Winter Work

My favorite question from non-farmers comes as winter approaches. Almost everybody asks, What do you do all winter? Honestly, I didn’t know the answer to this question until I managed a market farm out on the coast of Maine: we plan. And plan some more.

Summer on the diversified vegetable farm is more than a little complicated. Each year, we complete over 1,000 planting events, each requiring different seeds, seeder or transplanter settings, and dates; this process starts in mid-February with onion seeding in the greenhouse, and ends sometime in mid-October with garlic planting out in the field. Each of our forty fields has a different pattern of drying and moisture that dictates different timing for preparing the soil and managing the weeds. For most of the summer, we wash and pack about thirty different crops each week, each with its own requirements. We deliver these crops to each of ten different locations each week.

In addition to managing the vegetables, we have to keep on top of mowing under the electric fences that we use to keep the deer out of our fields, maintain tractors, order supplies, write paychecks and pay bills, hire our seasonal crew, keep the burdock and thistles from making seed, move the greenhouses, and make a little headway on some of the bigger projects that always lurk around an old farmstead. And, on the farm, the CEO and the chief widget cranker are often one and the same. I can do a certain amount of thinking and planning while riding in the seat of the tractor, but it tends to focus on the latest and loudest things out there, not necessarily the behind-the-scenes stuff that has to get done.

Of course, all of these events are subject to the vagaries of drought, flood, frost, and heat. Even the normal variations in weather – the necessary rains, the all-important week of good weather in the first week of May – can create major bumps in the farming road. You can’t plant when it’s wet, and most crops hate to be harvested in the heat.

So, with the CSA season officially wrapped up – and winter officially beginning on Sunday, I’ll sit down and start to do whatever I can do to find a clear path from one end of the season to the next. First, I’ll outline the financial plan for the year, answering the big questions first (how many CSA members do I hope to get?) and doing the math I need to put all of the little pieces in place (five tons of compost per acre times thirteen acres times some number of dollars per yard plus trucking per twenty yards and how many tons of compost are in cubic yard again…?) to figure out how much will be left to reinvest in the farm in the fall; figuring out the right investments to make in the winter helps us make better choices.

Next comes the planting plan, which begins by figuring out how much of each crops we want available to harvest when. Then, I work backwards to figure out when we need to plant it and how much seed we need to buy. I have developed a pretty nifty database solution that allows me to plug in the harvest date and how much we need, and fills in the rest of the information (provided I’ve got good data to work with!). That done, we order the seeds and sort them into our seed storage shelves in the walk-in cooler. Then, I return to the financial plan, revising and polishing and doing the harder work of figuring out the details of just how I’m going to make everything work.

Several years ago, Kim read about and the developed a tool for our farm that we call, “Life Planning.” Basically a spreadsheet of our entire lives with a column for each week of the year, it allows us to plot out all of the major events of the year, from planting tomatoes in the greenhouse (which means we need to have compost on hand two weeks before that, and need to till up the ground ahead of time) to the kids’ birthdays. This gets a quick revision every winter, and we also use it plot out timing for bigger projects so that they don’t conflict with times that already have too much going on. During the summer, this sheet serves as a reminder each week of things that we shouldn’t forget to do, and it relieves a lot of stress because we know things won’t slip us by.

All of this work – in addition to conference planning and speaking at a variety of venues – keeps us busy right up until February 15^th, when we start planting onions in the greenhouse. I’ll try to slip in a few late mornings, and maybe a weekend or two off the farm (that don’t involve speaking at a conference about farming!). But, for the most part, what I do in the winter is look forward to summer again!

In the Farm Kitchen

Every year, when it comes time to write something about Daikon Radish, I go looking for information about the Radish Spirit that appears in the Miyazake anime, Spirited Away. And, I never find anything useful. In fact, this time around, I stumbled on a web page that claimed that the term “Radish Spirit” was an invention in the dubbed version of Spirited Away. I am crushed. I think the world would be a better place with the radish spirit in it.

Daikon radish are tremendously popular in Japan, where they account for an astounding fifteen percent of the country’s vegetable production. Radishes are often eaten raw as a digestive aid at the start of a meal. We enjoy them as a foil to salty and rich meats like beef, or just for snacking; the following recipe is a perennial favorite of our family and guests.

Beet and Daikon Salad

Daikon radish are popular in Japan, where they account for 15% of that country’s vegetable production. We frequently enjoy them sliced, raw, as a foil to salty meats or just for snacking. We also enjoy the following recipe:

1 medium beet
6-inch piece of daikon
1 medium carrot
2 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp canola oil

Grate all of the roots together, and add salt and pepper to taste. Add rice vinegar, sesame oil, and canola. Makes 4 small servings.

