Notes From The Field: Push and Pull

The past week has been all about finding our harvest rhythm again and these smaller early harvests make it a bit easier for us to do that. Just like that, full days that can be dedicated to bed prep, transplanting, cultivating or greenhouse work are gone. Harvesting is rewarding work and this transition is a great one to be in the midst of, but it does take some more mental gymnastics and shifting of expectations to juggle all of the other work needed to ensure we have crops to harvest in 6, 12 or 20 weeks from now. Now that the CSA has begun, we'll be harvesting every morning, working together to get in tender greens before the heat sets in and hustling through the late morning to wrap things up by lunch. Time flies in the afternoon as we race to get in transplants, put plastic mulch down for another round of cucumbers or seed 30 trays of Swiss chard in the greenhouse. All throughout the mornings, I'm invigorated when I look out across a field to see weed crew extricating kale from giant amaranth or teasing tiny carrots away from just germinating lamb's quarters. They came out of the gates strong this past week and hand weeded or hoed roughly 10,000 row feet...
...in other words, they weeded... 

almost 2 miles of the farm!

Dan took advantage of the great cultivating weather we've had (hot, dry, windy) and zipped around killing weeds with the Super As, then took it down a few notches to flame weed the carrots, which is most effective when walking at a snail's pace. In the words of Robert Frost, we have many more miles (of weeding) to go this season, and your help would be such a boost if you can make it out to Crop Mob this Saturday. We're hoping for a critical mass of volunteers to make a big impact on our weed population, so come on out to the farm if you have some free time between 9am-noon this Saturday. Stay a little while after for some tasty snacks from Basil Tree catering. The difference that a few extra hands can make during the beginning of weed-bonanza season is tremendous and helps make our crops healthy and vigorous; it also helps our weed crew stay happy! 

Anna, Erinn, Janelle, and the early season garlic. 

This week's share will have some beautiful red and green butterhead lettuce and Swiss chard, both of which we hope to have on the stand pretty consistently throughout the season. Garlic scapes and radishes will make their debut, and will be an option in your share the next couple of weeks. I'm a big fan of the chicory family and heads of frisee will be the first of a few crops from that family that we'll be harvesting over the coming weeks. (If you don't like it raw try it sautéed with garlic scapes, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.) Kale, bok choy and spinach will round things out. On the horizon we've got a few nice plantings of beets coming on, along with some very baby summer squash that should be ready for picking soon. Pick your own crops are coming along nicely and we'll see some more peas and herbs added to the list soon. For this week though, I hope you enjoy the quintessential taste of early CSA with the sugar snap peas. I also hope you'll find some stillness and solace in the quiet rows of green and coming abundance while you're out in the fields this week.


With Gratitude,
Erinn, for the farm team

CSA Salad with Carrot-Ginger Dressing

CSA distributions have begun, and we all know what that means in New England: greens! And loads of cruciferous roots, stems, and leaves, too. While many of these items are delicious sauteed, stir-fried, and roasted, I prefer to eat them in their raw state when temperatures linger in the upper 80's/low 90's, much like they have this week. Here's a suggestion for a CSA-inspired salad with a refreshing and robust carrot-ginger dressing.

CSA Salad
Makes 2 servings
Ingredients:

• 6 cups salad greens, such as chopped head lettuce, spinach, or arugula
• 2 cups Asian greens, such as chopped mustard greens, kale, bok choy, or cabbage
• 1 kohlrabi, julienne-sliced
• 4 radishes or 2 turnips, thinly-sliced
• 1 cup sugar snap or snow peas, tops and strings removed
• Garnish of scallions, thinly-sliced

Directions:
Wash, chop, and (salad) spin greens. Wash and prep other vegetables as indicated. Combine and gently toss greens and kohlrabi with carrot-ginger dressing or preferred dressing; garnish with radish/turnip slices, peas, and scallions.

Carrot-Ginger Dressing
Makes about 1 1/2 cups or more

Ingredients:

• 4 medium carrots, roughly chopped
• 1-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1-2 tbsp garlic scape, finely chopped
• 3 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• 1/4 cup oil (I used walnut oil)

Directions:

Place all ingredients except oil in a blender or food processor; process until finely chopped. Slowly add the oil and continue processing until smooth; add water to thin, if desired. The dressing can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to one week.

Rebekah

Images by Rebekah Carter (2012). Dressing recipe slightly adapted from The Kitchn.

Notes from the Field: Our 2011 Assistant Growers

I... am... not... going... to... talk... about... the... weather. OK, yes I am, a little. We did need the rain. I admit it, I did say that. And when the forecast called for a quarter to a half an inch, I thought that would be pretty good. But we got almost 2 inches last Wednesday, then another inch and a quarter over the next three days. Well, you know that -- you were there. But really, it was a lot of water. So much water, combined with those cool temperatures, puts us uncomfortably in mind of 2009, when a wet, cool early summer led to some devastating disease pressure later in the season. We're hoping that history will not repeat itself so soon, and that this water and cool temperatures will only lead to slightly delayed squash and cucumbers and beautiful greens for another week.

But enough about that -- more about our farm crew.

Larisa and Lauren

Each year, we are fortunate to work with a few people who are passionate about becoming farmers and are at a point in their careers where our operation can be useful to them. Our assistant growers, who work the entire growing season with Waltham Fields, are a critical part of our farm team. They drive tractors, pound stakes, pull weeds, transplant and seed crops, harvest and harvest and harvest, and manage CSA distributions. Many of our past assistant growers are now farmers in their own right (check out our "where are they now?" page for some stories). This year's AGs, Lauren Weinberg and Larisa Jacobson, are as fine a pair as we have had on our farm.

Lauren comes to us from her recent work at Adamah, a farm and fellowship program at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Connecticut. She had many roles at Adamah, including the Sap Queen, Pickle Apprentice, and Field Apprentice, all of which have contributed to her wide knowledge about food production and preservation. While she had never driven a manual transmission vehicle, let alone a tractor, before she came to WFCF, she had made more kim chee and sauerkraut than many of us have ever seen -- in a kosher kitchen where goat yogurt and chevre shared space (but never utensils) with 50 gallon barrels of pickling crops. We appreciate Lauren's thoughtfulness and thoroughness on the farm, along with her appreciation of the beauty and the spiritual side of the work that we do.

Larisa was most recently at UC Davis, where she completed a master's degree in International Agricultural Development and spent time working on biodigester projects in Guatemala, along with teaching and working on the student farm at Davis. She has tons of "secret" skills and knowledge, including welding, fiddle playing, assembling cultivators from miscellaneous parts, and community organizing, among others. She won us over in her application with her vivid description of hitting an irrigation upright with the loader bucket of her tractor -- and fixing it, possibly the only time when a farm equipment accident has led directly to someone getting an interview on our farm. Despite this story, Larisa is a skilled equipment operator who is getting the hang of all the big and little pieces that help our farm go. Her sense of humor and intense work ethic also come in handy.

In addition to our assistant growers, our farm team is rounded out by our field crew, who start next week (more about them later) and a group of work sharers who staff our CSA pickups, make sure our CSA newsletter is legible and functional, take care of our perennial herb and flower garden, and help us in the fields. They each have fascinating stories as well, and histories with the farm -- some long, some short, but all wonderful. We could not do this without them.


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