What Now?

My favorite question from non-farmers comes as winter approaches: What do you do in the winter? Honestly, I didn’t really know the answer to this question until I began managing a farm in Maine. The answer? We plan. And plan some more.

Summer on the diversified vegetable farm is more than a little complicated. Each year, we manage over 1,000 planting events, each requiring different seeds, seeder or transplanter settings, and dates, starting in February and ending in September. Each of our 75 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 harvest, wash and pack about 30 different crops each week, each with its own requirements. We deliver these crops to each of 10 different locations every week.

We also manage the burdock and thistles in the pasture, planting trees, building greenhouses, maintaining tractors, ordering supplies, writing paychecks, paying loans, hiring employees, and pretty much whatever else needs doing or thinking about. On the farm, the CEO and the chief widget mover are often one and the same.

Of course, all of these events are subject to the vagaries of drought, flood, frost, and excessive 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 throughout January and February do whatever we can to find a clear path from one end of the season to the next. First, we outline our financial plan for the year, answering questions like, how many CSA members do we want next year, how much money do we need to make at farmers market, and how many new toys can we buy? Next comes the planting plan. We begin by trying to figure out how much of each crop we want available to harvest when, and work backwards to when we need to plant it and how much seed we need to buy. I’ve developed a pretty nifty database solution such that when we plug in the date we want to harvest and how much, it fills in the rest of the information (provided we’ve got some good data to work with!) When that is done, we return to our work on the financial plan, revising and polishing and doing the harder work of figuring out just how we are going to make everything work.

Several years ago, we read about and developed a tool for our farm that we call “Life Planning”. We plot all of the major events of the year, from harvesting asparagus to planting tomatoes in the greenhouse to each of the kids’ birthdays, on a grid so that we can look at the amount of work in a given week and decide ahead of time whether we need to adjust our plan. It also serves as a reminder each week of things we shouldn’t forget to do, and relieves a lot of stress because we know things won’t slip by us.

All of this work keeps us busy right up until February 15th, when we start planting onions in the greenhouse. I will try to slip in a few late mornings and maybe a little time off the farm, but for the most part, what we do in the winter is look forward to summer again.

Farm Happenings

Weather: In this sort of cold, I feel grateful to have no livestock on the farm. Livestock in this weather means frozen waterers and difficult feeding; some folks I have talked to recently are actually calving in this January freeze. The only things I have to keep warm are rosemary and stored roots, which just isn’t that bad. Unfortunately, crops in our unheated greenhouses have been hurt by this early deep freeze; it remains unclear how well they will recover. Last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, we had spinach to harvest in the first week of January, but no market for it. I’m hoping that this weather will break, and the spinach will come back.

What We Did: The snow around Christmas kept Ben and Sarah home several days, so mostly we focused on staying caught up on packing roots and other urgent tasks. We did find time to take stock of our winter projects, and took a complete inventory of our seeds.

Comings and Goings: Chris stayed at home with Oliver and Isabel for the holidays, and had quite a nice time. Not much coming or going really, which was a nice change.

In the Kitchen

When you get this box home, the dried peppers, squash, and shallots should be left in a cool, dry place. Bag up the roots and the cabbage, and put them in the crisper drawer of your cooler.

The Rock Spring Farm Blog, www.eatbetternews.com, has several years’ worth of recipes and vegetable descriptions. You can visit there any time to search for recipes and tips on how to use your CSA share produce.

Heart of Gold Squash

Dried Peppers – In the paper bag. We harvested these in September and dried them in our onion curing racks. These aren’t super hot, and will make a nice addition to soups and sauces, especially if you remove them at the end of cooking.

Red Savoy Cabbage – use this like green savoy cabbage, very light and crunchy.

Purple Top Turnips – these are the roots with purple tops and white roots

Beauty Heart Radishes – green tops and white bottoms, with a beautiful, pink interior with great sweetness and crunch.

Gold Beets – use like red beets, but without all of the staining; they have a slightly less-earthy flavor.

Shallots

Daikon Radish – long and white, delicious raw or cooked

Rutabagas – Purple tops, yellow bottoms. Use a good sharp knife on these.

Carrots

Celeriac – the knobbly root that smells like celery

Brussels Sprouts – a small amount, from our remaining inventory. These suffered some freezing damage out in the field, but a quick peel leaves an outstandingly-sweet little cabbage-y treat.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

1 lb Brussels sprouts
3 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper

Preheat the oven 400 degrees. Mix Brussels sprouts with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Roast on a baking sheet for about 40 minutes, shaking occasionally, until crisp on the outside but still tender inside. Sprinkle with even more salt, and serve.

Rutabaga Rosemary Fries

2 Rutabagas
olive oil
minced fresh rosemary
salt

Peel the rutabaga and cut into a ½-inch “fries.” Steam in a steamer basket over boiling water until just tender. Drain and toss with a generous amount of olive oil and the rosemary. Lay the fries in a single layer on a cookie sheet, with none of the fries touching each other, and bake in a 400-degree oven for about 25 minutes, turning them once in the middle. Place under the broiler for about two minutes to brown them, salt to taste, and serve.

Puttanesca Sauce

Sauté some garlic, onions, and anchovies in olive oil. Add dried chilies (either chop them up and leave them in, or use them whole and take them out at the end of cooking), black olives, capers, and chopped tomatoes (canned or fresh). Maybe add a splash of red wine. Simmer for ten or twenty minutes to reduce the sauce, depending on how much liquid you’ve got.