Also in the storage radish category this week are the Beauty Heart Winter Radishes. Our friends Ryan and Kristine at Grass Run Farm shared these with a conventional-farming neighbor who really enjoyed them, and now regularly asks Kristine to pick up some of those Bleeding Heart Radishes. The bright red color makes for a great presentation; just last night, eating alone, I shredded half a large radish on a coarse grater, and sprinkled it with umeboshi plum vinegar for a salad that took less than thirty seconds to prepare. For a more substantial side dish, this cooked cabbage and winter radish combination not only looks cool, but tastes great, as well.

Spicy Cabbage with Winter Radish

1/3 cup winter radish, chopped into small pieces
1/3 cup onion, chopped
4 tablespoons olive oil
3 cups shredded cabbage
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
1/2 teaspoon hot pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste
dash or two of ginger juice or some thinly slice ginger

Cook the onions lightly in the olive oil, add the radish, cabbage, sesame seeds, and hot pepper. Cook until the cabbage is tender about 10 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Add the ginger, toss and serve.

Because this is the last box of the winter season, we have tried to bulk up on some of the staples that everyone enjoys, like Carrots and Red and Yellow Onions. Stored in a plastic bag in your refrigerator, the root crops will store for months if necessary. Onions will keep well if you store them dry and cool – a cupboard on an outside wall can work well.

Carrot Soup

2 lbs carrots, chopped
1 medium potato, chopped
4 cups stock or water
1 Tbsp butter
1 cup chopped onion
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tsp fresh herbs (dill, or a mixture of parsley, thyme, and basil)
2 Tbsp lemon juice

Bring stock or water to boil in a medium saucepan, add the carrots and potato, and boil until carrots are tender, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a small skillet. Add onions and salt and sauté until they just soften. Add the herbs and garlic and cook for about five minutes more, until the onions are translucent. Stir in the lemon juice. Puree everything together in a blender, transfer to a soup pot, and simmer gently for about ten minutes. Serve hot, topped with sour cream and a sprinkling of fresh herbs.

These caramelized onions make a great side dish on their own, or use it as a topping for pasta or pizza.

Caramelized Onions

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 pounds onions, peeled
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup red wine
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 bay leaf
4 tablespoons stock
salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a large, ovenproof saucepan over a medium flame. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Add the onions to the butter and cook for about 20 minutes, until they are nicely browned. Add the sugar, wine, vinegars, bay leaf, and stock, and bring to a simmer.

Place the pan in the oven and cook for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the onions are soft. Remove the onions from the pan with a slotted spoon. Reduce the sauce over low heat until it achieves a slightly viscous consistency, about 1 hour. Season with salt and pepper, and reheat the onions in the sauce.

Last week, I got a little over-enthusiastic and baked up way too many Beets (using a covered baking dish, a half-inch of water, in a 400-degree oven for about an hour; run the beets under cold water when they’re cooked and the skins will slip right off). I stored the leftovers, peeled and whole, in the refrigerator, and Mom and I sliced them up as needed and used them all week as a little extra side dish with every meal. It made a surprisingly elegant addition to the plate.

The Acorn Squash have turned largely orange as they’ve been stored without bright light. The chlorophyll that’s responsible for the green color degrades without sunlight (which is why acorn squash start off with a bright orange “ground spot”) and leaves the orange background color. They are still delicious.

Farm Happenings

Weather: Cold, mostly, but we had an interesting warm spell last weekend. On Sunday, Chris left the farm for town at around noon with plenty of mud clinging to his shoes; by three, when he returned, the ground had already refrozen. Monday morning treated us to huge, fantastic sundogs that lasted for much of the morning. Wednesday morning dawned clear and white, with giant snow flake crystals that glinted in the sunlight- beautiful snow-plowing weather! Forecast snow for Thursday night means that Chris is planning to head up to stay with friends at Gardens of Eagan in Farmington, where he’ll plug in the truck to keep everything at the right temperature and hopefully miss the worst of the weather.

Comings and Goings: Chris’ mom, Karlla, came to visit from Seattle last week. She and Chris spent most of the week overhauling the bookkeeping system (Mom’s a QuickBooks wizard) to provide better, more intuitive data entry and feedback. Chris attended a class on financial record keeping and decision making with the Land Stewardship Project in Rochester, and went to a meeting at Featherstone Fruits and Produce in Rushford to discuss alternative transportation and distribution systems for local farms moving vegetables into the greater Twin Cities area.

What We Did: Sarah began the long process of inventorying all of our supplies in the packing house. Since we can pretty reliably predict what we will use over the course of the summer, a good inventory helps us avoid emergency shortages when the heat is on. She and Brenda also began cleaning and oiling all of the handtools, soaking the heads in buckets of water to tighten them to the handles (a good trick I learned from Grandpa Blanchard. Grandpa farmed tomatoes for two years near La Grange, Oregon, taking them over the Wallowa Mountains into Pendleton. This was back in the thirties. I never heard him swear except when he told me this story, which he concluded by saying, “It was a hell of a way to make a living.”)