Notes From The Field: Second Verse...

... same as the first. It's a favorite saying of Andy's, and it perfectly captures the rhythm that we fall into at this time of the year. Mondays, harvest squash, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant and tomatoes. Beets and carrots if we're lucky. Maybe some melons. Scramble to get some beds made so we can plant some more lettuce and other greens. Tuesdays, harvest lettuce, chard, kale, collards, other greens, and anything else we didn't get to on Monday. Pick tomatoes. Scramble to get some things planted in the beds we made the day before. CSA pickup and outreach market. Wednesdays, back to harvesting Monday's crops. Pick tomatoes. Take a break to harvest some melons. Think about doing something besides harvesting. Cultivate. Thursdays, back to harvesting Tuesday's crops. Pick tomatoes. CSA pick up. Fridays, harvest everything. Pick tomatoes. Talk about how to harvest sweet potatoes. Saturday, CSA pickup. Don't harvest anything (except sometimes tomatoes). Try to tie up loose ends so the farm can rest for a day before it all begins again.

This rhythm is alternately comforting and maddening, depending on the day and your mindset at the time. It is deeply reassuring to have cucumber and tomatoes that need to be harvested on a regular basis. At the same time, if you have any resistance to bending over in the same position you've been in for ten weeks, reaching into the spiny branches of the squash plants with an arm still engraved with angry-looking scratches from two days ago, filling buckets and trays again and again and carrying them down to the end of the row while mosquitoes buzz around your ears and neck and the sun grows stronger -- then it can take an effort of will to begin again each week and each day as the season lengthens into maturity. Some say if you repeat a task 10,000 times, you master that task. My son was trying to do this with catching a baseball earlier this summer; his friend was practicing scales on the piano. If picking cucumbers can be put into this category,we have become virtuosos by late August.

When this rhythm is interrupted, as it was last week with the approach of Hurricane Irene, it takes us a little while to figure out how to do something else. With our hand in the glove or our fingers on the keys, our arm sunk deep in that spiny squash, our minds can sometimes go on autopilot, drift into an alternate consciousness that makes it difficult to get out of the deep groove the repetition has worn into our minds. Last week, after a flurry of indecision, we decided to put some seasonal projects temporarily on hold and sink a significant amount of energy into storm preparation. Beginning Wednesday afternoon, we seeded and transplanted in every available bed on the farm, trying to get spinach, arugula, lettuce, braising greens, Dan and Erinn, with the help of some volunteers, took the plastic off of our old and unpredictable hoophouse. We picked all of our pumpkins and stored them with the onions, shallots and garlic in the smaller of our two greenhouses. With the help of a group from the BU School of Management, we harvested and sorted 2,000 pounds of tomatoes in two hours and stored those in the greenhouse as well. We battened down the hatches, storing anything that seemed like it might fly away, buttoned up the greenhouses, and went home to wait.

Along with much of north Waltham, the farm lost power for a few hours on Sunday morning. According to our rain gauge, about 3.5 inches of rain fell between Saturday afternoon and Monday morning. The winds were strong enough to knock our hot peppers around, but most everything else on the farm looked fairly normal by Monday morning; there was no standing water in the fields, only a few shingles off the gray shed roof, and both greenhouses and our little green shed were undamaged. Early in the morning, we took all the harvest crates and wash station bins out of the walk-in cooler where we had stored them and put them all back where they belonged. We opened the greenhouses back up and put all the pick-your-own signs back in the field. We took a little walk around to make sure there were still crops in the ground to harvest. And then it was time to pick the squash again.

Enjoy the harvest!

-Amanda, Andy, Erinn, Dan, Larisa and Lauren

Pan-fried Eggplant with Basil

I can't say I'm new to the joys of eggplant. Eggplant parm, baba ghanoush, dressed and grilled, I love it all. I can say it was only recently that I discovered how wonderfully the purple-skinned vegetable pairs with basil in an Asian-style sauce. Simple and fragrant, the following recipe is not only easy to prepare, but is also a great way to use up a bunch of those fresh veggies from your local farmers market, CSA, or home garden.

