Category Archive

CSA member Weston continues to be an example for all of us.

Welcome to the 2012 CSA season!

If you are thinking about canning this year, you may be interested in reading this post which gives many options for limiting BPA exposure.

http://agardenerstable.com/2012/01/20/home-canning-bpa-free/

I’ve been meaning to put up a couple of updates from Nov and Dec, and get the information posted for 2010 membership.   Hopefully within the next two weeks, so check back soon!   (2009 members and those on the 2009 wait list will have first priority for 2010 membership, and then we will open it up to everyone.)

It has been really nice to get some feedback in the last couple weeks.  Here are a few quotes:

From Reid:  “[Sept. 7th’s] haul changed my opinion about green bell peppers. Up to now, green bell peppers were to me that vegetable that was used as filler (which I would eat around) in Buddha’s Delight at the local chow mien place, or the item on the typical party veggie tray that was really only palatable with the ranch dressing – kind of sharp and watery. The other morning my wife asked for bell peppers, which we’d just received from the Reimann Family Farm, in the scrambled eggs; I obliged. I ate all of my peppers (not around them!) and felt really satisfied. I suppose this is how bell peppers are supposed to taste like, full of flavor, slightly sweet, bold, refreshing. I really had no idea. Thanks for doing the bell pepper justice!”

Vanessa on tomatoes:  “This tastes like GOODNESS!”

Molly:  “Many, many thanks for your ease-filled, generous, affordable, incredible, tasty fruits of the earth.  I hope to eat your food for many years to come!”

If you have any feedback on how the season is going, we’d love to hear it!  You could just leave a comment on this post, or email us.

See you on Monday with the next box of sunshine!
~Chris.

I forgot to mention a really beautiful moment from our weekend at the farm — it was our town’s annual “Pioneer Days” celebration and on Sunday night there were fireworks at the high school.  The school is relatively near to us, so mom, dad, grandma and I took lawn chairs out onto the driveway and watched the fireworks across our neighbor’s field.  The wetlands to the east, south, and west of us were filled with frogs singing along to the booms and blasts, and lightning bugs danced along to the bursts of light.  It was one of those moments that was so beautiful it felt like it was already a rosy memory even as we were living it.

[Photo credit: I found it here.]

The cool cloudy weather has continued this week, so our plants are still growing very slowly.  We will do our best to provide you with as much as we can in the harvest boxes, but please be prepared to be patient until things warm up a bit more.  If this is your first year in a CSA, you are certainly getting trained in on how eating seasonally can look quite different from year to year!

We look forward to seeing you this Monday, June 9th, for the first delivery of the season!  Remember, all the details like time and place are in the “Veggie Schedule” section found above.

Many thanks to everyone who helped out this weekend!  Emily was a pleasure to work with on Saturday as we set up the rest of the drip-irrigation and planted a few seeds.  We packed everything up just as the thunderstorm started, and thankfully the hale missed us for the second weekend in a row.  On Sunday Monica and Nick stopped by for a couple hours and planted 120 out of our 150 tomato plants!  Then Mark brought 3-year-old Alyssa up to help finish the planting.  Grandma Carol and Alyssa planted beets while the rest of the family weeded.  Kevin joined us in the evening too.  Monday was Chris’ birthday, and so Sunday turned out to be a great family gardening day topped off by a delicious dinner and homemade ice cream cake.  Thanks to everyone who helped make the weekend a success!

We have been prepping the beds and planting like crazy around here.  All the cool weather things are in and happily growing, like the broccoli, cauliflower, kale, radishes, lettuce, spinach, and peas.  Over the next week or two we will finish up planting the warmer weather things, like beans, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and basil.  This year’s late spring and continued cool nights have slowed things up.  It looks like our first delivery won’t be until June 9th, and will probably consist of radishes, lettuce, green onions, and maple syrup.  A lot will depend upon the weather over the next couple weeks.

Pending downloading the photos from the camera and getting to a fast internet connection, we hope to share pictures of our beautiful baby plants very soon!

It has been an action packed weekend at the farm.  We are again cooking maple sap into syrup.  On Friday we pulled the taps out of the trees, since the weather is warming and we are already up to our eyeballs in sap.  Maple syrup is our traditional first harvest of the year.
  

We also pulled up the parsnips.  They grew last summer and fall, and have been in the ground all winter.  Supposedly this makes them sweeter, and spring ground thaw is the traditional time to harvest them.  They are certainly sweet!  We sliced a few up to eat raw along with our lunch of venison sausage, pancakes with homemade maple syrup, and blueberries we picked last summer.  What a feast!

After lunch Jim and Thea the beekeepers showed up.  Sadly, all of their honeybees died over the winter.  They came to collect the hives and clean them out in preparation for a new batch of bees they’ve ordered.  The unexpected benefit to us humans is that the bees died before eating much of their winter stores of honey.  So Jim and Thea gave us some of the honey still in the comb.