Farm to Folk Newsletter     September 9, 2008

“A little extra info from the farms to the folks”
website: www.farmtofolk.com

 Buy Fresh Buy Local Newsletter:  http://www.drake.edu/news/dbletter/buyfreshbuylocal/

Cindy Madsen will be delivering her pork, poultry and honey on Sept 9.  Please order directly to her.  vcmadsen@metc.net   Orders are due to her by noon on Friday.

Berry Patch  Now harvesting - several varieties of apples, red raspberries, elderberries.

Notice change in pick your own hours:  Wednesday and Saturday mornings 8 -12 noon.

Paul's Grains  Check their website for products and prices, then email your order to Marilyn.  They may deliver again in Sept if there are significant orders.

Full Circle Farm  will deliver this week.

Grains of Wisdom Breads will deliver bread this week. Pre-order or take your chances with first come-first served.

Member, Kris August submitted this information that may be of interest to some of you:

Meet the Members

This week we introduce Sue DeBlieck and Tomoko Ogawa.  These roommates are both in the Sustainable Ag Program at ISU, have a backyard garden, and work at Onion Creek Farm and the Student Organic Farm.

Sue has been an f2f member for two years and on Tuesday was getting apples for a pie that would include crust from Paul’s grains flour and locally acquired lard.  She grew up gardening and canning with her family in northern Minnesota and always loved the fresh spinach from the garden but not the canned spinach.  When her family moved to the suburbs, they gave up gardening and preserving food as too much work and not necessary to their lifestyle.  Sue’s interest in local food was renewed a few years ago when she spied some apples growing in her neighborhood and stole them.  The fresh taste encouraged her to invest in locally grown foods and the whole local foods philosophy.

Tomoko’s interest in gardening began when she started a horticulture club at her junior high school in Tokyo.  Her club had a garden behind their school where they grew potatoes, summer squash and tomatoes among other things.  In Japan her mother rode her bicycle everyday to shop for food.  Tomoko fondly recalls the rice balls that her mother made for her school lunch box, describing it as comfort food.  Before coming to ISU, Tomoko worked at a Farm Retreat in Japan where they grew all their own vegetables and rice and she worked with youth in the rice paddies.  Shopping at Farm to Folk is more like home she says.

In addition to the food they get from f2f, they have been cooking with produce from their backyard garden and enjoy making Indian food while listening to Indian music.  They like being a part of Farm to Folk for the good food, the people, cooking and knitting tips and the connection to the broader community outside of their University experience.

Iowa Fresh Produce:

Good morning

Venturing out this morning to feed the cat and ducks I made a mental note- DIG out the Flannel! It definitely is getting to be flannel shirt weather though I must say with just a t-shirt one does walk along spiritedly trying to stay warm. Looks like another few days and then we'll most likely rebound into an Indian Summer. That will be appreciated by all those late maturing crops this season and give me a chance to finish up some outdoor jobs..., old fencing to pull, greenhouses to recover ( and finish building for that matter)  drip lines to remove from the fields. trenches to dig for water and electrical lines... always seems that the list continues to grow no matter

what progress has been made on it. The only thing that really stops it from growing are those howling winds, flurries of snow and frozen ground. So in reality I hope it never does quit growing.

With all the problems and negative things that happened this Summer there has been a glimmer of light. Several years ago I lost bees over Winter due to Sudden Colony Collapse( SCC) or so I think as upon opening the hives in early Spring  not a bee could be found  within the hive- only honey comb with reserves yet of honey and dead bee larvae. Just a week or so ago I noticed an influx of bees after a Summer without seeing many. Seems we have a swarm that has settled in the stud wall of the granary. Now that is good news. I hope at some point to retrieve them and move them into a hive. In the mean time it takes some getting used to walking in amongst them all the time as their pathway is also the entrance for the wash shed (  a lean to structure built off the back side of the machine shed) Every so often you get inadvertently hit by one but so far it hasn't angered them enough to spend their solitary weapon.

 This week you'll find:

lettuce mix
bell peppers
eggplant
tomatoes (probably a combination of slicing and roma types)
cherry tomatoes for those who hadn't received them last week
personal melons
onions
 

The personal melons have been popular  these past few years as families get smaller and yet want to enjoy watermelon that before was normally found only in the larger form. It looks like they should be ready about next week. They will include the orange and yellow fleshed melons for the most part.

With the cool weather I will probably bring some leeks as well as a bowl of leek and potato soup would be a good lunch today. They are a versatile vegetable and easily substituted anywhere you would use an onion in a recipe. Unfortunately they will be small this year as they were planted between the onion patch and the garlic/shallot patch. In other words they were severely stressed with all those earlier rains. If you don't want to use them now they freeze very well. I like to slice them up into 1/4" pieces and then freeze them on a cookie sheet. Then transferring them to bags or packages you can easily retrieve exactly how much you need when the time comes.

Enjoy the weekend, 

 Bruce

Small Potatoes Farm

Hello Everyone,

      Deliveries

 We will be bringing beets, potatoes, carrots, Japanese turnips, summer squash, peppers, some eggplant or beans, tomatoes, garlic and cucumbers. Potatoes this week are 'Desiree', a great potato.

 Greens Share will be lacinato kale, red Russian kale, winterboer kale and purple mustard.

      Happenings

      This morning a delegation of Japanese are scheduled to visit the farm to learn more about your CSA. That's about all the information I know. The irony is the CSA movement is often credited with its start in Japan over 20 years ago. Speaking of visiting the farm, don't forget the CSA member potluck on the 20th.