Pan-fried
Eggplant with Basil

makes about 4 servings

Ingredients:

• 3 medium-sized Chinese eggplants, halved and chopped into 1"-1.5" pieces or 12-16 small eggplant ("Fairy Tale"), halved
• 2 large bell peppers, sliced into thin strips
• 1 medium onion, cut into large pieces
• 3 Thai or serrano chiles, sliced thin
• 3 tbsp garlic, minced or sliced thin
• 1/2 c Thai basil leaves, roughly chopped
• 4 tbsp medium to high-heat oil (I used walnut)

Sauce:

• 2-3 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1-2 tbsp sugar
• 3/4 cup warm water

Directions:

In a small bowl, combine all sauce ingredients, stirring until sugar dissolves; set aside.

In a large pan over medium-high heat, add 2 tbsp of oil. When hot, carefully add eggplant pieces; fry for about 2 minutes, or until they just begin to brown or soften. Remove from pan. Add 1 tbsp oil and onions; cook for about 2 minutes or until soft and glossy. Remove from pan. Add the remaining 2 tbsp oil, garlic, and hot peppers; cook until garlic begins to turn golden, stirring frequently to avoid burning. Add bell pepper and onions; cook for about 30 seconds, stirring frequently. Add eggplant and toss or gently stir to combine all ingredients. Pour in the sauce and stir to ensure even coating; cook for another minute or so, until the sauce thickens a bit. Throw in your basil and cook another 30 seconds; turn off heat and serve immediately.

My Two Cents:

Make this side dish a meal by adding rice and green vegetables; kale or Asian greens sauteed with garlic and oil, or spicy garlic green beans are recommended. Go the extra mile and make it a three-course dinner by serving some overnight pickled cabbage with peanuts as an appetizer and some fresh fruit (melon season has arrived, wink wink) for dessert.

This dish is SO close to being vegan. If you are looking to make it completely free of animal products, try out this recipe for faux fish sauce featuring ingredients such as seaweed and shiitake mushrooms, which create an umami (pronounced "oo-mah-mee;" meaning a pleasant savory taste) quality similiar to that imparted by actual fish sauce.


Rebekah

Images by Rebekah Carter (2011). Eggplant recipe adapted from Epicurious.

Notes From The Field: Order From Chaos

Order from chaos. That's what we do. At least that's what we attempt to do on a daily basis. (This is an uphill climb.) We take a field and cut it into small squares and say "you here...and you here...and you here". We cut those squares into even smaller component parts and assume that the soil will understand that it is now blocks of crops and beds and rows and we coax and plan and design strategies for each species and cross our fingers and hope against hope. We try to be attentive to the wants and desires of the plants, to be respectful of their nutritive needs and environmental preferences. We prepare what we can best imagine to be a lovely place for each plant to be and try with all of our powers to keep it that way.

We kill small weeds with tractors. We confuse insects. We hide plants from insects under covers and clay masks. We kill insects. We kill medium size weeds with hand tools. We curse insects. We inspect for disease, treat disease, curse disease. We pull large weeds by hand with help from anyone we can find. We plant successions to hedge against the conspiratorial force of chaos that lurks in the wings the second that we sow seeds in the greenhouse in the spring. We curse weeds. We sometimes wonder why we do this. We laugh with volunteers as we weed beds for the second and third times and remember why we do this.

We harvest, and I'd be lying if I told you that it didn't stun me every year, the beauty of the bounty and its colors and smells and volume and force. The fields that we've spent the last year planning so precisely, each square inch in such high demand, in places now a near perfect reflection of how it looked on paper with other spots handed over to a roiling madness of green and fruit. Some plants that were planned for, some plants interlopers, having escaped the steely edge, careful hands and watchful eyes of our crew. We haul it in, clean it up, eat some of it quickly and send the vast majority on its way. To the CSA distribution, the Outreach Market, The Salvation Army, Food For Free, our education programs. Out into the world to nourish and bring joy to people in our community. Chaos held at bay long enough to sneak the harvest out of the fields one more time, encroaching again now as we head into the depths of August and the angle of light begins to change and we start to scheme about better ways to do things next year.

