Weekly Newsletters 2005
Week No. 1 – 2005
Our family welcomes you to an 11th growing season
TODAY…. This week, as in each year’s earliest deliveries, you can enjoy wonderful fresh and healthful gourmet salads! Sorrel and endive are returning this year, at subscribers’ requests; read more about them below. Nature dictates that first bags from the farm are always light. Much of what we grow takes a while to mature. What you’re eating was grown here where we live – not in warmer climates with irrigation 1000s of miles away. Our plants have come through repeated frosts by greenhouse protection or under layers of straw. They’ve also survived one of the driest springs on record here . LATER ON… In bloom, are Fava Beans and everyone’s favorite – snow peas. These prizes will make it into your bags in the next few weeks. FRESH HERBS… Remember, you can hang your oregano, dill and tarragon clusters upside down and dry them for use later if you don’t cook with them fresh this week. They’ll dry nicely for you in a corner of the kitchen to flavor garden bounty that takes longer to grow. Cilantro is best fresh, and better to freeze than to dry. Buy and consult our “From Asparagus to Zucchini” cookbook for many more tips and specifics on preserving fresh vegetables ($13 to members, $19.95 retail price ). VOLUNTEERS WANTED… Come join us for a morning in the garden. 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. is generally cool and pleasant before the sun becomes harsh (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday). Spending time in a garden helps connect us to food in ways no purchase can. START FRESH … Have fun with this week’s vegetables. Follow tips we provide. Be Creative! Read about all your options, project what you’ll consume over the week and preserve what you can’t (by refrigeration, freezer or storage). HELP US CUT COSTS… Please bring us clean, recycled brown paper grocery sacks
This week’s subscriptions contain:
Recipe of the Week
Base for Creamed Soups (save this recipe and make creamed soups all season with other vegetables)
From “Vegetables ” by James Peterson
3 TBSP butter
1 medium onion
1 or 2 potatoes
6 cups of milk, and/or broth (chicken or vegetables)
¼ to 1 cup cream (optional)
salt and freshly ground pepper
Heat butter and cook onions until translucent. Add potato slices and milk/broth. Bring to a simmer. Simmer for 20 minutes. Add sorrel and spinach (or other greens), vegetables of your choice and simmer another 5 minutes. Puree in blender and/or strain through food mill or fine strainer. Add cream. Thin with broth or milk to desired consistency. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately or chill and serve cold
Week No. 2, 2005
Seeing food from vantage of another’s point of view
TODAY…. I try to imagine what it’s like to stare down into a recycled brown paper grocery sack at clusters and bags of vegetables and herbs I’d never seen outside a can, freezer package or bottle. What’s it like for you? What’s it like for us? Our family sees these plants 7 days a week from the ground up. Their fragrances fill our senses. Their fragile nature is as clear to us in garden as it is stuck in traffic on the Dan Ryan Expressway, ice bottles slowly melting in coolers, temperature 96 degrees and people waiting at delivery points. From first light to dark, we crawl around, kneel beside, stand over these plants, nursed into life from seed months ago. We carefully disengage them from giant weeds and grasses that grow three times faster. We pull, chop, compost the competitive plants that would starve our produce of water, sunlight and minerals – both above and below ground. We weed, weed, weed into our dreams. THIS WEEK … Two young boys from a neighboring sheep farm, crews of young adults from Emma Goldman’s Housing Cooperative in Madison, a young woman from Monroe and two moms with their children from Janesville have all been joining us in garden and field in recent weeks. Their help has been terrific! Their interest in this business of tending life into food feeds us. If you can find time for that at least once this season, we all benefit. Come experience the process; the changing seasons. IT’S HOT …. Relief from the heat is so welcome, but it may be too late to keep some spring varieties that like it cool from bolting. It may cut short items like spinach. You’re getting extra lettuce this week because we’re trying to save it from being lost; we must harvest it to keep the plants alive and growing. Try it on sandwiches. Experiment with salad combinations and dressings. HELP US CUT COSTS… We still need a good, weekly supply of clean, recycled brown paper grocery sacks! Bring your neighbors’ if you can.
