to right:  cucumber plants (from which we are harvesting over 150 per week), peppers, Ida Gold tomatoes, basil, and Glacier tomatoes on the right.  Just right of the taller tomato plants Shain is growing a trial variety of pole beans.  You can't see them in the picture because they are still pretty small.

We've been struggling with growing beans these past two years.  Our French fillet beans have become rather famous at the farmers market and with our CSA members, but they haven't been germinating very well and are a challenge to grow and harvest.  We are trying a new type of French fillet bean that is supposed to taste just as good and be a lot easier to grow.  We'll see.

Above is greenhouse 7 where we've planted most of the beans, along with a row of dill down the far left side, and the row of summer squash right down the middle.  You can see the sparsly growing beans on these two rows above.  Shain estimates we've experienced a less than 50% germination rate on the beans this year.  He's determined to figure out how to adjust to this problem and make it better in the future.

Well folks, it's fair week here in Star Valley.  Time for some small town fun and games.  One of my favorite things is to look at all the craft exhibits and farm animals.  It's so good to be able to enjoy this time of year.

This Saturday we will start digging up the garlic plants.  It's a huge project and we invite all our members to come pitch in.  There's work to be done for any and everyone regardless of strenght or size. Contact me for more informaiton.

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies!

Tara

 

CSA Newsletter, Week #12

In your share this week:

• Fresh Garlic
• Carrots
• Golden Beets
• Cucumbers
• Sugar Snap Peas, the kind you eat whole, pod and all. 
• Cilantro
• Italian Parsley (in the same bag with the cilantro.  If you can't tell thes herbs apart from looking at them, taste the leaves.)
• Zucchini
• Yellow Zephyr Summer Squash
• Kale
• Spinach
• Salad Mix

A fabulous share!  We are all eating well this week.

I walked around the farm on Monday with my "big camera" (as opposed to my "small camera" that I keep in my pocket to take pictures while I do farm work, which is now at the bottom of a river somewhere). I have very good intentions of making a post here on the blog to show you how great the farm looks right now.  When I sat down at the computer that evening, I experienced some lenghthy problems with my photo editing program so the blog post didn't happen.  On Tuesday, I decided it was more important for me to pick the peas instead of work on the farm update.  (I hope you agree.)  Now here we are on Wednesday and I'm short on time to get out the door to deliver shares.  Sorry for my lack of pictures and stories from the farm.  I can only assure you it means we are working hard on our harvest days, and playing hard on our off days.  I'm even managing to keep the house clean and our bills paid on time this summer.  This has been a great summer for us.  And we think the CSA is benefiting greatly from our reduced work load as well.  Just today someone said "This year is so much better than last year!"  I agree completely.

Please remember that next week's CSA delivery will be made one day early.  It will be there on Tuesday, July 31st. 

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies!

Tara

CSA Newsletter, Week #11

In your share this week:

• Carrots
• Garlic Scapes, just a few, the very last of the season
• Zucchini
• Summer Squash
• Swiss Chard
• Spinach
• Salad Mix
• Golden Beets - We left the tops on the beets so you can eat them!  This early in the season, the tops are still looking really good and mostly bug free.  Enjoy the beet greens as an added bonus!
• Cilantro
• Snap Peas - Sorry, only enough for 10 bags this week, just enough for those picking up in Smoot.  We will rotate the peas to everyone in following weeks until there is enough for all of us.

Cucumbers should be ready next week.  Italian parsley next week too.

Romaine lettuce heads are heavily infested with earwigs, our first planting may be a complete crop loss.  We are watching the second planting to see how it turns out.  Shain is determined to figure out how to grow head lettuce without so many bug issues.  He loves crisp, crunchy romaine so he'll be trying until we get it right.

All our produce is really GROWING now and already the zucchini and squash are out of control.  Shain and I left the farm for two whole days last weekend and they doubled in size while we were gone.  Is it too early in the season to start researching zucchini recipes?  Shain made us some vegetable soup today with zucchini, squash, tomatoes and other odds and ends.  We ate it with a little cheddar cheese and tortilla chips.  Yummy!  No recipe to share, he just added a little bit of what ever produce we have on hand to some some stewed tomatoes and voila!  We've also been cooking up the zucchini and squash with mushrooms and wilted greens, served over pasta.

There is a lot to harvest now and we are loving all this great food.  We have awesome workshares who help get all this food harvested, washed, bunched or bagged, and organized into the CSA shares.  The process we go through on harvest days is amazing to watch.  You think the veggies look good when you get it home to eat?  You should see it as we pick, pull, cut, wash, and bag it.  The colors!  The aroma!  This is great food!  And we are happy to provide it for you.

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies!

Tara

CSA Newsletter, Week #10

In your share this week:

• Swiss Chard
• Kale
• Spinach
• Carrots
• Garlic Scapes
• Cilantro
• Zucchini
• Salad Mix

We are well into the summer season here on the farm with hot days and warm nights.  These conditions help our crops grow very well and the amount of food we can harvest each week is growing too.  We are no longer repeating out daily ritual of covering and uncovering the veggies with row covers and are actually leaving some greenhouses all the way open day and night.

With the warmer weather come some challenges.  The first is working around the heat.  Because leafy greens and other crops wilt with the heat, we need to start our workdays a little earlier.  Our harvest crews are now showing up at 7 with most harvesting done in a few hours.  Then we wash and bag produce until noon.  The temperatures in the greenhouses are also a concern now and good ventilation is very important.  Just a few weeks ago we were watching the weather forecasts for the low temps and now we watch for the high temps.  Last, the bugs are showing up more as we harvest and wash produce.  So many bugs thrive in this warmer weather, but especially the caterpillars and ear wigs.  We are already seeing them in all our leafy greens.  Our washing procedures take a little more time as we slow down to look for bugs.  Salad is the most challenging, but we will continue making the effort because we know it is a favorite.

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies!

Tara

CSA Newsletter, Week #9

In your share this week:

• Salad Mix
• Swiss Chard
• Kale
• Garlic Scapes

Remember!  The shares are being delivered one day early this week (on Tuesday, July 3rd), at the regular times and places.  We are taking some days off this week to celebrate the 4th of July holiday with family.  This week's share is a little smaller due to our shortened harvest week.

Starting next week, we will be starting our work days a little earlier in the morning and increasing our workshare's work time by one hour each.  This is all in anticipation for the increase in veggies we expect to start harvesting.  We are on the verge of being able to harvest carrots, golden beets and cilantro.  Meanwhile, so many of the other crops are doing very well and we are pleased to look around and see so much great food growing in our fields and greenhouses.

This past week, we've finished mulching greenhouse 7, transplanted basil and dill, started 3 flats of butter head lettuce, fenced off a new chicken run, sold our baby goats, gave away all our old chickens to make way for new chickens, dealt with naughty goats who want to eat our peas, fixed electric fencing issues, and also some much needed weeding. 

I didn't mention anything special about the garlic scapes in the shares this week and last.  I foget that not everyone knows about garlic scapes.  We share some recipe ideas here.  I plan on cooking ours on the grill (drizzled in olive oil with a little salt and pepper, probably wrapped in tinfoil).  Looking forward "curly garlic french fries".  Garlic scape pesto is a very popular way to use them up and it freezes well.  I also like to cut some with scissors and freeze them in snack size baggies to use all winter long.  I want to try dehydrating some too.  They will keep in a loose sack in your refrigerator crisper drawer for a month or so.  We'll have more next week, but not sure if they'll last til the week after.  Eventually they started to harden off (become very tough) and are no longer edible. 

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies.

Tara