We're through the halfway mark and our greenhouse seeding is done for the year. We've begun our final big wave of transplanting for the summer. This is the time in each season when things may come into focus briefly and one may be able to see the season's start, middle and coming end all at once. It's a time for a deep breath and a summoning of energy to begin the march through August into September, reining in the wildness that summer brings for a few more months.

--------------

I would like to take a few lines here to humbly thank our 2011 Weed Crew from the bottom of my heart for 12 weeks of stalwart service and almost unimaginable high spirits. This is their last week here and to say simply that they will be missed would be disrespectful. The crops that would not have been harvested without their help are too many to list. They were indispensable

and the most joyful bunch of weeders I've ever come across. Laura, Rachel, Shira, Courtney, Jess, Sam, often Joanna-we can't thank you enough.

And thank you as well to the many volunteers who worked beside them this summer.

Enjoy the harvest!

-Dan for Amanda, Andy, Erinn, Larisa and Lauren

Hot and Spicy Garlic Green Beans

You really know summer's end is near when it's 7pm and you're scrambling to get your recipe du jour cooked up and photographed in what remains of the natural light coming through your kitchen window. Not so long ago, 7 pm offered more than the cool, blue tones I was able to capture in this picture of delicious sauteed green beans. Limited light aside, this side dish (or meal if you're anything like me after a long day of work) is so easy to throw together and extremely open to personal touches. Throw in a handful of nuts or seeds: peanuts, cashews, walnuts, sesame... yum! Got mushrooms? Slice 'em up and add them, too. Use soy sauce or salt. Apple cider, white, or rice vinegar... they all work! Absolutely love cilantro? Give some a rough chop and sprinkle it on right before serving. Just be sure to add the four base ingredients: fresh garlic, green beans, oil, and red pepper flake.

Make the most of those tender summer crops while they're still coming in!

Hot and Spicy
Garlic Green Beans
makes 2 sides or 1 meal portion

Ingredients:

• 1 pint green beans, stems removed
• 1 tbsp cooking oil (I used walnut oil)
• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced or sliced thin
• 2 tbsp vinegar
• soy sauce or salt to taste
  
• red pepper flake to taste
• mushrooms, fresh herbs, nuts, or seeds (optional)

Directions:

In a pan over medium-low heat, cook garlic in oil until golden brown. Turn up the heat to medium-high and add the remaining ingredients; toss often to evenly coat the beans with sauce and to avoid burning the garlic. Cook 2-3 minutes or just until the beans are slightly tender. Serve immediately. Goes well with rice!


Rebekah

Image by Rebekah Carter (2011).

Notes From The Field: Tomatoes

It's difficult to write about anything but tomatoes these days on the farm. We have faced 200 foot row upon 200 foot row, day after day this week, somehow thinking that each pick might just be a bit smaller than the previous monumental one. Gazing down a row of hundreds of pounds of ripe Taxi tomatoes, sustaining energy and motivation through the harvest becomes a psychological game. We find ourselves talking to the tomato plants, puffing ourselves up, letting them know who's boss and that they can't intimidate us with their pound upon delicate
pound of ripe fruit. I made the naïve mistake of mentioning the possibility of not picking tomatoes for one day and dashed way too many false hopes when we did indeed find our thumbs and index fingers thick with tomato sap later that afternoon.

Don't get me wrong, I love the convenience of a tomato in the kitchen. Practically no stovetop or oven is needed this time of year and meals appear almost instantly in my house with a few tomatoes, fresh herbs and a little olive oil. Farmers' lunches during tomato season here tend to be very similar variations on the same convenient tomato-centric idea. Andy has his favorite lettuce, tomato and mayo sandwich, Dan a more classic BLT, and Amanda will often be found happy with a knife, a wedge of gouda and a tomato in hand. Larisa has taken George Foreman grilling (our lunchtime savior) to a new level, throwing a mix of tomato, egg and kale on it for a killer sandwich. So we love tomato season. But we'd also love to feel like we had time to do something other than pick, sort, weigh and organize them.