This week’s subscriptions contain:
Recipe of the Week : Easy Snow Peas
You can, of course, eat your snow peas in a salad. You can also cook them. Chop 1 or 2 garlic scapes and sauté them in olive oil. Add snow peas. Cook 3 to 5 minutes. Add a splash of soy sauce and some fresh dill or marjoram. Check your Asparagus to Zucchini Food Book for great recipes using all your vegetables from Scotch Hill Farm. If you don’t have the new edition, we’ll be bringing it to the delivery sites. It retails for $19.95, but we sell it to members of our farm for $13. Of that amount, $10 goes to the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition, a licensed non-profit that educates consumers about our group of CSA growers in central Wisconsin and organic agriculture
Week No. 3 2005
Scotch Hill Farm hosts USDA SBIR program visit
TODAY…. We got a call from the director of the USDA Small Business Innovation Research program. It has been helping us organize a guild and marketing cooperative of small family farmstead soap-makers. He will visit our farm from Washington , D.C. in July. We’re excited to have him stop here on a cross-country trek that will take him to farms receiving SBIR funding. Our milk soap has become about one-third of our income. It’s helping 9 other families begin similar enterprises and reduce their need to work off-farm to meet expenses. Ninety percent of Wisconsin dairy farmers in one poll a few years ago indicated someone in the family was working off farm. Two thirds said their farms would fail without this income… THIS WEEK … We rent a 3-acre field on Gempler Road near an Amish carriage-making shop. The field is lined with trees, the way all fields once were. Birds we hear there as we work are different from those that grace the open land around our home garden and farm yard. We planted dragon beans and more sweet corn there this past week. We also transplanted many greenhouse starts, and cultivated earlier corn, now approaching 6 inches in height. We lost our first corn. We don’t use seed treated with fungicides; 3 or 4 days of very cold, cloudy weather several weeks ago probably rotted that seed in the ground after we planted it. We need rain …. The ground is getting hard and dry. Growth of some plants has slowed. Others are beginning to show stress. Most vegetables require at least half an inch of moisture a week. HELP US CUT COSTS… A big thank you to those who brought us brown paper grocery sacks. Please keep them coming. We go through many in a season.
This week’s subscriptions contain:
Recipes of the Week
Greens and Beets Piquant (from the GreenThumb Cookbook, 1977 Rodale Press, Inc.)
Clean and cook 1 lb. of greens (using chard, turnip greens, beet greens, endive, etc.) until barely tender; Drain and chop. Melt ¼ cup of butter or vegetable oil in saucepan. Sauté 3 minced onions until tender. Add 1 cup of minced, cooked beets (or turnips) and greens with 2 TBSP vinegar, one or two boiled eggs (chopped).Toss until heated through and serve.
Endive with Sweet and Sour Dressing
Wash 1 bag of endive (our personal preference is to mix with lettuce), tear into 1½ inch pieces and dry with paper towel. Beat 2 eggs with 1/3 to ½ cup of honey, ½ cup vinegar or lemon juice, ½ cup of cold water, ¼ tsp dry mustard or 1 tsp prepared mustard, salt and pepper to taste. Pour mixture over 3 slices of crisp fried, chopped bacon (optional) or olive oil. Stir until thickened. Pour on endive. Serve immediately.
Week No.4 2005
Much needed rain falls on thirsty local cropland
TODAY…. Our family has worked right along through the 90-degree weather, though we’ve had to stop for rests, even short naps at mid-day. We’ve been drinking a lot more fruit juice and water to keep from dehydrating. Some evenings we’ve sent the boys with the truck into town to the public pool after weeding and harvesting vegetables all day. THIS WEEK … Our first rain in two weeks came – two days in a row. The first night’s rain brought a storm that knocked down trees along our rural road, including a huge portion of one tree in our yard. The rain was so violent that it shredded many leaves of our chard. This near indestructible plant, however, should revive to see many more harvests. The second storm was much less violent, and we were oh so grateful for the extra moisture. We had just planted sweet corn, beans and squash and needed the rain to get everything germinating and growing properly. EATING FROM THE GARDEN… Dela, the boys and I have been taking turns fixing stir fry, soup and salad dishes. How about you? One of our new subscribers said she tried 3 new recipes last week! Send us new recipes or old favorites you’ve been trying with our fresh vegetables and herbs. NATURAL WEED TRIMMERS … There are some places around our place, behind buildings and along side greenhouses, where we usually mow. To rest paddocks and keep the animals from over-grazing, we’ve been putting up temporary fences and moving 4 hungry lambs about these spaces as much as possible. If we had more time and a budget for fencing, we’d certainly do more of this. The animals don’t contribute to atmospheric conditions brought on by burning fossil fuels. They’re more pleasant to listen to and observe than gasoline powered engines .
