Fourth Harvest week!
Important Announcement....Due to the 4th of July holiday, Friday folks should plan to pick up their CSA shares on Thursday, July 3rd this week.

Pick-up this week will be re-located to the newly renovated long barn. We are in love with this expanse of space and hope you will appreciate the beautiful timber frame work so lovingly completed by our friends Michael Alderson, Jon Courtney and Robbie Alden. We had a great month working and sharing meals (and afternoon coffee) with them and watching their craft. A HUGE and bountiful thanks to these three for all their dedication to restoring the barn for all of us! It is a truly special space.



One of my favorite activities is to walk through the garden and harvest food for dinner. I love the cooler temperatures of the evening and the shadows as the sun hangs lower in the sky. This past week, the end of the afternoon rain revealed a glorious rainbow and a yellow haze in the hours before dusk as the storm front moved past and the sun set below the clouds. Breath taking beauty. Sorry, no picture-- we were just livin' it. Harvesting directly from the garden for dinner is a task I savor and take time for. This week, I dove indulgently into the peas and harvested a full skirts load (defined as a load of produce carried to the kitchen in the fabric of one's skirt).
We are slowly getting to a point in summer when we no longer need to restrain ourselves from garden vegetables. Of course there are always some crops that do not do as well, and we need to Hold Back ("H.B." is in common parlance at our house.) In the early part of the season, like the last few weeks, we have been eating a mess of pac choi as we try to clear out the row to use for another crop. Back to the PEAS of this week: I turned them into a delicious topping for homemade pizza, with a handful of garlic scapes, mozzarella made from Dulsie's milk and farm cured proccuitto. The peas were divine. The whole experience of them was divine...the color, the taste, the appearance on the vine and the feeling of the snap they make when harvested.
Like strawberries, peas come on in a bell curve and we are at the beginning. But never fear....there are 2 succession plantings of peas and tons of blossoms on these plants so you will all get your fill of these snap peas before the season's through. They are best raw off the vine since the sugars start to change to starch once they are harvested (a good reason to volunteer this week or next to help with the harvest). In fact, peas are hard to come by in the grocery store because by the time they would land in your shopping basket, they would already be starchy. Peas are a garden original.

This weeks Harvest:
Peas
Strawberries
lettuce
chives
mizuna
broccoli

The strawberries this week will be small but wicked flavorful. We are picking pints of sparkle strawberries, which are by far the best! They are little burst of sugar and berry goodness. They ripen after the large, earli-glow you have been eating the last few weeks. If you make it home with this pint of strawberries, you possess a willpower greater than most.

Hope the holiday weekend offers you time to relax with family and friends.

Blessings on the meal,
Stacy and John

Third Harvest 6/24

Note: We do not offer PYO berries at this time. (2015)

Happy first week of summer!

The past few days mark for us the beginning of the "height of the season". (Not in terms of harvest-- that is yet to come.) Today we welcomed the Farm Camp kids for the first week of Farm Camp. The farm is buzzing with people, energy and BERRIES! We have had a healthy flow of pick-your-own strawberry customers and look forward to a strong finish to the berry season.
We hosted our first wedding event this past weekend so the farm is looking (relatively) tidy. Aside from being a great excuse to clean up the farmstead area and the sweep out the ell, it is great to host a gathering of family and friends in this setting. With a rooster in the background, the tractor rumbling across the street, and gardens and fields surrounding it all, the wedding couple certainly were making a statement about the kind of landscape-- and lifestyle that they value. Moreover, the party included plenty of people for whom “organic family farming” is not a particularly familiar concept. Some wedding guests had raised eyebrows as pick-your-own strawberry customers came and went, and when Stacy walked by with the cow to do evening chores. These folks in particular are most welcome guests to the farm. They usually are amazed to find that farming like this still exists. I am always encouraged by what often feels like a universal appeal that the farm has. The pleasant surprise in Aunt Edna's voice as she steps through the ell and says, "My goodness, look-- they're really growing food here!" ... priceless!