Speaking of convenience, the onions conveniently decided that they were also ready to come out of the fields this past week. We wanted to be sure to get them out of the ground once their tops had fallen but before all the leaves have dried brown. With the rain predicted for early this week, we knew that the pressure was on to get them out while they were still dry. So we found ourselves racing to get through tomato harvests in order to have a few hours a day by the end of the week to head over to our Lyman fields to pull onions. Then lug them pack to our curing shed (aka greenhouse with a shade cloth over it), and lay out each and every onion across stackable trays and mesh table tops.

In the midst of this bulk harvest frenzy, we still managed to have one of those dreamy farm days on Friday when small crews break off for special projects, tackling and completing multiple tasks simultaneously. There are few things better than this. The weed crew got through a massive hand weeding project, tearing through our West field of fall Brussels sprouts, napa cabbage and collards. Check. After morning harvest and lunch, the last two beds of tomatoes got picked. Check. Andy, Andy and Rachel headed to the Lyman fields to harvest the last of the onions. Check. Dan and Larisa hummed along in tandem on the Super A tractors getting some control over the newest weed flush in our fall cauliflower, broccoli, kale and cabbages. Check. Lauren and I got caught up on greenhouse seeding. Check. To top it all off, Amanda and her family left for a well deserved vacation that day. Double check. A day like that after a week like that wouldn't have been possible without the head-down work ethic of the entire farm crew. As we approach the week ten halfway point of the summer CSA, it feels like an appropriate time to once again thank everyone working so hard on this farm, in recognition of all of the pulling, heaving, lugging, sorting, weighing and stacking and in gratitude for that dreamy Friday.

Enjoy the harvest!

- Erinn, for Amanda, Andy, Dan, Larisa and Lauren

Don't husk that corn (yet)! And other grilled vegetables.

Whether during your workweek, weekend, or vacation, grilled vegetables are a summer treat to be enjoyed into the crisp days of autumn. If the simple elegance of brown grill marks aren't enough to convince you, the ease of preparation- chop, whisk, brush, grill, serve- should be adequate reason to try your hand at cooking vegetables, including unlikely candidates such as sweet corn and Swiss chard, over the flames. Below is a classic combination of vinegar, oil, fresh herbs, and spices to try out during your next outdoor cooking adventure. Though I've given approximate measurements for ingredients, this recipe is quite flexible; I encourage you to experiment with the myriad flavors available this time of year in New England. If you've discovered a winning combination, share it with our farm friends on our Facebook page.

Grilled Summer Vegetable Dressing
Makes about 1 cup

Ingredients:

• 1/4+ cup vinegar (apple cider or balsamic work well)
• 3/4 cup olive oil
• 1-3 cloves garlic, minced (depending on preference)
• 2-3 tbsp fresh herbs, chopped fine (i.e. basil, parsley, oregano, marjoram)
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1-2 tbsp maple syrup (optional)
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions for Grilling Veggies:

Slice summer vegetables, such as green onions, eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, carrots, tomatoes, and bell peppers, in half, lengthwise; larger squashes and onions can be sliced again in halves or thirds, as seen fit. Whisk together all dressing ingredients; brush generously onto the vegetables. Grill dressed vegetables over medium to medium-high heat until tender, about 2-4 minutes; flip halfway through cooking. Season with additional salt and pepper, if desired; serve hot or cold.

Grilling Sweet Corn

Carefully pull back husk leaves without detaching them from the stem; replace leaves so that the kernels are once again covered. Silk-side up, hold individual ears under cold running water for several seconds. Grill over medium-high heat for several minutes until husks are browned or blackened, turning throughout for even cooking. Remove husks and season as desired; serve hot.