This week’s subscriptions contain
Recipes of the Week
Fava Bean Casserole (from the GreenThumb Cookbook, 1977 Rodale Press, Inc.)
2 cups fresh or dried fava beans
1 teaspoon salt
4 small onions, chopped
1 teaspoon rosemary
¼ cup butter
3 tomatoes, sliced
¾ cup grated cheese
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
Cook the favas in salted broth or water until tender; then drain, saving the cooking liquid for soup. Sauté the onions and rosemary in melted butter and mix with the drained favas. In a 2-quart casserole, place a layer of fava mixture, a layer of tomato slices, and a layer of cheese. Repeat, topping with tomato and cheese and parsley. Bake at 375 F. for 20 minutes or until heated through. Makes 4 servings
Week No.5 2005
You make so much possible and we thank you
THIS WEEK … Three earthen beds of soil got fresh application of manure and bedding from our farm buildings this week. We mowed down the grasses and weeds, the harvested spring plants, the seedlings that burned up in the record spring drought of several weeks ago. We applied the rich organic matter and tilled it back into the earth. Just a few years ago this same amount of work took us weeks and weeks to accomplish, by pitch fork, rakes, hoes, hand, wheel barrow, walk-behind roto tiller. Today a mower, a used manure spreader, a 70-horse-power tractor, a 50-inch.rotivator that works off tractor powered take-off accomplished the work in a few hours. This allowed us so much more time for weeding, staking tomato plants, harvesting and pruning. The result is higher yields, richer soils, better tasting and more nutritious vegetables. We have those of you who’ve supported us these past 11 years to thank for these machines and devices we’ve invested in every year. This is where your money has gone – farm expenses, land stewardship, soil fertility and a balanced, natural, human scale of farming. We thank you for making it possible. We thank you for supporting agriculture.
This week’s subscriptions contain:
(C) Chard, Mozzarella and Basil Pizza very adapted from Farm House Cookbook
(1) Dissolve one package active dry yeast in 1¼ cups lukewarm water in a large bowl or heavy-duty mixing bowl. Stir in 1 cup of unbleached, all purpose flour. Add 1 teaspoon salt and 2 more cups flour, one cup at a time, mixing well after each addition. If you’re using an electric mixer, set speed at medium and gradually add one last ½ cup of flour until the dough is no longer sticky. Increase speed to high and mix dough until smooth and glossy, about 4 minutes. If you’re making dough by hand, turn it out onto a heavy floured work surface and gradually knead in the remaining ½ cup flour until dough is smooth and glossy, which will take about 8 minutes. Return the dough to the bowl, cover with a damp towel and let rise in a warm spot (68 to 70 degrees F) until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour. (2) Preheat oven to 450 F. Brush a baking sheet lightly with olive oil. (3) Rinse ½ to 1 pound of chard thoroughly and chop or shred with a knife. Coat the bottom of a skillet with olive oil and very lightly wilt the chard (don’t over-cook). Wash, slice other vegetable toppings if you like. Lay the vegetables in thin slices on prepared baking sheet, fanning them out gently. Brush them lightly and thoroughly with 3 tablespoons olive oil and bake in center of oven until soft and golden (about 10 minutes). Remove from oven. (4) Reduce oven temp to 425 F. (5) Punch down dough and roll on lightly floured surface to fit same baking sheet. Sprinkle dough with garlic slices and cover with 12 ounces of mozzarella. Arrange vegetables on top of cheese. Drizzle with a little more olive oil and bake until dough is golden, cheese is melted and bubbling and vegetables are cooked through (about 25 minutes). (6) While pizza is baking make pesto with basil, olive oil and 2 chopped cloves garlic in a bowl or food processor. Puree and drizzle over pizza when finished baking. Let sit 5 minutes to warm the pesto and let pizza cool. Serves 6 to 8.