Of course there is good reason for Aunt Edna's surprise. Most farms don't look quite like this. Or rather, I should say, most food is not grown on farms like this. Where 2% of the farms in the US produce half the food on the supermarket shelves, we can safely assume that Broadturn Farm is not the standard. Huge mono-culture vegetable and grain fields, and factory-sized confinement feed lots paint a more realistic picture of agriculture today. In light of that doesn't it make sense that Edna would not want to visit a farm? Doesn't it make sense that Scarborough's zoning ordinance would at least prevent any sort of mixed-use for such unhealthy places? It does. Piggeries were banned from Scarborough because in the 1950s, where the Maine Mall is now, there was a large pig farm (not really that big by Iowa piggery standards, but still probably pretty stinky.) In the name of public health, zones were created to keep separate farms from the communities they serve.

Which brings us at Broadturn Farm to the mess we have found ourselves in. Because the farm is so public, we have attracted lots of attention (thanks to the Press Herald among other papers). If you didn't catch the articles in the paper check them out, along with the reader's comments. Here is the first one about the barn renovation. Here is the follow-up article. And here is another article not about us but very pertinent to the issue. That should catch you up...

The amazing work of the timber-framers: Michael Alderson, Jon Courtney, and Robby Alden. THANK YOU. Once they leave, there will still be work remaining to be done. A number of CSA members are carpenters, or at least familiar with hand tool, and by the end of this project many will have the opportunity to help.
The Harvest:
Lettuce
Radishes
Garlic Scapes
Strawberries
Green Onions
Kale

Broadturn Farm's resident chef Toto Talarico's "Orecchiette with Lemon and Kale"
1 lb. orecchette pasta
5 garlic scapes chopped
1/2 bunch kale thinnly sliced
some broccoli raab, also chopped fine
pepper flakes 1 pinch
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup grated peccerino
1 lemon

Cook pasta, sautee garlic and pepper till tender. add broccoli raab and kale, mix into pasta with zest and juice of 1 lemon. Salt and pepper to taste.


Pick your own strawberries are ripening fast, so tell your friends.
A few pictures of our crew: Ariana, Tim, and Toto in the onion field...

Second Harvest 6/16

It is still early spring, (as this weekend's rain has attested) and though the garden is producing some highly anticipated produce, we do still have to shop to make up the balance of our groceries. As food has become more and more central to our lives, our shopping habits seem more and more schizophrenic; more like a family with a major eating disorder than a farm family "in touch" with what we eat... Mid-summer through fall it's easy enough to make dinner by walking out into the garden and "shop" among the rows of vegetables. In winter too, our freezer and root cellar supplies us the the majority of our needs. However, when spring comes and supplies are sparse, (and the household is full) we have to make lists and make frequent trips to the supermarket. ("frequent" because we often forget those lists at home.)
Its then that Stacy, who does most-- if not all-- of the shopping, enters the ethical battleground of how to buy food. Which criteria to follow? Local, Organic, Affordable, Taste, Mileage to Drive? A hierarchy develops, but then to complicate things further, how many different stores can she visit before the baby needs a nap? If time only permits one store; which one? Diving deeper, she struggles with individual products: Generic Brand, Organic, Local Product, Which one will Emma eat? How much compromise is she ready to take on today?!
Oh yeah, one more variable to really put the screws on: How much time in this busiest of seasons do we even have to cook and eat well? Dare we divulge to our CSA community how many take-out pizzas we consume in the spring-time???
We are always working towards a goal of eating and living in a more sustainable manner, but in Springtime, before the fields really start producing, and with time at an absolute premium, you might see Stacy plying the aisles of Hannafords with a cart full of Rice Krispies, macaroni and cheese, and chocolate chips.
The good news is that there is an active group in Portland developing the idea of a new place to shop: a Portland Food Coop. Ever since the Whole Grocer closed (and even before) there have been rumblings about a storefront co-operative which stands firmly committed to local sustainable products. We want a place to buy food that does not rely on slick advertising that essentially plays on our best intentions (and fears) to navigate beyond industrial agriculture. It can be a cluttered and confusing food landscape, but as we work towards forming direct relationships with our food producers, whether it is Maple's Ice Cream, or Jim Gerritson's potatoes, (or our own gardens) the battleground clears and we experience true food security.
Stacy joined the steering committee of the Coop this past winter, and having recently become incorporated, they are about to put the final touches on by-laws. They are working to develop a basic membership structure to start an initial membership drive. But, much work remains undone. What it needs are more people to dedicate time in the next 2 years to sit on committees and do the hard work that needs to be done to get the doors open. There are multiple committees working on different projects that need more volunteer energy. At the recent retreat, the 21 people who attended all agreed to bring one more person along to a committee meeting to increase our volunteer effort and move the project forward. So, Stacy is looking for one person to bring with her to the next committee meeting. Pyramid scheme, anyone?