Grilling Swiss Chard and Kale

Using either the dressing described above or simply a high-quality olive oil, brush or rub the oil onto the greens and sprinkle with salt; grill leaves over medium heat until wilted with crisp edges, about 1-2 minutes; turn greens halfway through cooking. Serve immediately.

Are grilled vegetables healthy?

There is some confusion about the healthfulness of grilling various foods. Rest assured, grilling is a safe and healthy method for cooking your favorite summer fruits and vegetables. Unlike meats, plants lack creatine, an organic acid found in muscle, that combines with sugars naturally present in flesh that form carcinogenic compounds called heterocyclic amines (HCAs) when cooked at high temperatures. More HCAs are formed during grilling compared to other cooking methods due to the tendency to grill meats over high heat for long periods of time. Fat drippings on the grill also create carcinogenic compounds known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that stick to food surfaces as they are cooked. Marinating meats, cooking at lower temperatures, and preventing flare-ups from fat drippings can greatly reduce your exposure to these potentially harmful compounds when grilling meat.


Rebekah

Images by Rebekah Carter (2011). Information on the healthfulness of grilled foods referenced from The Cancer Project, The Washington Post, and Consumer Reports.

Notes from the Field: One Thousand Pounds...

... of tomatoes. That's what we picked last Friday. Yellow 'Taxi', 'Orange Blossom', 'Japanese Black Trifele', 'Pruden's Purple', 'Paul Robeson', 'Jet Star', 'Early Girl', 'Cherokee Purple'... the beautiful names, colors and flavors of one of our favorite harvests of the year rolled in all afternoon. It sounds like a cliche, but there's nothing quite like a ripe tomato in August.

... of watermelons. That's about what the coyotes have eaten this week. They began this disturbing behavior last year when it was so dry and they were thirsty. They may have been a little thirsty last week, but with all the puddles of irrigation water around, I think they just have a taste for the melons. They seem to get them just a few days before we would have harvested them; they work at them with their teeth and roll them around until they break off the vine, then claw and bite them until they get them open and completely empty them of juicy, sweet flesh. Then they leave the green rind as a calling card in the field for us to find in the morning. We spent one night last week at the farm in a tent, which was beautiful, in its own way -- and no more watermelons disappeared that night. But even my very understanding family can't spend every night camped by the melons, so we ordered an electric fence and have been making do day by day with huge quantities of chili powder from Patel Brothers on Moody Street. Unfortunately, it seems like our wily friends might have a taste for chili-melon slush (sounds pretty good, actually). We'll see what's left in the morning.

... of food is what we've been taking each week to our Outreach Market, which opened July 13. This market, which takes place not far from Patel Brothers each Tuesday evening until October, is a way for our farm to get our produce directly to the lower-income folks who live nearby. Anyone can come to the market and fill a bag with vegetables for $5. Some pay with cash, some with SNAP, which we began accepting this year thanks to a partnership with the Waltham Farmers' Market. We also partner with many local direct-service organizations to provide vouchers for a free bag to many of their clients. Last week, we gave away a record 72 bags of produce at the market. On July 28, the Boston Globe reported that doctors at Boston Medical Center "are seeing more hungry and dangerously thin young children in the emergency room than at any time in more than a decade of surveying families." One thousand pounds. It's the least we can do.

Enjoy the harvest.

-- Amanda, for Andy, Erinn, Dan, Larisa and Lauren

Notes from the Field: Transition and Irrigation

This week we woke up and it was August. It's another time of transition, this time moving from July's wild and vigorous growth to fruition, the result of all that heat and photosynthesis. Slowly, if we've done our job right, the burden of our work shifts from planting to harvest over the course of the month. Storage onions fall over and need to be brought in. Cantaloupes begin to net and turn orange. Watermelons size up, and if we can keep them from the coyotes who are already stalking them, ripen up. Over the course of the month, the sweet potatoes will use all that green foliage they put on over the past couple of weeks to make some roots under there. In the meantime, the harvests of peppers, eggplant and tomatoes will pick up, and late summer will be upon us.