      We've been doing a lot of weeding and harvesting. I did make a mad dash to get some more cover crops in Tuesday night in hopes for rain, but it never came. We had a little this morning, but probably not enough for a good emergence. I've been catching up on mowing, too, and had a breakdown. I was pretty sure I didn't have the tools, parts or knowledge to get the mower back to business quickly, so we had to buy a new mower. The old one was my grandfathers (as is the disk I used to cover the cover crops). Both made there way from the weed

pile at my fathers farm in eastern Iowa, via his pickup, to our farm to begin their lives anew after 50 years being idle. 

      It’s that time of year. Most of the garlic is cleaned and sorted for seed, delivery or the garlic tasting. This should mean more garlic in the box. We'll be planting our seed garlic back in the ground in about a month.

      In the Kitchen (by Stacy)

      In preparation for winter I've been roasting pans of vegetables (carrots, beets, tomatoes, peppers, onion, squash, garlic) tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper, and then pureeing them with some basil.  The result is a thick, flavorful paste to which I can add water to make soup.  For soup I add some vegetable boullion and some cut up beans, and orzo pasta.  We also used the paste as a pizza sauce the other night. 

      Also, I've been keeping marinated cucumbers in the fridge for a snack.  This recipe is from Dani S.:   to sliced cucumber add equal parts water, vinegar (white), and sugar.   Cover and refrigerate over night.  I used a little less sugar and they turned out fine.

      Finally, I'll be making pesto tonight and it seems many of you have similar plans.  Here is the recipe I use:

      2 cups tightly packed basil 

      2 to 4 cloves garlic

      1/4 cup pine nuts (I use sunflower nuts)

      1/4 tsp. salt

      1/4 olive oil

      Blend basil, garlic and nuts in food processor.  Add salt.  Pulse   again.

While food processor is running add oil in steady stream and allow to process until a thick, smooth paste is formed.  Makes approx. 2 cups.   If you like Parmesan cheese in your pesto add 1/2 cup along with the salt.

      Most Notable Events - Gas Saver Extraordinaire

      I had the gas story a little wrong. I guess I was just preparing myself for a future political convention speech. Jennifer O. and husband (Drake pick-up) fact checked my claim and sent this clarification.

      We bought a Honda Metropolitan scooter about a month ago. It gets 100 mpg, and my husband and I trade off who rides it to work. Whoever isn’t riding the scooter is driving our 36 mpg Honda Civic. So, when I talked to you last week, we had only spent $4 (not 4 gallons) on gas in the month of August. Since then, we’ve had to fill up the Honda once, so we’ve now spent $43 total on gas in August. Plus, we’ve never had so much fun on the daily commute!

      Our hats off to them.

      Have a great week,

      Rick, Stacy and Tillie

      P. S. Worth Reading If You Have The Time

      [Reprinted without permission from the August issue of the Local Harvest Newsletter]

      Welcome back to the Local Harvest newsletter. Sorry for the delay in this "August" issue. We were eating tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes. And making really incredible sauce.

      Through much of the summer, we have been hopeful. It's hard not to be, when being so well fed by the garden and the local farmers. Everywhere we went, people were talking about buying local food. We like that. It felt like the tide was turning. But in the last couple of weeks, it has seemed like The Insanity is gaining ground again. The FDA decided it was a fine idea for iceberg lettuce and spinach to be irradiated. A science adviser to the Bush administration equated seed saving with Multi-species gene manipulation. Then a small scale cattle rancher from Texas told us that fuel and feed prices are going to put some of his neighbors out of business this year. A poultry farmer

in the Midwest said the same.

      I don't need radical change right this minute. I'm willing to watch it unfold, if it does so kind of quickly. But when it looks like momentum is gathering in a direction that seems fundamentally wrong, well, it's a little discouraging.

I mean, irradiated iceberg lettuce?? That has to be a bad idea in about six different ways.

      The up side of pondering the news is that it got me thinking about this notion of momentum. Motion, shift, gathering power. Harnessed for the common good, it could be our golden ticket.

      When we choose to eat a more local diet, we first have to learn about what is raised near us, and when. Our minds are thus engaged on a new level with the land and the seasons. Buying our veggies and meat from the farmers market or a CSA, we strengthen both our social and economic ties to the farming community. We develop a taste for seasonal food, and may find we prefer plums from a neighbor's tree to any corn syrup laden snack in a box.

      Little by little, the authenticity of real food reveals itself to us. Our

eating habits change. Food, not as international commodity, but as deep nourishment, becomes important and interesting to us. We plan meals, we cook, we sit down to eat. Small acts, really, but ones that undermine the dominant food system's ethos of convenience and instant gratification. Slowly, momentum builds.

      Having experienced real food, we see through the lies of irradiation and genetic manipulation and agricultural consolidation. We are willing to stand up for the real thing. Maybe we march in the streets, as the French are fond of doing. Or write letters, as over 275,000 people did a decade ago when the USDA was shaping the rules that would define 'organic.' Maybe we simply keep putting our money where our mouth is and keep local farmers in business. More

motion, more gathering power.  

      It's safe to say that the industrial food system is going to continue to roll out weird technologies and advertising campaigns and laws to ensure its profits and self-preservation. They will do so in the name of safety and satisfaction. No matter. Individuals can still recognize what is real and whole. Making contact with the authentic is truly powerful. When we do it together, in every community, great shifts will happen. 

Recipes 

See you Tuesday!

Marilyn, Corry and Deb