Newsletter #15-09
Posted by admin on October 18th, 2009 filed in Uncategorized
We’re having a great time. Wish you were here. Dressed for the weather, we are digging potatoes. Yukon Gold, that is. We are very grateful for Shannon, one of our CSA sharers who volunteered for the day. She came prepared to play in the snow last Friday. We appreciate her help and cheerfulness in less than ideal conditions.
Besides the Yukon gold potatoes in your tubs this week, you will find some Blue Lagoon potatoes. These developed on our farm this year and you may never see them again. They have purple skins like the Russian blue potatoes but are white on the inside. It’s interesting how bees can cross pollinate and make new varieties.
This year we planted celeriac, a root which is a member of the celery family. The celeriac can vary in size from tennis ball to melon. This year it’s quite small. When you are ready to use the celeriac, you must first wash the root thoroughly in water, then peel its outer skin. You can then use the celeriac for cooking purposes or slicing it into sections that can be boiled. The leaves are a little tougher and have a stronger flavour than celery. They are most suitable for soups and stews.
Celeriac can also be baked, whole, in its skin. Once baked, you can remove its skin and eat its inner flesh. It is, however, especially good when cooked with potatoes. It will give real zip to your mashed potatoes. Celeriac can be eaten raw but since its flesh will darken when exposed to air, sprinkle it with a little lemon juice or cook it as soon as it is peeled.
| We planted five colours of carrots this year but the White Satin performed the best. Consequently you have mostly white carrots in your tub. They are said to be sweeter and juicier than orange carrots.
Jack Frost took our lettuce but we managed to snatch the surviving brassicas from his grasp and make up a bag of autumn greens for you. We enjoyed a wilted greens salad for Thanksgiving. Stefan wilted the greens by sautéing them in white wine. They tend to be a little bitter so he added pears. The stems could have been chopped up and sautéed longer than the leaves as they tend to be a little tougher. |
“The way we farm may be the single biggest and most undervalued way that we can mitigate global warming”Tim LaSalle –Rodale Institute CEO
If organic practices were performed on all the planet’s food-growing land it would be like taking more than 1.5 billion cars off the road.
More than 7,000 pounds of carbon dioxide can be taken from the air and captured in one acre of soil in a single year, using organic farming methods.
Advanced organic farming could capture enough carbon from the air to offset about 25% of the total fossil fuel emissions in the United States.
Organic corn production requires 30% less energy compared to conventional chemical farming.
Organic farming provides the surest path to improved nutritional quality in our widely consumed fruits and vegetables. Vine ripened organic produce tastes better and produces more nutrients per calorie consumed. Charles Benbrook ph.D. Chief Scientist—The Organic Center
This is the last week for this CSA season. We have had to work harder than usual to make sure you got a fair share this year. The beginning of the season always produces a lighter tub but this year the vegetables were at least a month later than usual so we purchased 500 lbs of organic flour from Prairie Flour Mills to bake you some focaccia using our vegetables for flavour. We hope you enjoyed your produce. We thank you for sharing our enthusiasm and supporting our venture to erase some carbon footprints. This summer we could have used some global warming but the climate change was most unpleasant. We wish you a pleasant winter and hope to meet again next spring.
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