Over the past month, our farm has gotten 1.45 inches of rain, mostly scattered throughout the month, never more than about a quarter inch at a time. A quarter inch of rain definitely helps wet the surface of the soil so that irrigation water can soak in (there's that capillary action again). It doesn't do much for soil that hasn't had much water in a month. In general, vegetables like an inch of water... a week. In hot weather, even more. On dry soils (like ours), even more. Add that up, subtract one and a half inches in little bits here and there, and you get a whole lot of water that we've needed to use to keep crops going over the past month. That's farmer math.

You can see the results most vividly in the pick-your-own crops, where we haven't been able to irrigate yet, and the fall broccoli and cauliflower in the east field, where we ran overhead irrigation as we were transplanting -- the middle of the beds are beautiful, and the ends of the beds, where the overhead didn't quite reach, not so much. The last planting push of the season, when we're supposed to seed fall greens and turnips, is upon us this next week, and we're going to have to play the water game to see when -- and where -- we can get these crops in. The same is true for cover crops (more about those next week).

We use two kinds of irrigation on the farm. Overhead, the big silver pipes with impressive jets of water that turn in circles and make a reassuring "swish-swish" sound, is moved around the farm and used for everything from carrots to broccoli. We set up a line, flush it, and run it for 2-3 hours to make sure that the water soaks down to the roots of the plants. In the meantime, we set up another line so that when the first one is done we can turn another one on immediately. Shut down the first, turn on the second, and begin the process of dismantling the first line and moving it down the field to water another thirsty section. It's hard physical work, carrying 16 foot lengths of pipe several times a day, and hard mental work to try to set up a watering schedule that hits both the most vulnerable crops (newly planted seedlings), those that will benefit most in yield this year if they get water now (carrots, celeriac, broccoli, for example) and those that will benefit in yield next year if they get water now (strawberries, for example).


For tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, peppers, eggplant, melons, sweet potatoes and raspberries, we use drip irrigation under biodegradable plastic mulch. Drip irrigation is more efficient than overhead, and it doesn't have the same effect of spreading soil borne diseases through splash onto leaves, since it delivers water right to the roots of the plants. We can also fertilize through the drip lines, sending regular doses of fish and kelp, beneficial bacteria, and necessary plant micronutrients to the crops in their irrigation water. Because it takes time to set up and take down, we only put drip irrigation on crops that will be in for the whole season and that we won't double crop, and we try to plant these crops in big blocks so that we can water them in cycles. Once this system is in place, it takes lots more mental than physical work to keep it going.

Now, here's the thing: a dry year is hard on us in many ways. It takes more labor to irrigate, it takes more mental gymnastics to figure out the timing of planting and cultivating, and it really does decrease yields at our Lyman Estate field, which is not irrigated. Plant nutrition is dramatically curtailed in very dry soils, so plants are not only stressed by the lack of water, they're stressed by the lack of nutrients as well. Insects sense the stress and move in, and... well, you can imagine the rest. It's not pretty. All of that being said, however, a dry year is much, much better for us in terms of lessening disease pressure in some key crops (tomatoes, anyone?). Chances for a beautiful crop of tomatoes and colored peppers are much higher in a dry year. There's always a bright side. And now that we're turning the corner into the late innings of the season, with the big fall brassica planting behind us, the weed fires beginning to subside, and the tomatoes staked and tied up, hopefully we can begin to see the good results of that side even as we continue to irrigate.

Dan and Erinn are on vacation at the beach this week. We are so happy that these two hardworking farmers are able to go away for a week at the height of the season. It makes all of us relax a little to imagine them eating salt water taffy, doing crossword puzzles, and watching the waves roll in. Wherever you are, hope you can relax and enjoy the transition to late summer. Enjoy the harvest.

-- Amanda, for Andy, Erinn, Dan, Larisa and Lauren

Images by Rebekah Carter (2011).