This week's harvest:
Strawberries
rhubarb
lettuce
mizuna
parsley
pea tendrils
tomato seedling
garlic scapes
radishes

Strawberrys to go with that rhubarb should please most folks. But we also have the makings of a very interesting salad. The Pea Tendrils are a very gourmet item which can be cut bite-sized into a salad of lettuce, mizuna, and radishes. Don't worry, we are not sacrificing our future peas; these are cover crop field peas which happen to be producing delicious little buds. Dice the scapes while they are still tender and add them on top. (In succeeding weeks they may get tougher.) The tomato seedling is really only for those among you who have a patio or small garden space. Why are we offering them?
#1. We have them as extra.
#2. CSA is only second best; home grown is always king.
#3. A cheap way for us to have everyone experience the difficulties in getting a good tomato off a vine, and thus an ounce of sympathy.
#4. We gave out basil last week and you can't have one without the other.
#5. Even if you can't put it in the ground, or get it to produce a tomato, smell the leaves and it will bring you back to any summer garden you've ever been in.
#6. We're sick of planting tomatoes! We have enough! Take it!
Blessings on the meal.
--John
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June 10th

THE FIRST CSA DISTRIBUTION WEEK!
June 10th and 13th, 2008

I went to check on the mint last night and something has attacked it...brown spots everywhere. Then I ran to check the basil.... John wakes up every morning and shares with me a new dream he's had about how the livestock escaped. Apparently, they were 5 miles away this time and he couldn't find all the animals. This is the stress of June manifested in one's overactive dream state. The spring is so full of hope and trepidation each year. Our to-do list is always full and the fields are transforming at an exponential rate. I love the power of spring and try to focus on the potential of the season to bring forth our bounty but it's always a challenge not to get mired down in all the work so as not to see the beauty. Luckily, our kids keep us up-to-date with this beauty, picking bouquets of wild irises and feral daylilies for the table and feverishly searching through the berry patch to locate the first, ripe berries of the season. They remind us why we keep going, keep growing and striving to do the right thing for our community and our environment when really it would be so much easier to lock those animals up in the barn and know they would stay where you put them or to spray the mint with some chemical to take care of the pests. But then...would I really sleep better?

This week's share will include:

• Arugala
• lettuce
• Pac Choi
• rhurarb
• chives with edible blossoms
• sorrel
• 1 basil seedling
  

(Look how big those peas are getting!)

When in doubt about what to do with unfamiliar veggies, I always do a search on Epicurious and something interesting and delicious always comes up. I even reach out to Epicurious for inspiration and ideas about veggies I use all the time. You can type in an ingredient and the site will pull recipes with this ingredient from their database for your perusal. You can go through your amost empty refrigerator and cupboards and type in a few things you may have and a recipe will pop up. Sometimes in the winter I will type in a few random ingredients that I have in the freezer from the summer harvest and out will pop an idea.....for example, this winter John's sister, Layne, a fisherman from Georgetown, gave us some Maine shrimp so I typed in shrimp, corn, zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes and we made a fantastic corn chowder with shrimp from an Epicurious recipe.

The basil seedlings will want a nice, warm, sunny spot and plenty of water to keep the soil moist. You can pinch it back and use the leaves in your favorite dishes and it should hold you over with basil tastings until the garden basil is ready for harvest.

The chive blossoms are beautiful added to salads and pasta dishes for color and delicious flavor. The stem of the blossom is a bit tough so you will not want to use it. The green chives shoots other than the blossom stem are tender and delicious.





















Just to give you some highlights..... the berries are fruiting and almost ready. We encourage you to check the website/blog daily if you want to be the first out to pick your own berries. We anticipate the field being ready for picking this weekend so make tentative plans to drop by for a quart of berries!

If you are interested in volunteering, we love to have help with the harvest on Tuesday and Friday mornings from 7-12. We also work most Saturdays and welcome volunteers from 8-12. Saturday, June 21st there is wedding scheduled at the farm so we will not be doing farm work that day.

The first CSA distribution week is always chaotic as we try to get ourselves and everyone else organized and help new folks with the pick up process. Please let is know if there is something we can do to help you or to make the routine more pleasant. We look forward to seeing you all today and Friday and in the weeks to come. Here's to a great season!

Blessings on the meal-
Stacy and John